In Flight Movie Reviews

Whenever I make a leg cramping and back breaking transpacific journey, I make a point to watch as many movies as I can on the in flight entertainment system. Why do I do this?

Firstly, I rarely go out to the movies because of the cost. Movie tickets in Japan cost roughly $20 US and on a public school teacher's salary that's an extravagance. But so is an international vacation. As much as the plane tickets cost, every film I watch allows me to tick $20 off of the price in my head. Not exactly ground breaking economics, but it works for me.

Secondly, "I was on a plane" is a wonderful excuse for seeing a film that you normally wouldn't be caught dead admitting to having seen. It's somewhere between "I was with a group and was out voted" and "I was drunk."

So here are the films I watched during the flights and on the ground with some quick thoughts:

1. Mr. Holmes: Ian McKellen plays an elderly Sherlock Holmes. What more need be said? 10/10

2. Fantastic 4 (2015): Ugh. While the effects were pretty good and the acting was acceptable, whoever wrote this drek has clearly never read a comic book in their lives and certainly doesn't understand the Fantastic 4. Superheroes all have a core to them. Batman: I am Vengeance, I am the Night. Spider Man: With great power comes great responsibility. The core of the Fantastic 4 is "Superhero Family." (That's why the best Fantastic 4 movie ever made is called "The Incredibles.") Without that understanding as a base, this movie turns into yet another long, tedious, origin story that doesn't feel like a superhero film let alone a Fantastic 4 film. 3/10

3. Pixels: Adam Sandler, I will give you 20 bucks if you promise to never make another movie. 1/10

4. Arthur Christmas/Muppet Christmas Carol: Palette cleansers and modern classic Christmas movies both! 10/10

5. Hotel Transylvania 2: OK Adam Sandler, you can keep making animated films on the condition that you NEVER play yourself. Cute movie with some fun if not horribly original jokes. 7/10

6. Star Wars 7--The Franchise Reawakens: Woah boy! This deserves its own separate post. On the whole, a good movie that did most of what it needed to do. There are a few flaws, including a couple points where the film comes to a screeching halt (Tentacle monsters) and J.J. Abram's fingerprints are all over this (Tip: Action scenes are LESS enjoyable when you can't tell what the bleep is going on). I still haven't forgiven Abrams for Star Trek, but I will admit that he's learned from his mistakes and at least he seems to get Star Wars. 8/10

7. Minions: OK, I see why people love these little guys, but I just don't think they can carry a movie on their own. They work better as side characters or in small doses. 5/10.

8. Slumdog Millionaire: Very surprisingly, this mostly lived up to the hype. On the plus side, this reminded me why I love a good game show and the characters were very well done. I wanted to see the main character triumph and the villains get their comeuppance. On the other hand, I can see why this film is not exactly popular in India, it's one big stereotype. Also, they screwed up the rules of Who Wants to be a Millionaire (There are two safe points so the main character should not have been in danger of losing all of his money. Plus phone a friend doesn't work that way.) 8/10

9. The Duff: For the love of Aslan, please tell me American high schools haven't turned into this? Utterly unoriginal story of 25 year old actors playing high schoolers. Saved by the hilarious performance of Allison Janney playing a mom who turned her divorce into a self help book empire. 2/10

Then I fell asleep listening to an audio book of Dracula. Not recommended.

RNR 1: Wrestlemania Play Button

RNR 1 Wrestlemania Play Button Part 1 投稿者 AWLBoss
RNR 1 Wrestlemania Playbutton Part 2 投稿者 AWLBoss

And with this Random Nerd Reviews is BACK!  Still working out the details as far as format, audio, and how the heck people like Doug Walker, Linkara, and SFDebris DO this so well, but it's a step in the right direction!

2015 will be the year of RNR!

I've noticed the strangely large number of hits that the dead review blog has attracted.  And I've decided to begin doing reviews on random things again. I'm just not sure what form those reviews will take. Text, video, or audio?  What do you think?  Leave a comment and I will likely cave like a house of cards and do whatever you want me to do.

New blogs will begin in the new year. My first review will likely be prowrestling related. 

Arise!

From the ashes of failure, a new blog shall rise!

Reality shows that are actually worth it

OK, I confess that I haven’t done anything vaguely review like on this blog for a number of months. (Cue: faux Italian/Brooklyn accent) I’m sorry, apologies all around, I mean no disrespect, badda bing badda boom.

