I've really been into Russian literature and art lately. For example, I was on the Wikipedia page for the Islamic Angel of Death Azrael and one of the provided pictures was a painting depicting him by the Russian Symbolist painter Mikhail Vrubel: I love his paintings because they look like someone broke stain glass and then tried to reassemble it. Here's another angel painting: He was also very much into painting demons, especially after having a mental breakdown (he's Russian, so I suppose he was obligated to have one of those). I also went out and bought a couple of Fyodor Dostoevsky novels: "Crime and Punishment" (the standard) and "Notes from Underground:" That's actually the translation I bought. They say it's the first example of an existential novel and boy were they not kidding. I've started reading it and I'm only past the first section but what a mind-f**k! So far, my favorite quote is thus: "Maybe man does not love well-being only? Maybe he loves suffering just as much? Maybe suffering is just as profitable for him as well-being? For man sometimes loves suffering terribly much, to the point of passion, and that is a fact. Here there's not even any need to consult world history; just ask yourself, if you're a human being and have had any life at all. As for my personal opinion, to love just well-being alone is even somehow indecent. Whether it's good or bad, it's sometimes also very pleasant to break something." It's crazy, man. Lastly, I had a wonderful time reading Leo Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" a year ago and even got an A on a paper I wrote comparing the title character to Doctor Faust. It's basically a meditation on death and just such a great story. I recommend it to anyone who loves to read: Oh, those crazy Russians! How I love them!
I recently saw a special on MSNBC about Charles Manson that was hosted by the incomparable Keith Morrison. You know: Oh yeah. Well, Bill Hader does a great impression of him on Saturday Night Live. Observe here:
and here:
He's so exaggerating, I love it. It's as if ol' Keith has an orgasm every time someone mentions a murder or some other terrible thing. He's just TOO into his job. Definitely seek out the Charles Manson special (It's called "The Mind of Manson" and is an analysis of Manson's 1987 "Today Show" interview, where he was "unshackled and unapologetic") not only because it's very interesting but also because Keith is just so entertaining. He's got this smile on his face like he's relishing in the whole thing. He's awesome...for more SNL clips, here's a link: http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/ And here's "The Mind of Manson," for all interested (broken into five parts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMQ9uipjqpk This is all I got...was such a slow day for me, I didn't post this until it became the next day!
Good God that looks so low budget...hello! Here is the wonderful second part of my grueling task of pointing out the mistakes made by "Dragonball: Evolution" and its makers. This is still not a review but an airing of grievances, so don't take it as a Critic's Corner kind of article. I'm just angry:
YOU SON OF A BITCH! YOU LIED TO ME! YOU LIED TO ME FOX! YOU TOLD ME THIS WAS DRAGON BALL! YOU LIED TO ME! I'LL KILL YOU! AS GOD IS MY WITNESS I'LL KILL YOU! ...now, onto the characters section (I can't feature pictures of all the characters so you're better off hunting them down yourself): WARNING: SPOILERS GALORE ARE COMING! But, again, don't see this movie. 1) Son Goku - A complaint I've been hearing quite a bit about movie-Goku is that Justin Chatwin is not Japanese, so he doesn't work. I didn't have a problem with that because Goku is not Japanese, he's a Saiyan, so he would of course be different from everyone else. My problem with movie-Goku is that he is not a Saiyan but some vessel of Ōzaru (I think...he looks human but I don't think he is...). Also, everyone knows that Goku started out as an unruly child but took a tumble down a waterfall, slammed his head on a rock, and became the perfect child. This is never mentioned and it's important because it distinguishes him from the evil Saiyans and also establishes the long-running gag of Goku's hard head. Aside from all of this back story negligence, Goku remains a good person, although not nearly as naive as he is in the anime (probably because he's older and goes to high school, which is fine). His character is okay, but they destroyed his back story. 2) Gohan - As stated before, he's still alive for a good amount of the movie and is killed by Piccolo instead of Ōzaru Goku. Honestly, I thought Gohan was just fine. He was kind, sweet, and strong, and he obviously loved Goku. The problem with him is not his character, but his demise. Thankfully, there were a few characters that weren't destroyed. 