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More Holiday Images

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.

Covent Garden Lights 2

Inside Covent Garden

Xmas Pictures 1: Snowflake Ally

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?

Ally Snowflakes

Something to Watch: DVDs, 10Dec13

I usually hit movies first, but Day Of The Doctor gets the number one spot this time around. This is after all the 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Special, and definitely had more Doctors than any other episode. While we are on the topic of TV, I should mention Futurama: Volume 8 and Futurama: The Complete Series will both be hitting the shelves this week.

Another break from my normal structure; I usually do live action movies first, but Despicable Me 2 has to start out the movie presentations this week. It was way too much fun, and you just can’t have too many minions. The other movies worth mentioning have either Cantonese or Mandarin as their primary sound track, including Man of Tai Chi. Note that that is the second Asian-centric film Keanu Reeves has starred in this year, and the first one he has directed. Saving General Yang takes place in 986 AD, and involves the famous Yang Family Generals. For something different, The Rooftop seems to be a Taiwan gangland musical with lots of singing, dancing, and fighting. It looks like a fun film to check out.

In Anime, Bleach: Season 19 brings us up to episode 279. To put that in perspective, they are up to episode 366 streaming from Japan, so the DVDs are finally starting to catch up with the streaming sources. Another returning favorite is Fairy Tail: Part 7, bringing episodes 73 through 84, and they are also releasing Fairy Tale: The Movie this week, so you get a double dose.

Btooom!: The Complete Series is about a combat game which suddenly changed when the 7 best players in the world were kidnapped, and woke up on an island with a bag of bombs each and holes in their memories; now they have to kill each other off and be the last one standing to escape, or so they are lead to believe. Finally, in the main series, a bunch of friends had their bodies repeatedly swapped so they never knew who they were going to be next, had their ages change at random, and had their desires overwhelm them and take control, all being done to them by an outside force. Now, in Kokoro Connect: OVA Collection, their inner emotional state is suddenly being projected into one of their friends, including phobias and suppressed desires, sometimes with near lethal results.

Happy Birthday Doctor Who

More coverage, this time with a glimpse of the crowd in the rather cattle-car waiting area they kept us standing in for a couple of hours. They could have just opened the doors and let us sit down, but that didn’t happen. That was just about the only part of the event I found less than entertaining, everything else about the event was excellent.

Something to Do: Movies, 6Dec13

The Last Days on Mars is a UK movie which is borderline horror and very much a thriller, but it includes some actors I like and some excellent production values. It has been out for a while on iTunes so will only be in a limited number of theaters, but I think it will look good on the big screen. Likewise the Canadian film Ice Soldiers only gets a limited run, also includes some actors I like, and has a very tasty looking trailer. Finally, the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: The Rebellion Story will also be doing a limited run on American screens this week. The American offering this time around is Implanted, which did not look quite as interesting as the others when I viewed the trailer, so I will be waiting for that one to hit a streaming service to see it.