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Satoshi Kon
1 min read
is dead? I wanted to see more from him :< 46 is way way too young for a guy that talented to die. He had one movie still in production called The Dreaming Machine. Some other news about his death: www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/….
One of these days I'll write an unsad journal. Workin' on it. On the bright side, I'm playing Starcraft II : )
One of these days I'll write an unsad journal. Workin' on it. On the bright side, I'm playing Starcraft II : )
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I'm Tearbending
4 min read
To quote Zuko, "That... wasn't a good play (movie)"
The Last Airbender was not a good movie. It didn't pander to a younger audience as some reviews suggest. It wasn't crippled by racism. It was bad in the classic way things are bad: It was poorly told.
Let's start off with the good things and work our way down from there. The Costumes were cool as hell. Some of the sets were pretty neat and so were some of the cg bending scenes.
Now we get into the sub-par. Bending is a normal part of the Avatar world, but every time anyone did anything involving bending, Nighshamalanana-nana slowed everything down to a screeching halt to let us marvel at it's shiny-ness. There's just no reason to marvel at the mysticism of what is an every-day occurrence in this world. It's would be like marveling at the mysticism of your car starting when you turned the key. Also, everyone struts their kung-fu stuff way too long before lifting any kind of material. It makes the elements seem very detached from the benders which is the opposite of how it should be. The fighting in general is really weird. Every bending fight has a very I-go-then-you-go rhythm to it rather than hitting whenever they get the chance. The casting was also kind of dumb. His choice for white actors playing Katara and Sokka was fine, but why is everyone else in the Southern Water Tribe Asian or Inuit or otherwise non-white. The same strangeness pops up again in the Fire Nation where the main characters seem to be Indian(ish) except for Iroh who's something else (I honestly can't tell what).
Now for the truly shitty parts. Oh my god the acting. Everyone in this movie was as bland as salt-less saltines. No one seems to act with motivation - like there's nothing at stake. The only exception to this is Zuko, who still manages to seem conflicted. Unfortunately, his acting, and the entire story is bogged down by some of the worst dialog ever written.
The directing is also lackluster. Not enough time is given to crucial story elements like: what is the condition of the Earth Kingdom that they're barreling through? Did an explosion occur on that ship or was Iroh firebending? (I know the scene and I couldn't tell what the hell was going on), What are Iroh's feelings about Zhao and Ozai? How long has Zuko been looking for the Avatar and why look in the South Pole?
To explain these, they decided to use tons and tons of exposition. Unfortunately The exposition couldn't be more awkwardly delivered if the actors were looking straight at the camera when doing so. Zhao and Ozai had pretty much this conversation, Zhao: "Our spies say that someone claiming to be the Avatar is emancipating out Earth Kingdom Colonies" "Oh?" "Yes, but it appears he's only using airbending" "Pheww, He must be having trouble learning waterbending" "Yes, I believe so too. By the way I got some scrolls when we raided that 'Secret Library'" "Oh? And what did you learn" "We're deciphering the locations of the moon and ocean spirits" "You mean the ones that lend the waterbenders their control over the element?" "Yep." "Well, on your journeys be sure not to be nice to my son, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. You know he disgraced me at a war meeting some years ago, and I never liked him as much as I liked his sister."
Half of the scenes in the movie are like this! Characters just exposition-ing for the whole scene with no real reason to. At one point Zuko calls over some Earth Kingdom kid for the sole purpose of having that kid say the story of Zuko's fall from grace for him, and when he finished, the kid just wandered out of the scene like nothing happened! Also, they tried to fit in too many different things into too short a movie. And they wasted precious time on crazy displays of bending water really really slowly through the air.
That's not even getting into how underdeveloped the world is, how "grounding" the characters made them completely unlikeable, how you never get someone's name when they're introduced, how there's no explanation of where Momo and Appa are during most of the movie, or how there's no set up to Yue's sacrifice at all.
The movie's a mess. Please disregard it and go netflix the original series.
It's still surprisingly deep, funny, and interesting.
The Last Airbender was not a good movie. It didn't pander to a younger audience as some reviews suggest. It wasn't crippled by racism. It was bad in the classic way things are bad: It was poorly told.
