I am trying to follow this new version of “The Prisoner” on AMC. Don’t think I will last too long with it. I describe it as psychotic and I don’t care for psychotic.
Category Archives: Reviews
The Prisoner Returns?
From Cable360.net
AMC Sets The Prisoner Free
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Wait before looking
DO NOT start watching a series until all the episodes are on DVD. It will drive you crazy.
I have gotten to the 2nd and 3rd disks of the Madlax series and I am getting more into it as it goes along. There are two or three background mysteries going on as well as the foreground story. The series is still weaving its web and the viewer is getting entangled.
All in all it is a 7 disk series (26 Episodes) and Volume 3 is the last one out. Volume 4 should be available Real Soon Now, but the rest of the series is going to grind out very slowly and that will be very frustrating.
I am upping my rating from 7 out of 10 to 8 out of 10, for the entire series that I have seen so far.
In the extras, there is a bit called “Conversations with SSS” where the American voice actors are doing a completely different dialog over scenes from the show. Some of them are very funny.
Serenity
I saw Serenity this past weekend. I enjoyed it.
Joss Whedon kept the characters from Firefly and continued to develop them, using the movie medium to give some more depth than they got from TV.
The story picks up from the show and continues the Alliance’s pursuit of River. I don’t think you need to have seen the show to become engaged with the movie. The TV show provides back story on the characters but the movie defines the characters within its own view. It is hard for me to say, since I did see the entire series, that if someone walked in without Firefly, that they would appreciate the movie, but I think they would.
The movie quickly establishes the overall conflict between the Tams and the Alliance, and even provides the reason that the Alliance fears River Tam. Within Serenity, the crew continues to deal with a ship that is continually breaking down and with the tensions of living with a group of people they might not otherwise want to live with.
Especially when the goals of some are the pursuit of individual wealth and glory and for others is the pursuit of individual liberty over the commune of the Alliance with its select few who desire mastery and control over the human race. It is this pursuit of the mastery and control that leads to the main crisis of the movie and its tactically satisfying conclusion.
There is no strategically satisfying conclusion that can be reached, a la “throw the ring into Mount Doom”, in a two hour movie. And maybe there never will be. The suppression of one’s humanity in support of an ideal society goes back throughout human history. I doubt it will change much in the future. And there will always be people to take advantage of that blind faith for their own ends.
Whedon blends comedic elements so easily throughout the script. Even in the middle of a tense scene, a spot of homor highlights the moment and heightens the tension. People act as people throughout the script. Even stereotypes and exemplars of virtue have dings around the edges to make them more real.
I will give this an 9 out of 10 and expect to get the DVD when it becomes available.
Master Mosquiton OVA
AnimeNfo.Com : Anime : Master Mosquiton OVA
I was lucky enough to get both disks of this OVA back-to-back. It is a quirky story about a young girl, searching for immortality, who resurrects a vampire as her slave.
Then she uses the vampire, and his lackeys, to search for the O-Part (Philosopher’s Stone) that will grant her immortality. She doesn’t want to use the vampire’s method for immortality.
She and the gang have many interesting adventures finding the O-Part and, when she has it in hand, she finds that the human race will be destroyed if she doesn’t part with it.
Such a dilemma; to keep the O-part and have youth and beauty forever but lose whatever admiring audience she would have had, or keep the audience and lose the immortality. Decisions, decisions.
The vampire, Mosquiton, is an interesting character. A docile slave most of the time, happy to be cleaning and cooking, he becomes a vicious monster who forgets his slavery when he sucks on the blood of his master. Evidently, the only way to get him off this blood high is to stake him and then resurrect him one more time.
I enjoyed the show quite a bit. A lot of comedy in it; sort of like Lupin crossed with Hellsing. And the ending is decidely weird. (Did I mention they ended up on the Moon in the 1920s)
I will give this a 7 out of ten.
The Bushido Blade (1981)
The background in this movie is that Perry is in Japan trying to get a treaty signed with the Shogun before the Russians show up. The Shogun is going to give the President a gift of a sword, but the sword is stolen by an anti-treaty faction and the Shogun will lose face and not sign the treaty if the sword is not recovered.
