Watch Your Ass.

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I'm smack dab in the middle of the Aki Sumo tournament and so far it's been fairly interesting with some old favorites doing very well and a new Yokozuna and Ozeki out to prove themselves. It's just too bad that the Sumo Deliberation Committee had to go insane on the 4th best Yokozuna in history -- the nigh unstoppable Asashoryu -- and ban him from competing for the next two tournaments thus depriving us fans of some much needed Yokozuna on Yokozuna action.:evil:

Still...I can't express to you just how nice it is to come home after working all night long and being able to kick up my feet and watch sumo live from Japan. Now if only Japan could get a Japanese man to step up to the championship plate without constantly choking the ticket sales in Japan might improve quite a bit.

Well not exactly. As I may have mentioned in many other posts in the past three of the members of Mystery Science Theater 3000 have reformed as The Film Crew and are currently riffing away at bad movies once again which means, of course, life is once again worth living.

The Film Crew consist of Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy who on MST3K were know as Mike, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo respectively.Mike Nelson has been running a website for a while called Rifftrax in which he makes tracks of humorous commentary on recent big films and TV series and you should definitely check that out as well. He was interested in getting some of the crew back together again but without all the hassle of mounting a television production. The interest and support was there and so now we have a MST3K reunion of sorts as The Film Crew.

Hollywood After Dark ~ Out Now!

Killers From Space ~ Out Now!

Wild Women of Wongo ~ Out Sept. 11

The Giant of Marathon ~ Out Oct. 9th

Instead of a TV show they decided to go with straight DVD releases and after watching the first two as well as watching the samples of further volumes at the San Diego Comic-con I can safely say the guys are still as funny as ever and I highly recommend them. There are some negatives however. The guys are basically playing themselves as common workers who are forced to create commentaries for old bad films that don't have them. As such, the charm that MST3K ahd with all its silly trappings of robots and mad scientists is sorely missing. The barebones nature of the productions further highlight the issue for fans like myself that we are indeed getting a stripped down version of MST3K. The in-between comedy sketches are painfully unfunny and seemed as though they were just added quickly as an afterthought.

The efforts of TV's Frank (Frank Conniff) and Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu) are sorely missed.

All is soon forgiven however, once they get back to the movie and the comedy gold ensues once again. To me though, there still is a little too much noticeable dead air here and there in the commentary on the DVDs I've watched so far and I find myself doing my own commentary to fill in the gaps. These, however, are just the first DVDs of what will hopefully be a long running series and it always takes people a while to get into the swing of their surroundings; a fact that anybody who has seen the early episodeds of MST3K will attest to. Get the DVDs, slide them in the player and enjoy!

Did I ever tell you the story of how TV's Frank got me sick? It's true!

A few people might know that I run a rather busy book store in the Los Angeles area. I'm a fairly hands on kind of manager and I have a tendency to adopt book sections for a while and see how much I can work my magic inventory secrets and push sales as far as I can. For the last couple of years I've been busily running the manga/graphic novel section as it's an area of interest of mine anyways and it's fun watching the new issues pour in and to see the section get more and more popular. I've been wildly successful and in the company I work for my manga section in sales is in the top ten out of +600 stores.

Because of this, I get rather a lot of books when a top selling series comes out with a new issue. Naruto is pretty much on the top of the food chain. The only thing that competes with it is Fruits Basket which sells faster initially than Naruto but the older volumes don't sell as consistantly so it kind of balances out.

Where am I going with all this useless information? Well for some reason the good folks at Shonen Jump decided it would be an awesome idea to release three issues of Naruto AT THE SAME TIME! The problem? Well besides the usual space issues, as I said before Naruto is at the top of the food chain and I typically get 120 to 250 copies of a new issue depending upon how the last issue sold. So by getting three at the same time I was suddenly buried under 400 copies of Naruto! Thanks Shonen Jump! Did I mention that issue #18 comes with free stickers? Gosh oh gee I would've loved to have been in the same room with the brain trust that approved that marketing idea. I wonder what's going to happen to a bunch of loose stickers at a manga aimed at young teen boys. I wonder...

On a giant plus side, they finally brought over one of my favorite manga entitled Mahou Tsukai Kurohime although they shortened the title on the international market to just Kurohime. Now if you'll forgive me, I have a veritable mountain of manga to sort through.

*grumble*

...oh by the way, girls are the backbone of the manga industry and overall Shoujo titles far outsell all other types of manga.

The craziness at work has finally died down somewhat and I've been returning to my film viewing ways at long last. The film that sits high and above the rest in terms of priority is the newest film by Chan-wook Park (Oldboy, JSA, Lady Vengeance) entitled I'm A Cyborg But That's OK (Saibogujiman kwenchana).

