In 2006 a comedy came out called “Idiocracy” staring Luke Wilson. It was about the decline in human intelligence as the natural way of evolution until in the future the world would be nothing but a bunch of hicks and morons. The movie is rather funny, my husband and I love it, but the sad thing is how possible the movie’s scenario actually seems.

The way society is heading now we really are doomed to one day have our own Idiocracy.
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My husband and I just finished the second episode of the anime version of High School of the Dead, a series about the zombie apocalypse starting in downtown Tokyo.

It was originally a manga that my husband adores and is still reading as new chapters come out.

So far the adaptation from manga to anime is spot on.

I watched my first anime before I read my first manga, Weiss Kreuz, an older series about assassins posing as flower shop workers during the day. It is not a great anime, but it has a special place in my heart, and like many of its fellows it also has an accompanying manga.

The manga for Weiss Kreuz is not typical, but tells the story of how the main characters ended up working together, a prequel to better understand the events in the anime.

Manga and Anime relations for a single series can develop in a number of different ways. Most people assume that the norm is to have a manga that existed first that they then translated into an anime to see the stationary pictures come alive with movement and voice actors.

Sometimes it is that clean cut, but not always.
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First I must send out a HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to my wonderful geek husband of two years now. I love him more each day, and that’s not just me saying that. Geeks in love stay in love.

You make every day better.

I dabbled in amateur film making when I was in college. Of course then I had resources that I no longer have outside the classroom. I was spending a semester in England where I took a class that allowed me and my teammates to create two short films. The experience really showed me how much work goes in to even just a minute’s worth of screen time.

Difficulty for anyone can change depending on a number of factors—experience, cooperation among participants, equipment, and time.

Time will always be the first one that gets you. For the 3-5 minute films I made for my class in England we were given a week to film and two to edit. You would think that would be more than enough for such a short movie.

But then remember you have to have an idea, actors, locations, props, and equipment to get everything done.
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It isn’t often that a movie is so bad that I allow it to join the ranks of my most hated movies of all time, like The Spirit, Shadow of the Vampire and To Die For. But The Last Airbender was so painful to watch, I almost left the theatre.

I do not leave movies without giving them the full benefit of the doubt, but maybe sometimes I should. If I had left when I realized that no, the movie was not going to get better, I could have avoided the inevitable soul-raping that took place.
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A good sci fi film is about atmosphere. It’s not just aliens or fantastical creatures, or even a futuristic setting. It’s a whole feeling that grips you while you’re watching it. At least, that’s true for good sci fi films.

This past decade I feel like we have been falling short. There are examples of a few truly great sci fi movies, but for the most part I have been disappointed.

The inspiration for this blog was the recent sci fi flick, “Splice.” After over a week since I saw the movie I am still unsure how to accurately describe it. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good. It was messed up. It was disturbing. It was just plain weird. And not in the ‘well, that’s what I want of my sci fi movies’ kind of way. More like a big WTF.
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“Heroes” is at long last dead, having finished its ultimately short reign this past season. NBC is stepping forward to pick up that superhero slack by introducing a new caped crusader as part of its upcoming Fall line-up, “The Cape”.

“From the visionary team of Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun comes an imaginative adventure about a dad who would do anything to protect his family.

Officer Vince Faraday was a good cop trying to clean up a corrupt city. Framed for murder and left for dead, he suddenly found himself separated from his wife and son and forced into hiding. Now, inspired by his son’s favorite comic book hero, he’s taking the law into his own hands, and playing a deadly game of chess with the powerful kingpin who framed him. With the hope of one day reuniting with his family, The Cape is sending a loud message to all criminals… run.” -NBC.com

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Supernatural is up there with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly for me for favorite TV shows of all time. It has everything I love in a series. Great characters (and not too many of them). Snark. Pop culture references. Sci fi/fantasy. Beautiful people. Good acting (usually). Great writing (usually). And a linear plotline with many stand-alones to help balance a season.

So what went wrong?

There is a part of me that wishes Supernatural had stopped after Season 2 (with a few minor changes to leave us with a feeling of completion), instead of spanning through 5 seasons with another on the way. I liked aspects of seasons 3, 4, and 5, but not the whole of it, and I feel like I could have, like I should have.

Now, in Season 3’s defense, that was the year of the writer’s strike, so it had to try and wrap up a normal 22 or so episode season in only 16. That really hurt the show at no fault of the creators, writers, or actors. But we were forgiving then because they had a good excuse.

After that, Season 4 was mostly good and introduced the fan favorite character Castiel, but it also introduced Adam. There were bad episodes well before him, but that was when the show started to lose me and my faith in it.

I can’t avoid spoilers in this particular blog entry, so be forewarned now if you have not already guessed that.
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There are classic lines from movies that have become a part of cinema history. These lines are often used in parodies and quoted in reverence.

I don’t have any problem with parodies or when a classic line is spoken specifically to honor the movie it came from.

But there are also generic lines, lines we have heard again and again that have become more than just clichés, they are an epidemic.

You know some of the classic lines I’m talking about.

The American Film Institution’s list of the top 100 movie quotes in American cinema puts this at #1:
 

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

But my favorite would have to be #79:

Striker: “Surely you can’t be serious!”
Rumack: “I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley.”

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Since 2004 friends and I had attended Anime Detour in Bloomington, MN. It was small but still fun, and conveniently located. However, the awful girl that ran the Masquerade for cosplay competition ruined it for us and we decided to hit Chicago this year instead.

Rising far earlier than I would normally consider civil, six of us (with one other waiting for us in Chicago) left Minneapolis and arrived for the three day weekend with plenty of time to get into our costumes and start a new Con experience for the first time in years.

To compare, Anime Detour has just over 3000 attendees. Anime Central had around 17000.

For me the highlight of any Con is cosplaying. Halloween is my favorite holiday for a reason. I love dressing up.

This year I was an original design of Emeralda from the classic video game Xenogears, and one of the more seldom seen costumes for Sheryl Nome from the anime Macross Frontier.

We had a whole Macross Frontier Group the second day, which is always the most fun, and were stopped frequently for photos.
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Not my own ramble. It’s my fic, so that would be rather self-serving. Although so is this.

I am so excited for this coming weekend (May 14-16) and heading off to Chicago for Anime Central that I have no desire to work on the blog I had planned.

I will be taking a break next week since I will be enjoying said Con, and the following week I will be presenting a review of the experience with pictures.

So “Lines That Should No Longer Be Spoken In Movies” will have to wait a while.

In the meantime, I present to you this wonderful blog entry from AmyinSydney. Along with several other faithful readers, she is spreading the love of my two-year long epic fanfic across the fandom-verse, where I am known not as MissSuperCube or the Geek Girl, but simply as Crimson.
 
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