Toadlick Games

Reaching a higher consciousness

Recent Posts

  • Ukraine Timeline
  • Inflation
  • Rule by the HR Witches
  • Gab roundup
  • Legal Snooze

About

Powered by Genesis

Chick Flix

March 26, 2015 by L. Bane. Leave a Comment

Bunny Love

Not a movie, but first we have this offering from a Chinese version (of sorts) of Amazon:

The best thing that can be said for these is that they’re significantly less disturbing than the other animal heads on there which look to be made for bizarre Adult Swim bumpers.

Cinderella

The entire time that I was watching this I puzzled over why this movie exists; it’s not as if there’a dearth of live action Cinderella knock-offs.  The answer of course is in the movie theater full of cheering women: printing cash for Disney.  Women apparently can’t get enough of the “loser babe scores alpha male” story which is refreshing in it’s own way since such sentiments run so counter to PC “mores” and feminism generally.  So hooray for Cinderella and the Disney money machine that helps keep lefty extremism at bay despite their own efforts.  But as a guy, yeah, I don’t need to see another Cinderella movie again, ever.

The Snow White Murder Case

Quick: pick out the ugly one, the pretty one, the one that was murdered, and the killer, and some are one and the same.  It’s easier than you think.

This Japanese movie was sold to me by Sally as being a real plot-twister of a murder mystery.  Fifteen minutes in though I was reminded of when Memoirs of a Geisha came out ten years ago and there was much consternation over the fact that Japan couldn’t field any decent actresses so Hollywood had to go with Chinese actresses (“All you people look the same to me”).  The accusation at the time was that the animated form had stunted the ability of the Japanese to put together live-action productions.  I made this remark to Sally and she asked what was wrong with the movie and I said “well, the acting,…the directing, um, the cinematography, the script, and, well, yeah it’s like an over-funded high school movie project”.  I can capture the movie’s faults in one screen grab, where, in a rather important scene someone thought that it would be a good idea to put a color-shifting bowl of rotating water, a transparent LED toilet of sorts, in the background:

It doesn’t help that the bowl is more interesting than the actors

The movie did have a few strengths.  For instance, what was of mild interest, and what the movie should have concentrated more on, is the absolute pettiness that can accompany large groups of women working together.  Lots of ‘fun’ was on display such as women putting each other down for their clothes, making efforts to steal the office alpha-male (or what passes for one in a Japanese office), petty thefts, backstabbing, exaggerating stories told in confidence so that they can be crafted into a self esteem killing barbs, etc.  Yes it’s all in there and it goes to show that for as much as women may love the workplace, they rarely like working with, or especially for, other women.

It’s a shame that a movie that was so close to succeeding in being a cautionary tale on workplace feminization turned into such a hot, unfocused mess.  (Actually the movie could have just been about any one of the four things it tried to be about and it would have been better).

Empresses In The Palace   

The costume drama to end all costume dramas

While in China I may have mentioned that there was a historical soap opera of sorts that played nonstop on one of the channels.  Weighing in at a hefty 76, 45 minute episodes, it is a lot to take in, perhaps…

I bring this up since the series can now be viewed on Netflix in a truncated format: 6, 90 minute episodes.  Talk about a hatchet job!  How one edits this down without translating the whole thing I don’t know, so I’m unsure what the point of the exercise is.  The series is meticulous with their set design and costuming and is filmed on a set which is a recreation of the Forbidden City and is a tourist attraction in its own right.

The problem with the native series, not that I could understand any of it, is that at least 90% of it is women talking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth about palace intrigue BS (the other 10% is women boring men to tears with palace intrigue BS).  “No wonder they were always overrun by barbarians”, I thought while watching.  Sally complained that the Netflix series doesn’t make sense in its heavily edited format, but I can easily believe that a version of this series could be trimmed down to an even hour for male viewers.

Filed Under: china, Japan, movies

Ah,uh,hmm…

September 2, 2014 by L. Bane. Leave a Comment

At least it’s not a chocolate fountain I suppose…

Filed Under: Japan

Drunken Airport Blogging

June 3, 2014 by L. Bane. Leave a Comment

As if there was any other kind of ‘airport blogging’.  I recall the famous professional skeptic James Randi remarking about how he never drank because he did not ever want anything clouding his mind.  Now that’s some dedication, bordering on mental illness in my mind.

When I was at my departure airport (and not sauced, not good for business to show up drunk despite what Bill Clinton’s memoirs might say) I again thought about my love of the airport.  There’s the term ‘future shock’, and I would think that airports would be a perfect manifestation of that: being able to near-instantly transport to anywhere.  It’s a credit to the human race that many people who sit in airports wonder where their stinking ‘space ports’ are; and if there were space ports, nothing less than trans-dimensional gateways would do!

The view from the Timberline restaurant at DEN

Yes, with airports the fact that I could show up and go anywhere, anytime….
Well almost anywhere.

