Innerface to Moiraverse

Eilen saapunut boksi, joka sisältää anime-tv-sarjan Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Rose Collection 13 ensimmäistä osaa sekä Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movien, rikkoi DVD-haamurajan 200. Mukaan on laskettu DVD:llä omistamamme elokuvat ja sarjojen kaudet (tai niiden osat). Luku on vain murto-osa Elokuvien ja valokuvien kokoelmasta, mutta olen siihen kuitenkin hyvin tyytyväinen. Ja kokoelman sisältöön myös.

Tyytyväisyyttä herättää myös Revolutionary Girl Utena, jota katsoimme eilen kaksi jaksoa. Miekkoja! Univormuja! Shoujoa! Kauniita poikia ja tyttöjä! Gnostilaista surrealismia ja goottilaisromanttiset puitteet! ^_^

Our Easter holiday weekend (4 days) ended up being rather quiet. Dugi suffered from some sort of stomach flu that turned him into a little ball of pain and I suffered from not being able to ease his discomfort. The good part is that despite his illness we managed to enjoy the foods I had hunted for the weekend in Stockmann’s crowded delicacies department: salmon rolled with bacon(!) and spices, filet of pork, raw spiced salmon with roe sauce and ingredients for my favourite Chinese dishes: sweet egg ‘n’ tomato and pork with green beans.

I managed quite a bit of spring cleaning even if it was mainly basic stuff: dishes, laundry, clearing the dinner table of piles of paper and changing spring-inspiring table cloths, candles and other decorations on the living room tables. I did some reading for the faculty of medicine admission test and am feeling somewhat disheartened by it. It seems my physics knowledge is hardly in better shape than chemistry O.o

We watched a couple of episodes of Moonlighting (I so love that show! The verbal acrobatics of David Addison are such that I just have to have subtitles on ^_^) and a few movies: the anime Ninja Scroll, classic Italian horror Suspiria and the romantic and appetite whetting Like Water for Chocolate (Como agua para chocolate).

We were meaning to visit Grandma Elvi but agreed with her that we’d come later instead of me visiting her on Mon since she worried I might carry the stomach ailment. Fair enough, and we’d rather visit her together anyway.

I called Dugi to check on him today (since he was still in bed when I left for work and the pains have really started only after he has gotten up) and he’s apparently feeling better. I’m really happy — I got quite worried on Sun evening when the pains had lasted for three days and he became feverish. Naturally he got sick during a national holiday when it’s quite difficult to get to a doctor. Well, luckily it seems he won’t need one, and if he’s still too sick to work tomorrow he can visit occupational health centre.

On other health related news, my tooth seems to have recovered, nerve and all, since the slight tenderness when biting on it has gone away *happy*. And on other good news I got some due things done yesterday and this morning: 1 book I forgot to cancel returned to the book club, 1 faulty DVD box returned to Amazon.de and 4 wedding thanks cards/letters sent (I’m embarrassed about this, but man how time flies! Most of them were delivered before Xmas, however. Still a few of them unsent — I have to write letters or get photos printed for them).

Käytiin elokuvissa

Oma elokuvateatterikokemukseni oli vaihteeksi lähestulkoon häiriötön. Ehkä pitäisi lakata kokonaan käymästä teini-idioottien suosimien elokuvien näytöksissä. Trailerit vähän sattuivat päähän. Basic Instinct 2 vaikuttaa tylsältä; Sharon Stone on timmi mimmi edelleen, mutta miespääosalta puuttui ainakin trailerin pätkissä kaikki karisma ja kipinöinti. Valkoisen kreivittären trailerissa oli se sama miespuolinen voice-over joka paitsi tuntuu olevan joka ikisessä trailerissa myös toi mieleeni kaikki sketsit, jotka pelaavat ko. voice-overilla, tehden mahdottomaksi sen ottamisen vakavasti.

