The Real Reason Anime Characters Have Big Eyes
In a study that has been getting a lot of attention recently, American and Japanese college students were required to judge the facial expressions of digitally altered photos. The American… Read more »
Hot Fuzz
This movie is a British parody of American cop/buddy/action thrillers. That’s an easily parodied genre, but the dry British humor makes this surprisingly quirky and interesting. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg)… Read more »
The Dreaded “Angst”
Steven den Beste and Ubu Roi have been conducting a spirited debate on their blogs about Shakugan no Shana. (Ubu’s posts are here and here; Steven doesn’t have permalinks for… Read more »
The Namesake
This is an earnest, heartfelt and well-intentioned movie, and I really wish that I liked it more than I do. It’s basically about some immigrants from India who name their… Read more »
Japanese actress caught in sheep ‘poodle’ scam
Important consumer alert: If you want to buy a poodle, make sure that you aren’t actually getting a sheep with a funny haircut! (If anyone has pictures of this, let… Read more »
The Hoax
In 1970 Clifford Irving, a minor writer best known for a biography of a notorious art forger, approached McGraw-Hill with an astonishing proposal: he had made a deal with reclusive… Read more »
Ah! My Goddess! Season 1–Anime Review
Once upon a time there was a poor college student, a decent young man, but awkward and unlucky. One evening a beautiful goddess appeared before him and offered to grant… Read more »
Rant: Shakugan no Shana DVD 4
A while ago I praised the quality of the subtitle translation on the Shakugan no Shana DVDs. Given that this seems to be a particularly difficult story to translate they… Read more »
Meet the Robinsons
This movie managed to surprise me: it is the first computer-generated 3-D animation that I have seen in which at least some of the human characters did not seem either… Read more »
Trying to Make Sense of Kanon
I have spent the last few days trying to figure out the ending of Kanon, which may be a waste of time, but the damned show got stuck in my… Read more »