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djotaku's twitter feed
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- just started playing WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos. http://raptr.com/djotaku
- video did NOT kill the radio star. Radio is still around. MTV, on the other hand, no longer plays music videos. RIP TRL.
- Yay MD for the $170 electric bill credit!
- @harajukuroxy that stinks. My mom used to get a lot of migraines.
- My latest computer animation: http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/dtbp/node/48
- My latest computer animation:
- Nearly done with my latest animation
- @minimoniotaku: the old momma joke was hilarious
- Using akmod-nvidia, built the latest drivers for nvidia and 3D works again! w00t w00t! Blender here I come!
- Dagnabbit. Nvidia doesn't support Xorg7.4pre so no Blender for me for a while
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Jun
30
I don’t recall if I’ve ever mentioned it on this blog, but I hate going to the movies. I’ve nearly given it up. The only exceptions are Pixar movies and the very few movies that I can’t wait until they come out on DVD to watch. So today I went to see WALL*E with my wife and slightly younger brother. It is, literally, the BEST Pixar movie ever created. The only reason I’m okay with the fact that they waited this long to come out with the movie is because it allowed them to get so awesome at creating movies that it looks beautiful!!!
First of all, like most Pixar movies, there’s a short film at the beginning. Right from the intro screens, you’re clued in on the fact that this is done in the slapstick, physical comedy style of the 1940s Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons. Let’s just say that my brother and I were laughing so loud and cracking up so bad, I’ll have to watch it at least another two times to catch everything I missed from my eyes watering up. It’s that funny - if you’re a fan of physical comedy. And, of course, Pixar has character emotional expression down to an art form.
Then the feature film came on and it was great. In a way, WALL*E is “An Inconvenient Truth” for kids. But to say that is to do a HUGE disservice to the guys at Pixar. Really, the whole point about how rampant consumerism caused the Earth the be so polluted that we had to leave is so that we could have this extremely cute robot cleaning up the Earth. So, it’s no spoiler that he’s the only robot left cleaning. Everyone was talking about this: from Pixar to some of the trailers for the movie. Basically, we caused such a mess that all human life is sent away and we leave an army of WALL*E robots to clean up the Earth. Eventually, the task is SO daunting that we’re left with our one WALL*E. He’s diligently cleaning up when the humans send a probe to see how the cleaning is coming along. This causes his love interest to enter the picture. Again, no spoilers yet. Now, when she first appears on the scene, oh man, it was exactly the type of humor that my brother and I love. We were shattering that theatre with our laughter.
I loved so much about the movie, the story, the visuals, the characters. But what really blew me away was how two robots who can only convey emotions by moving their eyes, heads, and hands (the robots can’t talk except for a very small amount of words, but I don’t want to ruin it!). My wife really got sad about something that happens to one of the robots - and it’s just a robot! And the way the “female” robot acted towards WALL*E’s advances, conveyed pure feminine energy. It was just great to watch. Now for a few spoilers.
<spoiler!!!>
Things I loved in the movie:
- the iPod and the role it plays with the movie
- the references to Space Odyssey 2001 such as the Auto Pilot looking like HAL 9000, the music when the captain first wakes up is the same as the music when the pen is floating in 2001 and the use of Thus Sprak Zerathustra
- My brother caught that WALL*E’s powered up sound is the sound of turning on a MAC
- the giant WALL*As at the space ship were great
- I loved the little OCD cleaner robot. He was, without a doubt, my favorite secondary character in the movie
- The robot sanitarium was a hilarious scene
- The part where the silhouette of EVA made WALL*E panic was pure animation history - I’ve seen that in so many of the old cartoons from the 1940s
- The part about how the corporation wanted to keep people fat and lazy so they were easy to control was a great social commentary - in fact the whole thing was great - it was much more sci-fi than I thought it was going to be
- Also, I loved how the story was revealed bit-by-bit like when he rolled by the area where the space ship took off and the videos went off. It had a very tragic feel to it because the videos seem to feel like the humans will be back really soon
- With the video only for the Auto Pilot to see where it says that the work was too much and the world became too toxic, I was left wondering:
- did the CEO and his workers die on Earth? IOW, did they remain on Earth to supervise the cleanup and were so sure of their machines that they didn’t take a ship to leave?
- did they see all the WALL*Es breakdown? Or did that happen after the humans were dead. I mean, WALL*E was around for 700 years!
- I loved the cameo by the actor who played the CEO of BnL.
</spoiler!!!>
Ok, I think I saw a Pizza Planet truck, but I blinked. Can anyone confirm that? Also, I kept my eyes open, but didn’t see any Pixar toys amongst the trash. On the one hand that could have been a conscious decision on their part to say that their toys would never end up in the trash. But I was really hoping for a cameo! If anyone spotted a cameo, let me know.
