Sunday, April 12, 2009

"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"

please can someone out there recognise that quote...




anyhoo, heya folks and Happy Easter! w00t! the day of the ressurection, not to mention chocolate eggs and long weekends and stuff...

well, sorta long weekend... i had friday off, had to work yesterday, have today off (in that we dont even open the store today) and then im working tomorrow, but have tuesday off. go fig. but i degress.


hope everyone is doing well. life here is going ok. not too great, but not too bad either.


this week i was hunting for easter eggs (as you do) and i almost left it too late (i.e: YESTERDAY) to pick up my parents eggs. the supermarket had almost nothing left, so i picked up two eggs that were sorta ok, but not brilliant. Fortunately there is a Thornton's (Chocolatier's) near where i work and they had some high quality eggs available (and quite a lot of them!) so i got a couple of really nice ones for my parents, and ended up sharing the not so great ones with my co-workers. XD
its great to work in covent garden...its a real nice area and there are some awesome shops near by. XD


i also purchased "Black Lagoon" vol 5 manga on thursday, which covers the part of the story where Rock and Revi are in Japan. this is equivilant to the final episodes of the anime, but i know for a fact there are a few more volumes of the manga to go, so it will be interesting to see where the manga goes from here. There is still the "Greenback Jane" arc to cover but thats not a good story to finish on, so i suspect there will be a final story in the manga that wasnt covered by the anime. we shall see.



yesterday i watched "Persepolis" on the tv...i have seen the DVD available before, but its never perked my interest enough to buy it. i actually quite enjoyed it...its not something i'd usually watch, and i doubt i will be adding it to my DVD collection, but it was very well done.

for those of you who dont know, Persepolis is an animated autobiography of a young Iranian girl (Marjane Satrapi, the film and book's creator) growing up in the 1970-1990s during the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. (not to be mixed up with the Gulf War). the film is primarily in black and white, and the version they showed on TV was the original French dub (Marjane having spent most of her teenaged and adult life in France) so i kinda had to concentrate to follow it. the animated aspect does vaguely take the edge off the violence of the era, but it doesnt hide it either. the whole situation, as viewed by the young Marjane going through puberty, is really well handled, both harrowing and exuberant. and, despite the frequently dark situations, actually kinda funny. i literally laughed out loud during the sequence where Marjane overcomes her depression in a Rocky-esque montage of exercise and study...she is literally singing "Eye of the Tiger", albiet with a french accent. XD

The art style is simple (it emulates the original graphic novel that Marjane produced first) but very well animated, a definite visual treat.

for those of you who'd like to try something a little bit different from "typical" animated shows, or who want to get a deeper insight into the Iranian culture, Persepolis is a film i'd recommend. (and like all foreign films, i recommend you watch it in it's original French Dub with English subtitles). be warned though, it is something you have to actively be engaged with and pay attention to...its not a film you can stick on and veg out to.

i'd also like to see "Waltz with Bashir", an animated documentry on an Israeli soldier (also semi-autobiographical) involved in the 1982 Lebanon war. i find it very interesting that animated movies are becoming a medium to convey parts of our history that we otherwise might not be aware of. i think "Waltz" would be a very interesting and engaging experience, much like Persepolis was.


*pauses to go eat Pan au Chocolait*


mmm. delicious.


so yeah. thats been my two cents for this week.

hope everyone has a great easter and also has a good week.


take care!
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