Dugi tykkäsi Memoirs of a Geishasta enemmän kuin minä, mutta en itsekään sitä inhonnut. Monet näyttelijät olivat erinomaisia (etenkin kaunis ja häijy Gong Li), miljöö ja vaatetus pääosin onnistunutta, tarina liikkis ja musiikki upeaa. Sayurin lumitanssi oli hirveä. Geishameikin länsimaalaistaminen risoi minua huomattavasti ja hiuksetkin häiritsivät. Jotain kipinöintiä jäi puuttumaan, koska henkilöiden kohtalot koskettivat vähemmän kuin olisin suonut. En kuitenkaan tylsistynyt, ja kokonaisuudessaan leffa oli nautinnollinen. B- se on. Pitäisi lukea kirjana taas.

Pelattiin ropea

Nukuin tänä(kin) aamuna pitkään toipuakseni viikonloppuna kerätystä univelasta. Syynä oli jälleen kerran roolipelaaminen — Annin kanssa ryhmäkampanjaa ja soolona Claritya. Molemmissa peleissä dialogi oli onnistuneempaa kuin Geishan muistelmissa ja tarina jytisi eteenpäin ihanalla intensiteetillä.

Sooloilu jatkunee suunnilleen normaalilla tahdilla, ja ensi viikonloppuna on luvassa FPA:ta ^_^

Luettiin sarjakuvia

Kuten sanottu, Vesi oli mustaa on mieleinen. Marian koodi osoittautui sympaattiseksi, enkä ole harmissani jos sille tulee jatkoa. Muuten olen ahminut man[g/hw]aa: Angel Sanctuary Vol. 8, Les Bijoux Vol. 3, Salapoliisi Conan Vol. 18 ja Under the Glass Moon Vol. 2. Suureksi harmikseni minulle selvisi, että viimeksi mainittua ei Koreassa koskaan tehty kahta osaa enempää — juuri kun olin ehtinyt innostua sen juonenkäänteistä ja ihastua sen kauniisiin poikiin. Haeskelin netistä suosituksia korvaavaksi mangaksi, ja ajattelin löydöksien peusteella tutustua Pet Shop of Horrorsiin.

Töitä töitä töitä

Niin. Lisäksi mm. väsään dokumentteja Suomen keskiaikaseuralle. Aika paljon pitäisi olla tehtynä seuraavaan kokoukseen mennessä. Iloksi kirjoittelu siis jatkunee epäsäännöllisenä ja tasottomana.

Käväisin eilen etsimässä Suomalaisesta kirjakaupasta kotoperäistä sarjakuvaa suositusten perusteella, ja löysin enemmän kuin etsimäni.

Ensinnäkin, Suomalaisen kanta-asiakkaat saavat tässä kuussa ostaa kolme Finnkinon leffalippua 21 eurolla. Kanta-asiakakkuus on ilmainen, ja sen saa voimaan samantien. 7 euroa lipulta ei ole paha hinta, varsinkaan tällaiselle alennuksettomalle aikuiselle, joka ei voi enää nauttia opiskelijalipuista ^_^ Toiseksi, kanta-asiakkaat saavat ihan pyytämällä Suomalaisesta kupongin, jolla saa ostaa kaksi lippua Geishan muistelmiin 6,50 euroa / kpl.

Nämä jutut melkein jäivät minulta havaitsematta, koska en ole saanut mitään kanta-asiakaspostia. Satuin kysäisemään asiasta, ja myyjän selvitys tuotti tiedon, että yhteystiedoikseni on merkitty joku osoite Turussa O.o Näin todistettiin taas tietotekniikan luotettavuus.

Takaisin sarjakuviin. Kvaakin foorumilla oli jo joskus helmikuussa todettu Suomalaisen myyvän hiukkasen alennetulla hinnalla Infamyn (Nina von Rüdiger ja Karim Muammar) Vesi oli mustaa (9,90 euroa) ja Mikko Ketolan ja Anssi Rauhalan kovakantista Marian koodia (14,95 euroa). Alehinnat olivat edelleen voimassa, ja päädyin ostamaan molemmat vaikka vain kotoperäistä tukeakseni.

