Super Late Night Post

After spending nearly all my Black Friday writing a environmental geology paper on my water supply, I feel the need to post at 3am (I realize the post will say 4am but I am in central time). So Texas lost to A&M and Colt McCoy left the game with 20 seconds left with a pinched nerve. This is after he was hit with an extremely cheap shot by an Aggie player after a play had ended. With this loss UT will be lucky to get the Big 12 title. After finishing my paper I enjoyed watching a movie that I consider to be a classic, a must-see. The movie is Akira. You may be saying, "The concept of a cartoon movie being a classic is not just stupid but its idiotic." And the fact is that anime is strongly looked down upon by Americans these days. Most people think anime is for super nerdy computer geeks who don't have any girlfriends. Well to be honest some of it is...but there are certain anime movies that just downright good movies. Akira is one of these movies, Princess Mononake is another superb movie with it actually being released by a divison of Disney and having some serious star quality with Billy Bob Thorton and Jada Pinkett Smith lending their voices.

But back to Akira. It was released way back in 1988 and it boasts the most jaw-dropping animation quality of any movie I've ever seen. Every frame of action was hand drawn, as opposed to what most animes did in the late 80's and early 90's which was to have static characters with the backgrounds moving. The movie is an adaptation of the 2000+ page magna of the same name by Katsuhiro Otomo. The story is set in post-WWW III Tokyo. The plot has numerous themes and a lot of symbolism. While some of it works, the ideas of evolution and tampering with powers beyond our comprehension (Katsuhiro is specifically talking about the atomic bomb here), some of it is dated, the ideas of teen angst and rebellion. As with any adaptation there are going to be some casualties in terms of cuts from the source material, especially when the source material is over 2000 pages long and it is being condensed into a short two hours. I myself have never read the magna but it is evident that some material is missing has the last twenty minutes of the film break down story wise, though it provides some of the most spectacular animation of the movie. If you are in to anime and haven't seen Akira then go out and see it now because it has been the foundation for all anime after it. If you aren't in to anime I still recommend giving it a try, you may be surprised at how much you like it. On a final note, the movie is very graphic so don't watch it with little kids and the actors they got to do voice overs are well picked but the story doesn't translate as well...so watch it in Japanese with subtitles. Bed time.

~Aldana

The Fountain

7 out of 10 is what I'd rate this movie. It was an awesome movie with some flaws keeping it from being an all-time classic. The soundtrack is incredible, I listened to it nonstop everywhere the first few days I had got it. The movie's imagery has lingered in my mind for the past several days since seeing it. It is a rather slow and non-eventful movie for the most part, so some people will be turned off by it. Thats all I've really got to say about this movie.

Happy Turducken Day!

Well this marks the second year in a row that I will be having Thanksgiving without any immediate family. I will however be going to Austin to spend it with the strange Mexican side of the family. Should be loads of fun...and for those of you who don't know the greatness of the mighty Turducken then just look at the picture and know it contains three birds in one.

~Aldana

The Decline of Gaming

I like to think of myself as a pretty avid gamer. Not hardcore per se but certainly I play games much more than a casual gamer. When the ps2 came out way back in 2000 I was one of the lucky few to waltz in to my local KB Toys (this was before GameStop and EBGames were nation wide) and purchase the ps2 i had pre-ordered the previous summer. You can imagine my surprise when they were being sold on Ebay for thousands of dollars. Needless to say I didn't even think of selling mine. Because I bought it so I could play on it, which you would think would be an obvious concept. But with last weeks release of the ps3 it is evident that gaming is not so much about the games anymore. Many gaming and tech sites, such as Kotaku (which you can find in the links section), went and interviewed "gamers" who stood out in the cold and rain for days to get a ps3. And over 50% of the people interviewed said they were simply getting one to sell on Ebay...how does that make any sense? Are people that money hungry that they are willing to stand outside in 30 degree weather for 72 hours just to be able to make what now amounts to about a 400 dollar profit. The whole next-gen situation is giving some pretty clear signs that the gaming industry is heading downhill. Now I'm going back to playing Final Fantasy XII.

~Aldana

And so it begins...

The course of mankind will begin to shift at the inception of this blog. A great barrier to world progression will be brought down and trampled upon by our revolutionary ideas. Incredible leaps in human evolution will be made, as diseases are abolished and the body becomes more efficient and durable. A new era is on the horizon, a new era of fantastical accomplishments, discoveries, and eradications of poverty, unjust inequalities, and pollution. A new hope has come into existence, and that hope can be read and felt, mostly felt, here at the Potdana (the a's are pronounced as spanish a's) blog.

-Potter