Preserved Raindrops

Last night's tweets;

Coffee's a reward for a hard day's night.
Rabbits hunted by cameras are confused.
Smiling, televised art's an endless fight.
Old video gets loud French horns defused.

I suppose I should be pleased Avatar didn't win Best Picture or Best Director, but I think I honestly put so little stock into the so-called opinion of the Academy that I pretty much don't care either way. I did kind of like Christoph Waltz's speech when he won Best Supporting Actor for his part in Inglourious Basterds. I liked that John Hughes was remembered, but I never liked seeing any of the rows of stiff actors on stage. I mostly felt embarrassed for them, particularly Alley Sheedy for some reason. I was a little frightened by Molly Ringwald's wide, staring eyes. I noticed Kathy Ireland had the same thing going, and I wondered if this was symptomatic of being a woman previously adored for her beauty only to now be all but forgotten, a sort of involuntary, fervent plea for love. And I thought Ben Stiller was really funny.

I'm fascinated to learn through AICN that Keanu Reeves is interested in making a third Bill and Ted movie. It remains the only role in which Reeves was ever appropriately cast, in a long career of anachronistic appearances as action heroes, romantic leads, and Victorian gentlemen.

It was raining yet again yesterday. I took some pictures;







I got some video, too, but YouTube's performing maintenance right now. Annoying.

I watched the third and final episode of the Re: Cutie Honey OVA, in which things started to feel very Evangelion. The serious subject matter the show seemed intent on exploring didn't quite gel with the satirical, playfully sexual quality of the show, but on the other hand, the ideas it explored kind of made sense in the context of a porno. Amidst all the gratuitous female flesh on display, we get a story about a villain without a heart trying to "become one with" Cutie Honey until, fascinatingly, Cutie Honey offers to do just this at which point the villain, Jill-sama, is horrified at the prospect of losing her own identity and chooses death instead. The idea of submerging an identity into the safety of a larger society is contrasted with Honey's heartfelt friendships. There's something there about the loneliness and anonymity of watching porn compared to the reality of other people. Which reminded me a bit of the Angels in Evangelion offering fantasy Misatos, Reis, and Asukas to Shinji as well as, of course, the Human Instrumentality project. The fact that Evangelion explored these ideas so much more effectively is one of the reasons I wasn't as wowed by Re:Cutie Honey, but Re:Cutie Honey does present an interesting and different angle.