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Head on over, I just transferred everything.

Movies 7/21

Applseed

I sat up and said "Hmmm" when I saw that this was based on a manga by Masamune Shirow. So I figured that this had a better than average chance of being good. I'm not yet familiar with the manga, I just got it after the I got the film, so this my first encounter with Applseed. I was not disappointed. Excellent story involving revenge, humankind saving, and a love story is presented using a combination of animation techniques that includes 3d, motion capture, and cell creates a really entertaining film. This film is from 2004 and is the second take at Appleseed. I'll be interested in tracking down the 1988 film for comparison's sake. Anyway, I recommend this film highly.

Pan's Labyrinth

Guillermo del Toro has created an excellent adult Faerie story. Fantastic to look at and interestingly set in the early years of Franco's Spain. Del Torro is as creepy as ever, remember Devil's Backbone?. Well it is that level of tension, add in a family's love of their daughter, some almost sadistic torture scenes and you've got a really good movie. I have really started to like his work. I was always impressed but he has created a truly distinct movie.

Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex

This is the first TV Series based on the famous Ghost in the Shell of Masamune Shirow. It is a mind-bender. Too many stories and ideas to have a go at right now but, I will talk about that which, as a Librarian, hit me most. That is how information is acquired, processed and used. In this world there really is no privacy, everyone is wired and can be watched in many ways. They, the powers that be, either already know everything about you or quickly can acquire that information. In the name of security, mind you. There is simply no way to avoid being caught in this world's electronic web/surveillance. Scary really.

You think the current web is fab, it is by the way, this world's has to be at least two to three orders of magnitude greater in scope. Truly it is all out there, somewhere. Think of all the digital book initiatives happening now are done and continued to expand? Not beyond the realm of possibility, barring a planetary meltdown of catastrophic proportions these initiatives will only continue and become ever more comprehensive, here is UPenn's listing of online books. Think of the variety of databases out there. These will only increase people. (No doubt I or folks like me will simply exist as people at the end of a video/chat reference interview, providing links and/or pertinent documents. Not a bad thing but face reality, human librarians are expensive creatures and I believe currently exist because traditional library users don't want to do without, we're part of a tradition and people like this tradition but money talks, sad but true. Let's all enjoy while it lasts!!!)

Wow, I digress.

Add in pervasive cybernetics and the possibilities for hacking humans implicit in that tech and off you go. The politics of privacy, human augmentation, religion, economics and well, pick a topic out the news and this series and the follow-on second season touch on it. Really these series underline for me what an amazing world we could create with all our tech and just how dangerous that tech could be when used for good old human things like greed, power and the usual amusements. Think of how much more vicious our world could get as we create all this amazing tech that theoretically is there to make our lives more convenient but demands that we share more of our-selves and our private lives in order to gain access to these conveniences.

Excellent for landscape, architecture and other stuff

All kinds of fun and cool stuff.

Afro Samurai

Afro Samuri is great stuff: excellent animation, interesting characters, revenge tale, "modern yet feudal" Japan is an interesting setting/technology and what else, well just watch it its really good stuff. Go watch and enjoy.

Ciao Facundo

Well, bye-bye Facundo. Not sure at all how I fell about this deal. Age and experience for youth and well Erp-Fu? We'll see in a few weeks if Vanney settles in well. Hopefully it works out, but I just don't feel good about this and I hope I'm wrong. Who knows maybe our style will suit him. I wonder how the locker room feels about this?

DCU 4(1) - 1(1) Colorado

"The first 25, 30 minutes we were flat, the same way we came out against Salt Lake," Perkins said. "Fortunately, they didn't capitalize on a couple things. Second half, we collected ourselves here [in the locker room] and came back out fighting."

Well said Mr. Perkins. Good game and closer than final score indicates. Alot of the guys had good second halves, Adderly, Moose, Fred, Gomez, and Perkins. This team is still giving away alot chances though and well, as long as we score more than anyone they can work on that.

Speaking of defenders and according to Steven Goff: "After the game, according to sources close to the team, United was trying to finalize a trade that would send Argentine defender Facundo Erpen to Colorado for former U.S. national team defender Greg Vanney." Whoa that's interesting, what's the deal, Colorado is the home of old DC defenders?

Cheers

Solo con tu pareja

Alfonso Cuaron, director of Y tu mama tambien made this delightful, mildly surreal and, at times, quite serious film in 1991. This movie is about relationships, people growing up, AIDS and Mexico City. The humor in this film is just great, endlessly poking fun at the oddities of men, women and their relationships while treating the serious issue of AIDS with respect. In this film all relationships are heterosexual and it is in this community that issues surrounding AIDS and its impact on individuals are discussed. I also quite enjoyed the lazy pacing of the film, it added a certain dreaminess to the film and that may be what I'm calling surreal. Well, anyway, here is a far better synopsis from the Criterion Collection, the version that I saw, than I have time write.

Found an awesome photography link

So I found the above link here. This is done by a photographer SAIGA Yuji and he documents the story of an artificial island, Gunkanjima, that has now been abandoned. Strange, evocative, and well sad in a way.

USA 2 (0) -1 (1) Mexico

Wow! Comeback win versus El Tri!!!! Wow! Salute the guts the boys showed!!!! I was quite honestly shocked. After the Sanchez's triple save and us being a goal down, I said to myself that it wasn't our day. We were playing well but had run into a red hot keeper. Then the pk and off we go. Excellent counter-attacking and Benny F., wow that was hard to do and gorgeous to see. Mexico kept coming and Tim HOWARD came up big! Wow. Been a long time since I felt that way about USMNT.

Realistically now there are still problems with team but right now I'm ignoring them. Something tells me we will see plenty of USMNT faults on display very soon.

Cheers