Now for today’s topic: Reality television. I won’t bother going into the history of reality TV aside from noting that it spun out of the game show boom of the late 90s and that game shows are another post entirely. What I will say is that the genre of reality TV has produced some of the worst drek in the history of visual media. Stuff that makes you embarrassed to call yourself a TV watcher, an American, and a human being. For example, most of the reality shows on VH1 which have cutesy names like “Flavor of Love,” “I love New York,” “Charm School,” and other such innocent sounding titles that are only used because “Aging Rapper Flirts with 20 Prostitutes” didn’t focus well.

But I’m not here to talk about that today, I’m here to talk about the reality shows that are actually good, or at least OK, or just don’t make me want to go to confession for having watched them.

The Amazing Race: Starting off with the top of the heap, this is the best reality show around, full stop. The basic premise, for those of you not cool enough to already know, is that 16 or so teams of two who have a preexisting relationship of some sort (married, dating, family, etc.) race around the world. The race is basically a treasure hunt. Teams are given a clue that leads to a challenge to get the next clue and so on. At predetermined checkpoints (aka, the end of the episode) the team in last place is Philiminated by the host, who just so happens to be named Phil. First to the finish line wins a million dollars.

I love this game because it is a game. The drama is not player vs. player but player vs. game. And let me tell you, these challenge creators are some sick little bunnies. The first episode of the current season had teams in Tokyo where they had to consume what looked like half a pound of wasabi to get a clue. I’m fairly sure that much wasabi goes against the Geneva Conventions. After that, they had to WALK way the heck across town while guiding a group of 25 tourists, none of whom spoke English. I know people who have lived in that city for 10+ years and would never even THINK of trying this. They’d just do what the native Tokyoites do: Take the bloody train!

Amazing race is one of the most highly decorated reality shows out there. Having won every outstanding reality competition show Emmy award ever given and the host has won the first reality show host/judge Emmy.

Hell’s Kitchen: This one is highly subjective. I like to cook and this is a cooking competition reality show, so I’m going to like it. Premise: X number of professional cooks work at a soundstage restaurant run by Michelin star winning British stereotype Gordon Ramsey. Each episode consists of a cooking challenge with prizes (a free lunch at a top restaurant or free high quality cooking gear) and punishments (Clean the whole kitchen and dining room or do everyone else’s prep work). After that, they serve dinner to a restaurant full of photogenic people paid to act as if they actually want to be there. At the end of the episode, the producers Ramsey eliminates one of the players. Last cook standing wins.

The main source of entertainment on this show (as it is with most reality shows) is watching the contestants make unbelievably bone headed mistakes that a first year culinary student wouldn’t make. There is also the fun of watching Ramsey, who is legitimately good at this stuff, deal with the incompetence around him. If you liked the BBC comedy Chef! and don’t mind that Ramsey is far less eloquent (he swears a LOT) and a lot more Scottish than Lenny Henry then you might like this show.

America’s Got Talent: This is American Idol if American Idol didn’t suck so much, but more on that later. Premise: Talent show. That’s it. If you insist on the details, AGT is American Idol except any act can audition, not just singers. Acts perform on stage before a live audience and three judges, Piers Morgan (Simon Cowell knock off), Sharon Osborn, and David Hasselhoff. The acts have roughly one to two minutes to do their thing before the judges decide if they are good enough to advance to the next round. However, if the judges hate an act, they each have a button they can press that sets off a buzzer and gives the act a strike. 3 strikes, you’re out. After the first round, they switch to a call in vote ala Idol. Winner gets one million dollars.

The entertainment comes from the amazing creativity of some of the performers. AGT is also the only place in America that you’ll see magicians on network primetime. I’ll admit to some bias here, I am a stage magician and I love watching magic. I could go into a long diatribe about how the judges are biased against magic acts (or anyone who isn’t a singer for that matter), but I’ll save that for another day.

One last point about AGT. They had an audition in Seattle Washington last season and, naturally, all the crazy street acts showed up. At the end of the show, Sharon Osborn was caught on tape saying “This place is barking mad!” Way to go Seattle! It’s a real accomplishment when Sharon “My husband eats bat heads for a living” Osborn says your town is nuts.

There were, at one time, other reality shows that were decent on account of being either creative, heartwarming, or respecting the intelligence of the audience. Specifically: The Mole, Treasure Hunters, Murder in Small Town X, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Who Wants to be a Super hero, and Celebracadabra. Naturally, they have all been canceled.

One last rant before I sign off. American Idol. I bleeping hate this show. Aside from about 3 episodes of the first series, I have never watched it and I am proud of that fact. Now before anyone points out that I shouldn’t be griping about shows I don’t watch, I submit to you that the general format of American Idol is common knowledge and therefore fair game for criticism and ridicule.