The Shogun’s commander sends off an agent to get the sword back and several American sailors follow to assist, very much against the orders that forbid foreigners from travelling in Japan.
Much fighting, heads removed, arms removed, samurai vs rapier fighting; the sword is eventually recovered after much loss and tribulation and it is returned to the signing ceremony. This means the Shogun Commander doesn’t have to commit seppuku to preserve the Shogun’s face and Perry is happy.
This was a joint US-Japanese production and had a good cast, this was Richard Boone’s last role (as Perry). Toshiro Mifune did well as the Shogun’s Commander. Sonny Chiba was the Prince tasked to recover the sword. And I thought Frank Converse did a good job as the American Captain. It had a lot of POTENTIAL.
It just wasn’t very-well written or directed. Three Americans wandering around the Japanese countryside don’t have a whole lot of trouble (some, but not a lot) getting through to their destination. And they keep finding Japanese who speak English. (I suppose you had to do that for the story-line. They didn’t use subtitles.) Interesting scenarios didn’t quite gel into a whole. I will give it a 5 out of 10.
Web Gallery
As some may have seen, I have put photos from my recent Scottish Trip on the web using Web Gallery Mate. I have been exploring the various features for creating the Gallery, organizing channels of common subject matter, and trying to provide cryptic descriptive commentary on the individual pictures.
I came back with almost 1000 photos in 3 1/2 weeks. I really need to get a digital camera.
Suffice it to say, I have not finished scanning in all the pictures I took and I am not likely to enter them all into the Gallery and am even less likely to comment on all that are entered. But I hope that a bunch of pictures of the flowers in a Garden don’t need individual commentary, especially since I don’t know what they all are.
One feature I have found is that if you click on a photo in a channel (Like the St Andrews Gardens) the picture opens up in a web page and there are buttons for advancing to the next or previous picture. There is also an up button and if you click on that, it starts a slide show of all the pictures in that channel. Neat. And you can set the time that each picture is displayed.
I still need to work on arranging pictures within a channel to have a flow.
Now I need to go back to my previous travel commentary and link bits to pictures as reference.
Post-Worldcon Thursday
Thursday, I wanted to go see Venus Rising. It was at the Burrell Collection, in the Glasgow suburbs. To get there I needed to take a bus. The problem was to find out where to catch the bus. So, I decided to go to the central bus Station, Buchanan. To do this I caught a bus on Argyle St and told the bus driver I wanted to go to Buchanan.
Since I wasn’t familiar with the street layout it took me a while to realize that I had traveled farther than I thought appropriate and asked the bus driver where Buchanan was. Turns out I should have gotten off many blocks back, so I got off and walked back. I actually had a downtown Glasgow street map with me, so I had an idea where I was going. After I found the TARDIS, I got there. And got into the wrong information line, the one that wasn’t moving. So I left the line for lunch, got caught unawares by an Asian Bagpipe Band and returned, this time in the right line.
I found out that I had to go to the Central station to catch one of three buses that would take me to the Burrell Collection. Eventually, I found the stop and this time I asked the driver to tell me where to get off. And so we wandered through the Streets of Glasgow looking for the Burrell Collection, not seeing any wooden houses along the way. I think I may have nodded off because a lady was prodding me saying the driver was at my stop.
I alighted from the bus, crossed a busy street and entered Pollok Country Park. It was a shady tree-lined lane that faded into the distance. I started walking down the lane. And walking and walking. After thinking I was about back to the SECC, I saw a sign to the collection and it was just around the corner.
Quite an impressive museum. I got in on one of the guided tours and learned that Burrell liked to collect things. He had a collection of Grecian artifacts, a collection of Roman artifacts, a collection of medieval doorways, a collection of Chinese pottery, a collection of tapestries, a collection of armor, a collection of Whistler, a collection of Renaissance art, a collection of stained glass windows, etc. The man just liked to collect things.
