One of the movies hitting the big screen this week is a remake of the classic 47 Ronin. While I am not sure how Keanu Reeves ended up starring in a Japanese Historical Epic Chushingura, it looks like a good addition to a true story that has been done as kabuki, bunraku, stage plays, films, novels, and television shows, not once, but many times each. The historical incident at the core of this tale took place in 1700’s Japan, and it is probably the single best known and most often retold story in Nihongo (that’s Japanese to you and me). The other choice this week is also a remake of an old film (get some new ideas, Hollywood!), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which looks like they may have done justice to the James Thurber story. Even though there isn’t anything original out this week, it looks like they have done a world class job on each of them, so I will have to be in the theater for both.
I would have thought this would be the perfect date to release some blockbusters to drive last minute Xmas shopping, but not so much it seems. In fact, I didn’t find a single live action sci-fi/fantasy movie or TV show that had not been previously released. Pretty disappointing, especially if you were looking for some last minute gift inspirations.
I had hoped to do better in Anime, and I did, marginally, finding a single new title. Humanity Has Declined is about a woman who takes up the family business of arbitrating between Humanity and Fairies only to discover the task more difficult than she had imagined. And even though the Fay are taking over the Earth as humanity dies off, there is always hope for the future.
Classic Rockabilly with a modern Japanese band, or maybe that is Punk, or perhaps Ska. Or something else; it gets hard to tell after a certain point, but they certainly play with enthusiasm. Myself, I suspect they might be channeling The Ramon’s and the Fine Young Cannibals by way of Chuck Berry and The Beatles. Whatever they are doing, I like it, and hope they do a lot more of it.
I took a ton of pictures while we were there, and I think I am beginning to understand my dads tendency to whip out the slide projector at the drop of the hat and share his photos with everyone. There was a Christmas Fair that started at the base of the London Eye (that giant Ferris Wheel across the river from Big Ben which was featured in the very first episode of the new series of Doctor Who in 2005) and ran on for a number of blocks along the Thames. One of the things they had was a booth full of Gingerbread Houses, some of which were quite complex. At the far end of the fair there was a old world intricately decorated carousel, the blue thing you can see above and behind it is the Eye in its lights.
A few more pictures indicative of the season I took while in London. These are some of the lights from the display at Covent Gardens, which was completely transformed from the way it normally looks. The first is one of the entrance ways around the edge of this shopping center that is older than my entire country. You would actually enter through one of the archways to the left and cross through an equivalent archway on the right to get inside the mall area, but I liked the visual effect of looking down the hallway perpendicular to traffic. The second image is inside the main mall, which they filled with giant Christmas ornaments and a couple of disco balls to flash highlights all over them. It was quite impressive.
When I was in London a short while ago for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary I was completely amazed by the holiday lights that city puts together. Not that the concept was anything unusual, since every city does it, but the scale and sense of style seemed quite beyond what I am used to. So, for the next several randomly chosen blog entries, I will do my best to post a picture or 3 here, in the hopes everyone might get a grin out of them.
The first one is your basic snowflake motif, hung in a local ally, not even on a real road. The way things were blocked off, there was never a fear of any vehicle traffic down this byway, and yet it was as festive as could be. The reason I finally got a good picture of it after 200 shots was because it was the ally between me and Trafalgar Square, with the place we stayed at one end of it. Since I passed by it pretty much every time we went outdoors, a few of those shots had to eventually look good, and this one did. Did I mention London was amazing?