American Idol is a misnomer. The correct title of the program is American Karaoke. All the contestants do is sing cover versions of other people’s songs instead of creating something new and finding their own sounds. I understand that the judges need something objective to judge but if they are all such big names in the music business, shouldn’t they be able to tell if someone has talent no matter what they sing?

As a result of this, the American music scene has become stale over the last few years. The only concert tours generating any publicity are “come back” tours for musicians who were in their prime while I was in diapers. Oh, and Michael Jackson albums . . . LOTS of Michael Jackson albums. But imagine if American Idol was a singer songwriter contest that spat out a brand new talent and possibly a whole new movement in American music every season. Now THAT would be worth watching.

Well, that’s all I can come up with. There have to be dozens of reality shows currently airing on American TV and I can only find 3 that are any good to watch and two of those are due to my personal hobbies and preferences. And to think, we gave up a game show renaissance for this tripe, how sad.

I'm RyuSensei and I . . . I torrent (Hiiiii RyuSensei!)

There’s something that I feel I should get off my chest. I use bit torrent.

By rights, that should be the end of the post, but there are a lot of people out there who don’t know what bit torrent is. Bit torrent is a file sharing program and network that is used mainly to swap files of movies, music, TV shows, and anime. By many standards, this system is illegal. But I feel no guilt for what I do. There are circumstances where torrenting something is a perfectly acceptable option. I’m not an expert in ethics, but I think I have a good sense of right and wrong (thanks Mom and Dad).

The main reason that file sharing is illegal is that users obtain for free what others have to pay for. Additionally, you are taking hard earned money away from the original creators of the products. This is known as stealing. OK, fair points. But there is an obvious counter argument: If you CAN’T buy it in the first place, then it isn’t stealing.

Most of what I download is material that isn’t available to buy in rural Japan. This applies mainly to American TV shows that are either not broadcast in Japan or are not broadcast on any channel I am able to buy access to (i.e. not on offer by the satellite people). I don’t consider that stealing because I couldn’t buy it if I tried. If I could, I would (It would save hard drive space for a start).

The other thing that I download a lot of is fansubed anime. Fan subbing is exactly what it says on the tin. Anime fans take works that don’t have a licensed English version and add their own English subtitles either as a linguistic exercise or because they enjoy the show and want to share it with others. Since my Japanese is good, but far from fluent, I need subtitles to understand more than the general gist of what’s being said. Since the fansub groups don’t charge for their services and there is no legal alternative, fan subbed anime clears the benchmark for acceptable downloading.

Now for the stickler: Movies. Surprising as it may seem, not every Hollywood movie makes it to every theater on the planet. When a movie comes out that I want to see (not horribly often, but still…) I always check to see if it’s going to be coming to the local theaters. If so, I won’t even consider downloading it. If I know for a fact said film won’t be available to see in theaters, then it’s fair game.

A small caveat is the files known as “cams.” These refer to someone sneaking a camcorder into a movie theater, filming the screen and posting the resulting footage online. I avoid these like the plague! At least I do now, having downloaded one a couple of years ago not knowing what cam meant. These things make my skin crawl because they do actually feel illegal. Admittedly, cams do a fantastic job of simulating the movie going experience what with the crying babies, people standing between you and the screen, grainy images; it really is the whole package. That leads to the other point about cams, the quality is horrible! Just wait 6 months (or less anymore) for someone to rip the DVD. You’ll get a better product and some piece of mind as well.

A recent example of what I do and do not find acceptable is the leaked “work print” of the upcoming Wolverine movie. Short version: someone, probably in the studio, got a hold of an unfinished copy of the film and decided to post it online to give the diehard Logan fans an early look. This is wrong. Excluding the fact that movie studios DO need to make money off of these films, who the heck wants to see the unfinished product?! I have not downloaded this file, nor do I intend to. I’m almost certain that the final product will be in Japanese theaters in a few months. I’ll see it then. I have other things in my life besides seeing a movie (and with tickets at 1800円, I have much cheaper things to do with my life).

In brief, (don’t laugh, I can be brief if I try) downloading something readily available to buy = bad. Downloading something you can’t get any other way = OK.

You may be wondering how I came to this set of beliefs. If not, I’m going to tell you anyway. It comes from the US military. I grew up as the son of a career member of the US Air Force (generally known as a “lifer” behind his back and “Sir” to his face). On of the common practice in those days (mid 1980s to early 90s) was for family in the states to send a videotape of the latest movie or TV show to their relatives serving overseas. Said tape would then be played in a VCR hooked up to a TV. A second VCR would be set to record the image on the screen, thereby copying the movie. This process allowed dozens of servicemen and women to see the film and get a little taste of home from half way around the world. I see bit torrent as the 21st century equivalent to this (as a matter of fact, I know several people in the service right now who use it).

