You Only Live Twice

TYPE: Action, Mystery

RATING: 7/10

REVIEW:

This one didn’t seem to have the flair that is usually associated with James Bond. Maybe it’s just because of the fact that I’ve watched too many movies and have a feel for gadgets. Either way this one was a gadget-less mission.

Bond seems to be on the verge of breaking down. He keeps irregular timings, he keeps making mistakes meant for a much lower class of me, and there is an aura of forgetfulness around him.

M is then given advice by a psychologist friend to allow Bond to recover slowly by giving him a mission that will bring him back to his senses. It is then that Bond is sent for a diplomatic visit to Tiger Tanaka in Japan who is a high honcho in the secret service. To retrieve something that England needs, Bond finds himself trapped in the necessity to overcome death itself by trying to kill a world-wide crimnal who harbors an Island of Death.

Sue and Will co-chairing Glee? Some say madness, I say genius! While this episode was a lot of set-up and not a lot of singing, it still had some of the best character development and writing the show has given us so far.

Things I Loved:

*Poor Sleepy Finn- I liked a show actually acknowledging how exhausting high school can be. And Finn seems more like an real high school guy than ever- obsessing with Rachel and her boobs, giving up homework but not video games, wanting to take a nap in the nurse’s office– he’s just a great character because he feels totally true to life.

*Sue’s Journal- So many amazing quotes, I don’t even know where to start. Please let this be a regular thing!

*The Competition- While they were both a little too manic to join the ranks of my favorite performances, “It’s My Life/Confessions” and “Halo/Walking on Sunshine” were a blast to watch, and even funnier knowing those kids were running on some Vitamin D-Congestant, courtesy of Terri. Finn and Kevin’s voices get better every time we hear them, and Rachel’s high note at the end was unbelievable.

*Emma and Terry’s showdown- “You don’t have a chance with my husband.” “I just think he deserves better than you.” Mee-ow! I can’t wait to see more from these two, because that one little scene was great.

*Will Finally Breaking Down- It was nice to see some cracks in his veneer- losing his patience with Terry in the break room, and that chilling “Every time I try to light a fire in my life” speech. Will just keeps getting beat down and beat down, and it was nice to see a reaction from him that wasn’t nice and shiny.

*”I don’t even remember performing.”- Finn totally gets the line of the week.

Things I Didn’t Love So Much:

*Emma getting engaged to Tanaka- I’m just not buying this. Better to be alone than engaged to a man in those shorts. And if the marriage isn’t going to change anything, why bother doing it? This was the only scene that read a little false to me.

Great, character-driven episode, and next week’s looks like a hum-dinger! Keep rocking out “Glee” kids- even if the NBC president won’t let you sing in the Macy’s parade.

Muitos anos na “batalha” e com muitos guerreiros, Hederson Tanaka é um deles, viajante desde 2002 esse faz falta por aqui. Muitos da nova geração de certo nem ouviram falar dele mas esse mostrou o skate de Florianópolis para  muitaa gente. Aqui é a parte dele no “guerreiros” do estinto projeto Phortsy do Jaca, o vídeo acabou mas as ótimas lembranças nunca vão se acabar. Este tambem faz muita falta por aqui….

It’s Monday morning and I still feel drowsy from yesterday’s jam. I went to bed at 00:30 AM and the air conditioner went off on 02:00 AM, waking up and rendering me incapable to go to sleep again. So, there goes my 4 hours of sleep deprived and now I’m in class feeling sleepy. Anyway, here’s the wallpaper of the week for the heck of it. I’m going to take a short nap.

Wallpaper High Quality 1280×924

Hot off the heels of yesterday’s landmark — some might say exclusive (but it’s much, much bigger than that) — find, we have gotten our hands on the cards that were intended to be in the 1990 Upper Deck baseball set.

These feature the stars of Major League II — a few guys you have heard of and, based on the box office attendance, some guys you haven’t.

(We won’t mention that the sequel came in 1994 — Major League II documents my squad’s second pennant-winning season, which is firmly 1990.)

– Lou Brown

See the rest of the “missing” 1990 cards after the jump.

“Lou Brown” is the former Major League manager of the Cleveland Indians.