The film opens with our main character, Young-goon (Im Soo-jung from A Tale of Two Sisters), working away in one of dozens of brightly lit workstations where she is diligently assembling some electronics. She begins to feel a little weak and needs a boost of energy and when she looks to the buzzing lights and machinery above her she can clearly hear the overhead speaker instruct her to cut her wrist, insert some wires into her wrist, and then plug herself into the nearest socket - an instruction to which she promptly complies.

This action immediately lands her in a psychiatric hospital where we are quickly introduced to what initially seems like the usual assortment of charming movies hospital "crazies". Young-goon immediately gains the interest of a fellow patient named Il-soon (the famous pop star "Rain") who immediately sets about attempting to assess her. Il-soon acts as a sheriff of sorts among the patients in that he has the ability -or so everyone believes- of being able to steal people's abilities and personality traits although he generally only does so one at a time. With this ability he can keep things in balance by taking stealing away a person's ability to play a mean game of ping pong in order to punish them, or he can assist them by temporarily taking their sense of guilt so their lives will be a tad more bearable.

There's a big problem with Young-goon however, she fully believes herself to be a cyborg and so she will not eat. Instead she grabs batteries and attempts to power herself up with them. This goes unnoticed for a time as a fellow paitent is more than happy to eat her food "so she doesn't get in trouble for not eating". Who will save her, how did she come to believe she wasn't human and how will she be able to survive as a cyborg living in a human's world?

This film is quite a departure from Park's previous dark & violent films and I can see why a number of people have had problems dealing with this film. It is slow in getting to the much advertised romance of the main characters and it drifts effortlessly in and out of the fantasyland in which the hospital denizens all see themselves. Im soo-jung is amazing as the cyborg girl who blames the "whitecoats" for hurting her grandmother and often fantasizes about calmly walking about killing every staff member of the hospital. Her character is not played as a cute little robot girl however as she is slowly starving to death and generally looks pale, weak and, due to her habit of putting in her grandmother's dentures in order to talk with the machines, she looks quite frightening.

The solution to the problem eventually plays itself out and it is at once incredibly touching, and amazingly simple that the end result I found to be truly satisfying. The film is gorgeous to behold. The colors are amazingly sumptuous, and the fantasy sequences are technically amazing in that they seem so natural and don't overpower the presence of the characters. I was also very happy not to be dragged down the old road traveled many times when a story takes place in a mental hospital in that the patients are seen as the crazy people who are actually sane as in the legendary film King of Hearts. These are real patients with real problems and there is nothing charming about it.

Despite my initial reservations about this film, I found that it had worked its way into my brain and I realized that I was thinking about it often. If you can divorce yourself from the expectations of another tale of vengeance movie from Chan-wook Park, I think you find this film to be a very rewarding experience.

This year's con was a fairly successful venture. Generally we spend our time split between shopping on the floor and attending various panels. Last year, however, we missed the preview day, Thursday, and most of Friday due to scheduling problems so we ended up running around the floor shopping non-stop and that was incredibly hard on the legs and back not to mention a tad boring.

This year there was a lot going on so we ended up attending less little panels and more giant extravaganza panels. Most of these took place in Hall H which seats 6500 people and has a multitude of screens so really every seat is a good seat. Everytime I was in these long ass lines and I had my doubts that we would get in, we would finally make it inside only to find the place looking half empty. The only downside to this hallway is that the people in charge cut off all entrances and exits from this hallway to the rest of the con building. This meant that to wait for an event you were constantly forced to stand outside in the heat and when you left the hallway you were forced back outside onto the sidewalk and had to fight your way through the single day scum (I kid I kid) and then back into the con once again. Did I mention that the front sidewalk area is pretty damn skinny?

The Get Smart panel was incredible! People went crazy when Masi Oka (Hiro from Heroes) walked out but then the Rock and Steve Carrell walked out and everybody just lost it. Since Rock and Carrell are such natural cut-ups everybody just gravitated towards them and nobody asked Masi Oka a single question!

The flipside of this is doing it oldschool which meant the very evil Room 6 CDEF. Originally the rooms above the con floor seemed like a pretty cool place because they could move all the walls around and make room for large events which meant more people could get in. The big problem with this is that they've never updated the media service in the rooms so even though the room can hold a lot of people, the only screen in a multi-room is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay at the front of the room off to the side a little bit - and this is the kicker here - the screen is set kinda low. So basically it stinks and we bailed out of a couple events because of this fact.

Holy God it's Crow, Tom Servo and Mike Nelson! *faints*

The Iron Man panel was pretty crazy too but the funny part was when the big wigs were getting all nervous and telling people not to tape anything under penalty of death and all that tish tosh as they were about to demonstrate some very cutting edge CG that they had been working on. They then ran a minute of the old Iron Man cartoon from the 60s which had people rolling in the aisles with its epic lameness. Still, it was a nice lead-in for the most desired clip of the convention which I'm sure everybody has seen by now.

