I’ve given the keys to the place to Jesper, so he should be popping up sometime soon. The posts by him will feature the following logo:
Hope you enjoy his posts, which will bring the world of design (and probably a fair bit of Japaneseness, as well as a post or two dealing with debauchery) from a Swedish perspective. I know I look forward to seeing what he’ll be writing about.
This is the image that I’m using as a desktop right now, which is a picture I took last Summer during my trip to Seoul. I’ve uploaded it to my server to share. The dimensions are 1280 x 960. Click here to download.
I went and saw KILL BILL last night, and absolutely loved it. One thing though is that I was a bit surprised by the huge amount of Japanese used in the film, which obviously was not subtitled here. I was expecting some, but not so many scenes done almost entirely in Japanese, and long speeches by the likes of Sonny Chiba. It didn’t affect my enjoying the film any, and I don’t think I missed anything very important. In fact, I could catch most of it, except the scenes with the yakuza bosses arguing and the long monologue by Chiba about his sword. The thing is, the Japanese that I have the hardest time understanding in movies is tough-guy talk (except the swear words, I know those). The other thing is that as much as I like Lucy Liu and all, I think her role should have been played by a real Japanese actress (or Japanese/American). I’m sure everyone outside of Japan didn’t notice anything, but her Japanese is definitely not native. It’s fine that she doesn’t look Japanese as this is explained in the film (her character is Japanese/Chinese/American), but having grown up in Okinawa (and by the way, the origin chapter told in anime was absolutely stunning, and I just kept thinking that I would love to see an entire film done in this style) she should have spoken Japanese natively. It especially clashed with the huge amount of Japanese actors in the film. As for Sophie Fatale, the actress that played her must really be half because her Japanese was pretty much flawless.
But that’s not a big deal, the film kicked ass and I enjoyed the ride from start to finish. For those wondering about the differences between the American and Japanese versions, I can tell you that the only black and white in the whole film is during the sequence at the very start of the film when we see The Bride’s face all bloodied in the church, just before the opening credits start to roll. The entire fight sequence in The House of Blue Leaves was in full color, and I almost felt some blood reaching the cinema aisles!
As for the follow-up, as much as I can’t wait to see it, I don’t know if it’ll get me as excited as the first one did, since it’s the whole Asian aspect of the film that really got me so anxious for Volume 1 (being the Asian movie freak that I am). But then again, these are all cool characters, so I’m sure that it’ll end up being interesting no matter what the locale.
As mentioned in Tokyo Boy, I went to Planet 3rd in Shibuya last Saturday, and took this pick of the section of the cafe where you can use these Macs to surf the net for free. Nice to see that they’re all sport iSight cameras, which means that you could technically go there and video chat with people around the world with no connection fees (well, the price of coffee maybe).
You need to check out afterimage, a site containing all sorts of cool works by Katsuyoshi Ueno (link via Featured).
That article on Takashi Murakami that appeared in this months’s issue of WIRED magazine is now online. The byline is: “He’s high art. He’s low culture. He’s a one-man mass-market machine.”
Taking a break from the Kansai pics to put up this, taken in Shibuya under one of the huge overpasses.
Both my Macs (17″ iMac and iBook) are now running Panther (Mac OS 10.3), and I couldn’t be happier. I’m still being blown away by the speed difference. Everything is coming up faster, selecting things is smoother, it’s just a joy to move around and do things. Really feels like I’ve gotten a new machine. The interface in general is also slicker, and I’m liking the changes I’ve seen here and there. I’m also addicted to the quick user switcher feature, and I keep switching between my account and Yuko’s just to see the cool transition effect that happens when you do. Only problems I had, which were quickly fixed, were the inability to type the letter “a” (due to a program I use with iTunes called Synergy – a quick visit to their site revealed an update of the program that already fixed this), and problems with my Airport network (I share my iMac’s Internet connection with my iBook, and the iBook wasn’t able to connect to the Internet after the upgrade on the iMac, but when I also did the upgrade on my iBook everything was fine). The following is an excellent guide to the new features found in Panther (link via Joi Ito’s blog).
