Wednesday, January 13, 1999

Arg…I come across all sorts of interesting stuff and forget to update my diary. And subsequently forget all about the interesting stuff once I *do* remember to update my diary. OK, let’s see if I can remember what I wanted to say.

I finally got some anime DVD’s through Amazon.com, in particular Iria: The Zeiram Animation (the actual title is “Iria: Zeiram The Animation”, as a result of direct translation I think) and Tenchi Muyo in Love. “What is anime?” I’m glad you asked!

Anime stands for Japanese animation — no, don’t yawn yet. Without getting into the whole history, I’ll say that this is adult-oriented animation. Not “adult” as in XXX, “adult” as in involving plots, deep characters, that sort of thing. It’s all done with Disney-quality animation, but with situations and characters that actually make you think. They really think about how to do animation, and take advantage of it.

Anime in particular tends towards SF/F stories, but have a rather unusual way of handling it: fast action interspersed with slower, dramatic moments, sometimes right after each other. I’m not much of an action fan, but this is action blended with true drama. Hard to resist, and in general excellently done.

OK, so enough about anime. Hmmm. I finally bought a good laser printer, and an Iomega Zip drive. I was a bit miffed to see that the Zip drive didn’t come with any Zip disks; I had to buy them separately. I think it’s now a matter of “Hey, we’ve got the market, we don’t need to give out free stuff anymore.” Grr. I also notice that Iomega sells a lot of Zip-ish products; small Clik! 40 MB drives, Jaz 1 GB and 2 GB drives, the super-huge Ditto drives (10 GB disks?!), and even Buz video editing software.

I notice over on Ain’t It Cool News (news on cool movies) that there’s going to be an X-Men movie. If they can bring up the very interesting social implications of the comic books and TV show, I’ll be impressed. The dramatic tension between the “mutie haters” to the mutants, plus the mutants’ uncertainty about their powers (and theiry sanity) have a lot of dramatic possibilities.

Regarding the “pretty big news” I mentioned last week: looks like it’s going through, and I’ll be able to unveil it next week. Nothing unbelievably exciting, but I think my reader will be interested. ;-)

And looking back over the Prince of Egypt box office standings, it’s ahead of Stepmom, only made 20% less than You’ve Got Mail, and made 11% less than Patch Adams (though Stepmom and Patch Adams have been out for one week less than Prince of Egypt). It’s kicking Mighty Joe Young’s butt, and has made about half what A Bug’s Life has made, and that in only half the time, without a re-release and special “blooper reel”. Looks like the public loves Prince of Egypt. Sorry to harp on this, but I’m glad to see a truly beautiful film get the money it deserves.

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