3) Chi-Chi - Chi chi is a Spanish term for breasts...this seems irrelevant, but movie-Chi-Chi was nothing more than a walking pair of breasts. She was probably the most destroyed out of all the characters. She's a bit older and in high school, like Goku, but this is not the bad part of her character. She's not obsessed with Goku like she is in the anime and her parents are never seen (nope, no big fat Ox King). She's now a hand-to-hand combatant who doesn't seem to be afraid of anything, as opposed to in the anime, where she just had a cool head-blade thing and was kind of a bitch: I know, I know, she DID compete in the Tenkaichi Budokai, but Goku didn't even hit her and he won. She's NOT a fighter. She has pretty much no personality in the movie, so what's left? Breasts. Boobies. Fun bags. Dusty Gozongas: God, she was in high school and her boobs were hanging out the whole movie! Put those away! In "Dragon Ball," her skimpy outfit was cute because she was kind of chubby and it was a joke. There was nothing funny about movie-Chi-Chi. Fail. 4) Bulma - Bulma stayed pretty much the same except Piccolo stole her Dragon Ball and she ends up mistaking Goku's for hers and almost kills him with a gun. She tracked it down with her Dragon Radar (as Goku calls it), then promises to help Goku find Roshi if he'll help her find all the Dragon Balls. She doesn't find out what they do until Goku tells her, but instead was simply experimenting on the one she had (she called it a something-crystal or orb, I can't remember). She decides she'll wish for money instead of a boyfriend. These are all not big changes and movie-Bulma was just as arrogant but good-natured as Bulma. All the panty jokes have been removed (it IS a PG movie) and she's been toughened-up a bit (like Chi-Chi, but not irritatingly so). She's also a bit older (twenties, so she can be older than the teenage Goku), which is fine, and she still uses capsules (thank God, they kept the capsules). She's a brunette in this movie, but the makers put a light blue streak in her hair I guess as a reference to the anime. Like Gohan, she's not bad. And yes, her last name is still Briefs. Yay. 5) Master Roshi - While everyone else grew older, Roshi seems to have grown younger (or, at least, less gray). He's missing his turtle, his nimbus cloud, and his tropical island, and instead lives alone in a city on some big patch of land surrounded by a crater...I think...it was dark in the theater and Roshi's house (not Kame House, unfortunately) was a dark scene. Forgive me. He still has his girly mags, though (they're swimsuit magazines, you know, because it's PG), so there's that. He also still has Hawaiian shirts and he's still a crazy old man. Basically, he's Chow Yun-Fat overacting. He's actually relatively entertaining and he accompanies Goku and Bulma in the Emperor Pilaf Saga-inspired scenes (finding a Dragon Ball, getting caught in a trap set by Yamcha), so that's charming. I'm not sure if he trained Gohan or trained with him according to the movie, but that really doesn't matter. He's also killed trying to use some spell to seal Piccolo that his master Sifu Norris (some old black guy...I don't know) taught him and wished back to life with the Dragon Balls. That's fine, too. He's charming, that's really all I can say. 6) Yamcha - Yamcha's a blonde now! And he's Korean! He's still a desert bandit but he no longer wields a sword and there's no Puar by his side (tear). He's pretty arrogant and kind of annoying in this movie, which works because he was arrogant and annoying in the anime. The biggest change is that he isn't the one who stops Ōzaru Goku, but Goku regains control himself. Because there's no Puar, he doesn't have a sword to use to chop Goku's tail off. I could go on, but you get it. He captures Goku, Bulma, and Roshi when they fall through a trap he set into a pit. Roshi jumps out of it with ease and tells him to help them because there's a Dragon Ball under the pit. So, he uses some mega-drill to help them and accompanies them from there. Not bad, really. He hooks up with Bulma, too, just like in the anime, and Bulma agrees to give him a third of the money she receives. Joon Park is kind of a sub-par actor, but that actually works because, come on, it's "Dragon Ball"-era Yamcha. 'Nuff said. 7) Piccolo - Alright, onto the baddie. He's still a Namek although now the Namekians are evil or something. "Daimao" has been taken out of his name and he's no "Lord Piccolo." No mention of Kami so I'm assuming Piccolo is all evil, all the time. He's been sealed by a bunch of monks and somehow released (not sealed by Mutaito and not released by Pilaf). He's not an old man but seems pretty young enough and he's gathering the Dragon Balls to destroy the Earth. He's really not that bad, but his character should have been explained further. Also, WHERE ARE HIS OFFSPRING? You know, his ORCHESTRA of children (get it?). In the movie, he's just got some mystery girl whose name is never mentioned ("Mai;" more on her later). Plus, James Marsters? Really? In the end, he's assumed to be killed by Goku's Kamehameha, but is actually only wounded and nursed back to health by