August 26, 2014

August 26, 2014

Studio Ghibli has tried very hard to increase its pool of directors, and especially groom younger directors so that it would have a future if its main directors were to retire.  Ghibli has had 2 main directors over the years, the wonderfully fanciful Hayao Miyazaki and the more serious Isai Takahata.  Takahata creates much less successful, but very important films about serious subjects and dramas with very little fantasy.  In the middle between these was a man named Yoshifumi Kondo.  He had worked with Ghibli for a long while, and headed up the animation departments on works going all the way back to Lupin III before Ghibli was officially created.  He also did some work for Western studios, doing key animation for The Wuzzles and Little Nemo.  The Ghibli curse struck after his first movie as a director was released, he died of a heart attack which is blamed on his intense work ethic.  A claim that would cause Miyzaki to persue a  more relaxed release schedule for his movies.  Whisper of the Heart was his only movie as a director, and its a light hearted drama that reminds me in parts of Kiki's Delivery Service, but all the fanciful parts take place in the main character's mind as she thinks of wonderful stories she would like to write.  As an homage to Kondo, Studio Ghibli would turn the story the protagonist thinks of into its own movie a few years later with "The Cat Returns".

There is some confusion as to the Bucky Ball "Ban" that has elicited outrage from the internet as of late.  People seem to think the government banned the product altogether and that now people with them have illegal property or some such.  The truth is, the marketing of these magnets as toys has been banned.  Bucky Ball shut down the factory in a fit of rage as places like Toys'R'Us and ThinkGeek decided that selling something no longer sellable as "toys" would not fit into their plans.  You can still buy their competitor's versions on science websites, Sharper-Image type stores, and Amazon.  Why can't they be sold as toys?  These are "rare earth" magnets that are about the size of a marble, and are sold in blocks of several dozen. These magnets are also called Neodymium magnets and they are VERY strong.  I have giant ones in my super light bass amp cabinets, that allow my single 12 inch, 25 pound cabinet to sound stronger than the 99 pound 4 speaker cabinets I had before.  I once saw a photo of when someone kept 2 magnets of several pounds each within 10 foot of each other, they collided and smashed his hand.  These are powerful magnets... and people are swallowing them.  In all instances, 100% of the people who have swallowed more than one has had to have extreme invasive emergency surgery.  These magnets are so strong, they pull the iron out of your blood.  Remember X-men 2 where Magneto does that?  These little ball magnets are strong enough to do that when inside you.  People that swallow more than one have them rip their intestines, LITERALLY to shreads as they pass through and just break the walls apart.  I'm not one to be all "nanny" state, but the horrific consequences of accidental ingestion is just too terrible.  So I can understand the ban on them being sold as toys.  Again, they aren't banned in general, and the government didn't force the company to stop making them.

I'm posting this on my Facebook feed later, so sorry if you are tired of hearing about it.  Nintendo made a GENIUS move with the newest Smash Bros. game.  If you know me, I dislike the franchise immensely.  Its the fighting game all my friends would rather play than get good at actual fighting games.  Anyway.  The newest roster was leaked and one of the final reveals, probably the last planned reveal as its a hell of a "kicker", is the dog from Duck Hunt.  Yes.  The dog everyone tried to shoot and many people have hated for years and years is going to be in a fighting game.  How had this not happened before?  I would be tempted to get tournament level proficient with it just to troll my casual fighting game friends.  If I'm going to be miserable while everyone plays a shitty game, I might as well be able to have fun... making them miserable too :P