In some ways this series is much easier to talk about, unlike Tezuka with his chameleon nature to shift the tone of a story on the drop of a hat. Hayao Miyazaki is a guy who very much tells excellent variations on a similar theme, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is no exception. Not to mention the films of Studio Ghibli, especially the ones with Miyazaki’s direct hand involved, are at a level where I think most people have a grasp on the kind of stories he does.
Where to begin writing this was a bit of a challenge due to all that’s contained within the work in question.
Originally serialized from 1976-78, I re-read MW to compare its dealing with the sexuality of the main characters in their very explicit homosexual relationship to the way those character choices have become headline news from both Marvel & DC. The problem with this approach became immediately apparent, because while the relationship is a large part of the book and the characters in it, it isn’t emphasized over any other detail about them; it isn’t the headline of the story but rather just a facet in its construction.
There is a lot of discussion currently with people whom I read and talk to about where interest came from specifically about that movie that got you hooked and changed how you view film. I kept thinking about this and the film that it always came back to was AKIRA which is odd because it was a cinema experience nor was it when I was that young but that is a story into itself.
Prometheus is a film that I did not intend to love as much as I did. I went into it hyped and expected to enjoy it but when the lights came up and I was shaking a bit and had that post movie euphoria that only the very best cinematic experiences produce.
I have had this thought in my head since I first saw Avatar in the theater in 2009. So I watched the film and I realized that what I thought was there wasn’t just in small bits it was completely there. James Cameron took DUNE and flipped it completely on its head to create AVATAR. He created BizarroDune and everyone came to watch.
Chistopher Nolan has left the small movie seemingly in his wake in his rise to meteoric heights. He doesn’t use his Batman to fund small dramas, he uses Batman to go even bigger with things like Inception and personally I am all for it. His movies while getting bigger and bigger don’t lose their meanings, themes and what they say about Nolan himself. In most cases I would say his Blockbusters are an even better window into the man behind the camera and I will show you why.
Up until about maybe 8 months ago I pirated nearly every single issue of comics I read.
Since the beginning of the year I have been seeing a lot of people posting and talking about piracy as it relates to comics but I feel that none of the posts I read had any real bearing because they were for lack of a better term older people and hadn’t grown up in the culture of the internet and piracy, so I feel this post will act as both my personal history with comics as well as how I went from pirating nearly everything to buying what mattered to me.
 | plok on Pledge, Turn, Prestige |
| plok on Pledge, Turn, Prestige |
 | James B (@altrot) on Akira: Memory Explosion |
