Long time etchy blog readers know I'm no fan of Mr. 'Double Guantanamo' Mitt Romney...   I'm also a big fan of James Lipton's "Inside the Actor's Studio".... and its parodies.   

Nice to see Lipton parodying himself and zinging Guy Smiley himself:

...he was too nice... :-P

Here's a fun Lipton parody:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BwcCHyidMk

I can't believe its been 8 years since my first and only visit to Osaka Castle!    I found myself having a free day in Osaka so I went back to check it out.   



Osaka Castle's keep is unfortunately just a rebuilt concrete approximation of the original keep, which was burnt down and rebuilt a number of times.  The current version is made from concrete and steel and houses a museum devoted in large part to the castle's original lord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the Shogun who unified Japan in the 16th Century.


There's much more to a good Japanese castle than just the tower,  the best ones have a good system of fortifications... in this case very high walls and both an inner and outer moat.


Unforutnately going during the day, I was treated to an unending stream of noisy school kids from 6 to 16 years old...  kind of diminished my enjoyment of the museum....  stupid kids learning about history! :-P


Nice juxtaposition between old and new Osaka...

As this is a reconstruction and a museum inside, it doesn't have many windows on the way up,  the only view is from the top observation floor -



The tiger dolphin shark thing... the building on the right foreground used to be a military headquarters during the Imperial days (after the tower was burnt down before the end of the War).  Then it was turned into the Osaka City museum until a much newer, fancier building was built a few blocks away. 


Here's the "proof I was actually here" pic.   Less hair than my 2003 visit. :-P





Speaking of non-full heads of hair... a statue to Toyotomi Hideyoshi nearby the inner grounds.


Anyway,  check out Osaka Castle if you happen to be in the area.  Its worth the trouble to see the grounds and the museum... but of course is missing the most important part... seeing what a real castle looks like from the inside. :-P

I saw this one on the plane on my way to Japan a few weeks ago.  Its a crime drama / thriller based on a Japanese novel starring Oizumi Yo and Koyuki.   

Oizumi plays a private detective who is hired over the phone by someone to investigate a murder with Yakuza ties.    The key thing about this movie, and what I think I like most about it is the setting.  It takes place in and around the red light district of Sapporo in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido.   The setting makes it somewhat unique from a generic gangster type story (or one set in the default locations in Tokyo...) and rather than getting pushed into the ocean or dumping you in a shallow grave on some hillside (like they always do in HK movies...),  in Sapporo apparently the gangsters like to bury you under 20 feet of snow.

Photobombing Animals -

Watched 'Battleship' in the theater the other day. I was skeptical how they could turn a board game with no characters or storyline into a feature film...


Surprisingly they manage to graft a simple but sufficient plot over the bare bones of "You sunk my battleship!" -> screw up Lt. Hopper and his rag tag ship mates vs a nefarious invasion force of aliens...


Don't expect much and you'll be entertained by the explosions and CG.  What I liked about this movie is that it didn't really try too hard... Movies like Transformers and even some of the Marvel ones suffer from overly convoluted story lines. Battleship is relatively straightforward.  Sometimes less is more (but don't expect Michael Bay to ever understand that...)

It's straightforward and yet also amazingly brain dead and unbelievable at points.... From the notion that they keep live ammunition on a retired museum ship to the fact that these space aliens apparently can't see anything half the time and when they do, they only shoot at warships that are point their guns at it...

Anyway... an entertaining 6/10.

BE SURE to stay to the end of the credits.  It has to be the longest post-credits scene i've ever seen....