———–

Mrs. Sandmich and I used some frequent flier miles to purchase round trip tickets to China for “Sally’s” sister’s wedding.  After moving miles around, etc. it ended up setting us back $200 for the tickets.  Okay, not bad.  However, what is bad is the $200 per person fee plus four pages of documentation (per person) for a travel visa in order to enter the ‘peoples paradise’.  I saw that and thought “why doesn’t China just pull the trigger and ban travel outright?”.  As documented by The Sandmich, they’re already recalcitrant about letting their own people leave, but what does it say to a two week visitor when there is a novella worth of information and a flight-worthy fee just to get in?  Compare this to places like the Dominican Republic which has signs at their airport that basically say “Got money?  Come on in!”.  If it wasn’t for a friend of the family getting married and the fact that I might be missing out on the biggest party that I’ll ever attend in my life I’d tell those ChiComms to screw off.

———–

On that note, how about some language?

While traveling in Colorado on my latest spell I thought of my hour long travel both ways to my brother’s family’s place where I stay, to the plant where I work.  I thought that I could stay at a hotel instead and be there in fifteen minutes, and then since I was by myself I could drive up to see my brother’s family and drive back that night and…well that doesn’t make any sense, best just to stay an hour away.  I can’t complain much at all since there’s someone who actually works at that plant who makes that drive every day of their lives.  The drive I could do, the $60 a week gas bill I could not though.

Anyway, while driving I feel like I should expand my mind by listening to language classes from iTunes U.  Last time I tried to relearn some Spanish (especially helpful in Colorado), but my mind begged for mercy and a return to A State of Trance.  “No room in the inn” I could hear the gray matter screaming.

Not to be deterred completely, since I scheduled the trip to China I decided to do some Chinese audio lessons.  What a cluster-F of a language.  In the past, while listening to Sally talk to her dad it sounded like she was constantly asking him questions (the tone most typically heard in English when someone says “Really?”).  It turns out that is one of four vowel accents used to differentiate vowels and words.  For instance, the words (as pronounced in English) “pa”, “pa?” and “pa?!” are three different words (there’s a forth that’s barely different from the first).

“Okay” I figured, I get it, nothing too bad.  Then I listened to the lesson that taught how to count from zero to ten (which is actually irrelevant when it comes to East Asian languages).  But I remarked to my brother that if I listened to that lesson all week to and from his house that I might be able to count to three.  It’s odd since two of the numbers are the same as Japanese.  It’s almost as if the Japanese said “nice language you got there Chinamen, we’ll take these handful of words and you can keep the rest of that hot mess”.

———-

So I of course purchased the HD version of Final Fantasy X (review forthcoming).  I played it all the time at home.

Back into the…whatever it’s called

Also of course, when visiting someplace as scenic and interesting as Colorado I would want to do something more interesting than playing any silly video game…until I learned that my brother who turned me onto the game more than a decade ago was playing it as well.  I’m sure my sister-in-law was amused to no end to see her husband and ‘future version of husband’ sitting around for hours on end playing a redux of a twelve year old video game that we’d both played already a couple times between us already.

———–
‘Beautiful People’

Just to wrap this back up before I wolf down a steak at the Timberline that isn’t past due, I thought I’d make another airport remark.  Most, I would say north of 90% of the people, dress and prepare themselves as if flying is still something special.  I recall a whole article in United’s Hemisphere’s that detailed how men should properly dress for transportation via air flight.  I can’t say as I follow any of the advice (typical jeans-dockers-untucked dress shirt hipster look), but it’s nice to know that somewhere in the universe, some level of standard is being maintained.

Thankfully they didn’t mention anything about the proper sobriety level as I get ready to stumble to the gate; ready for a three hour flight of illegal bootlegs of amazing BluRay rips of Cowboy Bebop and trips to the bathroom…

Filed Under: Booze, china, Japan, travel

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

Nearby Ponds

  • Ace
  • AmRen
  • Church Militant
  • Counter Currents
  • Dissident Mag
  • Gab
  • Market Ticker
  • National Vanguard
  • Unz
  • Unz (Derb)
  • Unz (Sailer)
  • Unz (SBPDL)
  • Vdare
  • W. R. Shooters
  • Zero Hedge
  • Zman

Distant Waters

  • Breitbart
  • Instapundit
  • Liberty’s Touch
  • Other McCain

Archives

Categories

  • anime
  • art
  • books
  • Booze
  • car
  • china
  • Cleveland
  • corporate welfare
  • education
  • election
  • Fascism
  • food
  • football
  • gaming
  • health care
  • immigration
  • islam
  • Japan
  • Korea
  • law and order
  • Minnesota
  • movies
  • music
  • Obamanation
  • Ohio
  • pets
  • politically incorrect
  • politics
  • science fiction
  • snow
  • space
  • sports
  • technology
  • travel
  • TV
  • Uncategorized
  • unions
  • work

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org