He was a contemporary of Hearst and was often competing for the same artifacts as Hearst. Since Burrell wouldn’t pay more than what he thought was a fair price, Hearst often won the bidding wars. Burrell picked up Hearst’s pieces pretty cheap after Hearst had to liquidate his collections.
Eventually, he willed his collections to Glasgow if they built the right display for them. And the building is magnificent in its own way. The glass walls are right up against the woods on one side. The main floor had most of the collections in rooms with very high ceilings, so high that the second floor balconies overlook the displays. The second floor is where the paintings were collected. It was impressive to look down on the tapestries and the furniture and the other large art works below and get another perspective of them.
Finally, at the end of the tour, we ended up in the “Venus Rising” display. “Venus Rising” is by Titian and is the picture of Venus coming from the sea and wringing her hair. They had collected several other art works from other artists, like Picasso and Degas, that followed a similar theme. Together the pieces were touring the Scottish Museums and they were at the Burrell at this time. A very small, but very impressive show. I thank Ann for mentioning it.
I left the Burrell and thought to look in on the other part of the park, the Pollok House. Unfortunately, it was nearing closing time by the time I got there, I missed the last murder and so decided to walk back to the bus. I discovered at this point that there was a courtesy bus that ran between the front gate, the Collection and the House but it had stopped by this time. I did wander briefly into the Pollok House Gardens and they were incredible. Such structure and organization, such variety; I really wished I had gotten there earlier and had the chance to explore in more detail.
I walked back, past the Highland cattle, down the tree shaded lane and got on a double-decker bus back into the city. For Dinner I went to a nice Thai restaurant around the corner from my lodgings and then went across the street to a bar that had live music coming in as part of the Bagpipe Festival. I thought it was a strange time to have a bagpipe festival, with the Tattoo going on in Edinburgh, but they had it anyway. The music at the pub was non-bagpipe acoustic music.
Then it was off to bed to prepare for the trip home.
Maburaho
An interesting concept behind this series. Everyone can practice magic. Each individual has a limit to the number of times they can use magic. After the limit is reached, the magic-user disappears in a flash of smoke, ashes blowing in the wind. There are some people that can use magic thousands of times during their lifetime. Indeed, at the high school the show is placed in, the average is 8000 per student. It’s a magic high school for the elite.
Then there is Kazuki, descended from a long line of magic-users, who only has 8 magic uses left before he goes kaput. (There is a machine that measures to the amount of magic life left in a body) This puts him at something of a disadvantage with the rest of the students. Until it is revealed that Kazuki’s children will be the most powerful magicians of their generation. At which point every girl in the school wants some of Kazuki’s genes. Having powerful magicians in the family is a way of elevating social status and class. Yes, it turns into a ‘harem’ anime.
Of course, Kazuki has no interest in sharing his genes with anyone and the fun begins. Unbeknownst to most everyone, Kazuki is the most powerful magic user in the world and he proves it by making it snow in the summer (oops, down to 7 now) as a way to impress a girl he is fond of.
It will be interesting to see how the authors handle the growth of Kazuki and what will happen to him as he uses his magic to save and protect the people around him.
As is explained in the extras, Maho is “Magic”; rabu is “love” and Maburaho is a Japanese pun putting a backwards love inside magic. Please don’t try this at home, or I will hurt you.
Maburaho has tweaked my interest so I do want to see what will happen next to Kazuki. I will give this a 6 out of 10.
Fumoffu
A derivative of the Full-Metal Panic series, which was a pretty good series about a soldier who never had a childhood having to attend high-school to act as a bodyguard for some young woman who was the key for global domination for some evil group. Since he never was a teenager his response to high school hi-jinks isn’t always pleasant.
In Fumoffu, the mission is over but Sagara stays in school to be a bodyguard. The episodes are just extending the concept of a soldier responding to typical teenage events in an extreme manner. Booring. Of course, you blow-up the shoe locker because someone left a note in it. Of course, you open a watermelon with a shotgun, blindfolded. Not really worth watching any further, I will give it a 4 out of ten.