Finally, after what seemed like six months of waiting, There Will Be Blood finally made it out to the boondocks that is the east coast, and it was worth it. Daniel Day-Lewis will clean up at the Oscars, and if he doesn’t, I will start my own strike against the Oscars right as the WGA finishes their own.

Since I’m a bastard with little free time this semester that isn’t spent watching movies (I’m not saying I have a lot of free time, I’m saying the little free time I do have I watch movies during), I have obviously not updated recently, and this post will also be a quickie, in that I’ll mostly just post some videos and links and leave the analysis to you the viewer.

Speaking of little free time, writing all those silly little moon language characters hundreds of times kind of sucks, but I purchased a program to help me with memorization and such, though its usefulness is possibly somewhat limited:

iKana

Sadly for you little-endian plebeians (ok this doesn’t work anymore), this software is only for the greatest operating system ever, OSX.

While specifically on the topic of reading Japanese, I have come across a Japanese version of YouTube with less restrictions and more anonymity. And of course, that means more wacky zaniness that you all so desire. This Valhalla for otaku is called NicoVideo.jp. But wait, when you go, you will encounter a wall of hieroglyphics and be utterly lost in all the wavy lines. Never fear, as this thread will tell you how to proceed.

Moving onto another thing I wanted to cover, independent computer role-playing games. Tell me, what comes to mind when you watch the following game trailer?

Possibly the best game ever made, I’d say. AND NOW YOU CAN PLAY IT. Speaking of role playing games, I hope in the near future to have an update covering some of the better independent role playing games available for Mac and PC.

Finally, I’d like to hammer you with three trailers to new and upcoming films that you may or may not be interested in. First, the most promising of these three happens to be, The Forbidden Kingdom.

From watching the trailer, you can immediately see what makes this movie amazing. Yes, the two greatest Asian martial artist film stars to ever grace the shit hole that is Hollywood, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I can’t even express to you how long I have wanted this to happen, and I eagerly anticipate the release of this film. I have my hopes held high for this film, however due to the disappointment that was War, another film that had high potential (Jet Li and Jason Statham), you can’t ever be too careful.

Some quickies include the film Mongol. Looks like it has some potential, it’s opening limited release this June (means I won’t ever get to see it). As one may assume it’s about Genghis Khan and it was filmed in Kazakhstan!

Lastly is John Woo’s Red Cliff, based on the (Romance of the) Three Kingdoms time period in China. Opinions on it are somewhat mixed, depending on people’s opinions of John Woo’s directing abilities. An additional disappointment is the lack of Chow Yun-Fat, who dropped out early on in the film’s production. Ken Watanabe is another great actor who was considered for a role but since them dern Chinese won’t let a Japanese actor play in their movie, another talent was lost.

That’s all for now, perhaps I’ll find time to update before the next full moon.