Deviant Dispatches

Last week, Spousal Unit and I got a new TV. It's a 39-inch Insignia , and we paid a damn good price for it. (This doesn't change the fact that my thrifty Norwegian sensibilities were all in a tizzy at shelling out so much money.) We spent a good deal of time in the store debating whether to get 60Hz or 120. What's the difference? I'll tell you. 60Hz looks like normal TV. Good,  but normal. Nothing about looking at it makes me uncomfortable. 120Hz is for action movies and things that move quickly - higher quality, sharper picture. It makes me intensely uncomfortable. One of the first things we watched on the new screen was the finale of Trinity Blood . (We can now watch Netflix on the TV through Blu Ray.) That was fine - wonderful, even - because it was animated. The details were sharp, and we saw so many things we'd missed on our little computer screen. But then, we watched Star Wars Episode I. Believe me, I was against it. The event was delayed for a...

I saw The Hunger Games a couple of weeks ago, and I really enjoyed it. I'll post more of my movie thoughts later, but this post is devoted to one of the bands used for the film soundtrack: The Civil Wars . The haunting song Kingdom Come was featured in the closing credits; this video includes that song and a little snippet of interview with Joy Williams, talking about her band mate John Paul White. I love how haunting this tune is, and I think their sound really captures what the music of District 12 would sound like. It captures the sound of the Appalachians around modern-day Tennessee and West Virginia. Bluegrass is perfect for the coal-mining district. The Civil Wars were also part of the song Safe and Sound , which circulated quite a bit as a pre-film promotional piece. Taylor Swift is the "star" of this song, but The Civil Wars are the unsung heroes of it. Usually, I can't stand Swift. I don't enjoy her music, for more reasons than just not being a...

I'm very excited for the movie version of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which comes out in theaters on March 23 . I absolutely loved the books in that series, and can't wait to see what they do to bring it to life. The intensity willl be amazing, I think, and Jennifer Lawrence seems like she might actually play a good Katniss. I know some of my friends will have concerns about staying true to the book and the possibility of the movie totally ruining the book in their eyes. I have some similar concerns; would you expect less of someone who has a t-shirt like this? Available here I don't really believe a bad movie can ruin a good book for me, though. The two are very separate medias, one relying imagination, the other asking merely for eyesight and hearing. And even if the movie isn't exactly the same as the book, it can still be a wonderful movie. The prime example of this right now is Harry Potter. I've enjoyed pretty much all of the mo...

The best $1 movie I ever purchased was "Panda and the Magic Serpent." The movie is one of the first color animes, which came out in the 1950s. It's a trip and a half. For the most part, it's just a fairy tale: a white serpent is transformed into a woman, a boy falls in love with her, and a sorcerer tries to break them up because he knows what she is. But one of the best parts is when the sorcerer and the snake-woman decide to have this magical space battle. I'm not exaggerating: the two of them are kind of floating around in some kind of black void (he with his crystal ball), shooting various colors of light at each other. Everything up until that point is pretty normal, then BOOM! Early Chinese space disco. Despite that oddity, it really is an excellent movie. It's a precursor to modern anime, and you can see a lot of history from this one movie. Give it a shot - you will especially enjoy the musical bits.

I am not a horror lover. Something about those terrifying movies just drives me mad. Some people love that. Some people thrill at being frightened: the fear remains mostly superficial and is brushed aside when need be, leaving behind a clean slate and a desire to do it all again. For me, it just leaves paranoia and paralysis as I squish my limbs into a corner, hiding from the ghosts, zombies, birds, etc. Once, during college, Spousal Unit tried to make me watch Evil Dead with him. Anyone who knows anything about Evil Dead is aware that it's a terribly made film, and most horror lovers view it as a comedy rather than a true horror. They sit down with a fabulosity of friends to watch the ensuing "hilarity," munching on their popcorn and clutching their guts in laughter. (There's even a musical version .) Well, that was more or less Spousal Unit's reaction to it. I squished quietly into the corner, as far from the TV as I could get. At the scene where a certain chara...