Sometimes a girl just needs the good old-fashioned mayhem that only prehistoric biologicals on a rampage can provide. This is the fourth of Steve Alten’s Meg books and the action is centered in and around the Tanaka Oceanographic Institute and Lagoon where Angel, a captured Megalodon shark, is resident with her pups, the new Dubai Mall Aquarium, and the deep ocean environment where several new yet more ancient playmates reside. Jonas Taylor and his family are again faced with multiple crises on several fronts, their expertise with prehistoric sharks now being exploited by the ambitious and unsavory Saudi Arabian businessman Fiesal bin Rashidi. His only concern is to populate the new aquarium in Dubai with the world’s rarest (though as yet undiscovered) specimens. It is his deepest desire that the Taylors find the specimens for him using the skills and techniques they’ve perfected with Angel and that, even as the Saudi Arabian collection grows, there will be a concomitant decrease in the number of Taylors as a result.

Once again, Jonas Taylor demonstrates his McGyvery mettle and his son, David, now twenty-years-old and an expert in his own right, is tested professionally and personally in ways his father never imagined. From the Monterey coast to Saudi Arabia to beneath the Philippine Sea, there is constant and surprising peril. Alten’s imagination has created another wondrous and violent world filled with nightmare creatures brought to startling life in the complete darkness of the ocean depths by the lights of exploratory craft. The initial excitement of scientific discovery is quickly supplanted by a fight for simple survival, complicated in turn by bin Rashidi’s pursuit of commercial gain regardless of the financial and human cost. The Taylors are caught between several antagonists; they must use all their mental and physical resources if they hope to avoid the wickedly gruesome ends that claim so many others. Thanks, Steve, I needed that.

For more information about Steve Alten and his newest projects, check out his website. Fans of this dynamic author will be interested to read more about his fight with Parkinson’s Disease, and his efforts to facilitate a cure, on Variance Publishing’s ThrillerBlog.

A bit of background on how I came to like Morning Musume:

Ive known of them since about 2001 or a bit earlier. I guess I could never really like them until recently, (i was about 12-3 back then) so it must of been weird to like a group of girl singers who were clearly marketed to guys in their 20’s. That, and I didnt understand their appeal? They werent pretty (although they have all become very pretty now), so I didnt understand the hype around them. Also my proficiency in Japanese was lower and I didnt understand / like the upbeat happy songs. I was really into ballads, and i think Cantonese slow songs. I liked Japanese songs too at the time, but they were mostly anime theme songs.

One of the first songs I heard was The Peace, and although I really found it annoying back then (especially at the end haha, how it stops and comes back on) but its now one of my favourites!! Funny how time changes you. I guess my experiences and the pressure I now feel as an adult, the songs help me relax (instead of slow ballads). So thats how I came to like the songs I guess!

So, the only real member i remember is Aibon, with her “twin” being Tsuji. THen I came to find out about GAM, and thats how I started liking Ayaya (i liked her before, but a lot more because of GAM) and Mikitty. Although I dont really like mikitty now , but my love for Ayaya has just increased exponentially

Finally,  after watching 3,2,1 Breaking out (that song really made me like Morning Musume, especially the later gens) and a lot of Utaban, i finally got hooked onto morning musume ^^”. It made me discover their personalities, understand the amount of members / transitions theyve had, and listen to their songs.

So who do I like?

I like everyone in Morning Musume. But there are still favourites

If i had to choose only 1 member, its without a doubt Nacchi. To me shes everything a girl should be
Just look at her smile!! Shes always smiling and she has that perfect short hair (showing her pretty face, usually long hair is just a cover up ). Shes bright, funny, talented as a singer and dancer!! If I could marry anyone shed probably be it!!

Nacchi!

Other members I like (recently/still and used to) include:

Aibon (she was so cute as a child…now shes ]

Tettekete (if you havent read my other posts, you will know I ABSOLUTELY LOVE HER, shes my new nacchi: she sings well and can pull of this sexy male voice, dances well, is natural with her emotions, had short hair and looked great with it, plus shes 3 years older than me )

Konkon (Konno Asami is the genius who works hard, plus shes so cute and only 2 years older than me. She goes to Keio university now [equivalent of Ivy League in Japan])

Linlin (she has yet to actually sing some lines in a song, but shes got the talent and potential, plus shes so funny)
Tanaka Reina – shes like the pretty queen, Yankii (badass/delinquent) girl type (without actually being a badass). Shes also a good singer (though her voice is a bit whiny). Plus she has this really cute wonky eye condition (that was fixed recently through surgery).

Tanaka

Other notable members i liked: Sayaka (okasan) Ichii, Goto Maki, and Koharu.

Gottsan

As a generation: I dont consider the originals as a generation .
I think the 5th generation spoke out to the most. I really like Konkon and Tettekete, so thats 2/4 I liked. Plus Ogawa has this funny place in my heart and Gaki is…cute/blonde . A flawless generation!! In my life, Ive found that i communicate best to girls who are 1-3 years older than me.

