HAVE ANY OTHER CJAD LISTENERS NOTICED THIS?
Is it just me or is the lovely
Orla Johannes beginning to lose her accent? I was listening to her do the Montreal traffic report and plug
Dagwood's Sandwiches a few minutes ago and her accent seemed to be fading in and out, sort of the same way that, if you listen to the BBC World Service on shortwave, you hear them talking at a normal cadence for a while and then some bass distortion will fade in for a few seconds, making the voices a little bit deeper and more metallic, and then fade out. (I'm not sure exactly why the bass distortion happens, but, if you listen for a few minutes, you can pick up on the fact that it's some sort of regular cycle; presumably, something to do with radio waves.) I think it will be a pity if Ms. Johannes lost it completely.
Also regarding her accent, according to
Orla Johannes's voice-over talent listing page, it says she is British (and has a B.A. Honours degree in Marketing from
Bournemouth University in Dorset); I honestly thought she was Australian, and so did my British mother (who was actually born in Malta, but she is English). My mother thinks that it might just be that Ms. Johannes's accent has been compromised because of living in Montreal for a while. Aww... when I heard her on the radio, I liked to pretend I was in Canberra, since, as
Steventheeunuch knows, pretending you're in Canberra is ever so much fun.
Note to Ms. Johannes should she see this... the last line is a private in-joke; don't worry about it.
As a reasonable, level-headed, pragmatic anime fan, I tend not to flip out if someone criticizes and/or makes fun of anime or anime fans, since it's not something that should ever be taken personally.
Even if it's absurd claims about all anime being witchcraft. (Yeah, I know the direct links suck, so it's almost at the bottom of that page.) Here are some more sites I found which will "take the piss out of the fanboys", as a certain wise "eunuch" would say.
Anime Sucks Foundation
Anti-Anime Man (my new favourite superhero!)
The Amazing Anti-Anime Site (which I should have linked to a long time ago)
If you can read all three sites and never get offended, congratulations, you're a reasonable anime fan. Otherwise... well, you are, of course, aware that these sites aren't meant to be taken remotely seriously, right? They're just there to yank the chains of the sort of fans that get outraged over the drop of a pin.
BY THE WAY, NON-ANIME FANS
I'll get back to talking about real issues too within the next day, just I had two exams on Monday and, honestly, that took a lot of energy out of me. :P
I ASKED A VITAL QUESTION OF EARTH-SHATTERING IMPORTANCE ON X-ENTERTAINMENT.COM!
(Actually, I know the answer for the main question is "yes", since I looked it up on Google, but it was funny to write out.)
ATTENTION Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans, I have a question!
(Of all the places I frequent, this seems the most appropriate place to ask.)
Are you getting the same Pizza Hut campaign in the States that we're getting in Canada, where, if you make a certain order at Pizza Hut, they'll include a DVD of either Lost in Space (the 1999 TV retread), Weekend at Bernie's or the original live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
Something about that campaign bothered me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it why but I just had an epiphany... didn't the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film have product placement for a certain pizza chain in it? That in itself isn't a problem; I'm a capitalist and everyone's got to make a buck and I prefer seeing real brand names in movies anyhow, since it adds to the realism (okay, not that realism is that important in a movie with animatronic humanized turtles).
My problem is... if I'm not at all mistaken, wasn't the pizza chain product placement in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film for... Domino's? So Pizza Hut is now delivering a film wherein there is essentially a short commercial for their competitors? Did they screen these films in advance before approving them? Or maybe it's digitally-altered.
(And, yes, I remember that, in the NES adaptation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, there was product placement for Pizza Hut. That's why I remember that it was for Domino's in the movie, because, since the game came later, I was surprised that the Turtles switched their pizza joint allegiances.) :P
HMM... I DIDN'T CARE MUCH FOR GHOST IN THE SHELL, BUT...
(Former?) RottenTomatoes.com forum poster
Meier posted in the Anime News Network forum about how Mamoru Oshii's
Innocence: Ghost in the Shell 2, Oshii's first animated film as director since the original
Ghost in the Shell 9 years ago, has been
selected as one of the official selection to compete for this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Here's a review of Innocence in the Japan Times, and
another review.