Go see it right now. I don’t know if it’s going to have an awesome opening weekend, but go see it if you enjoy animation at all you MUST go see it!
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Or you may know it as WALLE or WALL-E, but the commercials and wikipedia have it looking more like WALL*E.
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Sep
16
Stanford University, a leader in trying to get Congress and the public to understand the importance of the Public Domain have done what I’ve been dreaming of doing for a few months now. They decided to test the doctrine of Fair Use in copyrights by creating the following video. Any Disney fan should be sure to watch. Don’t know what fair use is? Don’t worry, they’ll explain it below.
In the case that the above video should be removed from youtube, download it from their page. If that page should happen to be down, then you can download it from me here.
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Sep
18
Why No Apologies for the Asians?
Category: Disney, Entertainment, Movies, tv | 
5 Comments
I am against censorship. The recent news that Tom and Jerry will be edited in Europe to remove smoking scenes is absurd! So it’s not ok for Tom to smoke, but it’s ok for Jerry to electrocute him, chop him up, and all the other behaviours kids may imitate from watching cartoons. Even racist stuff has a place in our culture so that we can see what was acceptable back then, why it was acceptable and why it’s not acceptable today. I think it can be educational and also show how every immigrant group has gone through racist depictions in our multi-media. However, what I don’t like is unequal treatment people seem to give the different races and ethnic groups when it comes to apologizing. Here are two screenshots from the original Three Little Pigs.
Now here are two screenshots from Disney Rarities where they sing a song about a fortune cookie man.
Having the Rickshaw was a bit racist, but tolerable. However, having an “honorable trash box” is just plain wrong! It’s like asians call everything honorable, even their trash cans. WTF is that? Now, to me, this wouldn’t have been any more racist or wrong than the TLP except that there was absolutely no apology from Leonard on behalf of Disney with respect to this cartoon. So what I get from this is that it’s ok to make fun of asians, but not Jews? is there a reason why they seem to have a need to apologize to one group and not the other?
And Disney isn’t the only one guilty of this - the Tom and Jerry cartoons had a whole explanation from Whoopi Goldberg about how the black maid in T&J was a little racist, but it was left in to preserve the integrity of the cartoon. However, when Tom or Jerry get hit on the head with a cymbal and suddenly get all slanty-eyed and buck-toothed, there’s no apology to asians.
Again, I think that these scenes SHOULD be left IN so that we and our children can look back on what was acceptable and how things have changed. But there seems to be some kind of conspiracy or, more appropriatly, some consensus that it’s ok not to say anything to the asians. They’re good sports about it, right? They won’t make as big a fuss as the african americans and the jews. I just think it’s so wrong!
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Dec
23
Big Brother wears Mickey Mouse Ears?
Category: Disney, Me | Leave a Comment
Went to Disney a few days ago with my family and found out that Disney is not quite the innocent little park it once was. I never quite felt the same about the park after 11 Sept 2001 when they began checking bags, but this time it was even more invasive. In order to enter the park I had to insert my ticket and then be digitally fingerprinted. Why did I have to be fingerprinted? To tie the ticket to me. In addition to the fact that it had my name printed on it, it now had my fingerprints attached to it. Now, I can’t really think of too many nefarious things Disney can do with my prints, but it was just really weird. Are that many people having their tickets stolen?
Perhaps what was going on was that people were buying the Park Hopper passes and then a whole family would visit Disney two people at a time. It’s the only real reason I can see for the moves. That or perhaps the cost of the blacklight ink for getting back into the park was sky-rocketing. Either way I didn’t like it and it tainted my experience.
Although my younger self would never had believed me, Disney is boring as an adult and the fingerprinting just added to the gloom. It’s not so much that Disney is boring as the fact that it’s not entertaining enough for the $60 price tag. It was a little too much money to see some animatronic pirates. The best ride for me continued to be the Haunted House.
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Nov
15
They’re out!
Category: Disney, tv | Leave a Comment
To sum up the opinion my wife and I have of the current cartoons out there for kids: they stink! The animation style is very strange and certain shows like Ed, Edd, and Eddy have a really strange palette. We pine for the cartoons of our youth. So we were very happy today to find out that, after three years of searching the web constantly, we found Duck Tales and Rescue Rangers Season 1 on sale at Best Buy. Part of the Disney Afternoon, Duck Tales was one of our favorite cartoons and represents the first time cartoons were taken seriously by studios. It kept me entertained for many a day as I sat and watched the degenerates of Duckburg try and bilk Scrooge McDuck out of his money. We’ve been watching the videos recently and the nostalgia is great! These DVDs are a must for anyone who grew up on the Disney Afternoon.
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