Seven

You know why I hate this movie with a passion besides the craptastic director, overreliance on fx over story, and ludicrous crap like the predator's wrist blade being 4 FEET LONG or something? It's the possibility that this will be the death of any chance of Ridley Scott making Alien 5 (which would be an infinitely better movie) if AVP makes money and the corporate types decide AVP is the future of the franchise. It's the same thing as when the Batman franchise went to Joel Schumacher after Tim Burton left. This new guy seems to think the more sfx he can shoehorn into a movie and the more "xtreme" he can make the aliens, the less he has to actually tell a coherent story about well-developed characters and make what you can basically call "Tango & Cash in Space". But hey, if the audience prefers drek like Resident Evil and Soldier, what difference does my opinion make...

Crap. I looked at Singer with about the same respect as Peter Jackson in the way that they can convey the movie with enough respect so that the original material isn't poo on, unlike that douche that is directing AVP. I really thought he was beginning to hit his stride with X2 and now we'll never know how good he could have made X3. I've never been a big fan of Superman, blue tights, red cape, 50s goody goody values... snore. The only Superman I ever liked was from Kingdom Come. Anyways, I can only hope that the next X3 at least keeps up with X2 and doesn't fall into mediocrity with all action and no character development, which Singer was good at, especially when trying to balance out the big number of lead characters that Xmen had.

All this movie needs now that it is X-TREME is two of the biggest bottles of NOS that one could find, neon and hydros on the Predator spaceship, and any rapper/actor like Ludacris, Ice Cube, Method Man, or even Eminem and this movie is money in the bank!!!

Why do they always make the mask so you can see Batman's eyes? You never do in the comic books! I mean, how stupid would it have been if the Spiderman mask had two little eyeholes where you could see Peter Parker's eyepupils?! My attachment is really crappy since i did it in Paint while in the middle of other stuff, but you get the point...

Pretty much anything with Toshiro Mifune or directed by Kurosawa are definite must see, but you did mention that you watched some Kurosawa films already. There is an older movie called Heaven and Earth directed by Haruki Kadokawa, with huge battle scenes like Ran. I think any of the Zatoichi (Blind Swordsman) films are also enjoyable but don't feel as epic as any Kurosawa films. I do like them since it looks more into the Yakuza lifestyle than focusing on bushido or samurai, and usually has a few comedic scenes. I didn't enjoy the Kitano Zatoichi movie at all, maybe because I didn't thing Kitano had any charisma as Zatoichi and the bad CG work with CG swords impaled through people and CG blood didn't do it any favors. I'm probably just biased though. Twilight Samurai was excellent and Hiroyuki Sanada should be more remembered for this movie than the other crapfest "The Last Samurai" that he also starred in.

You know, the Destiny Gundam's successor has an N-Jammer-Canceller-Canceller-Jammer. NJCCJ for short. Rumor has it that by the year 2006, SEED Gundams will carry NJCCJCCJCCJJJCC. LMAO! I nearly fell out of my chair at work when I read that. All the other cubicle monkeys are looking in my direction wondering if their manager has lost his mind.

You have no idea... I haven't had too many problems, just leaky radiator pipes. When it's running at optimum levels, it's one hell of a fun ride.

Another shot of my car and its new shoes...

I just got new rims and tires too! Corners like a go cart now...

I'm sure someone has something to say about this gem: I've never read the book, but it HAS to be better than this crapfest. Anyone got opinions on the matter?

What you didn't know about the Rankin Bass renditions of Hobbit and RotK were that they were animated by none other than STUDIO GHIBLI of Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, and Princess Mononoke fame! Although the character designs weren't probably of their making. Does anyone remember that other Rankin Bass movie - The Last Unicorn? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084237/ I thought that movie was pretty damn good for the time. Another funny fact was that Christopher Lee voiced the main villain of the movie. If he had voiced Saruman in the Rankin Bass RotK (if they had put in Saruman) it would have been a really weird bit of coincidence.

Leave? What are you talking about? The guy works freelance, so it's up to Gainax or any other anime studio that wants to hire him to fork up the dough and incentive to get him to work on their projects.

My cup runneth over....

he does? whoa! haha i remember when he had that auto s13 back in the day and he sold it but he owns the pacific rim car? hmmm interesting Yep... Jerry Tsai. He used to be a regular here a while back. He pretty much owns Pacific Rim and he hosted the MacrossWorld conventions at his place back a couple of years. Oh and I actually meant S13, since it is the same car that he ran at D1 which got totalled recently. I wonder if he still had a MacrossWorld sticker on the window, since it was there when his car was featured in Super Street...

You could ask our old member VF1X about all this drift stuff (who hasn't been seen in these parts for ages), after all, he owns the Pacific Rim S14 that's being run in the D1 championships...