Now, I didn't care much for the original
Ghost in the Shell, which was, of course,
#5 on my "Overrated Anime Films" list, but, considering that Mamoru Oshii is the director of my favourite anime film,
Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer (and I just bought the DVD of his first feature film,
Urusei Yatsura: Only You), I personally wouldn't mind seeing him win... anything to show the world that Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli aren't the be-all-and-end-all of Japanese animated films.
If not
Innocence, then I hope
Wong Kar-Wai's futuristic thriller 2046 wins it.
Could there be any other reason I hope that
Innocence wins? I think there is, but I can't quite put my finger of it... maybe
Cox and Forkum can jog my memory.
(See
this entry for more details.)
Oh, that's right...
Michael Moore's
Fahrenheit 911, the documentary that will somehow blame Bush for the terrorist attacks on September 11th (and
Orson Scott Card thoroughly debunks that fallacy in this essay, thanks again
LGF), possibly even implying that Bush had specific knowledge, is also on the official list, and I like seeing Michael Moore lose. Fuck, out of the 18 films on that list, I'd even rather see
Shrek 2 win, and I thought the original
Shrek is the most overrated of the three Best Animated Feature Oscar winners so far (yes, more overrated than even
Spirited Away).
But, let's see... who should I root for? Pretty cyborg cartoon character
Major Motoko Kusanagi or lying tubby leftist windbag? Damn, this is
such a tough choice. <---sarcasm!!!
I hope the
Section 9 blog, written by someone who is a big fan of both
Ghost in the Shell, unlike me, and George W. Bush, just like me, will have something amusing to say about all this.
THE ANIME NETWORK BECOMES A PROPER CHANNEL
The Anime Network,
which is launching a linear feed on June 30th, becoming a normal cable channel and not just a Video On Demand service,
has signed a deal with one of the top 10 cable companies in the United States, which ICv2.com doesn't name but which
Anime News Network says is
Insight Cable Communications.
I wish ADV Films all the luck in the world with this endeavour and I hope it's a success and I hope
the Grinchy CRTC's heart grows two sizes too big and lets Canadian cable operators carry this channel, since there's virtually no alternative channel in Canada for non-kiddy Japanese cartoons. (One of those is almost certainly a pipedream...)
However, that being said, I find their launch slogan, "They said it couldn't be done. We proved them wrong!" to be, if not a little arrogant, then certainly a bit premature, since I am one of those skeptics that has my doubts that a dedicated anime channel can be successful, at least on basic cable. This Anime Network thing has gotten farther than I thought it would, and ADV is to be commended for getting it this far, but getting the channel on the air is the simple part, relatively speaking... the real question, and the bulk of my skepticism, isn't whether or not they can get enough capital (or a Japanese sugar-daddy) to start up a channel, it's whether or not a dedicated anime channel can make a profit in the American market.
While
Anime Nation's John Oppliger is a guy who has, as of late, been getting
some harsh-but-not-totally-undeserved flack from the anti-fanboy section of anime fandom, his
answer from August 7th, 2001, about how profitable an anime channel would be still hasn't yet been proven wrong.
"A potential all-anime network would have to overcome difficulties not limited to finding a viewing audience, though. A broadcast or Cartoon Network-style basic cable channel would be essentially required, both by broadcast standards and marketing necessity, to air only edited or all-ages friendly anime, which limits the number of shows available. A premium cable channel would require a massive paying subscriber audience to merely support itself, much less make a profit. And even under optimum circumstances an all-anime television channel would require a massive library of titles to broadcast. Consider that there are 168 hours in a week and a single 26 episode anime TV series with no commercial breaks takes up only roughly 11 hours. Japanese licensors will also need to be paid for American television rights, as no copyright holder will agree to allow an American television network to broadcast and profit from an anime series without earning royalties or an up-front percentage of the profit.
