the staging zone^α

Maleficent is a re-imagining of Walt Disney's 1959 animated film Sleeping Beauty, which is itself based on the classic fairy tale of the same name. Told from the perspective of the titular villain, the film attempts to flesh out her character and provide an explanation (if not justification) for her actions.

For the most part, it does this very well. However, it feels limited by having to retell the Sleeping Beauty story. For example, the whole premise of a curse involving the pricking of the princess's finger on a spindle comes across as incredibly far-fetched. There are far more suitable means of enacting revenge than whipping up such an outlandish curse.

A related issue comes with the whole sleeping element of the story itself. Considering all the hoo-ha about the curse, it's somewhat ridiculous that the princess is seemingly woken from her slumber mere hours after she started her nap. And yet she earns herself the moniker 'Sleeping Beauty'? She probably spent less time sleeping than the average person does at night!

There is also the problem of the story's apparent 'twist'. I say "apparent" because whilst it's set up like a twist, it can easily be deduced simply from how the story is progressing.

Although I liked the visual aesthetics of the film, the CGI fairies are simply too 'cartoonish' for their own good. For a film that utilises live action actors to create a sense of believability, the fairies look like something out of Monsters, Inc., and that breaks immersion.

Despite these issues, Maleficent somehow manages to be a very enjoyable film as a whole.

Groundhog Day is an fantastic comedy film about a man who is trapped in a time loop, forced to repeat the same day over and over again. Although I knew about the general concept before watching it and have seen numerous homages to it in various media, it surprised me just how original the film felt and how well its narrative fit together.

Groundhog Day is an fantastic comedy film about a man who is trapped in a time loop, forced to repeat the same day over and over again. Although I knew about the general concept before watching it and have seen numerous homages to it in various media, it surprised me just how original the film felt and how well its narrative fit together.

Groundhog Day is an fantastic comedy film about a man who is trapped in a time loop, forced to repeat the same day over and over again. Although I knew about the general concept before watching it and have seen numerous homages to it in various media, it surprised me just how original the film felt and how well its narrative fit together.

Groundhog Day is an fantastic comedy film about a man who is trapped in a time loop, forced to repeat the same day over and over again. Although I knew about the general concept before watching it and have seen numerous homages to it in various media, it surprised me just how original the film felt and how well its narrative fit together.

Groundhog Day is an fantastic comedy film about a man who is trapped in a time loop, forced to repeat the same day over and over again. Although I knew about the general concept before watching it and have seen numerous homages to it in various media, it surprised me just how original the film felt and how well its narrative fit together.

Groundhog Day is an fantastic comedy film about a man who is trapped in a time loop, forced to repeat the same day over and over again. Although I knew about the general concept before watching it and have seen numerous homages to it in various media, it surprised me just how original the film felt and how well its narrative fit together.

Groundhog Day is an fantastic comedy film about a man who is trapped in a time loop, forced to repeat the same day over and over again. Although I knew about the general concept before watching it and have seen numerous homages to it in various media, it surprised me just how original the film felt and how well its narrative fit together.

Groundhog Day is an fantastic comedy film about a man who is trapped in a time loop, forced to repeat the same day over and over again. Although I knew about the general concept before watching it and have seen numerous homages to it in various media, it surprised me just how original the film felt and how well its narrative fit together.

Black Butler is an anime set in Victorian London about a boy from a wealthy family who traded his soul in return for being served by "one hell of a butler" (a pun from the subtitles that you'll probably get sick of by the end of the series and isn't even an accurate translation of the original Japanese phrase) — literally a demon butler with supernatural abilities. The two make it their business to fight crime for whatever reason.

I liked the general concept of the story, though the episode-to-episode execution of the plot can be somewhat weak. There is a very slight mystery element, but the viewer isn't really provided with enough information to be able to make any deductions.

The animation quality is average and appears to have been produced with limited resources. Despite that, I did like the stylised visual aesthetics.

The voice acting is consistently good. There aren't any outstanding performances, but they all suit the characters well. I liked the opening and ending songs. For the ending song in particular, it was quite a nice surprise to hear BECCA's vocals in it, which I recognised instantly. The rest of the audio elements are minimal and don't draw attention to themselves.

Overall, Black Butler is a mixture of weak and decent components. I enjoyed it a fair amount.

Today has been an interesting one in the run up to the general election in a few months' time. The day started off normal enough, but as I was checking Twitter this morning, I noticed a surprisingly large amount of tweets about the election. Still, I shrugged it off as a mere coincidence.

Later on in the day, I caught a glimpse of Google's homepage, carrying a message encouraging people to register to vote. But as I (gasp) don't use Google myself, that message could have been on there all week for all I knew.

It wasn't until I was browsing my students' union's website that I figured out what was going on. Hidden behind a carousel that required the user to have JavaScript enabled (a feature I usually disable by default), I found the following banner on the website's homepage:

My initial reaction to this image was that of confusion. The banner was clearly prompting users to register to vote, but I thought I had already done that! Had the government only allocated today for registration? Looking through my emails, I did find a confirmation of my registration from last year, after my local council ordered me to do so, threatening me with legal action if I refused.

Attempting to discern any more information from the banner proved fruitless. With no logo to inform me of the organisation that was running this apparent campaign, and a hashtag reading "#BATHBEHEARD", I could only come to the conclusion that it was some sort of concoction by the students' union. But oh was I wrong… Actually clicking the link simply took me to a generic web page showing information about the election, but nothing about this mysterious and oh-so-important "National Voter Registration Day". If further action was required by the end of the day, I had better get a move on.

