rebootied

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: I've started watching this movie twice, and haven't been able to finish it yet. The first time, I started the movie quite late and its peaceful, surreal, melancholy world proved too much a soporific. The second time, it had that effect on my wife, though I was enjoying it and wide awake. She just could not parse the humor. My explanation of "Well, to Americans... some Americans, this is quite funny" did not hold water, so to speak. Next time I'll try to watch it alone, possibly with some Portuguese beer and wearing a red toque. "ESTEBAN! ESTEBAN!"

A Beautiful Mind: I watched this on a plane twice and was really impressed. Ron Howard can not make a bad film to save his life; I've been a fan since Coccoon, and I even liked How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Acting is top notch, understated and believable throughout the entire film, without an excess of emotionally manipulative schmaltz. Ed Harris is perfectly cast, and it is always amazing to see the actress Jennifer Connelly became despite her atrocious beginning in Labyrinth. What was she, 14 at that time? I'd be pissed if people judged my art based on what I could churn out at 14, so I should cut her some slack. More than anything else, I'm entranced by the film's ability to induce empathy for a sufferer of schizophrenia. What it comes down to is that we're all broken in some way, and it's just part of what we are, and how we do what we do. In John Nash's case, he's both more broken and more gifted.

And the film does a lot better on a nice TV than watching on a 5" screen with minimal contrast and color depth.

Also watched through ep. 7 of Burn Notice season 2 (still fun), and the first 4 episodes of Warehouse 13 which I'm hoping picks up, because the setting and gadgets are really fun. It's X-Files meets Indiana Jones, or at least the OSS guys from the end of Raiders. The producers should be hiring Ken Hite (princeofcairo ) to spruce up their doo-dads and science hokum. Then again, I think Ken Hite should be hired to spiff up the Tomb Raider storyline as well, which I've got top men working on right now. Top. Men.

Yesterday was interesting:
Had lunch with The Wife's nursing students, as a kind of English conversation salon. It was fun; we have a local teppanyaki wine bar that's really a nice, relaxing place for hanging out. It went well but the aircon was hard-pressed to deal with the body heat and teppan heat while prepping food for 18 people. Never seen my son look quite so overwhelmed; he was acting really shy at first, because he probably couldn't decide who to try and charm first; a couple of the ladiez were incredibly pretty. Like, "if these two show up in a nursing outfit, I'd be expecting a porn bass-riff to start immediately." Va-va-voom. The boy eventually got over his reticence and dragged one of them out for a walk, little Casanova.

While we ate, we got to see the crowd headed for Daicon 7 at Namikili Hall. The restaurant's on the main drag between the train station and the hall. Lots of arrested development geeks, surprising me how much the geeks/nerds/SF dorks in the USA have in common with the ones in Japan.

After lunch we split up; my friend Jeremy from NZ and I went to check out the Con, and were suprised to find out it cost 13,000 yen to get in! We opted for a coffee at Starbucks and I checked the local movie times. Star Wars: The Clone Wars CG movie is playing, and I was determined to see it on the big screen. I went back and checked to make sure the pricing thing was correct, and lo and behond, it was actually FREE to get into the dealer's room and the 2nd floor galleries.

We checked the dealer room, which was tiny and pretty sad, like... really sadly lacking in anything. If I had been a fan of the fanfic manga, limited release DVD or CG-manga scene, I might have been excited to meet some heavy players in that scene, but it just isn't my thing. Then at one corner I saw some stuff from FEWTURE MODELS, with work by Yasushi Nirasawa, one of my HEROES.

On closer inspection, it turned out there was a book signing by him at 14:30, less than 7 minutes from that moment! I bought a book voucher and a t-shirt and headed up to the signing. I was the only foreigner there, and pretty much stood out readily. He greeted me in rough English, and I talked about how his stuff has been an inspiration. He looked stunned that he has had a foreigner fan for more than 10 years, since I got in with CREATURE CORE some 13 years ago. I asked him to push for a reprint, since I left my copy with Jeff Wilcox as a present prior to coming to Japan (thinking I'd be easily able to replace it). He also came up with a neat way of signing my T-shirt and book, and thanked me for the support. Daicon went from being a zip-bupkiss experience to being EPIC!

I'll post separately about Star Wars.

It appears that DaiCon 7, an international science fiction convention, will be held at Namikili Hall near my home in Kishiwada, Osaka over Saturday and Sunday (Aug. 23~24).

If any of y'all are planning on attending, drop me a line here or in email.

Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Freebies Bonanza: a bunch of full books in various non-DRM'd formats, and bunches of wonderful fantasy art desktops are available for a limited time at Tor. Wow. Thanks theothermichael!

Kristen Bell as Princess Leia in “Fanboys” » Give Me My Remote:

( cut img for marginal nsfw-ness )

Other People's Money @ Forbes.com:

He went for the fish first. Its scales were individual slices from the skins of old Nokia phones–back when it was just Nokia, not Marvel Comics Mobile–each articulated on its own little sprig of memory wire. The gills were scuffed iPod backings, the logos just recognizable under the fog of scratches. The eyes bore HP and PlayStation logos, respectively, and the lips were made from inner-tube strips that bore the smallest recognizable logomarks. As he lifted it, it settled into his hand, arching back to find his thumb and palm, nestling in there.

“It’ll work like an old-time phone,” she said. “It’ll even do a little lookup from old-style exchange numbers to different identity registers and try to get you a voice-call with someone.”

“Do people really do that?”

“Some do. Most just want it for the object-ness of it. It’s got a lot of emotion.” The scuffs, that’s what did it. They were like stories, those scratches, each one a memento mori for some long-dead instant in some stranger’s life.
[Cory Doctorow]

Dear Santa, I know what I want for Christmas:

Festo - Air_ray

Shave your head in the shower with a wet razor, first with the grain and then against the grain.

I'm in this business for the monsters. My single favourite monsters are the beastmen in The Island of Doctor Moreau. I love the octopoid creatures and the giant swine spirit in William Hope Hodgson. I have a lot of time for pig monsters. I've always liked being terrified of monsters from underwater coming up, like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. There's a picture of Beatrix Potter's Jeremy Fisher with the trout about to bite his foot and he hasn't seen it yet. Completely terrifying.
This much I know: China Miéville

China writes about his'self and the genre at The Guardian UK (thanks, rev_e )

yukihime.com » this was supposed to be the future: avestal 's actual blog:

Media scholar Henry Jenkins recently published an article about residual media–outmoded views of the future from a point in the past. Think of the ceramic spires of the 1939 World’s Fair, or the relentless utopias of 1950’s pulp SF. These futures are now generally viewed as overly silly or optimistic, given our wildly divergent present.
(...)
This recent, growing interest in the paleofuture is hardly surprising. As our unimagined future compresses to a single point, the weight of our memories grows ever more dominant. It’s so hard to create new dreams; how much nicer to relive the warmth of old ones! Subgenres like steampunk and alternative history play to this sense of inverted sensibilities; instead of optimism about what will be, we’re now nostalgic about what wasn’t; with a future devoid of promise, we take refuge in the past.

Brilliant.

I'm tempted to crosspost this to gameblather because it relates to not just SF in books/TV/film, but how we roleplay in it as well.

SciFi Channel is starting a TV series based on The Dresden Files? I had heard a mess of good stuff about the books, so I just picked up the first of them. I had no idea that they were getting their own show... The role of Harry is played by Paul Blackthorne, who did not particularly impress me as the main villain of season 3 of "24" - but that might have been the material, not his ability as an actor.