Happy Halloween!

Wishing you all a safe and fun All Hallow's Eve.

Movie Review: Attack on Titan Parts 1 & 2

Directed by: Shinji Higuchi, 2015

IMDb listing

Pros: excellent special effects, horrifically creepy titans, some interesting characters, learn origin of titans, thought provoking 

Cons: unnecessarily excessive shaky cam, LOTS of blood and gore, some caricature characters, ending has a confusion of action

It’s been a hundred years since the three circles of walls were built to keep the man eating titans out.  Some inhabitants are starting to question the necessity of the walls and even in the titans are real.  Suddenly the titans breach the wall and the horrifying reality of the titans is revealed.

I went into the film knowing nothing more than what the trailers said about it.  I haven’t read the manga or watched the anime.  So this review will only reference the film and won’t contain any comparisons between the stories across media (except to say that the people in costume in the row in front of us mentioned that the character Levi isn’t in the film).

There is a lot of blood in this film.  Now, that’s not surprising given the premise of man eating monsters, but there was a LOT of blood, and dismembered body parts, and people being crushed (sometimes with ridiculous ease and a giant explosion of blood).  The first half of the first film is especially horrific, as the titans wade through a town, killing indiscriminately.  The rest of the film, while still bloody, isn’t quite so bad.  

There’s also a lot of shaky cam.  While a few scenes benefitted from the effect - like the introduction
of the titans when the ground starts to shake - it’s often entirely unnecessary - like during the animated historical briefing title sequence.  As with the blood, it’s especially noticeable in the first part, though that could be because I was used to it by the time the second part started.

The special effects were, on the whole, amazing.  The design for the titans was awesome, though the first titan you see (the one on the poster above) isn’t representative of what titans look like en mass.  That titan looks like muscle on a skeleton with smoke coming out of the joints, while regular titans are gigantic humans with extra long mouths and offset features, like eyes too far apart.  They’re creepy and - at times - hilarious in a horrible kind of way, though some also look kind of goofy.  The end result is very creepy, especially as they’re tearing people apart and/or eating them whole.

You’re slowly introduced to three characters who play important roles in the fill, Eren (Haruma Miura), Mikasa (Kiko Mizuhara) and Armin (Kanata Hongo, who was also in the live action Gantz movie).  You’re given more information about them and their motivations than you are for the characters you meet in a more rushed way later.  In fact, later in the film you meet so many new characters it’s a challenge keeping them all straight and I didn’t remember more than one or two of their names afterwards.  

A few of the characters are basically caricatures and are clearly carried over from the manga.   Hange, a woman obsessed with titans and weapons is the best example of this.  She’s played mostly for comedic effect, but her actions seem starkly out of place given the grave nature of what’s happening in the film.

The teenage girls in the row behind us found one scene late in the first part that made them titter and laugh.  It’s a short scene and not graphic.

While I thought the ‘flying’ weapon get up was cool - and looked amazing when really skilled people, like Captain Shikishima used it - but recognized that it wouldn’t actually work in real life.  It propels you too quickly, there isn’t always something to hook into, and on the whole would be impossible to learn how to use effectively without killing yourself in the process (or the first time you tried to use it in battle).  But it does look cool on screen. 

I was really happy that part 2 of the film explains the origins of the titans.  And while the film didn’t answer every question, it did answer the major ones.  My husband found the ending a bit overdone in terms of the variety of action and character inclusion, though it was quite exciting to watch. 

The film does raise some questions about how people use fear to control others, whether rebellions are good or worse than the regimes they’re trying to replace, the nature of humanity, the uses of science, the desire for freedom, etc.  I love it when I spend the next day trying to parse what I’ve seen.

It’s not a film I feel I need to own, but it was an interesting story and I’m glad I saw it.

Shout-Out: A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe

It is perhaps a hundred years in the future, our civilization is gone, and another is in place in North America, but it retains many familiar things and structures. Although the population is now small, there is advanced technology, there are robots, and there are clones.

E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person. He is a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library, and his personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human.

A wealthy patron, Colette Coldbrook, takes him from the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was in the possession of her murdered father, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth. It is lost, and Colette is afraid of the police. She borrows Smithe to help her find the book and to find out what the secret is. And then the plot gets complicated.

Video: Back to the Source - Historical European Martian Arts

This is a documentary on HEMA, Historical European Martial Arts.  It's a long video, but it's split into 9 chapters, so if you don't have time for the whole thing, you can skip to the parts that interest you.



From their youtube page:

A look into the world of Historical European Martial Arts, where a community revives centuries old martial arts based on the research and study of period source material.

