So, if you live in Japan you can now download a free game that is like digital slots, but instead of fruit the pictures are mug shots of wanted criminals.

BBC Article

The Japanese police are a little iffy on the idea, but players seems to like it.

Mr Saito said the only criticism from users so far was that some had been “scared by the fierce look of the murder suspects”.

The only thing is, if you line up the killers you don’t win any real prizes. I think if you get three of a certain criminal you should get the option to go all vigilante on them, Punisher-style, without any threat of recrimination from the real cops. I bet those guys on the wanted list would be found like THAT.

Huh, and you thought Halloween was over. Halloween is NEVER over for me, because I am a FREAK and I love Halloween.

Unfortunately, for all my Hallo-freakness, I can’t carve a damn pumpkin to save my life. # 1, I am no longer allowed to handle knives (not for any sinister reasons; I have mulptiple scars on my hands and my husband decided enough of that) and # 2, I can’t draw for shit either. So between me and the husband we are lucky if we can make the traditional three triangles and snaggle-teeth.

These people, however…THESE PEOPLE have mad pumpkin carving skillz:

Anime Pumpkins

My favorite, despite its relative simplicity, is the Haru from Moble Suit Gundam (fourth row down).  Since its a pumpkin, if it starts chirping “Amuro! Amuro!” you can just smash it.

According to Reuters/Hollywood Reporter, there are three nominations available for the 2008 Oscars Best Animated Feature Category, and fourteen films trying to snag them. Two of the films are anime: Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers and Sword of the Stranger. No anime has won an Oscar since Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away, so let’s keep our fingers crossed!

Article

I actually haven’t seen either of the films, but they both look great; I’ll watch anything by Oshii and Sword of the Stranger looks good and violent. Both have been licensed, so we’ll get to see them eventually. I think it’s about time the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences started paying more attention to anime, though it’s understandable they want to focus on American movies.

Shut up. SHUT UP. I’m a girl. Sometimes I like stories like this.

Chinese Love Story

Despite my tough image, despite the way I swear like a sailor and love gruesome movies and read everything Garth Ennis ever wrote, I secretly love baby animals.

And no one does baby animals like the Japanese. It’s like they have a fucking Cutetics Lab buried in a hill on one of those tiny islands off the coast of Honshu. And this is one of their hideously cute products!

Watch the Cute!

The only things that seems weird is that Mama Sue sounds like a yakuza boss. Ah well, I wouldn’t mind having a Yakuza boss for a mom. Boss of the Cutekuza.

This is kind of cool- pictures from the recent coronation of the new king of Bhutan. This kid is a year younger than me, making him the world’s youngest monarch.

Pics!

In case you didn’t know, Bhutan is a super-tiny country sandwiched between India and Tibet. The old king abdicated as part of his plan to gradually bring democracy to the country. The new king doesn’t have complete power and has to report to a prime minister.

If you want to visit Bhutan, I suggest you climb mountains for a while to acclimate yourself, then visit their official tourist website:

Go there!

Despite what I may have written in the past, I don’t want the Dragonball movie to suck. I’d really like to see  some cool live-action anime action on the big screen. Doubt we’ll get it, but ComicBookMovie.com posted a pretty cool picture that purports to be Goku in full-on saiyan form. Is it real? Sure looks like it, and let’s be frank - the producers of this film have nothing to lose by showing us whatever cool stuff they’ve got up their sleeves at this point.

I’m still not sure this is going to get me to haul my ass over to the local cinema on opening night (or ever, really), but that’s some neat makeup they’ve got going on there. Wonder how it’ll look when it’s fully CGI’d?

Only the Chinese, with their out-of-the-box thinking and tiny, tiny, apartments, could come up with something this brilliant.

Fish Tank Toilets

I want one! Of course I would then spend half my time sitting on the bathroom floor, staring at the fish. But it would be good entertainment for the cat too. She spends half her time drinking out of the toilet anyway, with the fish tank toilet she could watch the fish while she drank.

Thanks to the efforts of American publisher Vertical, I’ve become a big fan of Osamu Tezuka, particularly his really dark stuff like MW and Ode to Kirihito. I was totally pumped to hear about the live-action film version of MW, which is going to be released in Japan next year. And now there is a video online to stoke my excitement even more!

Trailer

OK, so it doesn’t show much…but damn that voice-over sounds kind of sexy.

Here’s the description of the manga from Vertical’s home page:

Comics god Osamu Tezuka’s darkest work, MW is a chilling picaresque of evil. Steering clear of the supernatural as well as the cuddly designs and slapstick humor that enliven many of Tezuka’s better-known works, MW explores a stark modern reality where neither divine nor secular justice seems to prevail. This willfully “anti-Tezuka” achievement from the master’s own pen nevertheless pulsates with his unique genius.

Michio Yuki has it all: looks, intelligence, a pedigree as the scion of a famous Kabuki family, a promising career at a major bank, legions of female admirers. But underneath the sheen of perfection lurks a secret with the power to shake the world to its foundations.

During a boyhood excursion to one of the southern archipelagos near Okinawa, Yuki barely survived exposure to a poison gas stored at a foreign military facility. The leakage annihilated all of the island’s inhabitants but was promptly covered up by the authorities, leaving Yuki as an unacknowledged witness—one whose sense of right and wrong, however, the potent nerve agent managed to obliterate.

Now, fifteen years later, Yuki is a social climber of Balzacian proportions, infiltrating the worlds of finance and politics by day while brutally murdering children and women by night—perversely using his Kabuki-honed skills as a female impersonator to pass himself off as the women he’s killed. His drive, however, will not be satiated with a promotion here and a rape there. Michio Yuki has a far more ominous objective: obtaining MW, the ultimate weapon that spared his life but robbed him of all conscience.

There are only two men with any hope of stopping him: one, a brilliant public prosecutor who struggles to build a case against the psychopath; the other, a tormented Catholic priest, Iwao Garai, who shares Yuki’s past—and frequently his bed.

Vertical\’s Home Page

Is it just me, or does this trailer for the upcoming film The Uninvited have an aura that is suspiciously similar to the Korean movie A Tale of Two Sisters (one of the most deliciously creepy movies I’ve ever seen)?

I may be getting paranoid, but the fact that The Uninvited is produced by the same people that made The Ring remake  makes me wonder. Also, notice that the older girl in The Uninvited trailer is never shown with anyone but her sister, who recently left a mental institution to live with her father and new stepmother. Also there is a bag and a blood trail. And a house on the lake. Mmmm-hmmm.

I could just be seeing things, but you know. Whatever. Fuck you, Hollywood.

The Uninvited

A Tale of Two Sisters