“Donnie Darko” is an amazing film. Amazing! It’s a science-fiction period-film (late eighties) about teenage angst, time-travel and just about everything else. It’s very good at creating a dark, odd mood and suspense; the music is excellent, …
The R1 DVD picture is a bit soft and grainy but that was supposedly due to the type of film used… Lots of nice extras (extended / deleted scenes, director / cast commentary (very insightful)!). A definite must have seen!
The Funimation “Fruits Basket #1 DVD” is done quite well (ignoring the fact that it’s $10 more than “KareKano / His & Her Circumstances” for the same episode count (6)). All soft subs (font is a tiny bit too small IMO), good picture quality, some extras (mainly the Japanese “Making-Of” / Preview / Teaser show). The show is excellent; it sets out to make feel all warm and fuzzy inside and it succeeds very nicely.
But never ever listen to the dubbed opening song! The original is so nice and beautiful… Why bother to ruin it?
Good SF-novella by Nancy Kress: “Dancing On Air” (and no, you don’t have to be interested in ballet to like the story…)
Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai (up to ep11) is another GAINAX show which transports a boy + girl (just friends ;)) to alternate realities making parodies of just about anything (SF, Jurassic Park, Film Noir, Romance Games / High School Anime, Kung-Fu Films, …). After #6, I was quite sick of it, but just then they story returned to its core and dealt w/ the construction of the “Magical Shopping District”, which was an excellent move. I hope it manages to continue like that…
Mahoromatic (up to ep3, but 2nd half of ep1 was broken 🙁 ) OTOH I really, really like. GAINAX style, cute maid, some nice action / humor, tons of fan-service (nudity)… I just checked, Pioneer will start releasing that in January 2003, and knowing Pioneer it’ll most likely be on 4 discs.
Now and Then, Here and There (up to ep2) is done by Akitaroh Daichi, and heally, really hard to watch (because it’s so mean / brutal to basically nice people). Basically, boy transported into different world / universe / dimension and dropped inbetween two faction at war. Thinking hard about the box-set (which is $70).
RahXephon (up to ep13) still doesn’t grab me and seems even more Evangelion-like than it did after episode 3, i.e. Mecha controlled by boy who doesn’t / didn’t want to fight, female supervisor, odd / nearly emotionless comrade, … it’s all there.
Witch Hunter Robin (up to ep5) has a really nice, semi-Victorian darkish, angular style, very nice character design. Organisation (STN-J) hunting out so called witches with magical powers. Little humor, no fan-service (which is fine ;)), lots of ambience and interesting CG-backgrounds. Don’t know whether it’ll be interesting in the long run, but so far it’s been good.
Current (from this list, except #1 ;)) favourites:
‘nother Mini-Review: Whasango aka Volcano High. Live-Action Korean film, and way over the top. Does not take itself seriously at all, but looks good enough that it could… Student w/ mystical powers has been expelled one too many times (six or seven) and moves on to Volcano High, where after seeing his impressive powers all of the sports clubs try to get him to join… Headmaster falls ill, magical scrolls are missing, falls in love w/ school beauty (and head of the Kendo-club), fights w/ the “Dark Oxen” weight-lifting club, evil teachers arrive and take over order, big showdown at the end. not terribly clever, but very funny and definitely worth watching! Live-action Dragonball Z is as close a description is you can find (but w/ more humour). ^_^
iPod arrived just in time (i.e. on monday before leaving). Thus: Mini-Review iPod Windows 10GB. Very, very sleek (packaging as well). Sounds excellent, but included earbuds lack “oomph”. easy to use, great (simple) UI-design. use ephpod.
watched the first three episodes of Saishu Heiki Kanojo (My Girlfriend, The Ultimate Weapon). And yes, it’s as odd as the title. But it’s also really, really good. A very strange cutesy style with uhm… odd? flat? noses. lots of great style and emotion, and no GONZO-typical blunders in animation (Chise using both arms to wipe her tears away on the lookout-spot of the army base looks adorable). it goes super-deformed once in a while, has excellent humor (Chise dropping some rockets while riding on the back of the bike) and yet seems very sad while dealing with (sur-)real problems… /me wants more!