mbf tod@y

In merito a Bokurano...

"È giunta al terzo capitolo l'avvincente saga di Kitoh Mohiro, Il nostro gioco (Bokurano), edita in italiano dalle inimitabili Kappa Edizioni. A metà tra Il gioco di Ender e Gundam, Il nostro gioco racconta le vicende di un gruppo di quindici ragazzi e ragazze che si trovano a difendere il pianeta Terra da un'invasione aliena con l'ausilio di potentissimi mecha robot." (leggi)

...Riceviamo e volentieri pubblichiamo:

"Ciao! 

Dovresti aggiungere questo:

L'edizione italiana e' della kappa edizioni, ma fa veramente cagare, parlando della qualita' pietosa della stampa. Sopratutto si nota la differenza abissale fra i primi 2 volumi e il terzo. I primi 2 infatti sono stampati non da master, ma da scansione al pc, e si nota perfettamente l'effetto moire del pasaggio digitale da scanner alla stampante al laser, una roba da ricovero immediato, che per quel prezzo non vale assolutamente! E' una vergogna e una presa per i fondelli ai lettori. Questo andrebbe detto, anche perche' chiunque con un po' di cultura in anime e manga che legge anche gli originali se ne accorgerebbe...

E correggere questo:

"Nel terzo capitolo, appena pubblicato, scopriamo che il gioco è effettivamente letale: perdere la partita finisce significa perdere la propria vita. Quindici round, quindici battaglie, quindici capitoli. Metafora del beta testing come pratica estenuante, Il nostro gioco esamina la natura iper-competitiva del videogame e l'agonismo nichilista della guerra. Da non perdere."

Perdere la partita significa condannare la terra alla distruzione totale, mentre vincere la partita significa salvare la terra ma perdere la vita, in ogni caso il partecipante di turno crepa qualsiasi sia l'esisto, non c'e' salvezza e speranza, almeno fin dove abbiamo letto...

Sono in attesa del 4 ma come al solito la Starcomics, (son sempre loro), preferiscono far uscire sozzeria come tonnellate di shoujo che manga seri come questo, in giappone son gia' 6 i volumi usciti, qua ne usciranno 2 all'anno ad andar bene, e con tutta la pietosa qualita' di adattamento di sempre.

Ci tenevo solo a dirti l'amara verita'... " (MyoMyoChan)

Big Jim says "Forget 3D HDTV"

"Matteo,

     We have a large electronics store close to our neighborhood.  It is the neighborhood in which I have lived each episode in San Antonio since first coming here in 1970.  This store is owned by Bjorn and is called Bjorn's.   Bjorn is from Norway.  Someone asked him what brought him to San Antonio.  He said, "One large airplane and two little ones."  His store is very expen$ive.  I don't go there.  I have not bought anything there.  The description that I give is that you can't be admitted without an Unlimited American Express Credit Card.   It is the place where you buy your entire home theater for installation as your new house is being built.   I sometimes stop at his parking lot to look at the cars of the customers.  It can be a car show.

      I drove there Friday morning.  There was a very large black Kenworth tractor with a large housing unit on the back of the tractor.  The trailer was very large.  All the truck was polished black.  There were two slide out units that expanded the volume of the trailer.  They expanded on each side. There were nice metal steps similar to air stairs of the airlines.  There were at least three sets of stairs.  I entered from the back of the trailer.  There were about eleven customers and about seven salesmen who wore Mitsubishi emblems.  They were very well dressed and young.   The interior walls of the trailer were covered with larger thin flat panel televisions.   The focus of the display was a large DLP television.  The screen was probably fifty inches in diagonal dimension.   There was a small array of theater type seats.  Each seat had polarizing eyeglasses.   I selected a seat and put on the glasses.  The visual 3-D presentation was hard for me to view so I placed the glasses over my usual spectacles.   My viewing of the display was improved.   The presentation as a series of different types of videos that ran over and over as a continuous loop.  The total presentation was probably about eleven minutes.  I did not time it.  By chance, I started close to the beginning of the loop.  There were lots of signs and block images describing the DLP 3-D of Mitsubishi.  These signs and block images moved all about and migrated forward and backward.  Many of the images came to about ten inches from my nose.   There were several cartoon-like segments that recalled Pixar Films, e.g., "A Bug's Life".  One of the segments was extracted from "A Bug's Life".   The photographic images included surfing on moderate waves and a professional football game.  The surfing segment had a pretty girl riding a surfboard atop a large wave.  The surfboard moved quickly out of the screen and passed at an angle passing my right shoulder and going away.   The quality of these three-dimensional images were not nearly as pleasing as the cartoon images.  The edges and action were not as "clean" or sharp as the drawn images.  The final element of the demonstration was a professional football game.  The camera was around the 15 to 25 yard line.  The camera zoomed toward the players and back for the high ball travels.   The images of the football game were terrible.  The football game images were so poor that I wondered if they were not truly filmed in three-dimensions and that the three dimensional segment of the demonstration were to have been constructed in a laboratory using computers to manufacture 3-D images from a two-dimensional subject.

      I thought about my experience for a couple days and wondered how I would construct a narrative.  My current view is that the whole thing is a bust.  I would never want one of these things even if it were to be free.  I am subject to air sickness, car sickness and sea sickness.   My experience was that of eye strain and beginning nausea.  I did not feel well for a couple hours after my viewing.  I think that my limit for viewing these films would be a half hour or less.  The professional football segment was Barf-O-Genic.   I am not a man of few words but here is my message.  Forget 3D-HD TV." ("Big" Jim Graham, from Texas)

All I can say is: Get down tonite, get down tonite.

