Let's Watch Toward the Terra: Episode 17

Episode 17:

 

Let's Watch Toward the Terra: Episode 13

Episode 13: What hides on the Planet

Here's the 13th episode of Toward the Terra, retroactively posted because I was too lazy to do it before the 14th one. Apologies for the image quality, I hadn't really gotten a handle on this whole screen-capping thing when I took them.

Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor episode 01

I watched about five or six episodes of Darker than Black before being stopping. It had a seemingly engaging overall plot, but the two-episode arcs really didn't hold my interest. So I'm glad to see that this sequel series seems (*three word alliteration combo*) to be a very different kind of anime altogether.

First off, although obviously destined to focus on Japan, this episode at least is set in Russia, which is a welcome change of location for an anime series. The main character this time round is an ordinary person rather than a super-powered bad-ass, and she's surprisingly likeable. It's very hard to find female anime characters who are more than otaku bait these days outside of shojou series, so I'll take anything I can get.

Even more intrugingly, the super-powered bad ass from the previous series is a villain. Like I said, I didn't watch Darker Than Black to the end so I don't know whether I should be surprised that Hei is a bad guy this time round (or is he? Maybe he's working for the good guys and the people he kills here are evil, or this is one of them Moral Ambiguity shows. I'm really not sure). At the moment I have enough background information to tell what's going on vis a vis the contractors and their super-power OCD, but my ability to enjoy this series will depend on whether that's enough to get me through.

One thing I remember about the original Darker than Black was the fight scenes. This episode ends on a short but sweet one featuring some really smooth animation and camera tricks. Plus two characters get mercilessly bumped off, both of whom I had already grown to like. Always a plus.

A Certain Scientific Railgun episode 01 review

I should say up front here that I didn't watch the series this is based off (A Certain Magical Index) and know next to nothing about the setting or plot. In fact I'm really just watching it because the show's title is hilarious.

With that out of the way, lets see what this thing is all about.

Let's Watch Toward the Terra: episode 16

Episode 16: Omen of Change

Let the Right One In- Movie Review

The news of a remake/ readaptation of Let The Right One In intersected neatly with my local video place getting the movie to rent on Blu Ray, so I decided to give it a whirl. There are few times when I see an adaptation of a novel and come out of it thinking the movie was better, but this might be one of them.

The script was written by the author of the original novel. When I first heard this I thought it could lead to a bloated movie that tries to include absolutely everything from the book, but thankfully that's not the case at all. Lindqvist went through his story with an critical and un-biased eye and took out the side stories that sometimes dragged the book down, making more room for the central relationship between Eli and Oskar. What we get is a streamlined, faster version of the original with a lot of the waffle cut out.

I do have some complaints I'd like to get out of the way here. Unfortunately some quality material got cut out as well, such as nearly all of Hakan's characterization and backstory. The book's Hakan was a complex character who we got to see battling against his darker impulses and struggling to keep his action rooted in good intentions, no matter how delusional the attempt was, whereas I can imagine people seeing the movie version and coming away with the impression that he's quite a fatherly figure towards Eli, in which case they're in for quite a shock if they read the book.

Eli and Oskar also lose some complexity. The actors portraying them do a fine job, but we just don't get into their heads as much as in the book. Subsequently Oskar isn't nearly as creepy at the start as he was originally, and some of the more humerous scenes between him and Eli unfortunately aren't included.

The cinematography of the film is amazing from the outset and just keeps getting better, producing some real "holy crap" moments using plain old lighting techniques and camera angles rather than specia effects (the one exception being an extremely cool sequence involving Eli's eyes)

My overall impression of the movie is that everybody involved did not set out to make a vampire movie, but a romance film that just happens to feature a vampire. This is most noticable in the (extremely good) soundtrack, which could just as easily be used in a "normal" coming-of-age drama.

Thoughts on the Let the Right One In remake

So IGN has an article up about the cast for the remake of Let The Right One In, which is surprising because I didn't even know they were doing a remake. Although I haven't seen the movie yet, I've read (and loved) the book it's based on.

The rampant pessmism and gnashing of teeth that accompanies any announcement of a big-budget remake/adaption of anything always annoys me, as there are multiple major exceptions to the attitude that Hollywood ruins everything with it's vile attempts to make money (The Ring is, in my opinion, far to superior the original Japanese Ring). So I'm going to try and treat this fairly and not jump to conclusions.

I'm not familiar with either of the actors they've chosen to portray the movie's versions of Oskar and Eli, so I can't really comment on that. What I can comment on is the names chosen for the characters: Owen and Abby. I really thought they'd just change Oskar to Oscar. Maybe it sounds too old fashioned or something?

Abby for Eli is a bit.... iffy. I always thought the name Eli has a kind of timeless quality to it- you could just as easily imagine it applied to a 12 year old girl as you could to an immortal vampire. Abby on the other hand comes across as kind of childish. I don't really get why this one needs changing anyway- Eli obviously isn't a very common girl's name in America, but it wouldn't seem that wierd or out of place, and could enhance the character's mystique.

The location for casting- New Mexico- also causes me a bit of alarm since it's a far cry from the frigid location of the book and original movie. I'm not one of these fans who insist nothing can ever be changed so I won't boycott the movie if they decide to ditch the snowy locales, but I always liked the setting of the book.

The only detail about the movie that I'm completely not liking is the title- the producers have for some reason decided to go with "Let Me In", the ininspired moniker that the book was laboured with in America. Okay, let's face it, Let The Right One In doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it sounds bad-ass. Let Me In sounds like the title to a cheesy slasher flick.

EDIT: Okay, I've done some digging around and some new details have come to light.

According to this page this movie isn't actually a remake the of the Swedish film- it's another adaptation of the book. I'm prepared to view it as such as long as it differs in some signficant way from the first movie. I'm guessing most people aren't going to realise this, however.

Also:

This isn't actually a theatrical poster, but rather a mock-up used to sell the film to studios. I guess I was way off-base about there being no snow in the movie, apparently New Mexico is just one filming location among many.

It's a pretty cool poster. I can't help but notice that "Abby" looks extremely similar to how Eli did in the Swedish version. Even her clothes are similar, which makes me somewhat suspicious of the claim that this is a readaptation, since Eli's initial clothes in the movie were different from what she was wearing in the book.