Vesi oli mustaa yllätti positiivisesti, sillä ohkaiselta vaikuttavasta koostaan ja pikavilkaisulla simppelistä taiteestaan (no, verrattuna juuri ahmimaani manhwaan) huolimatta tarina tempaisi mukaansa ja olin erittäin vaikuttunut myyttimaailmasta, johon se sijoittui. Marian koodia en ole ehtinyt vielä lukea, mutta sen suotuisa arvostelu löytyy Kvaakista.

Check out this spot on recap article on the unfortunate movie adaptations of Alan Moore’s brilliant comics (via The Beat).

The review of V for Vendetta in Total Film mag didn’t bust my (rather moderate) expectations so I’m still looking forward to it. My hope is that I’ll enjoy it as I enjoyed From Hell, which would mean an enjoyable flick that has quite little to do with the mother-comic and has only one thing that really irks me a lot. (Here’s hoping the irking thing won’t be the female lead this time.)

As for other films on my to-do list, I’ve decided on waiting for the DVD with Rent and Casanova. The first was really slacked in the Finnish reviews and the second seems to require a suitable comedy mood. Neither needs a big screen or seems to deserve the investment in movie tickets.

I’m planning to see Memoirs of a Geisha next week (with discount tickets through Suomalainen kirjakauppa ^_^) and I’m still really looking forward to The Libertine especially since I was half sure it wouldn’t make the big screen in Finland.

Kappas, pitänee vaihteeksi käydä investoimassa Finnkinon sarjalippuihin, sillä maaliskuu lupaa monta kiinnostavaa ensi-iltaa:

Geishan muistelmat (Memoirs of a Geisha) 3.3.
Vaihtelevista arvosteluista, kiinalaisnäyttelijöistä ja englannin puhumisesta huolimatta geisha-kiinnostukseni ei salli minun jättää tätä väliin.

Rent 3.3.
Tampereen teatterin versio ja alkuperäisen kokoonpanon soundtrack ovat koukuttaneet minut tähän musikaaliin sen verran perusteellisesti, että leffa on must-see.

Casanova 10.3.
Rokokoomuotia ja isoja peruukkeja ^_^ Siinä on myös Jeremy Irons.

The Libertine 24.3.
Johnny Depp turmioituneena rappiorunoilijana, ’nuff said!

V niin kuin verikosto (V for Vendetta) 24.3.
Huolestuttaa vähän mitä Alan Mooren mestariteoksesta on saatu aikaan, mutta pakkohan se on nähdä.

Wow. I think I might be able to curb my distaste for Kirsten Dunst and see Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

As for other anticipations, no curbings necessary for Alatriste! I can hardly wait.

It obviously paid to mention that I find it hard to become inspired to watch movies, since on Fri I suddenly felt like re-watching The Matrix (continues to be excellent). Still inspired, we also watched the first of the Angelique movies. The movie itself was rather cute but the Finnish DVD release was a disappointment. I can live with the poor technical quality of the movie, even the abyssmal pan&scan and occasional couple of seconds lasting repeatings (glitch!) since I certainly wasn’t expecting perfection. What really annoyed me was the subtitling: a lacking translation (as in full lines not translated) timed all wrong. What the hell? I didn’t need a flawless movie experience but I wanted the story. Kind of distracts when you miss lines due to not knowing bloody French.

On Sat the movie inspiration continued and we watched The Secretary. What a sweet thing! I have to get the DVD for keeps ^_^ After that fun we returned to Dugi’s favourite Fading Suns solo campaign joining Jezebel and her magistrate duties on Ivanoff homeworld. The game felt both fresh and right after the break we’ve taken from it and I have a hunch we’ll be returning to her when we get home tonight.

Sun was a gaming day, too. The Decados siblings Anni and I play we’re getting to know their surroundings and place in the fief of Boyar Boris, who’s offered them a sanctuary from the nasty magistrate (no relation to Jez) hunting them. As the evening approached the game really kicked in and we ended up playing intensely ’til the wee hours of the morning.

