Trivia that matter
I looked around for sheet music to the “Säkkijärven Polkka” featured in Girls und Panzer der Movie. Apparently no two musicians play it quite the same way. Most of the versions I found don’t sound much like the tune in the movie. However, I did find a simple piano arrangement that matches pretty well here. (I suspect that it was transcribed from the OST.)
I finally had a couple of hours to devote to Girls und Panzer der Movie. Quick reaction: If you liked the original series, you’ll like this. If you found the original too implausible to enjoy, this is no different. For those who haven’t seen the original: if the idea of watching high school girls engage in the recreational equivalent of war with real WWII tanks sounds like fun, check out the series here. If you like it, then track down the movie. You can watch the movie first, I suppose, but it will make less sense and you’ll miss the significance of the various characters’ actions. I don’t have time to write a proper review, but there are reviews here and here (beware: the latter has many spoilers that aren’t hidden).
As Steven guessed, one of the highlights for me was a lively Finnish polka with kantele and accordion in the soundtrack. The movie’s makers didn’t pick the tune at random; “Säkkijärven polkka” has a little history behind it. To make Steven happy, I’m placing the tune below the fold.1
So you’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned shounen story about fighting monsters with magic, but every time you watch Twin Star Exorcists you wish someone would slap some common sense and courtesy into the characters? You are in luck: Shounen Onmyouji is available on YouTube, albeit as an old fansub tranlating the dialogue into something similar to, but not quite that same as, English. (It’s intelligible; you just occasionally need to translate the translation. (Update: The second episode and beyond use a much more readable translation.))
Shounen Onmyouji was one of the last series licensed for North America by Geneon, just before it ceased its American operations, and consequently most of it is difficult to impossible to find legally at reasonable prices. Someday someone will rescue the license — it’s too good a show to remain forgotten — but who knows when?
This is getting old. (If Wichita isn’t quite in the red zone, it’s close enough that it doesn’t matter.)
Somebody dropped by looking for “rich anime woman laughing.” He presumably was interested in the “noblewoman’s laugh.” Here’s Renge from Ouran High School Host Club to demonstrate:
The noblewoman’s laugh is particularly associated with Slayers‘ Naga. Here’s more of her than anyone needs:
While pondering a reply to Robin’s comment on the previous post, I thought it would be useful to compile a list of the Nebula award winners for novel, novella, novelette and short story from 2000 on and note the sex of the writers:
Upon Hearing Leaf Blower on a Fine Spring Eve
It’s the Divine Right of Neighbors
To run their motors loud
At the sitting hour, proud
I’m like Sitting Bull, Red Cloud
Aghast what Pale Face has allowed.
*****
I am so much more enlightened than you.
*****
Consider the winners of the four categories [best novel, novella, novelette and short story] over the last five years:
• 2015: 4/4 women
• 2014: 3/4 women
• 2013: 4/4 women
• 2012: 2/4 women
• 2011: 2/4 women
Fifteen stories written by women have won the main prizes in the Nebula awards in the past five years, and five by men.
I never cared much about the Hugo awards. They have never been anything more than popularity contests, and that they have been demonstrated to be meaningless is mildly amusing and nothing more. The Nebulas, on the other hand, are determined by a vote of the SFWA membership, i.e., actual writers, and reading the annual volume of Nebula winners was one of the ways I found writers worth following many years ago. But I find it difficult to believe that nowadays women write three times as many of the best stories as men. So, the hell with the Nebulas. I think I’ll read Tim Powers instead.
*****
Every few years I clear my evenings for a week and re-read The Lord of the Rings — I’ll probably do so again sometime this summer. I also enjoy most of his other fantasy-oriented works published during his lifetime. However, I’ve never gotten beyond page 20 in The Silmarillion. It turns out that I’m not alone, and The Silmarillion is the worst book with Tolkien’s name on it. It may be worthwhile to check out his other posthumous books, after all.
*****
*****
Does the term “vibrancy” actually mean anything? (Note that the word “diversity” has become its own antonym.)
(Via Isegoria.)
*****
Every man his own rhinoceros: at last, a political party I can join. Unfortunately, it’s Canadian.
(Via Francis W. Porretto.)
… so here’s a California bluebell, Phacelia campanularia.
