Alien vs Ninja

Exhausted after work, beer in hand, browsing Netflix for something crap to watch, I found this. Wasn't expecting much -- was pretty sure Joe had actually given it a negative review here a few months back -- but man did it ever entertain.
Particularly the Japanese Sean Bean.

Not a good movie -- all scenes with talking are so bad they're funny again, and the dub actors not being able to decide if the lead chin beard is Yamada or Yamata just adds to the 'fun' -- but the action scenes are all pretty fucking great. Very much hits that sweet spot of stunt actors in the woods with props made of tinfoil making the movie they always fucking wanted to be working on. As much as I'm looking forward to it I doubt Sucker Punch will contain anything as gleefully over the top as the bit where the token girl ninja fist fights the alien with tin foil gauntlets.

Kabukimonogatari

Mayoi Kyonshi.
So, Hachikuji Mayoi on the cover.
Um.
One would expect she might be in it, right?
NOPE.
I was honestly wondering if they'd swapped manuscripts with Shinobu Time somehow. After all, 99% of this book is Araragi and Shinobu fucking around with time travel.
For the glorious reason that he has not done his summer homework, Araragi and Shinobu travel back in time.
And try to stop Mayoi's death.
And return to the present to discover the world has been destroyed by a zombie apocalypse.
It was about this point that I realized I have absolutely no fucking clue where the book was going, and began to enjoy it quite a bit. He pulls a genuinely great ending out of his ass, too. I won't say the first half wasn't meandering and pedoriffic, but if he could just focus a little, I'm pretty sure Nisio could still write some genuinely great books.

An amazing turnaround, but still too little too late

So I was watching Alien vs Ninja, and not even planning to post about it since it was so
mediocre, and then all of a sudden this happened.


So yeah, unless you've already gone through all the Nishimura and Iguchi you can I wouldn't recommend seeking this out, but if you do, definitely just skip ahead to about the 56-minute mark. I am interested in seeing if Seiji Chiba can make a flick that's ninety minutes of buried-the-needle stupid/awesome instead of 30, though.

Actually, the very best thing on this disc was seeing a trailer for Mutant Girls Squad, so hurray for a hopefully speedy release.

Nominated for the 2011 Gendou Ikari Memorial Excellence In Parenting Award