Today I’ve been busy at work and gotten lots done! ^_^ I’m a bit tired from yesterday but the good gaming of the weekend boosted my perkiness noticeably. Here’s hoping it will last for a couple of days, at least. I love my RPG.

The R1 Battlestar Galactica season 1 DVD box arrived yesterday, not via customs but via Belgium instead ^_^ We watched the mini-series in the evening. I though we’d watch it in parts but it turned out to be one of those “once you pop, you can’t stop” type of things. And we still have all of season 1 to see! I can hardly wait.

Dugi did a bit of DVD shopping of his own. He visited Anttila sale and got Alias season 1 box, the Ilsa box (yes, really) and some Vlad the Impaler movie I hadn’t heard of (and forgot the name already) [edit: it’s Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula]. I’m actually quite pleased since I probably wouldn’t have bought them myself but I like to co-own them. Except for the Ilsas, maybe.

My VISA bill for January is going to be pretty damn impressive and I don’t mean in a good way, even if most of my purchases have been on major sale. Here’s the orders list: Tipping the Velvet (a BBC mini-series), X-Files season 1 box, Dogville, Jacob’s Ladder, Angel Heart, X-Men 2 special edition, Battlestar Galactica mini-series/season 1 box, Secretary (for a friend), Tipping the Velvet (for a friend), Flash Gordon silver anniversary edition, Countess Dracula/The Vampire Lovers (for Dugi ^_^) and just last night Battlestar Galactica R2 mini-series and season 1 box (for my dad as a gift).

On top of this I spent almost 100 euros in the Anttila sale: the 5 Angelique movies ^_^ (hey, have to balance out Ilsa somehow!), Carnivàle season 1 box (and what a pretty box it is!), Stupeur et tremblements (Fear and Trembling or Nöyrin palvelijanne), Argento’s Suspiria and Kim Ki-duk’s Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (Viisi vuodenaikaa).

Man.

But I can afford it all, luckily.

In February I’ll invest only in the Tori video DVD and Serenity. And MirrorMask, maybe. And… perhaps I’ll stop planning right here.

(Addict.)

Plenty of stuff to cover today [in fact yesterday for I wrote most of this then but I only had time to update the odd habits meme after the blog was up again].

What’s with the lack of updates?

Yeah, I know. The kinkyness test has been sitting there, pathetically, for some days already. Never leave a test result as the latest entry, they say. But I’ve got plenty of excuses!

First of all, the flu. I was pre-fluish from Xmas to midway the following week. Fluish from there for two sick leave days, two weekend days including New Year and a winter holiday Monday. Then came three days of being tired at work, Twelfth Day holiday, two weekend days and a full week of sick leave and (from Wed) antibiotics due to post-flu sinusitis. Thanks a bunch, world.

This week I’ve been at work and relatively healthy, although on Mon and Tue I was too busy and too tired to blog much.

And now [on Thu] Blogsome is down (yes, I’m writing this in TextPad to be updated into the blog later — don’t want to let the inspiration go to waste) due to a server swap. Has been since yesterday [Wed].

Well, have you seen any movies lately?

So glad you asked. Dugi and I went to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe sometime back. Now, of the books this is my least favourite because storywise it’s quite simple fairy tale and I’ve read it most often of the seven. This said, I enjoyed the film very much. I’m sure you’ve all heard the praise for Jadis, Tumnus and the impressive CGI animals, so I won’t have to bore you with details. Beforehand I was most worried about the big battle but I ended up loving it and especially the centaur general Oreius.

I also want to point out the mermaids beneath Cair Paravel, for there was something very Narnia about them. And I do mean the Narnia where I spent many of my childhood evenings. Seeing them cracked something in me and for a moment I thought I just might spend the rest of the night crying because of the magic. (I didn’t, though.) Apart from that moment when the enchantment pierced my adult defences, the best thing about the film was the potential it promised regarding the possible sequels. I so want to see Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair visualised like this!

Wow, some experience… anything good on tv?