At the present time, when there are television networks devoted to gardening and golf, it seems inconceivable that there isn't a television network devoted to anime, but keep in mind that anime is, after all, foreign film, and there are very few television network in America that broadcast entirely foreign film, especially Japanese animated foreign film. Once again, while the anime market may seem massive to anime fans, and it's true that the anime industry does have a lot of home video marketing influence and power in America, anime itself is still not nearly as understood or recognized an art form or entertainment medium in America as most anime fans think it is. It seems almost inevitable that America will eventually spawn an anime exclusive television network, but when experienced veterans like the Cartoon Network aren't prepared to venture into extensive anime programming, we should probably take that as a sign that an all-anime TV channel is still quite distant for the American market."
I think of talking about anime as too much of an "art form" to be kinda pretentious and, unlike John, I am very much a pragmatic, "live and let live" kinda guy when it comes to TV edits (since, even if I don't like the changes, the distribution/syndication companies have the rights and the approval of the Japanese licensors and I don't), but, still, he made some valid points that will indeed be refuted should, a year from now, The Anime Network be profitable but which haven't yet been refuted at this point in time. Basically, there's the normal overhead costs of running a channel of any sort, which aren't insignificant,
plus the licensing and broadcast rights for these shows (which some of the Japanese licensors may have agreed to waive for a time while they get it up and running, but this would only be for a limited time)
divided by the total paying audience, and the final factor there would have to be pretty high and I still think anime is (and probably will ever be) much more of a niche thing with the general public, if you ignore the popularity of the kiddy stuff, which I think most of the kids that watch that now will outgrow, and, as such, I would be surprised if this thing gets more than a couple of hundred thousand subscribers. I just don't see this flying at all on basic cable, as advertising dollars are already stretched really thin, and the market for non-kiddy anime is small compared to even the market for something like
Aqua Teen Hunger Force or
Family Guy reruns; it will be "basic" for a while, to get people interested, but then it will likely go premium, if it wants to survive. The other factor I would love to see answered is will ADV make more money from DVD sales from people who saw any given series and liked it enough to buy the DVDs than they lose from people who might have bought a DVD but just taped/TiVOed what they wanted to watch off The Anime Network, or just might have bought the DVDs but watched it off TV and decided that they didn't like the series enough to want to own it.
In short, while some anime fans might think an anime network is a license to print money, in the real world, it may prove to be a license to bleed money and the people who were skeptical before about an anime network being profitable have yet to be proven wrong.
If anyone wants to send me an e-mail and doesn't want to put in the name of a cartoon character as the receipient, as a frequent Blogspot Blogger, I have been invited to test out
Google's new G-Mail service, with a mailbox that is one full GIGABYTE (honestly, I thought that was an April Fool's joke). The default name it chose for me was
steve d*t brandon at g-mail d*t c*m (d*t = dot, c*m = com), which I was about to change, but then it occured to me that it's probably better to have an e-mail address with plain "Steve Brandon" in it, for CVs and stuff. So, now you can send me e-mail at that address, if you want.
DAMN... THAT TOOK ME FOREVER TO WRITE!
Hello all!
I just wanted to point out that I have done a massive, and I mean massive (well... 2500 words or so),
review of Super GALS! volume 4, "Look Out! Love is Dangerous!" for my RottenTomatoes.com . Yes, that's the review I've been working on for four weeks... partly because I'm a huge procrastinator and did it only sporadically, but also partly because, for various reasons, writing this review took a tremendous amount of research regarding small little details. And yes, many of my old "Alternate Angle" reviews at
Anime On DVD were longer than even that, and one review I did once (not on AoD) topped out above 10 000 words, but, in this one, there's hardly any filler. I decided against submitting this one to any site since it was so long, but I love talking about tiny details.
Also, yes, I did indeed break my boycott of
Kill Bill for volume 2, though I saw it at the cut-rate first run Dorval Cinema to avoid paying full price for half-a-film. Yes, I admit, some of my problems with the film from reading the script were based on my having, truth be told, only skimmed it, though, still, the bookend scenes involving little girls still made me a bit uncomfortable, even if Bill was much more of a bastard than he seemed when I read the script. I might do a full review of
Kill Bill at some point, but I have exams. :P
Still, it was only quite good, not the second coming of Christ or even just the Second Impact. I still don't get what all the fuss was about, at least on movie boards.
