Year: 2011

R.I.P. John Barry

In the midst of all the insanity of football transfer news over last night, I actually didn’t realise the passing of the great composer, Mr John Barry.

You won’t find me blogging much about music news as I know nuts about this subject, but Mr Barry is kinda different.  Probably best known for his works in the James Bond films, John Barry probably created what is best described as the “Bond Sound”.

Mixing a blend of horns, jazz, strings, brass (I’m not entirely sure what I’m listing here is even correct, so don’t get pissed if I got them wrong), his influence in the soundtrack of future Bond films which he does not even contribute can be felt.  (Don’t believe me? Check out the Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace songs.)

I guess I would probably want to list down one of my favourite soundtracks of all time. One that I actually bought (in cassette tape, no less) because I had a thing for a-ha when I was a boy, but ended up loving for the rest of the instrumental tracks when I grew up.

The album, as you would have guessed correctly by now, is “The Living Daylights” (1987).  The soundtrack would turn out to be Barry’s last contribution to the Bond franchise.  Fusing a bit of disco, a bit of classical music and  lots of that ‘Bond Sound’, this soundtrack when listened today brings a very retro-futuristic vibe to it.

I have included my favourite track of the movie’s soundtrack below, which I just found on youtube, which is I guess my way of honouring the passing of the great composer.

John Barry – The Ice Chase (from The Living Daylights OST)

JAMES BOND - ICE CHASE ( The Living Daylights )

Published
Categorized as Movies, Music

Kore wa Zombie Desu ka 3: Filler scenes is filler

NACHOOOO!
Sometimes you wear stretchy pants in your room. It's for fun.

One of my early hopes for the season is turning out to be a little underwhelming. The pace seem to have slackened after that inspired first episode. Episode 3 has a few fine comedic moments and a little plot development. Unfortunately the rest of it feels like a too large chunk of fan service filler. Not something I’m opposed to but given the potential the series has exhibited so far it felt unnecessary and thus disappointing. I have to wonder what liberties the adaptation took with the light novels source (having never read the books, and not having a desire to).

Still, it was a decent enough episode (it’s not Beelzebub) and it is early days yet. A lot of time to turn things around and I certainly hope that it does.

Beelzebub 1 and 2: Baby, I am disappoint

Beelzebub
Yeah well…I feel like crying too

Beelzebub was perhaps the one show I regarded as a safe bet prior to the start of the season since the manga is one of the stronger WSJ titles (not that impressive of a feat, let’s be honest). This is a show that got just about everything wrong. Its biggest sin is clearly failure to stick to the source material. How difficult can that be? The story is already there dammit! Instead, we get inferior and incoherent changes to the story, some truly retarded filler scenes in front of the school food stall (the bread and the milk scenes…), and never mind in the first minutes we already have the electric shock joke and the pee joke.

There are other problems. Sub-par art (crying Baby B’el’s pacifier looks like a clown nose, why?), poor casting (Baby B’el sounds bad, a problem when he “speaks” all the time) and poor pacing. Hilda’s introduction to the family was probably the best scene but only because it was played completely straight. Problem though, Oga slept for three days before that and Hilda and Baby B’el were presumably already staying in his house for that period of time. Like I said, incoherent.

This attempt at adaptation is like aiming for the moon with the rocket in Jules Vernes’ novel, and already off by a mile before exiting the atmosphere. Disappointing and heartbreaking. Just go read the manga and forget about this mess.

Saving the world one gibbering Investigator at a time

That skirt contains eldritch wonders
HE’S ALL OUT OF GUM

Zeboyd Games made this little oddball of a game last year for XBL, and now they’re appealing for donations to bring it to the PC. Anyone interested in contributing should proceed here.

I guess this will probably send the Cthulhu purists into a shrieking rage as they reach for their SAN check dice, seeing yet another attempt to supposedly bastardize the horror pedigree of the Mythos by trivializing it as much as possible. All I can say is I like wacky and novel attempts to play on familiar geek tropes, and this is hardly on the level of Hello Cthulhu if we’re talking about levels of inanity. I can’t say how the game(s) are since I’ve never played them, but for someone to put in the coding effort requires at least something akin to a minor labour of love.

Kore wa Zombie Desu ka 1 and 2: We have a contender!

our protagonist...
Every man wants to be a macho macho man

For potential best show this season. I almost gave it a miss due to the uninspiring character design, but I’m glad I gave it a go. It looks like it will be another Seto no Hanayome for me; I went in not expecting anything but it more than delivered.

So we have our protagonist Ayumu who is a bit of a pervert. He is also a zombie and a chainsaw-toting “magiclad girl” (Fucking magic, how does it work?).

To round up the cast we have a silent loli necromancer who communicates via handwritten notes and a tsundere loli “masou shoujo”, and in the second episode a busty vampire ninja makes her appearance (voiced Mio and resembles her superficially, but thankfully does not behave like her at all).  Going by promotional art there’s yet another girl. It does look like the old standard anime harem is getting assembled but the numerous brilliant subversions (see attached screen capture) saves the series and hilarity ensues.

Highly recommended and do watch out for that panty shot.

Duh Magnet says: Kore wa Zombie Desu ka is the kind of wacky nonsense this season was sorely lacking until now, and best of all, it’s nowhere as shameless as Sora no Otoshimono.)