This one is obscure, but Volume 0 of the short lived Yamato 2520 OAV series had a 6 minute space battle between the Earth fleet and a new enemy that would've made any fan of Ichiro Itano's work with capital ship battles cry. Coincidentally, he also directed the mecha action in that series as well.

Damn it! That's what I get for being away from the boards for so long. Thanks, Anubis.

I read up on animenewsnetwork.com about a new Zeta Gundam movie in the works now and confirmed by Bandai. Anyone else got info on this? I've heard rumors that it will be a compilation movie of the TV series with SOME new animation and seen a picture of an article from Newtype. I just assumed that they made a compilation movie way back in 1985 after the series ended, like they usually do and did for the original series. It's surprising that they didn't back then and want to do it now. Although I'm glad for any new stuff for Zeta. If this is a repost or old news, I apologize, although I did do a search first and found nothing.

Tong Po - "Mylene... goooooooodddd. Now I make you bleed like I make her bleed!"

The TV series was very complex story telling. They tried to weave in all this Aztec myth stuff which was very cool but somewhat hard to follow. The guy with the eyepatch was Ayato's dad. He and Rikudo were both geologists or something, and it was while they were working together that Haruka and Ayato met. Ayato's mom is Haruka's aunty, but not by blood as she was adopted by Rikudo years ago when she appeared at the shrine. Haruka is Rikudo's niece. Helen, Itsuki and Kisaragi were all clones. Helen was a clone for Bahbem. Itsuki was a failed mass-produced clone. Kisaragi was a clone of Ayato. Ayato is the tuner of the world who is able to give new life to the world and shape it to his will. Bahbem had Kisaragi because he hoped he could use him to change the world according to his own views. Very confusing, no? The movie is a retelling of the TV series. Very similar to the Escaflowne movie and the TV show. There is much less action in the movie and its very heavy on story. There is one cool scene in the beginning however that shows the creation of Tokyo Jupiter. What helps the movie along is that it's far less convoluted than the TV show. They removed all the Aztec references to Ixtol and the Yoroteoru and all that junk and just made it into a less confusing and more stream lined story. It has a few more scenes that make the movie more emotional, and while the ending is different from the TV series, it's still just as good. What I don't understand is what kind of world was to arise after the tuning of the world? The tuning happens and then the story ends. What would the tuning of the world bring about? It really felt like they rushed the ending, so in a way it is no clearer than EVA was.

Actually, it was almost appalling to the level that the creators of Rahxephon felt they had to steal so many plot elements from Evangelion. To name a few: the ambiguous religious references, the unusual and mysterious girl whose origins are unknown, who talks sparingly and will determine the fate of the world but only at the end of the series, main character who is hesitant to pilot the title mecha, big sister character who takes in the main character and encourages him, the end of the world, character becoming a gigantic white version of him/herself, etc... It goes on and on. I wished it was way more original because I loved the character designs and music.

No kidding, Initial D IS very overrated. The CG is pretty shabby even for the year it was released. The character design (while of course limited by how the manga looked) were animated really flatly and look unremarkable. Even worse, they manage to deflate what action and momentum they build coming up to any of the racing scenes by constantly switching to a couple of deadpan characters talking about race strategies and etc in the most boring manner possible. I'm an auto fanatic and even then I was barely kept awake. And I didn't make that judgement until after having seen First, Second, and Third Stages. Takumi is the most boring anime character in all of history. He talks as if he's on Prozac all the time, while his sidekick Itsuki talks like he's on speed all the time. Mogi has no depth as do the majority of the characters, and its hard to care anything about Takumi and Mogi's relationship when they hardly go beyond small talk with each other. If they continue with this series, they better make some major changes. The only thing supporting the popularity of this anime is the lack of any other series that remotely touch on the Japanese drift scene and the recent growing interest for this scene in America.

I wouldn't be worried about Sammy at all. Seeing as how they opened a bigass new building in San Diego and are ramping up game development by an incredible amount, they aren't planning on being small time players in the game industry. If anything they are going to be more stable due to their pachinko income and that should enable them to be in it for the long run. As opposed to most companies that are solely dependent on their game titles or hardware for income and stabilization.

My take on this is that the Sabrina stuff is not entirely normal but also not entirely bizzare and could be just looked at as a sort of extended form of cosplay. Now, the furries stuff is scary because the appeal of the furry phenomenon is the sexual nature of it. I mean, they even have a special term to signify getting all aroused by seeing a person in a fuzzy cartoon animal costume which is to get "yiffy". I don't think this Sabrina person is going out humping holes into anime statues at the local anime store, as ooposed to having an incredible obsession with cuteness. Which in itself to a much lower extent is already present in Japanese pop culture.

Nope not a big deal. I just assumed that there was some way since I see some members have post counts in the 1000s after only 3 months. That's insane to think they accumulated that much in so little time! It took me 3 years to get to 600+ on the old board. Anyways, thanks for the info.