A
Year of News That May Be Happy!
The temptation to have drawn Mickey Mouse as the main character
in today's 'toon was pretty dang strong, but it would have
muddled the message, so here we are. We'll
see Mickey soon, though.
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This past weekend I and the Companion Unit took in a movie
at an actual theater, filled with actual living, breathing,
possibly virus-infected humans. This was the first time
since Covid rampaged across this country that we've done
this and it's all because we're both Hayao Miyazaki weebs
who
couldn't
wait to watch "The Boy and The Heron" on the silver screen.
Thumbnail review: Magnificent to watch but a bit heavy
on the biographical metaphor.
The only "bad" part of the
film was that it was the only showing convenient for us
that day and it was the <shudder> English dubbed version. I
don't care how much care and attention goes into the process,
no matter how talented the voice-over talent, English just
sounds WRONG coming out a mouth animated in Japan. (This
goes for any foreign film. If you can't handle subtitles
stay outta the viewing room.)
However, we endured though I
personally plan on watching
the movie again as soon as a digital copy is available
in the original Japanese.
It got me thinking, though. Why, I asked myself, do domestic
dubbing studios almost always substitute the original Japanese
with voices employing flat, colorless, midwest accents?
Couldn't the many characters of
this
film have
just as easily been from the urban sprawl of New Jersey
or the swamps of Louisiana or the beaches of West
LA? Someday, when AI becomes as easy to use as a microwave
oven, it might be as simple as "Okay, computer. Play 'Akira'
and give all the voices a Pepe LePew inflection."
But who'd WANT to?
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So where's my look back at October 2023? Well, I think
it's on Hunter Biden's laptop.
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