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A REASON WHY OBAMA ROCKS: Because he looks almost like a Pinoy. And Pinoys are awesome, of course.
A REASON WHY OBAMA SUCKS: Because he invited Rick "The-only-difference-between-me-and-Dobson-is-tone" Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Seriously? Seriously?!
World's oldest computer is RE-A-SEM-BLED!
A rather...trippy...take on click-based adventuring. (WARNING: It will take a long while to catch up with the current panel.) The dream logic in this is amazing. I only wish that I could be half as coherent when I'm being incoherent. (Thanks,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dracobolt!)
***
I went on a bit of a watching spree yesterday, which is kind of a rarity for me (and not something I should really be doing all that often anyway).
Spirited Warrior - In a tiny village nestled in the forests of Thailand, a weapon-wielding maniac known as the Spirited Killer is murdering hapless travelers unfortunate enough to wander into his territory. Tony Jaa plays a villager leading a band of other villagers and surviving travelers against this Spirited Killer (played by Jaa's mentor, Panna Rittikrai) and the voodoo doctor who controls him. This was Tony Jaa's second film in which he was an actor instead of just a stuntman. The acting is laughable, the plot is a bit meh until you get to the end (WTF?), the fight choereography is solid. I wouldn't consider this a must-see, but it's decent enough.
Chocolate - The autistic daughter of a former mafia mistress sets out to collect money from the people who owe her mother so that she can pay for her mother's costly cancer treatments. This sounds just a bit unbalanced until you realize that the daughter's special talent is that she can perform martial arts moves just by watching them over and over again, either in person or on-screen in a movie. I first heard about this movie when I was browsing Tony Jaa's article and it mentioned that while Jaa was working on Ong-Bak 2, director Prachya Pinkaew and action choreographer Panna Rittikrai were working on a movie starring a female martial artist named Nicharee Vismistananda, a.k.a. Jeeja Yanin*. Of course I had to check it out, and amazingly enough I actually managed to find it subbed in English, in nine parts, on YouTube. (Here's the first part.)
Jeeja's main training is in tae kwon do, but she trained with Rittikrai's stunt team for a while before Pinkaew and Rittikrai developed the script for Chocolate. As such, while Jeeja isn't quite yet on the level of Jaa, I imagine that in a few more years, she'll be ready to co-star alongside him in a movie of ass-kicking proportions. (This is my grown-up Christmas list!) Part Four on YouTube showcases two fight scenes: the first one in which Zen (Jeeja's character) finally flips her shit in an ice block warehouse something-or-other, and her second fight (my favorite in the film, followed by her ending fight sequence) in a packing storehouse. Jeeja's only 5'2" (which is about my height), so it's fun to see her flip and fly all over the place. Her third fight takes place in a butcher's market, which is...pretty interesting, to say the least.
While I like Jeeja herself, I wish she had a better character. Seriously, the rare time that we actually see a female martial artist as a lead, and she's cast as an autistic girl, infantile and helpless except for her martial arts ability? I guess it was so she wouldn't have to act so much and could just show off her talent (which she's got a lot of!). I hope Jeeja gets better roles from now on, since Chocolate is actually a pretty good movie. It's also interesting to see that even though her mother's weakened by cancer later on in the movie, she can still take some names as the movie approaches its climax.
Michiko y Hatchin - Set in a fictional Brazil. Michiko Malandro has escaped from a supposedly inescapable prison for the umpteenth time. Not long after, she rescues 10-year-old Hana "Hatchin" Morenos from her abusive foster family. This seems kind of random until you find out that Michiko once knew Hana's father, Hiroshi, and is searching for him at the moment. Michiko and Hana also share the same tattoo on their stomachs.
Yeah, my summary of the plot doesn't exactly sound titillating. But trust me, this anime is worth checking out, for a number of reasons.
1) Characterization - Michiko and Hatchin, as weird as it may be, suit each other quite well. Michiko is hot as hell in a jalapeno and can seriously lay the smackdown, but she's also irresponsible and has a bit of a hairpin trigger temper. Hatchin offsets Michiko's immaturity with her own world-weariness, hard-earned from life with her foster family, but she still wants/needs a mother figure, which Michiko is willing to provide (albeit a bit awkwardly at this point in things). I'm not sure exactly where these two are going in the series or how they're going to get there, but Studio Manglobe has convinced me to go along with the ride.