some girl "Mai" almost killed. NO PICCOLO JR. EGG. Whatever. All I know is this: that last scene set up for a sequel. God help us all. 8) Ōzaru - I'm sure you've noticed by now that movie-Ōzaru is nothing like Saiyan-Ōzaru. I really have nothing else to say about him that hasn't already been said above and in part one. It's really a shame that Goku isn't a Saiyan in this movie because THAT DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF HIS ENTIRE CHARACTER IN "Z" AND "GT." 9) "Mai" (Piccolo's mystery girl) - I'm assuming this is an original character, but I had a thought I didn't have when writing part one: Mai, the more intelligent of Emperor Pilaf's hench-people (the other being Shu, a ninja dog), could have been the inspiration behind movie-Mai: Alright, alright, not bad. The only problem with this is that the movie never explains who this woman is (I had to find what her name was on the internet, which is why I put her name in quotes). If she's a human, why is she working with Piccolo? What's her relationship to Piccolo? WHAT'S HER NAME? The grave mistake of not including Emperor Pilaf defeats the purpose of having Mai in the movie. It was as if the movie makers said, "You know, we have a few elements of the Emperor Pilaf Saga in our movie, so we better include one of those villains. How about we use Mai, but align her with Piccolo and defeat the purpose of her character?" Sounds great, guys. These are the important characters missing from the movie: 1) Krillin - I could go on and on and on and on about how much of an offense it was to not include Krillin, Goku's bestest friend in the whole wide world, but I'll refrain. You just come up with your own anger. I think I know why he was taken out: too much money to pay for the CGI nose removal. 2) Puar - Puar was never an important character, but he became the sword that Yamcha used to chop off Goku's tail and return him from his Ōzaru form. This was an important scene because it was apart of the revelation that Goku was the monster that killed Gohan and it also reveals how to defeat him. If Goku was still a Saiyan...well, you know. 3) Oolong - Another lesser character, but he provided much of the comic relief in early episodes and also saved the world by interrupting Pilaf's wish. I suppose, because there's no Pilaf, there's no Oolong. 4) Emperor Pilaf - What, Mai's here but Pilaf isn't? It was Pilaf who released Piccolo! Piccolo didn't just get out! Pilaf also remains a small thorn in Goku's side all the way up to "GT," when he wishes Goku were a kid again. I've always loved Pilaf and it would have been so charming to see him in the film. And, you know, correct, too. 5) Shu - Pilaf's other hench-person, he's a dog ninja. I think Mai was used and not Shu because she's human and it's cheaper to simply film a human than CGI a dog. Plus, Pilaf was absent, so I guess one hench-person had to be, too. 6) Piano, Tambourine, Cymbal, and Drum - Piccolo's beloved offspring were completely absent from the film. The only servant he had was Mai, which never made sense. I suppose it simply cost too much to CGI both Piccolo and four monster look-alikes. Plus, judging by the absence of Piccolo Jr. (we're almost there, guys), movie-Piccolo can't produce offspring. Shame, makers, shame! You just defeated the purpose of the rest of the series! 7) Turtle - Master Roshi's turtle is nowhere to be seen and that really sucks because he was the voice of reason on the island. I guess no tropical island equals no turtle. 8) Ox King - Chi-Chi's parents are never seen or mentioned. Ox King was trained by Roshi, but in the movie, he doesn't mention him and Roshi doesn't recognize Chi-Chi. Basically, he doesn't even exist. If Ox King DID exist, this would explain Chi-Chi's ki and her fighting skills, but that would make too much sense. The makers wanted its audience, "Dragon Ball" fans or not, to be completely confused. 9) Kami - As stated, I'm assuming Piccolo was always evil because Kami is never mentioned. This is another grave mistake that defeats the purpose of the series. Kami trains Goku to defeat Piccolo Jr., but since Piccolo Jr. wasn't born at the end, I'm assuming Kami still won't exist in the sequel. Shame. 10) Piccolo Jr. - Finally, onto the elephant in the room. There's no egg, there's no hatching, there's no Piccolo Jr. Who's going to fight Goku? Who's going to train his son Gohan? Who's going to kick ass in every single way? It's bull! It's just bull! This sequel better fix every problem the first one had or I swear to God...PICCOLO!!!!!! Well, I guess that's it. This was a rather long post and I don't want to talk about it anymore. Since I saw this movie, I guess I have to see the sequel...and hopefully, after that, there won't be another post like this (I'm not confident). A little more despairing news: Warner Bros. has acquired the rights for a live action "Akira" and Leonardo DiCaprio is set to produce. You read that right. I've said it before and I'll say it again: God help us all.