Living in Japan can get damned lonely sometimes and you feel starved for English. I feel safe comparing myself to America’s troops in that I’m thousands of miles away from my loved ones and occasionally fall victim to bouts of homesickness. That’s as far as the comparison goes, I don’t see a Japanese middle school as equal to Iraq or Afghanistan (although, come to think of it). The not getting shot at thing is a definite perk. In other words, if torrenting is good enough for them, it’s more than good enough for me.

Aprill 2009 New anime! Part 1:

OK, it’s about time I get to this. April is the time of beginnings in Japan. The coming of spring and the coming of new life leads to a natural point of origin for the Japanese calendar. The Japanese school year begins in April. New company employees begin work in April (rarely a coincidence as most of them just came out of college). And new TV shows begin in April. This includes all the new anime for the year. In that spirit of nerdly glee, I give you my opinions of the new crop of anime that many fans around the world will soon begin downloading from the internet. As there are still new shows coming out, this is only a partial list. But here we go:

2009: The year of the remake. Yes, about half the new shows this year are either remakes or continuations of older shows. While this may show a lack of creativity to some, I don’t have a problem as long as they choose good shows to work with.

Dragonball Kai: A brand new Dragonball series!!! OK, not really. Dragonball Kai is a remade version of Dragonball Z. It’s the old show with the art reedited and digitally re-mastered as a 15th anniversary celebration. My gut instinct tells me that this is an attempt by the owners to get that HORRIBLE FUC$!#G MOVIE (calmdowncalmdowndeephealingbreath) out of the public consciousness as soon as possible. They deserve praise for this, but not forgiveness.

Some of the lost or degraded scenes have been redrawn and the original voice cast is back to rerecord their old work. Also, some scenes have been rearranged to better match the order of the original manga. For example, in the first episode, we see the villain Freeza destroying the main character’s home planet. Fortunately, baby Goku has just been sent off in his little rocket for the middle of nowhere world of earth (Yes, they rip off Superman. At least the creator is honest about it). Before, this didn’t appear until a poorly integrated flashback mid-series. Allegedly, several sequences have been reedited to improve the pace of the story. I’ll believe that when I see it. Who knows, maybe the famous 5 min battle will only take 12 episodes this time?

Seriously though, I highly recommend this for any anime fan who has never seen the show in the original Japanese. It’s a fascinating case study in how the voice acting makes, breaks, or completely redefines a character. While I’d rather see new material, a remake of a classic is still a classic. 9/10.

Full Metal Alchemist 2—Brotherhood: Our next rehash is of a series that was the most popular thing in otaku circles roughly 4 or 5 years ago. The series stars Ed and Al Elric. Two brothers and alchemists (it’s basically magic, limited to transmutation) who travel the world trying to make up for a botched attempt to resurrect their dead mother that cost Ed an arm and a leg (literally) and cost Al his whole body (his soul is now bound to a walking talking suit of armor). Along the way they learn lessons about how humans can be a bunch of heartless bastards. Yeah, this isn’t exactly a little kids show. The two seek the Philosopher’s Stone and its limitless power to regain their original bodies.

The first episode starts out in medias res showing our heroes tracking down and capturing a serial killer. It’s a good reintroduction of the characters, but if you don’t already know the world and general plot of the franchise, you are going to be a bit lost. The second episode retells the brother’s origin story, so that should clear up any confusion.

The biggest problem is continuity. The last time we saw these characters, they had gotten their happy ending. Their bodies had been restored and they were living out their lives peacefully in a parallel world without alchemy (aka on earth), so why are we suddenly back in mid story? Are we in a different timeline? A different dimension? Did these adventures happen in between one’s we’ve already seen? If so, when? These are the kind of things that bug me. I doubt we’ll get an answer because this series has never cared much for continuity between incarnations.

If they keep up the high standards of art and characterization that they set in the first series, this will be a good show. The story telling of the first episode was sub-par and boiled down to “Hey! It’s that character we remember!” thereby failing to hook new viewers who may or may not stick around for the “Explain what the goldfish is going on” episode 2. Fans of the old should definitely check it out but this might not be the best jumping on point for FMA. 7/10

Hayate the Combat Butler Second Season: As the name implies, this isn’t strictly a remake but it’s been over a year since season one ended so I’m counting it. The delay was caused by a last second renewal by the network because the show proved more popular than expected.

