I just watched Come and See (1985) by Elem Klimov. I don't really know what to say about it other than never have I watched something that so captures the utter horror of war. There is none of the heroism of war films, none of the visual excitement or even any catharsis. Klimov captures ...

Stylish and exciting. I'm cautiously optimistic for this.

Didn't plan to but saw Akira on Toonami last night. Totally worth staying up till 3:00am for. Second time seeing it and first time watching the dub which wasn't too grating. The film holds up as well as I remember and is visually gorgeous. I really have to get around to reading the manga one...

Saw 12 Years a Slave, a consummate masterpiece and the greatest film made concerning American Slavery. It manged to never to slip into sentimentality and portrayed with unflinching realism the disgusting horror that was the institution of slavery. It was a harrowing experience.

Watched All is Lost. A thrilling testament to the human spirit, a survival tale about man against nature, man against bad luck, man against the indifference of other men and perhaps most importantly man against himself. Barley a word of dialogue was spoken but my attention did not waver from the gri...

If you like Light in August I highly recommend The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!. People like to say they're complicated and all that, but if you don't have trouble with Light in August you shouldn't have trouble with his other works either; you just have to concentrate on th...

Watched La Haine again. It was as brilliant as I remembered it. Stark and violent, an ode to hopeless despair and anguish solidified by excellent acting and brilliant camera work. It left me cold and needing a stiff drink. "It's about a society in freefall...' says it all really. Also s...

Top 10 apart from Eva in no particular order:

Texhnolyze
Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Cowboy Bebop
Serial Experiments Lain
Haibane Renmei
Paranoia Agent
FLCL
Angel's Egg
Casshern Sins
Samurai Champloo

Finished a game of Hearts of Iron 3 as Republican Spain on the side of the allies. Did not go well... Germany invaded and I was not ready to say the least. Got driven into the sea in less than half a year. Spent the rest of the war in Western Sahara harassing the few Italian ships that passed by and...

Recently finished Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. It was a beautiful read, wonderfully subtle and infused with a deep sadness. Kawabata managed to capture time and place with vivid yet restrained description and a delightful juxtaposition of contrasting images and action. It is a true masterwork ...

It's the HOI series that I've never been able to get into, due to its nigh impenetrable nature. It's no Dwarf Fortress, but it's still overwhelming, because every single time I try to play a Hearts of Iron game, I think "so, what am I supposed to do now?" and invariably qu...

Just saw Gravity. It was an utter triumph, so beautiful and absorbing. The plot was solid if predictable, the acting convincing, the visuals were breathtaking and each scene was brilliantly constructed and flowed so smoothly with minutes of thrilling action passing without jarring cuts. My film of t...

^Shinji may be free from being a direct pawn in his fathers schemes but not the consequences of those schemes which he, Wille and the rest of the world will feel throughout Final. In addition I imagine he will be either directly or indirectly part of Wille's attempts to thwart Gendo and thus sti...

Well there is one point about the flash-backs where the anime is better than the manga : the heroes' training days in the boot camp : in the manga it was shown as a flash-back after the battle of Trost and served to introduce the personality of most of the characters(Jean, Reiner, Connie, S...

Bastion's voice acting is indeed splendid. The game wouldn't be half what it is without old Rucks. Spec Ops: The Line gets my vote for exceptional voice acting. Nolan North really put on a tremendous performance and the whole cast really sold the Apocalypse Now-esque decent into brutal viole...

Manga is nowhere near that slow but it has major pacing kinks of its own: awful placement of flashbacks in general being the major offence. But yeah, in comparison to anime's sleep inducing lagging in That Fucking Stone arc manga's pacing wad downright Hitchcockian in perfection. Oh god the...

This is always bizarre to me, as I thought those middle eps were very good. The only one I had an issue with was the one where Eren went Titan deliberately for the first time, as I thought that ep could have been condensed to half its running length without issue. Most of the rest was great though ...

Samurai Champloo had a pretty great dub and Haibane Renmei and Texhnolyze weren't half bad. I also quite enjoyed the Darker than Black dub.

OOC, how exactly does it compare to Death Note? Does it begin spectacularly but end in a sludge heap? I can't really see how it is comparable to Death Note. They have nothing in common except maybe a certain grimness and even then Snk's tone of existential despair is very different to Death...

I'm alternating between Europa Universalis 4 and Victoria II at the moment. Its been a while since I really got stuck into a grand strategy game and both are quite excellent. Vic II was not an easy one to learn, took quite a while before I got the hang of it but of the two I'd say it's t...