Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Yesterday, Satoshi Kon passed away. In a field of hacks and copycats, he was a true visionary and artist who made complex yet entirely human stories. While his works are absolutely originals that stand on their own, Tokyo Godfathers recalled Capra, Millenium Actress channeled Kurosawa, and in many ways Paprika predicated Nolan's Inception. I had the opportunity to interview the anime director one afternoon at the Hawaii International Film Festival in 2006 when he was promoting the latter. I have to admit that while he was nothing but cordial to me, his answers were pretty boring and actually bordering on lame. However, by the time the screening ended, he was pretty sauced, his thoughts were sufficiently lubricated, and he totally went off in the Q&A, giving me plenty of extra material to spice up the article.
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There's better stories, and there's boring stories. This one is better than boring. I didn't write it. It's available at the link at the bottom if you want to see it in context. Most of us have a story or many stories like this, and if you don't, then you just haven't found it yet.
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Just got back from five days in Honolulu. I go there often enough to have favorite places, and most of them happen to be food related. Number one on the list is always Waiola. It's not as famous as Matsumoto's, but it's my favorite. We ran an article on shave ice way back in Giant Robot 52 and asked readers to contribute stories and pictures. A lot of the photos looked like the one below, with Wendy and Eloise sitting by my niece Saoirse and brother Greg. Families, cousins, and shave ice go together. Afterward, I walked into
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It's always a journey to hit the Donutman in Glendora. Imagine, I'm on the westside, and it's a whopping 40 miles away. It's a special occasion when you go on a trip. Have good company, or go at it alone, like I have. Yes, I'm that way. While you sleep, I might be driving across Southern California for donuts. I'll eat them secretly like an addict. But this time, I was with newlyweds, Daniel and Lisa. Neither really like peaches, which is odd, since these are the best part of the Donutman, the peach! Here's a link to a previous blog photo that's a clear shot of what this looks like. The journey in a Prius works. 50 miles to the gallon? It's less than 2 gallons round trip! Here Daniel and Lisa pray to the Donut gods… This is an odd pose by Daniel. Poor building.
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I'm still learning or re-learning Final Cut so here's a quick video from the event on Saturday. It exists in Transmissions on our page, but I'm shoving it here, since shit, I did all the cutting and shooting. I can do this better, mark my words. It's hard to shoot still and shoot video. It's as if you need to choose one or the other to handle everything just right, but you can't. But check out the Mulan song, that's the best part. Maybe.
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