A very fun time was had by all at the panel for the upcoming movie "Whiteout" starring the very lovely Kate Beckinsale. She was very friendly and seemed generally happy that so many people were massive fans of her Underworld movies. She fielded many questions about Underworld and Whiteout and she came across as a very intelligent, witty, and quite a naughty woman. Fielding the question on how making Whiteout differed from the high action Underworld movies she stated that making Whiteout meant that she didn't have to sleep with the director as much (her husband directed the Underworld movies) and that since she wasn't dressed up in fetish gear in this movie that everytime she bent over she didn't hear a male crew member groan in pleasure (although she actually just moaned during that part). Yes I want to marry her...duh!

Every year there seems to be less and less bootleg video dealers which is good and bad. Obviously I don't want a pirate product but the bulk of what these dealers had were TV series and movies that aren't available on the market so it's becoming harder to find out of print stuff. A big plus this year is the amount of incredibly talented independent graphic artists is exploding to the point of being a bit overwhelming. I bought a handful of really cool art books from them but there was just so much art goodness it was hard to choose. What's up with the Tokidoki booth every year? it's always nightmare to get near and around! Ease up you maniacs!

Sorry Sony, you tried but the WB bag was way ahead of you guys this year with THE BAG! (my cat not included)

Now every year there's A BAG that's THE bag of the con. This year it was a massive bag from the folks at Warner Bros. that was very intelligently made out of nylon instead of paper. This made it, in effect, a giant bodybag and I watched many people fill it to capacity and drag it around like they did indeed have a dead body inside. A friend of mine even caught up with a lady who made a dress out of it and hopefully I'll have pics of that when he sends me his pics of the con.

Lest people think I forgot about the comic side of business, my pick of the con is Ted Mathot's "Rose and Isabel". A Civil War era book it details the struggles of two very different sisters who set out to find out what happened to their brothers after their letters stop coming home. They are both very well trained in combat but the way they employ their skills and the moral struggles they have with each other, as well as the surrounding war, make this a very compelling read. Buy it now!

An incredible runner up is Pierre Alary's "Belladone". It's an incredible piece of graphic art that echews hyper-detailed muscles to demonstrate the simple beauty of fluid movement. The only reason it's not the winner is that currently it is only available in the original French. But if you read French, even just a little, I highly recommend it.

Quick Fun Fact/Pet Peeve for people who don't attend the SD Comic-con - Very few people dress up in costume! I know the reporters will take tons of pics of the ones they find and people broadcasting love to surround themselves with costumed folks, but the simple fact of the matter that only 1 out of 200 people is dressed up and I'm probably being too generous. Seriously.

Well that's that. I spent about $1000 this year which seems to be an average for me as the years pass. Lots of comics & art books were bought and many signatures and poster were received. Normally I'm not big for getting posters but this year there were a lot of special exclusive posters such as the Watchmen, Cloverfield, Iron Man, Sweeny Todd and Shoot 'em Up that it was hard to pass them up. Free stuff is teh fun!

First off I'll just start with a quick photo tour of my little jaunt down to San Diego...

Hello hotel! This year I was few blocks farther away than normal but my bionic legs serve me well in situations like this.

Alright the first line for the Wednesday preview night! Holy crap it was hot this year and this particular hallway wasn't cooled down as well as the interior so a lot of people were wandering off to find drinks.

Every day was sold out so it was pretty damned crowded. The only days it was more noticeable was on the Wednesday and Sunday which are usually fairly quiet days. Fridays and Saturdays were the same ol' same ol' level which meant the center area with the big companies and their spread out displays were fairly easy to navigate but the two endzones were murder.

Two Spocks!:o It was funny but Nimoy's wife stated that the resemblance was scary.

People were a tad stunned by the live broadcast from the set of the new Indy movie. Ford was his usual shy self and Shia felt very out of place but it was nice to see them all hanging out and ready to go! :D

Zounds it's the Mach 5! Nostalgia is kicking in for me big time! :shock:

The view from the escalators are always pretty sweet. Nooooo! It's a time tunnel!!! Pull back! PULL BACK!!!

Grindhouse girl drew a lot of attention. She was remarkably nice for a model that had to stand in one place pretty much all day.

More lines. :? Seriously you have to be ready to stand in a lot of long lines if you want to catch the cool events. This line was for the MST3K kinda reunion! OMIGODIWASINGEEKHEAVEN!!!

Bye bye con! I'll see you again next year as I have for more years than...well anybody really.