Let's start off with the good things and work our way down from there. The Costumes were cool as hell. Some of the sets were pretty neat and so were some of the cg bending scenes.
Now we get into the sub-par. Bending is a normal part of the Avatar world, but every time anyone did anything involving bending, Nighshamalanana-nana slowed everything down to a screeching halt to let us marvel at it's shiny-ness. There's just no reason to marvel at the mysticism of what is an every-day occurrence in this world. It's would be like marveling at the mysticism of your car starting when you turned the key. Also, everyone struts their kung-fu stuff way too long before lifting any kind of material. It makes the elements seem very detached from the benders which is the opposite of how it should be. The fighting in general is really weird. Every bending fight has a very I-go-then-you-go rhythm to it rather than hitting whenever they get the chance. The casting was also kind of dumb. His choice for white actors playing Katara and Sokka was fine, but why is everyone else in the Southern Water Tribe Asian or Inuit or otherwise non-white. The same strangeness pops up again in the Fire Nation where the main characters seem to be Indian(ish) except for Iroh who's something else (I honestly can't tell what).
Now for the truly shitty parts. Oh my god the acting. Everyone in this movie was as bland as salt-less saltines. No one seems to act with motivation - like there's nothing at stake. The only exception to this is Zuko, who still manages to seem conflicted. Unfortunately, his acting, and the entire story is bogged down by some of the worst dialog ever written.
The directing is also lackluster. Not enough time is given to crucial story elements like: what is the condition of the Earth Kingdom that they're barreling through? Did an explosion occur on that ship or was Iroh firebending? (I know the scene and I couldn't tell what the hell was going on), What are Iroh's feelings about Zhao and Ozai? How long has Zuko been looking for the Avatar and why look in the South Pole?
To explain these, they decided to use tons and tons of exposition. Unfortunately The exposition couldn't be more awkwardly delivered if the actors were looking straight at the camera when doing so. Zhao and Ozai had pretty much this conversation, Zhao: "Our spies say that someone claiming to be the Avatar is emancipating out Earth Kingdom Colonies" "Oh?" "Yes, but it appears he's only using airbending" "Pheww, He must be having trouble learning waterbending" "Yes, I believe so too. By the way I got some scrolls when we raided that 'Secret Library'" "Oh? And what did you learn" "We're deciphering the locations of the moon and ocean spirits" "You mean the ones that lend the waterbenders their control over the element?" "Yep." "Well, on your journeys be sure not to be nice to my son, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. You know he disgraced me at a war meeting some years ago, and I never liked him as much as I liked his sister."
Half of the scenes in the movie are like this! Characters just exposition-ing for the whole scene with no real reason to. At one point Zuko calls over some Earth Kingdom kid for the sole purpose of having that kid say the story of Zuko's fall from grace for him, and when he finished, the kid just wandered out of the scene like nothing happened! Also, they tried to fit in too many different things into too short a movie. And they wasted precious time on crazy displays of bending water really really slowly through the air.
That's not even getting into how underdeveloped the world is, how "grounding" the characters made them completely unlikeable, how you never get someone's name when they're introduced, how there's no explanation of where Momo and Appa are during most of the movie, or how there's no set up to Yue's sacrifice at all.
The movie's a mess. Please disregard it and go netflix the original series.
It's still surprisingly deep, funny, and interesting.
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Remembering Frank Frazetta
1 min read
Sad day. If you don't know who he is, I recommend you correct that immediately. art10.co.uk/artdept/Assets/Ima…
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SavANIjam 2010
1 min read
I'm doing it! I'm going to be animating for 24 straight hours! starting 5pm today ending 5pm tomorrow! Graaaargh! I don't even know what it's about yet because we haven't yet received our prompt!
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Happy Christmas
1 min read
Tired of not having updated since October, I decided to say 'happy Christmas' to you all. I hope you have a relaxing/exciting/otherwise pleasant day. I have received an intuos 4 and I am very excited to see if I can get CS4 programs and Windows 7 working on my laptop.
Also, hopefully I'm not getting too sick. I wish the emoticon for mood that has the green smiley who is obviously coughing said 'sick' next to it instead of ' pain'.
Also, hopefully I'm not getting too sick. I wish the emoticon for mood that has the green smiley who is obviously coughing said 'sick' next to it instead of ' pain'.
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