Then there's the other characters. Atsuko Jackson, sporting the fiercest 'fro I've ever seen, is a police officer who grew up in the same orphanage as Michiko, and was responsible for Michiko's arrest about 12 years prior to the start of the series. Atsuko appears to have some sort of score to settle with Michiko, but the two of them sort of have a Dist-Jade relationship from Tales of the Abyss, in a way (especially once you hear Michiko mention Atsuko's possible masochistic tendencies during one flashback scene). Hiroshi Morenos, Michiko's own Prince Charming, actually seems like a bit of a dope (and is probably smoking some) when we see him in the flashback scenes. Pepe Lima's an exotic dancer trying to scrape together enough money to get IDs for herself and her younger sister Lulu so that they can jet to someplace better; the owner/cook of a ramen shop that Hatchin works at for a while, who claims "my kung fu send you to hell!"; the criminal syndicate henchman Shinsuke Rodriguez is about as sadistic as Nougami Neuro with the looks of Sideshow Bob crossed with Ryuk; and so on and so forth.
(Oh, and apparently Hatchin can get drunk off orange juice. Orange juice. drunk!Hatchin is an amazing thing to watch. So is drunk!Michiko, for that matter, especially when she's yelling at Pepe "YOUR TITS ARE TOO STIFF!" and then starts shaking her own at her. Yeah.)
2) Art/Animation - Michiko y Hatchin has some seriously beautiful backgrounds with amazing attention to cultural details, and the animation is top-notch as well.Michiko also wears some fucking awesome outfits. The graphics used for the episode title screen and for the middle-of-episode break screens are different in each episode, which is fun to look for/at. I can just imagine the research that the art team did for this series. "Okay, guys, we're gonna live it up in Rio de Janeiro for a couple of months. Party hard, bitches!"
3) Music - Music? Is awesome. Listen to the OP if you don't believe me - it's a really fun, jazzy tune. (TANGENT: If you're watching the OP and you're thinking to yourself, damn, that really looks/sounds like the OP to Cowboy Bebop, that's because Shinichirou Watanabe, who was the writer/director for Cowboy Bebop, is also the music director for Michiko to Hatchin. Fancy that.) The beginning of episode two also has this awesome electronic riff. I freakin' want this series' soundtrack.
The first five subbed episodes can be found on crunchyroll here. For the rest, start here on YouTube with part 1 of episode 6 and check the "More From" box on the right side (up to episode 9 has been subbed so far).
-Reileen
I've held on too long to let it go now
*I don't know how she ended up with this name, but I once had a Thai co-worker whose real given name was Ruchaneewan, but we all called her Meaw. Yeah.
A REASON WHY OBAMA SUCKS: Because he invited Rick "The-only-difference-between-me-and-Dobson-is-tone" Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Seriously? Seriously?!
World's oldest computer is RE-A-SEM-BLED!
A rather...trippy...take on click-based adventuring. (WARNING: It will take a long while to catch up with the current panel.) The dream logic in this is amazing. I only wish that I could be half as coherent when I'm being incoherent. (Thanks,
dracobolt!)***
I went on a bit of a watching spree yesterday, which is kind of a rarity for me (and not something I should really be doing all that often anyway).
Spirited Warrior - In a tiny village nestled in the forests of Thailand, a weapon-wielding maniac known as the Spirited Killer is murdering hapless travelers unfortunate enough to wander into his territory. Tony Jaa plays a villager leading a band of other villagers and surviving travelers against this Spirited Killer (played by Jaa's mentor, Panna Rittikrai) and the voodoo doctor who controls him. This was Tony Jaa's second film in which he was an actor instead of just a stuntman. The acting is laughable, the plot is a bit meh until you get to the end (WTF?), the fight choereography is solid. I wouldn't consider this a must-see, but it's decent enough.
Chocolate - The autistic daughter of a former mafia mistress sets out to collect money from the people who owe her mother so that she can pay for her mother's costly cancer treatments. This sounds just a bit unbalanced until you realize that the daughter's special talent is that she can perform martial arts moves just by watching them over and over again, either in person or on-screen in a movie. I first heard about this movie when I was browsing Tony Jaa's article and it mentioned that while Jaa was working on Ong-Bak 2, director Prachya Pinkaew and action choreographer Panna Rittikrai were working on a movie starring a female martial artist named Nicharee Vismistananda, a.k.a. Jeeja Yanin*. Of course I had to check it out, and amazingly enough I actually managed to find it subbed in English, in nine parts, on YouTube. (Here's the first part.)