Hayate the Combat Butler is, quite simply, the best comedy anime in years. It stars Ayasaki Hayate, a high school boy with comically abusive parents who sold him to the yakuza to pay off their gambling debts. Through a somewhat complicated series of events that involve kidnapping, confessions of love, vending machines, and punching out Santa Claus (admittedly, Santa was being a jerk) Hayate winds up working as a butler for a girl named Nagi. Nagi is a socially awkward, nerdy, incredibly book smart (second year of high school at age 13) bossy brat who is head over heels in love with Hayate and won’t admit it. She is also so rich that she makes Bruce Wayne look like . . . well, me. Also, her pet is a talking white tiger named Tama who frequently complains about how little screen time he gets. It just gets weirder from there.

The first two episodes look promising. The animation has improved noticeably from season 1, most likely due to a budget increase. All the voice talent is back and the dialog is as funny as ever. The show is also delightfully self aware and has never even heard of the fourth wall. For example, jokes like “Are you sure we can say that in this time slot?” and “Why are we having a school sports event in the first episode? Because it’s the fastest way to reintroduce all the characters at once.”

One thing that is missing is the references. The first series was one long game of Spot the Reference from everything in Japanese pop culture. Often dialog references were bleeped out in such a way that you knew exactly what they were saying. Characters would often dress up as characters from other shows as a visual gag or would rant that the plot of that week’s episode was a blatant rip off of something else. My favorite episode was when the characters all went to the studio that makes their show to complain about something, except for one girl that just wanted to meet her own voice actress.

All this is gone now. The trade off is that they seem to be going with longer story arcs instead of being a joke premise of the week series with only a loose plot line tying it all together. Hopefully, the badly veiled references will return in time once they finish getting the plot going again.

If you’re a fan of comedic anime and you haven’t seen this show, you owe it to yourself to see season one and start watching season two. 9/10

Shin Mazinger Impact! Z Chapter: This is the big one. Anyone who has ever enjoyed the concept of a giant robot with a human pilot stomping around Tokyo owes thanks and tribute to this series. As the name implies, this is the remake of the classic Mazinger Z (pronounce it as “Zed” or else Americans!) anime.

To understand just how big of a deal Mazinger Z is, this is a brief list of concepts and clichés that can trace their origin directly to this franchise:
1. Giant Robot with human in the head.
2. Heroes screaming the names of their attacks at the top of their lungs.
3. Using English because it’s exotic (the robot’s main finisher is the ROCKET . . . . . PUUUNNNNCH!!!!!!!).
4. Using English because it’s exotic and nobody gets the reference (The villain's name is Dr. Hell). The scary thing is that background characters don’t have the sense to run away REALLY fast when they hear a name like that.
5. BFG (Big F’ing Gun)in the robot’s chest.
6. Using English because it’s exotic and sounds really funny when native English speakers hear it (The aforementioned BFG is called the “Breast Fire!” Seriously).

After having seen the first episode, the best description of this series that I can think of is a loving tribute. The creators clearly love their source material and try to replicate the feel of a late 60s/early70s cartoon. The character design is relatively unchanged despite the monumental upgrade in animation. The show also takes any excuse they can come up with to throw in a few seconds of the old animation style as a dramatic visual sting (the fact that the old style is much cheaper to make, probably didn’t hurt either).

The story of the first episode is virtually nonexistent and it mainly contains various characters showing up and displaying their dominant character traits. Also, there are a lot of robots fighting and things blowing up. This is a good thing. The title of the episode leads me to believe that this was a conclusion to a multipart storyline that was shown out of order to build some tension. I normally don’t care for this kind of non linear storytelling, but it can work well if done right. Only time will tell.

If you are a fan of giant robots, (or of post war Japanese cultural history in general) they you should enjoy a show that can legitimately call the Gundam franchise “Young whippersnapper.” Add in that the people making it clearly care about what they’re doing (as opposed to just trying to cash in on a well known franchise *coughDamnyouFOXcough*) and you have a dark horse contender for series of the year. 10/10

That’s it for the remakes. I’ll be back in a week or so with reviews of some of the other new shows out this year. I like to give such series three episodes before I write a review or recommendation. As you’ve read, sometimes the first episodes of these shows make no sense whatsoever and it takes two or three for the shows to explain themselves.

In other coming attractions, I will write a full review of the sin against God Dragonball Movie as soon as my rage lowers to a nice simmer. Also an essay on the ethics of bit torrent is in the works. All this and more coming to you . . . as soon as I get around to it.