Tag: Movies

This afternoon Ariesna and I went out to see The Bourne Supremacy. As I expected it was mostly a fast paced action movie with just a hint of drama tossed in to spice things up. Was it good? Well… it would have been better if they didn’t use such jerky camera work for the action sequences, particularly the car chases. I have a fairly strong stomach for such things but even I was starting to feel a touch of motion sickness by the end of the movie. Poor Ariesna was downing some Dramamine to try calming her stomach and fight off the severe motion sickness that she was feeling. Still if you can get past the motion sickness issue; there are some other disappointments in store for you:

  • Matt Daemon isn’t playing the role of Jason Bourne as well as he did back in The Bourne Identity.
  • Figuring out the real bad guy in this film takes no effort and that ruins the suspensefulness of the film.
  • The portion of the movie where Bourne goes to Russia, feels tacked on like it really belongs in another movie1.
  • The way Bourne dealt with the Russian assassin didn’t make any sense.

So am I saying that I hated the movie? No, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was a fun film that allowed me to have some mindless entertainment for an hour & 48 minutes. Given I woke up exhausted and was in a sleepy haze all day that was probably for the best. I give the movie 3 and a half out of 5 cups of coffee. It’s worth seeing if you can catch it at a matinee or at a cheap-seats movie theater.

1 Though I have to admit, I did admire Bourne’s character for locating the girl and apologizing to her for what he’d done in the past.

A couple of months back, Ariesna and I stayed over at Komainu and Aizuchi‘s house after a gaming session to watch movies. We watched 1 part of this Ju-On that they’d gotten from God only knows where and it was nasty, evil and slightly scary. Well, now Lions Gate films has released it to theaters here in the U.S. Maybe we should all go out and see it, complete and in English. *shudder* Or maybe not…

Homestay, day 1
We got ourselves checked out of the hotel this morning and I found that calls to the US must be around $1/minute, as I’d called Ariesna a couple of times and hadn’t spoken all that long but the bill was rather high. After we were all checked out, we walked down to the language school. It was extremely hot out and there wasn’t a lot of shade. I noticed K was having problems, so I carried her bag for her to the school. Once we were there, one of the teachers brought us some drinks and snacks, but the A/C wasn’t working all that well and we were still frying.
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Today, we went to see the animation exhibit at Museum of Contempary Art Tokyo (MOT). It was a good exhibit but our translator was using a quiet voice while there were animated bits blasting out their music and voices, making her hard to hear. The exhibit covered Japanese animation from it’s very beginnings1 to the present day. Again for the most part, cameras were forbidden but towards the end of the exhibit they had a mock up of Lupin’s car from Castle of Cagliostro which they did allow you to take pictures of (but no flash allowed). In that same area, they also had some of the pre-production art and key-frame art from Porco Rosso, which was so damn cool! 😀
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Today, we had our last class where we could work on our original manga page. Thanks to E & SH allowing me hang out in their room and work on my page; I was able to finish it1. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring any of my omiyage gifts with me; so I couldn’t give one to Ueda-sensai or the assistants who were in there2. The assistants and ???-san3 came with us to the hotel and later to Ghibli museum; so I was able to give them their omiyage then.
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