Background info.

Picture of the day

Wang Dajun, "Image of Children No. 19"

(via the indispensable We Make Money Not Art)

The New Wave of Minimal Techno

Berlin has been the spiritual home of dynamic, forward-thinking dance music for much of the past decade, house and techno in particular; it is a hub where artistic talents converge and nascent genres emerge to spread across Europe. The combination of a famously liberal attitude towards partying and a startlingly low cost of living has made the city a magnet for art scenes of all descriptions, a hedonistic centre of creativity where clubs open on a Friday night and often don't close until well into the following week, and where three-day parties are par for the course. It is home to some of Europe's most famous clubs (Watergate; the dungeon-like, labyrinthine Tresor; Berghain, a gothic building which looms up from an industrial landscape) and achingly hip dance labels (Get Physical, Bpitch Control, Cadenza)." (Alex Macpherson, The Guardian)

Read more (via Haddock)

The cult of RBI Baseball

"Yet the guys, all in their early 20s except for LeDonne, 33, didn't care. As the 2007 Major League Baseball playoffs get ready to begin, the quartet is part of an underground cult following focused on a video game first released in 1988. RBI Baseball is the game that wouldn't die, an obsolete video (Nintendo) and arcade (Atari) game from the late '80s and early '90s that has spawned national tournaments and numerous Web sites. And the ringleaders, in their 20s and 30s, are largely based in Chicago. The popularity of RBI is even being noticed in academic circles." (Patrick Kampert, Chicago Tribune)

Chicago Tribune's Patrick Kampert writes about the cult of RBI Baseball. I'm attaching a copy of the article in PDF format for shamelessly promotional reasons ;-) Download rbi_baseball.pdf

Read the article (requires free registration)

Milan like New York

"AMONG the many reasons to suspect that Europeans are more gifted than Americans at enjoying urban life is this: they eat outdoors because it’s pretty. We eat outdoors even though it’s not. By we I mean New Yorkers, and I specifically mean the New Yorkers who, from the first rumor of spring to the dying gasps of an Indian summer, insist on restaurants with sidewalk cafes, apparently believing that nothing sauces roasted chicken like the exhaust from an M104 bus and there’s no music more relaxing than the eek-eek-eek of a delivery truck in reverse. On the narrow and sometimes cobbled byways of Paris, Rome or Barcelona, a sidewalk cafe most likely has a view, a mood, a purpose beyond fresh air. (To be fair, it isn’t so fresh there, either.)" (Frank Bruni, The New York Times)

Funny, for a moment I thought Frank Bruni was talking about Milan.

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Innovate or vanish!

"Indeed, the success of Apple, Intel, Google and scores of other technology companies has as much or more to do with their process innovations as the products that inspire loyalty among fans and admiration from foes. First, a definitional detour. Processes are the stuff in the proverbial “black box,” the alchemy unseen by consumers or the inelegantly termed “end users” who buy computers, cellphones, cameras and all manner of digital devices and services. Snazzy products are the stuff of legends, romanticized by “early adopters” and skewered by neo-Luddites. Yet while these products bring glory to companies, novel processes are often more important in keeping the cash registers ringing." (Pascal Zachary, The New York Times)

Stanford University's professor Pascal Zachary writes about the role of technological innovation.

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Gum Thief, a review

"[Douglas Coupland] seems as determined to goad as he is to entertain, and is so accomplished at both that one tends to find oneself in a state of weirdly mingled enjoyment and dislike at almost every juncture of his work. There's an undoubted virtuosity, much of it in the service of sparkling reports from the dreckiest, highest-tech edge of contemporary materiality - video games, style products, mall design, merchandise packaging - all of which he writes about with the relish of a true connoisseur. But inextricable from this is a certain airlessness, brought on by precisely that remorseless focus on all the most up-to-the-second junk of modern life; an unwillingness to acknowledge any aspect of existence that can't be pinned down by a brand name or a slick piece of trend-watcher's shorthand" (James Lasdun, The Guardian)

Yep, he's talking about The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland.

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The American short story is alive and well, says Stephen King

"The American short story is alive and well. Do you like the sound of that? Me too. I only wish it were actually true. The art form is still alive — that I can testify to. As editor of “The Best American Short Stories 2007,” I read hundreds of them, and a great many were good stories. Some were very good. And some seemed to touch greatness. But “well”? That’s a different story." (Stephen King, The New York Times)

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David Lynch @ Triennale

DAVID LYNCH
The Air is on Fire
9 ottobre 2007 - 13 gennaio 2008
Triennale Viale Alemagna, Milano, Italy

La mostra, ideata e realizzata per iniziativa della Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain di Parigi, è dedicata ai molteplici aspetti dell’arte di David Lynch. The Air is on Fire prende vita dallo studio di David Lynch, affollato di dipinti, da armadi pieni di faldoni d'archivio neri e da interi scaffali di cartelle etichettate, contenenti innumerevoli disegni. Questa autocollezione, conservata in modo eccelente, risale agli anni del liceo e non era mai stata esposta in Italia prima d’ora.

Ingresso: euro 8.00 / 6.00 / 5.00

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