2nd generation was too old (though the age gap has kind of closed down),

3rd generation never got to display their personality (it was only Gottsan, and while shes great…)

4th generation was  like Aibon and Tsuji only to me, Ive never really liked Yossi and Charmy (One was too manly, the other was too feminine and she looked like my friends sister). While I did like Aibon, it was only for her playing pranks and jokes and being funny and adorable (shes grown out of both)

6th gen should be the ones I can relate to most, but Mikitty is older than Gottsan and even Matsuura Aya! Ive never really liked Kamei and Michishige (if Tsunku wants to kick someone out of MM, these 2 should go first ) so that only left Tanaka. Also,Ive never been good at communicating with girls my age or younger…
7th gen: I like Koharu (is she 7th gen?) but only cause shes tal and pretty (compared to the rest in MM )
8th gen: I like Linlin a LOT!! Junjun is ok too and Mitsui Aika is cute..but I havent really discovered her (is she 8th gen).

Ill leave you with a favourite song, from my favourite girls group, with my favourite generation:
Suki na Senpai (the senpai you like, senpai meaning your elder (in a field, eg school, work etc) i think)

Shin Tanaka is a paper toy creator.  He uses curves, bright colors, and elaborate layouts to create some amazing figures.  His work fuses origami with urban art to create a very unique product worth showing off.   A ton more on his website

Shin Tanaka is a paper toy creator.  He uses curves, bright colors, and elaborate layouts to create some amazing figures.  His work fuses origami with urban art to create a very unique product worth showing off.   A ton more on his website

Jeremy MadL 'Mini Nookanooka' $25 Each Pre-Sale

Here are some trippy new vinyl collectible toys. These bad boys are called Mini Nookanooka’s and they are available now. These are designed by some of the heavy hitters in the vinyl toy biz. The above version is by artist Jeremy MadL, the middle one is by artist Shin Tanaka and the bottom one is by artist I Love Dust. These are presently available on presale only and I LOVE THESE!!

Check it out HERE

Shin Tanaka 'Mini Nookanooka' $25 Each Pre-Sale

I Love Dust 'Mini Nookanooka' $25 Each Pre-Sale

This is actually an animated picture from someone’s signature (I forgot whose), and I decided to make an animated Rainmeter skin out of it. Sorry if I don’t make any acknowledgement for this picture, so if you feel that you own this picture, please do so contact me and  I hope you don’t mind about me making this skin. Anyway, here’s the skin.

Skin Name: K-ON Moe Moe Kyun Rainmeter

File Size: 153 KB

Color Theme: Black?

Download: http://www.4shared.com/file/136248065/750dfaa7/K-ONMoe2Kyun.html

Note: A Rainmeter application can be downloaded in my previous post. Don’t forget to extract and move the folder to your Rainmeter skin directory. Happy downloading!

Calling all designer who can give me an inspirational design for the new Rainmeter skin! I’m running out of fresh idea guys for a new Rainmeter skin design. If you could help me by sending your design idea on a JPEG/ PNG picture it will be much appreciated and of course your work will be recognized. Thanks.

Skin Name: K-ON Picture Frame

File Size: 118 KB

Color Theme: White

Download: http://www.4shared.com/file/135884297/4a3868/K-ONPictureFrame.html

Settings: You need to configure k-on_LandscapeFrame.ini before getting the skin to display your pictures.First, change the “ImagePath” variable to the address/ directory which you want the skin to display your picture. Don’t forget to add a backslash (\) at the end of the directory (Example: C:\Pictures\).If you want the application to crawl the subfolders of the current directory, put the “Subfolders” variable value to “1″. Now, to set the length of time on changing between pictures, you need to set “Update” value (in terms of miliseconds).

Note: A Rainmeter application can be downloaded in my previous post. Don’t forget to extract and move the folder to your Rainmeter skin directory. Happy downloading!

I feel the same way every time I watch Major League: Back to the Minors.

What can I say? They put on an amazing show and the European drifters were also top notch…

Got there too early for my health at 9:30am and we grouped outside the gates waiting for other JCI members to arrive.
We then headed in…

We spent the morning in the pit area seeing what we saw Saturday just with numerous people. Saturday was great for this as we basically had the place to our selves..

Bastogi, great car, great drifting…

But this time the girls were out!

