Having recently put a rental copy of Appleseed through the paces, I’ve come away pleasantly surprised by this visually impressive sci-fi film. The feature that sets Appleseed apart is its extensive use of cel-shaded animation. The movie boasts numerous mecha designs that benefit greatly from the effect. The cel-shaded look also works reasonably well with the simple, stylized facial features famous to anime, lending depth while adding some odd shadowing.
The use of cel-shading in Appleseed seems to be limited to the characters and interactive objects like Deunan’s gun. Some of the lighter static backgrounds, like the tree-lined avenues that we see as Hitomi drives Deunan through Olympus, don’t benefit and look positively dated by comparison. Thankfully, the film has an abundance of night-time cityscapes that look great against the cel-shaded characters.
Beyond appearances, Appleseed proved to be far more engaging than I had anticipated. There are some bland fight scenes early on, but the story does eventually kick in and I found enough well-executed twists to keep me interested right up to the end.
I had an opportunity while on holiday in Auburn to see the latest Harry Potter film: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. First, let me start by saying that I think all of the H.P. films have done a pretty good job of adapting the books to feature-length films. The Sorcerer’s Stone and The Chamber of Secrets were particularly faithful, but I also felt like these were the easiest books to adapt because they are the simplest. With The Prisoner of Azkaban, I felt like Rowling started to imbue the books with a wealth of subplots and character development that was largely lost upon transition to film. For example, the book establishes a complex relationship and history between James Potter, Sirius Black, Lupin, Wormtail, and Severus Snape. In the movie, their ties are vastly simplified and, unfortunately, depersonalized.
The Goblet of Fire seems even more ungainly in motion picture form. My biggest gripe is that the film feels rushed; and I don’t mean in production values. The pacing feels off, particularly through the beginning of the movie. The viewer is sped through scenes leading up to and following the Quidditch World Cup and the beginning of the new year at Hogwarts. My other complaint follows from the Prisoner of Azkaban examples (i.e., what was left out). There are some important plot threads like the Ministry of Magic cover-up and Dumbledore’s subsequent call to arms that are only lightly touched. Some less significant subplots like the house elves and Hermione’s S.P.E.W. are removed entirely.
Still, I understand and accept that only a certain amount of material can be fit into a 2.5 hour movie. I consider the material that did make it into The Goblet of Fire pretty essential, so I think that the production crew succeeded in making another faithfully adapted Harry Potter film given their constraints.
I spent my Thanksgiving in proper form with family in Auburn. Between eating homecooked meals, watching movies, playing video games, and learning the ropes of an eBay business, it was a most enjoyable holiday. A Georgia Tech win on Saturday would have been nice to see, too, but it didn’t work out.
I was curious to see how Vance would have changed, if at all, since he started college. Aside from some new facial hair, my “little” cousin hasn’t changed much. Aunt Kathy’s eBay business seems to be in full swing. She had at least five or six different auctions going while I was there and I helped post a few more. She seems to take it pretty seriously.
Now with the Thanksgiving holiday barely behind me, I’m preparing for a business trip to Toulouse, France. There, I will be receiving training for an upcoming project. I believe it involves a modular software package for PC health monitoring.
You’re looking at the new ACP Studios blog. This is the fourth major rendition of my online Web-log, and it has slowly evolved from a very minimal static page to a full-blown content management system. The site is now powered entirely by WordPress, extended with a selection of plugins, and presented using my own WordPress theme, which I may release at a later date.
You’ll likely notice some cosmetic changes, but I would also like to draw your attention to some significant changes behind the scenes.
Image Gallery The site now has an image gallery powered by Gallery2. Photographs and other large images linked from blog posts will be stored in the Gallery, which can be located from the top navigation menu. You can click on an image within a blog post to go straight to a larger view with image details or you can manually browse through the Gallery from the front page.
Desktops Moved The dedicated Desktops section has been removed. The invididual entries have been converted to normal blog posts and moved to the Screenshots category.
New Permalink Structure The permalink structure has changed for blog posts. Please update any external links appropriately. The new structure is %year%/ %month%/ %day%/ %postname%/. I have created legacy redirection rules to aid the transition, but they will not be able to catch everything.
New RSS Options The location of the RSS feed has also changed. WordPress conveniently generates feeds for different content in a variety of formats. You’ll find the new RSS 2.0 feed here and linked from the footer of each page. You can also subscribe to feeds that track comments for individual posts or for the site in the general.
That’s all I can think of for now. I’ll get back to adding regular content shortly.