Introduction: (3 mins 18 sec) @ 0:00:01
Chapter 1: What is HEMA? (11 mins 52 secs) @ 0:03:20
Chapter 2: How Does it Work? (9 mins 54 secs) @ 0:15:12
Chapter 3: Research (6 mins 48 secs) @ 0:25:04
Chapter 4: The Validity of HEMA (11 mins 4 secs) @ 0:31:52
Chapter 5: HEMA Today (12 mins 26 secs) @ 0:42:56
Chapter 6: Equipment (9 mins 2 secs) @ 0:55:22
Chapter 7: HEMA Identity (7 mins 24 secs) @ 1:04:24
Chapter 8: Competitions in HEMA (10 mins 32 secs) @ 1:11:48
Chapter 9: The Community (5 mins 38 secs) @ 1:22:20
Closing Credits: (1 min 14 secs) @1:27:58

I learned several interesting things from watching this, one of which is that there's more than one way to correctly hold the hilt of a sword, including a kind of backwards, hands intertwined grip.

I also remember hearing criticism of a fantasy cover a few years back which showed a knight holding the hilt of his sword with one hand and the blade with the other.  Well, apparently that was a form of fighting employed against knights in armour - a means of turning their longsword into a halberd or other tool that was more effective than a sword at getting into the cracks in armour.  I couldn't find the cover, but I did find this article on longsword fighting with the following fencing manuscript photo (as well as several others).

If you want to do some research into manuscripts and European sword fighting, the video mentions Wiktenaur.com, which is a free library of books and manuscripts.

Book Review: Against A Brightening Sky by Jaime Lee Moyer

Pros: interesting murder mystery, wonderful relationships

Cons: 

The year is 1919 and a riot and explosions rock San Francisco’s St Patrick’s Day parade, the perpetrators targeting a young woman in the crowd.  Captain Gabe Ryon tries to figure out the connection between the attack and the growing number of murdered Russian immigrants.  Meanwhile his wife, Delia, is haunted by the ghost of a European princess.

The novel is split between Gabe and Delia’s efforts to understand what’s happening and stop the murders.  It’s great seeing how the investigation covers both procedural and spiritualist methods.  The mystery is intense, with a lot of twists.

It’s a real joy seeing a book that has several loving couples and deep friendships.  While you can read this book independently of the previous two in the series (Delia’s Shadow and A Barricade in Hell), you’ve definitely got a deeper sense of the relationships and how the characters have come to trust and rely on each other if you’ve read the other books.  

Perhaps that’s why the books, though dealing with disturbing subject matter, leave one with a feeling of positivity.  There’s a good amount of death and darkness, but the stories read more like cosy mysteries than hardboiled detective fiction.

It’s a fast paced book that makes good use of an interesting time and setting.  This is a series I highly recommend.

Mystery Box: Supply Pod Update - 10% Off Coupon Code!

Update: The fine people at Outer Places have given me a coupon code for 10% off  the Supply Pod mystery box to share with my readers, FANLETTER10.  The last day to order this box is Thursday October 29th, so if you're interested, you've got to decide soon.  Orders ship on the 31st.

Miss my previous post on this mystery box and don't know what I'm talking about?  It's a box similar to Loot Crate but 'where science meets science fiction'.  The contents are secret, but this box is themed around the film The Martian, and so may include "survival gear, astronaut essentials, engaging collectibles and much more".  Right now the box is only available in the US and comes in two options. The Essential Pod costs $29.99 + 7.99 shipping and handling.

The Deluxe Pod  is an extra $10 and comes with a copy of the novel, The Martian (with 50 people getting autographed copies).

Alas, I can't get the box, being Canadian, but I'm hoping someone does an unboxing video so I can see what cool things are in it.

Shout-Out: Robot Universe, Legendary Automatons and Androids From the Ancient World to the Distant Future by Ana Matronic

Explore the Robot Universe, and discover the hundred most epic androids and automatons from myth, through popular culture, to modern-day machines. Robot aficionado Ana Matronic—vocalist with world-famous band Scissor Sisters—explores their creation, design, purpose, and how they have comforted, fascinated, or terrified us across the ages and galaxies, profiling key sidekicks, servants, saviors, murder machines, cyborgs, and others in every genre. In-depth features cover special focus topics, such as robots in art and fashion, video games and comics, and music. This richly illustrated collection deftly shows how we have defined and redefined robots, why they capture our imagination, and why they’re here to stay, ending with a look at real-life robots from early prototypes to what lies in our robotic future.

Out November 10th.