East meets West

I know it's not Barefoot Gen, but there was a particular manga I wanted to bring to the attention of whoever read this blog. It's a manga that was only introduced this year, Karakuri doji Ultimo, or Robot child: Ultimo. The plot is essentially not that different from Astro Boy, but they give him an evil twin to make it interesting. The red-headed boy (yes it's a boy) is the main character, Ultimo, while the character on the right is the antagonist, Vice. A note on why Ultimo's appearance is so effeminate; just as during the time Shakespeare's plays first came out and it was forbidden for women to be in theater and thus men played women's parts, this was also the case with older Japanese theater. Such manga or anime characters are said to be bishonen.So what makes this manga worth mentioning? It's actually a collaboration between manga artist Hiroyuki Takei, and comic book legend Stan Lee; in fact, Ultimo and Vice are the names of two characters found within Iron Man's continuity.

Stewie and Sputnik

I know this may seem extremely irrelevant, but I had to bring this topic up. While reading the graphic novel, Fallout, and viewing the movie Day One, I remembered another scenario about Germany's endeavors in nuclear power. It was in an episode of Family Guy, in particular the episode, Road to Germany. Long story short, the characters travel back in time and wind up in 1939 Europe. To get back to their own time, they needed a uranium battery to power the machine that would return them to the present and there was only one place in Europe at the time that was studying nuclear power: Berlin. This was the big setup joke: Stewie>> "Berlin had weapons of mass destruction! How come America doesn't go over there and stop them?" Brian>>Oh, I don't know, maybe its because (slowly turns to television audience) they don't have any oil?" Stewie>>"OH! Clap Clap Clap." This little trade-off reminded me of how childish it seemed during Fallout and Day One of how America just had to have the nuclear bomb developed before Germany. It then brought up the memory of when the USSR launched Sputnik. In less than ten years, the United States had gone from a nuclear arms race with Nazi Germany to the space race with the Soviet Union; we didn't get the first probe into space, but we certainly got the first man on the moon. Are we that competitive as a nation?

Funny Actors, Serious Roles

I just had to get this off my chest. As we've been watching Welcome to Sarajevo, I was reminded of another, albeit different in structure movie. Woody Harrelson would be an actor most people would immediately recognize fo his comedic work on the late TV series Cheers and here he is casted in a more serious role (a war-torn country probably doesn't get more serious than that). It reminded me of another time when an actor who branded purely as comedic tried out a more serious role. I'm reffering to Bill Murray in the more obscure movie, The Razor's Edge, almost two decades before he appeared in Lost in Translation.

In The Razor's Edge, Murray plays a son from a rich American family who goes on to fight in World War I and is aghast at what he sees. After the war, he goes into hiding in Paris living more down to earth. Upon its 1984 release, the movie didn't recieve the recognition it does today, people were just too use to comedic Bill Murray.