Sure, Dugi and I just watched all of Babylon 5 season 1. And I got a replace box from Amazon.de with the fixed disc 2. Unfortunately they sent the whole box and I’ll have to send them back the box I got previously, but at least I’ve got the whole set without any aspect ratio glitches now.

I got Dugi to admit B5’s goodness (he was like “this is pretty Trek-like” in the beginning O.o) and now he’s as eager as I to get season 2. Haven’t gotten around to ordering it yet but did order X-Files season 1 from Play sale since it was so cheap and there’s something adorable about those early episodes.

Other than that we’ve been watching Farscape (nearing the series ending…), Desperate Housewives and Veronica Mars from tape or tv. Looking forward to Battlestar Galactica and Lost that start showing in Finland very soon ^_^

So glad I asked.
…
Umh, how’s it with music?

Why, I just popped into the record store [the day before] yesterday and got Get Behind Me Satan by The White Stripes, Melody A.M. by Röyksopp and Mesmerize by System of a Down. Great albums, all of them! Especially Mesmerize. Man, pure genius.

Hang on, aren’t you boycotting Sony CDs?

Oh, you noticed. O.o D’oh. Well, to be precise, I was campaigning for “No Xmas for SONY” and it’s past December now. Plus Mesmerize was on sale and I only paid around 10 euros for it — a price very different from the one I decided not to pay as testified in Boikotti.org. (By the way, the CD is not broken — “copy-protected” — as many claim there [and Hypnotize isn’t either].) Sure, the excuses are somewhat lame. Hey, it upsets me, too (although surely not as much as Merten, sorry for lack of support my hc friend). If it was something else than this brilliant music I would have passed.

[Also got System of a Down’s Hypnotize yesterday. Not as cheap as the other album but still 6 euros cheaper than when I didn’t buy it. And yes, I do realise the cheapness is probably mostly away from the retail, not from SONY so much.]

In any case there’s one thing I’m not budging with. I ain’t buying no broken CDs. The Finnish band Stella’s Kuuntelija I actually went to the store for turned out to be one of those. Another recent disappointment was the soundtrack for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, both the regular and the special edition versions O.o. I wonder if the US version is broken, too? Man this sucks.

Don’t start crying, now. Any positive stuff going on lately? Like… good comics?

Yeah! The latest issue of Ryhmä-X (that’s X-Men in Finnish) was a great surprise! Reading Astonishing X-Men written by Joss Whedon and drawn by John Cassaday, both extremely talented fellows, was a very positice experience. I love Cassaday’s art that returned the X-people from pinups to actual (heroic) characters. The same can be said about Whedon’s script. For a change we see conversations, expressions, thoughts and feelings instead of the constant, empty action. So I love the soap. That’s what it used to be all about! You know, when X-Men was still good and enthralling.

Since this was only the first part of a long arch I can’t say much about the story. Except that it still has every chance to be good. As for everything else, here are the highlights. Emma Frost. Wow. I used to hate her but here she comes off as she should be: an intelligent, highly skilled woman with a personality, who is valid as a gorgeous, cold vamp. As for my other least favourite characters, even Scott manages to look good. Not sure how I feel about the return of the Kitty yet, but it’s really nice to have that essential part of X-Men, a character with non-lethal powers, back. I don’t mind action but if there’s no drama to support it, it’s just boring.

This is so looking good and I’m actually glad I recently decided to renew my subscription despite my doubts (I didn’t know Astonishing was coming up — in fact I didnt know about Astonishing at all — bad fangirl me). I’m also contemplating getting the Astonishing X-Men collection Vol. 1 from Amazon.

Anything else you’d like to tell me?

Just this. It’s bloody freezing outside. -22°C! [today, too!] And since this is Tampere we’re talking about, big chunks of Finland have it even colder right now. Brrrh. I feel for the poor sods in Russia, too, with -50°C in some places O.o

The good thing is that germs don’t like the cold. The bad thing is that an army of them has a nice, warm nest within me. My throat is still sore [although not as bad today as it was yesterday; might I actually be getting well?].