I ultimately resorted to searching for the term "National Voter Registration Day" itself, leading me to this section of the website of an organisation I'd never heard of before either called 'BiteTheBallot' or 'Bite The Ballot' depending on whether you can figure out how to use a spacebar or not. According to the website, National Voter Registration Day is a "single day of action (5 February) to celebrate the importance of registering to vote" that was created by BiteTheBallot. Which is interesting because I have seen news reports claiming that the campaign (or whatever it is) was created by the Electoral Commission. Hmmm…

So it turned out that National Voter Registration Day had no significance whatsoever. Way to get people worried… Still, encouraging people to register to vote is a Good Thing™, although to accomplish that, promoting registration itself is probably a lot more effective than just confusing everyone and promoting a day that promotes registration.

Anyway, if you haven't registered yet, then please go do so.

In other news, it was kinda ridiculous earlier today seeing the BBC News Channel quoting Twitter CEO Dick Costolo out of context as saying that his company's own service "sucks", when in fact he really said, "we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years".

[Disclaimer: All posts tagged under opinion are opinion pieces and not reviews. If you are looking for a review, there are plenty of those elsewhere.]

Flubber is a hilarious remake of the 1961 film The Absent-Minded Professor. Starring the late Robin Williams in the lead role, it tells of an (you guessed it) absent-minded professor of chemistry who creates a sentient, green, gooey substance he names 'flubber' (short for 'flying rubber'). Meanwhile, his relationship with his fiancée is put under strain due to him being distracted by his experiments.

The film employs a lot of slapstick, although the humour is quite varied. Aside from the comedic elements however, the story manages to be surprisingly touching. The professor's relationship with his levitating, robotic assistant is also interesting. Danny Elfman's score does the job, though is nothing to write home about. The visual effects appear dated by today's standards, although that doesn't stop Flubber from being an extremely entertaining film.

Guardians of the Galaxy is a visually impressive film about an irritating gang of brutes with no redeeming qualities whatsoever who fight against a one-dimensional villain who has somehow got it into his head that the destruction of the universe is the solution to all of life's problems. With an unimpressive musical score and a script that can only be described as 'funny' (not in a good way), the occasionally engaging cinematography is the only place one may find solace in this borefest of a film that is as predictable as tonight's dinner, which I have just placed in the microwave.

In /photos/, you'll now find a bunch of pics I took over the Christmas break, which I've just returned from.

I spent an interesting couple of weeks in Hong Kong, and you'll find most of the photos from there in /photos/2014-12-Hong_Kong/. I also took some photos from the Causeway Bay protest site, both the night before (/photos/2014-12-14-Causeway_Bay/) and while (/photos/2014-12-15-Causeway_Bay/) it was cleared by police.

Back in London, I visited the incredible exhibition The Art of the Brick, which showcases Nathan Sawaya's artwork created out of Lego bricks. You'll find photos from that (yes, photography was allowed) at /photos/2015-01-09-Lego/.

I really need to put in a photo gallery or something…

Over ten years after it was first released, hit Japanese visual novel CLANNAD is finally arriving at the English-speaking market.

The 2004 game was developed by the studio Key, whose previous works KANON and AIR reached 2^nd and 1^st in the national sales rankings respectively. Despite the successfulness of those games, CLANNAD managed to surpass both of those, and is still widely considered to be the best visual novel of all time.

CLANNAD was later adapted into an anime TV series by Kyoto Animation, which proved widely popular the world over. However, for many years there was no prospect of an English release, with many fans unfortunately unknowing of the story's origin.

Luckily Sekai Project, a Los Angeles based start-up who have previously released visual novels such as Narcissu and Key's very own planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~ on Steam, have managed to gain the support of VisualArt's (Key's parent company) to publish the visual novel in English — a feat previously thought impossible. To raise funds for this, they have set up a Kickstarter crowdfunding project. With three days to go, the project's pledge funds have reached three times its original goal of US$140,000.

There is still time to pledge, so if you're a fan of the CLANNAD anime and want to experience it as was originally intended, head over to Kickstarter where you can snag all manner of backer rewards from the game itself to soundtracks, fanbooks and T-shirts!

A synopsis of CLANNAD's story from the Kickstarter page is as follows:

After losing his mother in a car accident and subsequently falling victim to an abusive, alcoholic father, Tomoya Okazaki is an emotionally-distant delinquent student at Hikarizaka Private High School. On his way to school, he meets a strange young girl, Nagisa Furukawa, who is repeating the year due to a severe illness. From their brief encounter, she decides that they are friends and enlists his help in order to revive their school’s drama club. With not much more to do, he cooperates with her, making friends with many of the students and learning about the different problems that they face…

I played Without Within, a freeware visual novel from Australia-based independent developer InvertMouse, earlier today. It's only 20~30 minutes long, but I absolutely loved the sweet story of an unsuccessful calligrapher's dreams to make it big. The illustrations are adorable too. It can be enjoyed in English or Chinese (both traditional and simplified).

The story is essentially linear, although there are a number of binary choices in which one option will result in a short bad ending. The 'correct' choice is fairly obvious in each case, however, so a walkthrough is unnecessary.

There is a Kickstarter project for an "upgraded edition" of the game, as well as a variety of physical rewards.

The publisher hopes to release the visual novel on Steam. It is up for voting on the service's Greenlight programme. But why wait for a Steam release when you can download Without Within today!

I should check out some of InvertMouse's other games…