At 2:00pm Practice began followed swiftly by Qualifying…

Vlasblom was on fire, sick angle, sick smoke. Definitely one of the best European drifters…

The V8 roar coming out of this Mustang was simply epic, it could be heard for miles and it was incredibly loud even when it was accelerating towards us to initiate as the noise echoed off the signs and parabolica.

After Qualifying and also after the main Final tsuiso battles Team Orange put on a few shows, they had a few kick ass demo runs and a little tsuiso battle between them selves.

Preparing for some quintuple drift:

The tsuiso battles were quality, better than what you expect. The Kumakubo vs. Tanaka battle took 2 One More Times to decide. This is why…

Crazy close switch back:

I don’t know how they fit!

Kumakubo eventually prevailed, here he is proving that he is the Tsuiso King!

The next post will be about the main Final event…

Today was an awesome day. As it was practice day there were hardly any people apart from drivers and mechanics, but the drifting was amazing and they put on a good show for the friends supporting them. I got there at lunch time as they were having a drivers meeting just before the practice session began.

Here’s Team Orange’s pit area:

The drifting course setup was using the Ascari chicane at Monza circuit, with an awesome 160km/h entry, nice left turn into a wide sweeping right, until another switchback leading onto the main back straight.

It didn’t take long until the drivers got used to the course and began laying good runs…

Dutch drifter Paul Vlasblom

Drift Queen

The Sheriff

Tanaka

Kumakubo

Suenaga

A Nomuken ER34 Replica, looked pretty sweet.

The driver is the funniest guy by a mile.

Thumbs Up!

And how we met the stars…

It was an honor to meet these legends in the flesh. Pity I look like a retard in the photo…

And I’ll leave you with this for the first installment of Drift Stars…

James Cagney made a big splash in William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931). It was his first starring role. Some people claim that when Cagney first walked on screen in that picture, it was the beginning of “modern acting.” Whether or not you believe that claim, there’s no denying the impact Cagney had on Hollywood, especially gangster films. The scene in which he shoves a grapefruit half into Mae Clarke’s face is iconic. Late in his life, Cagney claimed that people still sent grapefruits to his table in restaurants, with a wink and a nod. The Public Enemy ushered in a new era of onscreen violence, and an icon was born.

Cagney would go on to play many criminals, gangsters, and con men, in films like Smart Money (1931), Blonde Crazy (1931), Hard to Handle (1933), Picture Snatcher (1933), The Mayor of Hell (1933), Lady Killer (1933), He Was Her Man (1934), Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), Each Dawn I Die (1939), and The Roaring Twenties (1939). He was so good in these roles that when a lot of people hear the name “Jimmy Cagney,” they can only think of a sneering mug with a gat clenched in his fist and a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. But Cagney was a versatile actor. He also played cops, G-men, servicemen, and comedic roles, as well as singing and dancing in musicals. In fact, the only Academy Award he ever won was for his role in Michael Curtiz’s Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), a drama and musical that told the life of George M. Cohan.

I think Cagney is a great actor with a unique style and personality. Anything he appears in is worth watching. Blood on the Sun was directed by Frank Lloyd, a Hollywood veteran who’d been making pictures since the silent era. It’s a wartime potboiler with a dubious MacGuffin; the Tanaka Memorial, an alleged strategic document from 1927 in which Prime Minister Baron Tanaka Giichi created for Emperor Showa a strategy to take over the world. It is believed by many historians to have been a forgery. In the ’30s and ’40s, however, the document was widely accepted as true. It was mentioned in Frank Capra’s agitprop documentary series, Why We Fight, and translations were published in Chinese and American periodicals. Of course, one reason why it was widely regarded to be an actual document is because Japan’s actions so closely mirrored the strategy that the Tanaka Memorial outlined; the conquest of Manchuria and Mongolia, followed by the invasion of China, the establishment of bases in the Pacific, and the eventual conquest of the United States. So although General MacArthur’s armies were unable to uncover any original Japanese-language versions of the Tanaka plan after World War II, perhaps its authenticity is beside the point.