Most of Satoshi Kon’s works are long out of print and are generally only available at extortionate prices or through irregular channels. However, Paramount Pictures is currently streaming Millennium Actress, his most approachable movie, for free. That’s it above.
Meanwhile, Michaël Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle has been acquired for North America. Will it come to Wichita? We can hope, but I doubt it.
Francis W. Porretto on Ghost in the Shell:
Ghost In The Shell is the absolute pinnacle of its art form. There’s nothing else in the anime oeuvre to compare with it, especially as regards graceful writing and philosophical depth. Masamune Shirow will be remembered for centuries for the story. The makers of the anime can be justly proud of the finished work. That Hollywood should choose to make a live-action version is merely additional praise of the original.
So what is this SJW concerned about? That central character Motoko Kusanagi, a round-eyed, big-bosomed cyborg, will be played by round-eyed, big-bosomed Scarlett Johansson, one of the foremost female action stars of today. “Whitewashing!” “Racial exclusion!” “Cultural appropriation!” “Insert your preferred SJWism here!”
These…persons deserve nothing but contempt. They’re the true bigots and squanderers of cultural treasures – all cultural treasures. That a brilliant piece of anime, known mainly to devotees of the art form, should be picked up by a major Hollywood studio and cast with a terrific, somatically perfect leading lady is an act of high praise…but no! “The character has a Japanese name!” Therefore, by SJW rules, she must be played by a Japanese actress. Failing that, at least one with an epicanthic fold.
Anyone who grants these cretins the smallest sliver of time or shred of respect is doing a disservice to the entire human race.
I wouldn’t say that the first Ghost in the Shell movie is incomparable in its philosophical depth — there’s Serial Experiments Lain, at least — but it is a superior work, and the remake, if competently done, should lead its more adventurous viewers to seek out the animated version.
It’s recital season, and I spent a chunk of this weekend taking too many pictures at a ballet school’s dress rehearsal. Here are a couple of them. There are about 260 more to run through Photoshop.
I suppose I should be grateful that my neighbors aren’t mowing their lawns this Sunday morning, but banging a hammer on a resonant roof is no improvement.
One way to display a panorama without using 360Cities:
Clicking on the picture (if you’re using an older version of Safari) or the title in the lower left will take you to its Flickr page, where you should see it at a much larger size.
Update: This panorama is now an “Editor’s Pick” at 360Cities. Here it is using their embed code:
You can see another, rather different one of my panoramas at the bottom of their homepage.
… again.
Whoopee.
This past week has been a bit too eventful for my taste, but I did get a chance to stop for lunch at one of the better fast-food places in town.
Here are the answers to yesterday’s quiz.
… and now for something less depressing. Here are some lines and fragments from various poems that occasionally pop into my mind. See if you can identify the poets and poems. I’ll post the answers tomorrow.
1. Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat!
2. No. Not this pig.
3. … yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a …
4. I have awakened at Missoula, Montana, utterly happy.
5. … boxcars boxcars boxcars …
6. May God damn for ever all who cry “Peace!”
7. Polyphiloprogenitive
8. What I tell you three times is true.
N.B.: The spoiler system for this website apparently doesn’t work for comments. Don’t read the comments until you’ve made your own guesses.
TS:
The general election is dead to me, reduced to a mere curio object.
So abysmal are the choices that I have absolutely no skin in the game. I can write in PeeWee Herman.
Bonus quote from Mrs. Darwin:
But thanks to Trump virtually clinching the nomination by winning Indiana, I’m freed from the tyranny of the party. I don’t have to identify as a Republican anymore. When someone asks me if I’m a Democrat or a Republican, I can say neither! And for the first time, I can vote for someone I like for president. Who gets my write-in vote? Which person do I actually think would be best suited to run the country? It’s almost overwhelming.
(Illustration via AoSHQ.)
Update: Steven finds some positives. His post is in the appropriate category “Weird World.” Note particularly points #5 and #9.
What if The Lord of the Rings had really been about World War II?
In reverse, we could play with the idea of what would have happened in WW II if it had followed the lines of LotR…
The plot would focus on the destruction of the Atom Bomb (and implicitly all knowledge required to make it) by a small team of English patriots led by George Orwell, who infiltrate Germany and destroy the evil research establishment which is making the A-bomb.
The climactic end would be the death of Hitler (as the ready-for-use prototype explodes?) and the end of the Nazi regime in Germany with the return of the Holy Roman Emperor.
