FunBlog

Probably everyone knows what to expect from the latest Indiana Jones movie: thrills and chills leavened with cheerful good humor; lots of fun with no concern about passing the refrigerator test.

Actually this sort of thing is much harder to pull off than it looks–you have to keep the audience so enchanted while they are watching that they won’t ask questions. Get things a little bit wrong and it will become annoying or tedious. No one does this kind of thing better than Steven Spielberg.

This one is reminiscent of the first movie in the series: Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981), but it’s set in 1957, which I think is about 17 years later in movie time. Instead of Nazis for villains it has evil KGB agents. Once again there’s a quest for an implausible treasure. Its witty and thrilling and fun, but mostly forgettable.

…I think.

This pamphlet arrived in the mail:

(Click for larger image.)

Ever since the scientific community adopted heliocentrism as fact, attempts have been made to prove it. Some of these attempts should have worked. Remarkably, not only has NOT ONE of these attempts produced proof, but also the results of all of them are consistent with the hypothesis that the earth is at rest.

The general argument seems vaguely familiar:

1. The King James Bible clearly states that the Earth is fixed and the Sun moves around it.
2. Scientists claim that the Earth actually moves around the Sun. They have been trying to prove this for centuries, but have never succeeded (at least, not to our satisfaction.)
3. Q.E.D.

Now it would be easy for some wise guy to set up a web site as a joke, but a direct mail campaign costs real money. Also the web site seems “funny-strange”, not “funny-ha-ha.”

Maybe The Economist is preparing a special report on Japan for their next issue. That might be why they have just posted on their web site a strangely unfocused column that seems to be mostly about the Tokyo dining scene, but which begins with a description of a high-tech toilet that is far more sophisticated than the one I described.

This one features a massive remote control that appears to have tremendous potential for evil if it should fall into the wrong hands.

The full title of this movie is The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, but nobody is actually going to say that. It’s a sequel to 2005’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardroble and the first thing I should warn you about is that if you haven’t seen that movie, or read the book by C.S. Lewis on which it was based, you shouldn’t bother with the sequel. Prince Caspian jumps right into the action, and without that previous exposure you won’t know what is going on, or who the main characters are, or why you should care what happens to them.

On the other hand, if you saw and liked The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (I’m just going to write TLTWTW henceforth) then it’s probably worth seeing the sequel. The spectacular final battle sequence is worth the price of admission by itself.
(more…)

Chinese President Hu Jintao has just completed a rare state visit to Japan, supposedly establishing an “everlasting warm spring” in the relationship between the two countries.

Meanwhile the writers of Nijuu Mensou no Musume (The Daughter of Twenty Faces) seem to be busy trying to set Sino-Japanese relations back several decades. Consider the following elements from Episode 2:

1. All of the Chinese characters are depicted as duplicitous.
2. One of them is drawn in a way that amounts to an offensive racial stereotype.
3. The most sympathetic Chinese character, an attractive woman, gushes about how much she enjoyed “entertaining” Japanese troops during the war.

I predict that this is one anime that will not be popular in China, and it probably won’t be licensed for Region 1 either. It’s no great loss. I’ve rarely seen a story so riddled with logical holes.

Even if you didn’t already know it, the title of this series should tip you off that the team of manga artists known as CLAMP has a weird sense of humor. In spite of this, or perhaps because of this, I generally like their stuff. I’ve spent many enjoyable hours watching anime series based on their work. That’s what makes this particular series such a disappointment.
(more…)

The season of Summer blockbuster action flicks is upon us, and the first one will probably prove to be one of the best of the lot.

Iron Man is quite likely the original mecha story from which the entire genre descends. (The original comic book was created by Stan Lee in 1963–though Lee may have been influenced by Robert Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers which was published in 1959.)

The film’s most notable feature is Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as Tony Stark. He is not your typical run-of-the-mill tormented, angst-ridden superhero. Stark starts out as a wise-cracking, irresponsible playboy (though a brilliant inventor), and that’s pretty much how he ends up too, though he does develop something of a social conscience after being held prisoner by Afghan terrorists. Downey manages to make a potentially unlikeable character seem sympathetic, as well as devilishly charming.

The other big star is the computer-generated gadgetry. Like all mecha shows this is largely about gadget porn, but it is gadget porn done right. The gadgets look cool and fun and at least vaguely plausible. I tend to have trouble with mecha shows because too often the technology is painfully, self-evidently absurd. This movie manages to pull it off. It’s a wild, fun ride, and no fair applying the refrigerator test.