In Blood on the Sun, which takes place in Tokyo in the late ’20s, Cagney plays an American reporter named Nick Condon. Condon writes for the Tokyo Chronicler, which is essentially a mouthpiece for the Japanese government, and is aimed at the Western business community. When Condon writes and publishes an article about a secret plan that outlines Japan’s plans for world domination, his editor tells him to print a retraction. He refuses, and the Japanese secret police plant a false story in the newspaper designed to discredit Condon. When Condon still refuses to back down, the Japanese secret police raise the stakes by murdering two of Condon’s friends, whom they believe are smuggling a copy of the Tanaka plan out of the country. Eventually, the film becomes a cat-and-mouse espionage thriller, with Condon on the run with a “half-breed” named Iris Hilliard, played by Sylvia Sidney, who is originally sent by the secret police to ingratiate herself to Condon and find out if he has a copy of the Tanaka plan. (Since Sidney is a white actress in yellowface makeup, I wasn’t clear for awhile which two races she was supposed to be descended from. One is Chinese, but I could have sworn that at one point, another character described her as being half Japanese/half Chinese. Her surname, however, implies that her father was British or American. So I must have misheard the line of dialogue.) Besides the questionable historical accuracy of Blood on the Sun, the white actors playing Japanese roles will probably be the hardest thing for modern audiences to swallow. John Emery, who plays Tanaka, and Robert Armstrong, who plays Col. Hideki Tojo, are not the worst examples of yellowface I’ve ever seen, but with their indeterminate, lisping accents, they’re still pretty bad. Blood on the Sun isn’t a particularly racist film, however, especially when one considers the context in which it was made. All of its villains are representatives of the Japanese government, which committed horrifying atrocities during World War II, and with whom the United States was still at war when this film was made. Several of the actors in smaller roles are actually Asians (although it’s unlikely that too many, if any, are actually Japanese).

The main reasons to see this film today, aside from historical curiosity, are the performance of Cagney and the well-choreographed fight scenes. Blood on the Sun won a single Oscar at the 18th Academy Awards in 1946, for best art direction in a black and white film, but it should have won for “most awesome martial arts battle in an American film.” Sadly, such a category did not exist. How could it? Martial arts were new to Hollywood. Some people cite John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962) as having the first real martial arts fight scene in an American film, which is clearly not the case. Frank Sinatra and Henry Silva’s karate chops were fine, but they pale in comparison to the brutal judo smackdown that crowns Blood on the Sun. Cagney studied judo for this film, and liked it so much he kept it up for most of his life. How could he not? A born-and-bred brawler, Cagney clearly took to martial arts like a fish to water. The combination of judo throws and boxing as he fights the leader of the secret police, Capt. Oshima, played by Jack Sergel (who acted under the stage name “John Halloran”), is fairly basic by today’s standards, but it’s still impressive. Cagney and Sergel go to the ground several times, and the chokeholds and arm bars look as if they hurt. So do the throat punches. Sergel was actually my favorite actor in the film after Cagney. He’s tall, menacing, and has a shaved head and black mustache. He doesn’t look particularly Japanese, but he’s more convincing as an Asian than any of the other white actors in the film. Sergel was a former LAPD officer who had been investigated by the FBI because of his involvement with the sport of judo, including his participation in at least one judo tournament that was held in a Japanese internment camp. Even though he was a Los Angeles police sergeant and loyal American citizen, his admiration for Japanese culture and sport was seen as suspicious by federal and local authorities, and he ended up resigning from the LAPD in 1944. Cagney spends a lot of his time in this film punching, kicking, and throwing the bad guys who come after him, but his fight with Sergel is the high point. Cagney was a small man, and Sergel towers over him, but Cagney’s sheer physicality makes you believe they’re evenly matched.

After the success of releasing the first batc of K-ON wallpaper pack, I decided to make another since I’ve downloaded quite a few since the last month. So here you go, my special selection of K-ON wallpapers. Hope you’ll like it.

It probably won’t come as a big surprise to anyone, but it appears you won’t be playing Final Fantasy XIV Online for free.

When the game was first unveiled at E3 earlier this year, there was some speculation as to the style and intent; was it only playable online (i.e., an MMORPG) and if it did qualify as a MMO, would we have to pay the now-standard monthly fee? Well, we’ve known for a while now that FFXIV is categorized as a MMORPG, and according to producer Hiromichi Tanaka, there will indeed be a subscription fee. “It’s going to be a 30 days-based subscription,” Tanaka told VG247 at GamesCom last week. Now, most of you know the game will likely end up on Xbox Live at some point, but SCEA president Jack Tretton has confirmed FFXIV will at least be a timed exclusive for the PS3. Tanaka added that “talks with Microsoft are held up for the game because of the policy of Xbox Live.” So the update is fairly straightforward: we’ll have to pay our monthly fees as we do with all MMOs, and although Xbox 360 owners will see it at some point, PS3 owners will be the first to get a crack at it.

We’ll let you know if they can nail down a release date; it might happen at the Tokyo Game Show. As is, it’s expected to launch some time next year…possibly close to Final Fantasy XIII in North America.

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