Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Feb. 26th, 2006 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyranoThe first half of the weekend has been quite busy.
Last night, in the interest of capricity, my humidifier worked again. Two unconsecutive nights out of five.
I went over to the apartment of my delightful cinema companion, E, and picked on the cat until it was time to go to the Aquarius (which I haven't been inside of since I saw Lola Rennt far too long ago), where we saw Night Watch, the new Russian 'modern secret agents fight in an apocalyptic conflict between good and evil amongst an unknowing society'.
I don't know why it's being billed as a horror film, but it is. I enjoyed the film, and I'm looking forward to getting copies of the books which I understand are being released in English this year. The characters were interesting, even if I felt like we didn't spend much time getting to know them, and I want to know more. Both E and I had the thought that this world would make a fine role playing game scenario. The subtitles interact with the film environment, which I liked, but I didn't like when they distracted me from the film. The effects are interesting, although not entirely successful. Most of the speeded-up-camera effects look goofy. The concept of the Gloom and their interaction with it was cool. There were some inconsistencies that bugged me, and I'm betting that if I spoke Russian I would have gotten significantly different things from the dialogue. The bad guys are, as expected, amazing planners. The good guys, not so much. I'm rambling a lot here. If I remember more thoughts about the film I'll post them later. So. I give the film four wags, and for those of you who liked 'Blade' and 'Underworld' and other 'secret war on the streets of the now' movies I recommend it.
Afterwards, I went down to San Jose for Da Zhuang's birthday beer bash. Alas, the only beer I found there that I liked was the Stuart's Ginger Beer that I'd brought with me, but I had two bottles of that. And I suspect I met a lot of people from the theatre and acting part of DZ's social circle. Peter and Karen, from dinner on Friday, were there, as well as Technocowboy, Esmerel, Merlin, and many other intelligent and witty people. I had lovely discussions, and I laughed a lot, and my big crush on Karen did nothing like subside. After about six hours, they pulled out Battle Star Galactica, so I had to leave.
While at E's she gave me DVDs of an anime series she reccomended--Last Exile. I'm three episodes in and so far I don't know who the last exile is or where se is exiled from. The mix of computer and hand animation is a bit jarring at times, but that thing where anime makes no sense at all is beginning to subside. It's kind of steampunky in technology levels if not in tone. There's some sort of war, with lots of giant air ships and steam powered muskets, and lots of regulations, and somebody isn't following them and the referees don't care. And there's a pod-racing sort of race and a pair of plucky messengers are trying to win, but their good-hearted tendency may interfere, because they have taken over a secret mission of delivering a baby to one of the big floating air battle ships. Lots of German words and lots of English words spelled with Greek letters.
Really liking the gala apple juice that they have at Trader Joe's--it's much more cidery than the regular apple juice, with whatever type of apples used for that.
Last night, in the interest of capricity, my humidifier worked again. Two unconsecutive nights out of five.
I went over to the apartment of my delightful cinema companion, E, and picked on the cat until it was time to go to the Aquarius (which I haven't been inside of since I saw Lola Rennt far too long ago), where we saw Night Watch, the new Russian 'modern secret agents fight in an apocalyptic conflict between good and evil amongst an unknowing society'.
I don't know why it's being billed as a horror film, but it is. I enjoyed the film, and I'm looking forward to getting copies of the books which I understand are being released in English this year. The characters were interesting, even if I felt like we didn't spend much time getting to know them, and I want to know more. Both E and I had the thought that this world would make a fine role playing game scenario. The subtitles interact with the film environment, which I liked, but I didn't like when they distracted me from the film. The effects are interesting, although not entirely successful. Most of the speeded-up-camera effects look goofy. The concept of the Gloom and their interaction with it was cool. There were some inconsistencies that bugged me, and I'm betting that if I spoke Russian I would have gotten significantly different things from the dialogue. The bad guys are, as expected, amazing planners. The good guys, not so much. I'm rambling a lot here. If I remember more thoughts about the film I'll post them later. So. I give the film four wags, and for those of you who liked 'Blade' and 'Underworld' and other 'secret war on the streets of the now' movies I recommend it.
Afterwards, I went down to San Jose for Da Zhuang's birthday beer bash. Alas, the only beer I found there that I liked was the Stuart's Ginger Beer that I'd brought with me, but I had two bottles of that. And I suspect I met a lot of people from the theatre and acting part of DZ's social circle. Peter and Karen, from dinner on Friday, were there, as well as Technocowboy, Esmerel, Merlin, and many other intelligent and witty people. I had lovely discussions, and I laughed a lot, and my big crush on Karen did nothing like subside. After about six hours, they pulled out Battle Star Galactica, so I had to leave.
While at E's she gave me DVDs of an anime series she reccomended--Last Exile. I'm three episodes in and so far I don't know who the last exile is or where se is exiled from. The mix of computer and hand animation is a bit jarring at times, but that thing where anime makes no sense at all is beginning to subside. It's kind of steampunky in technology levels if not in tone. There's some sort of war, with lots of giant air ships and steam powered muskets, and lots of regulations, and somebody isn't following them and the referees don't care. And there's a pod-racing sort of race and a pair of plucky messengers are trying to win, but their good-hearted tendency may interfere, because they have taken over a secret mission of delivering a baby to one of the big floating air battle ships. Lots of German words and lots of English words spelled with Greek letters.
Really liking the gala apple juice that they have at Trader Joe's--it's much more cidery than the regular apple juice, with whatever type of apples used for that.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 08:08 am (UTC)And in fact, after seeing Nightwatch, Earl ran an episode of InSpectres (an indie Ghostbuster-style narrative system) in which we opened a Moscow branch of InSpectres to deal with similar themes.
I, too, am confused as to why this was billed "horror". I guess if you have vampires, it's horror.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 08:11 am (UTC)Well yes, but, again, that whole Blade/Underworld thing where neither is billed as horror, they're just horrific.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 05:37 pm (UTC)Well, the vampire subplot did have some gory bits. Or maybe it's that the ending wasn't completely happy.
Or, perhaps they realized they had a movie with witches, vampires, and lycanthropes, and picked the genre label that would best appeal to White Wolf snobs.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 05:22 pm (UTC)Since I've preordered the book you're welcome to read my translation of it as soon as I'm finished, if you'd like. I'm really hoping we get more info on Olga, Tiger Cub, Bear, Simeon, etc. I'd dearly love to know more about them.
Oh and don't expect Last Exile to make a tremendous amount of sense, it just won't. I love it for the beauty of the artwork and the characters...especially my beloved Lord Dio. But pay special attention to Luciola as well, he's kind of the basis for Wu Ya.