Jeeja's main training is in tae kwon do, but she trained with Rittikrai's stunt team for a while before Pinkaew and Rittikrai developed the script for Chocolate. As such, while Jeeja isn't quite yet on the level of Jaa, I imagine that in a few more years, she'll be ready to co-star alongside him in a movie of ass-kicking proportions. (This is my grown-up Christmas list!) Part Four on YouTube showcases two fight scenes: the first one in which Zen (Jeeja's character) finally flips her shit in an ice block warehouse something-or-other, and her second fight (my favorite in the film, followed by her ending fight sequence) in a packing storehouse. Jeeja's only 5'2" (which is about my height), so it's fun to see her flip and fly all over the place. Her third fight takes place in a butcher's market, which is...pretty interesting, to say the least.
While I like Jeeja herself, I wish she had a better character. Seriously, the rare time that we actually see a female martial artist as a lead, and she's cast as an autistic girl, infantile and helpless except for her martial arts ability? I guess it was so she wouldn't have to act so much and could just show off her talent (which she's got a lot of!). I hope Jeeja gets better roles from now on, since Chocolate is actually a pretty good movie. It's also interesting to see that even though her mother's weakened by cancer later on in the movie, she can still take some names as the movie approaches its climax.
Michiko y Hatchin - Set in a fictional Brazil. Michiko Malandro has escaped from a supposedly inescapable prison for the umpteenth time. Not long after, she rescues 10-year-old Hana "Hatchin" Morenos from her abusive foster family. This seems kind of random until you find out that Michiko once knew Hana's father, Hiroshi, and is searching for him at the moment. Michiko and Hana also share the same tattoo on their stomachs.
Yeah, my summary of the plot doesn't exactly sound titillating. But trust me, this anime is worth checking out, for a number of reasons.
1) Characterization - Michiko and Hatchin, as weird as it may be, suit each other quite well. Michiko is hot as hell in a jalapeno and can seriously lay the smackdown, but she's also irresponsible and has a bit of a hairpin trigger temper. Hatchin offsets Michiko's immaturity with her own world-weariness, hard-earned from life with her foster family, but she still wants/needs a mother figure, which Michiko is willing to provide (albeit a bit awkwardly at this point in things). I'm not sure exactly where these two are going in the series or how they're going to get there, but Studio Manglobe has convinced me to go along with the ride.
Then there's the other characters. Atsuko Jackson, sporting the fiercest 'fro I've ever seen, is a police officer who grew up in the same orphanage as Michiko, and was responsible for Michiko's arrest about 12 years prior to the start of the series. Atsuko appears to have some sort of score to settle with Michiko, but the two of them sort of have a Dist-Jade relationship from Tales of the Abyss, in a way (especially once you hear Michiko mention Atsuko's possible masochistic tendencies during one flashback scene). Hiroshi Morenos, Michiko's own Prince Charming, actually seems like a bit of a dope (and is probably smoking some) when we see him in the flashback scenes. Pepe Lima's an exotic dancer trying to scrape together enough money to get IDs for herself and her younger sister Lulu so that they can jet to someplace better; the owner/cook of a ramen shop that Hatchin works at for a while, who claims "my kung fu send you to hell!"; the criminal syndicate henchman Shinsuke Rodriguez is about as sadistic as Nougami Neuro with the looks of Sideshow Bob crossed with Ryuk; and so on and so forth.
(Oh, and apparently Hatchin can get drunk off orange juice. Orange juice. drunk!Hatchin is an amazing thing to watch. So is drunk!Michiko, for that matter, especially when she's yelling at Pepe "YOUR TITS ARE TOO STIFF!" and then starts shaking her own at her. Yeah.)
2) Art/Animation - Michiko y Hatchin has some seriously beautiful backgrounds with amazing attention to cultural details, and the animation is top-notch as well.
3) Music - Music? Is awesome. Listen to the OP if you don't believe me - it's a really fun, jazzy tune. (TANGENT: If you're watching the OP and you're thinking to yourself, damn, that really looks/sounds like the OP to Cowboy Bebop, that's because Shinichirou Watanabe, who was the writer/director for Cowboy Bebop, is also the music director for Michiko to Hatchin. Fancy that.) The beginning of episode two also has this awesome electronic riff. I freakin' want this series' soundtrack.
The first five subbed episodes can be found on crunchyroll here. For the rest, start here on YouTube with part 1 of episode 6 and check the "More From" box on the right side (up to episode 9 has been subbed so far).
-Reileen
I've held on too long to let it go now
*I don't know how she ended up with this name, but I once had a Thai co-worker whose real given name was Ruchaneewan, but we all called her Meaw. Yeah.