Well, before I leave for NZ, a few more things have happened.

Anastasia and I saw Shrek 3, which I had heard very mixed reports about. On the whole though, I rather liked it. I went to a haibachi restaurant with Anastasia, Lea and Lea’s friend whose name I forget (already, sigh), unfortunately after a large lunch at Outback before the movie, so I didn’t have much at the actual place. Later that evening, Anastasia, Lea and I all had a few drinks back at our place and watched movies.

Anastasia and I rearranged the living room, watched a bunch of anime with Lea, I updated my blog a bit (back dating the entries). I also tested my hard drive enclosure (the one I’d been using to access my laptop hard drive since the power port on it is busted) and found out it was faulty, so I ordered a replacement (free!).

Anastasia and I had a visit from Roger, which was nice. We went out to dinner with him and his daughter, then had coffee and a bit of a chat back at the apartment. I gave him back some electronics stuff he’d lent me a while back, although he neglected to take the erratically-working monitor… ^_~

I went shopping with Anastasia to get some luggage for the trip back to NZ. I figure it’ll last me a good 5 or 10 years while I’m travelling a fair bit around the world, so that’s all good. Same day, we also went and saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which again had been getting mixed reports, both by critics and from my friends. Overall I rather enjoyed this as well – it had plenty of little things from the first movies, and really it was just the second half of the second movie, so it felt concluding in a good way. I enjoyed seeing Chow Yun-Fat as a pirate lord as well. ^^

I also got a guy over to take the broken tv apart, he’ll be back later (probably after I leave) to take all the rest of it away.

Unfortunately right before I have to leave, I end up getting Anastasia’s flu, running nose, scratchy throat… oodles of fun.

Not.

Canterbury finally got their act together and made a decision.

I got first class Honours!

Wohoo!

In other news, I also found out that Fred Gallagher (of MegaTokyo fame) will be attending a New Zealand convention in Wellington. This convention happens the weekend that I’m due to be travelling. The Saturday that most of Fred’s events happen on does not exist for me. I leave the US Friday, arrive in NZ on Sunday. In theory if I somehow rewrangled my flights (again) I might be able to catch his last panel on the Sunday, but I don’t know that I’d be in any state to take anything in. Why do I find out about such things well after I’d like to know? Hopefully he’ll stick around NZ for a little while and the universe will make us meet randomly on the street. ^^

After leaving the convention, Anastasia and I headed to Tampa to visit friends and family. It was good to catch up with some of our friends that live there and generally rather stressful hanging out with her family, since they are nuts. Before the trip, Anastasia was all anxious about wanting to see everyone and see what she could do to help out with family stuff. After a couple of days, we were both ready to go back to Gainesville. And she needed to get ready for her classes, which started the following week. So, one very pleasant evening drive later and we were back.

Back in Gainesville, we went and saw Hot Fuzz, which is by the same guys that did Shaun of the Dead. Hilarious. Had an absolute blast and I’m glad these guys are making movies. ^^

In other news, the University of Florida has decided not to make me an offer for their PhD program this year. My application is still in their system and will be reconsidered for the Spring admission, and probably the following Autumn round of admissions, when there will be more funding.

My first anime convention! Anastasia and I attended Jacon this year in Orlando, Florida. Jen had previously made me aware that she was going for part of it and knew that I was keen on going to a convention, so thank you to her for letting me know about it.

The first thing we did when we arrived after running around and finding a park was more running around! We ran to the registration (up some stairs and around a bit in one of the buildings) and then ran some more to go find Jen. Jen was waiting in line for the Animusical, which we all then went to. This was an absolutely fantastic production of anime-meets-show-tunes put on by a local anime fanclub Wasabi Anime. I felt privileged to attend, as it was the last Animusical that they are going to do. The whole thing was a fabulous experience, with lots of people dressed up and acting on stage as anime characters lip-synching to various songs from musicals, show tunes and just popular songs. Great stuff.

Over the course of the next couple of days, Anastasia and I took our time wandering around the convention. There were plenty of people cosplaying (dressing up as and sometimes behaving as) various characters from lots of different anime. Naruto and Bleach were both crowd favourites, it would seem. Lots of Bleach characters. We went through the dealer room, which had lots of nifty merchandise for our perusal and purchase. We ended up getting some little Fruits Basket plushies, some manga, a katana and some ramune and pocky for consumption as we walked around. Oh, and a Urahara hat. Um, and a Hitsugaya pin. Did I mention I now own a katana? It’s supposed to be a replica of Ichigo’s Bankai katana (from Bleach), however it doesn’t have the red underlining, it has black… makes it more ninja-esque. Still very cool, if not strictly accurate. Anastasia and I also took a few strolls down Artists’ Alley, where they had a bunch of people doing and selling art. Some were good, some were pretty average, nothing that really stood out and said “buy me!” though, you know? What we did do was get a ‘mangature’ portrait of Anastasia done – like a caricature, but in the style of manga. That’s pretty cool, actually. We also got a little mini-portrait of the two of us, which is kinda cute. ^^

Hm… the only other thing really worth mentioning is the cel-painting. Anastasia and I took a class in cel-style painting, which was pretty interesting. The idea behind regular painting is that you draw from background to foreground, but cel-style is done in reverse! Draw in the highlights and shadows, then start drawing in the base colours. Very different mind-set to do, but in the end we both had a cel-version of Sonic the Hedgehog. ^^

Thanks also go out to Sue, who let us crash at her place in Orlando while we at the con.

I went to the opening session at 12:01am, much as I had done with the previous two Spider-man movies. This time I wore my awesome Spider-man shirt, and I blended in with the rest of the fandom around me.

I rather enjoyed it overall. There were new villains, certainly popular ones. Venom was a tough call to make for a single movie, especially given just how much back-story is needed for him to come about. This made a lot of the earlier parts of the film feel very drawn out, but I can’t see how else you could have covered all of it and kept Venom in the same movie. In a lot of ways, I think it might have been better to have Venom in another movie and just have the setup for it in this one – but that has its own issues, particularly in light of the director and main actors talking very publicly about taking a break from the mega-franchise that has occupied their lives for the last ten years or so.

Some scenes in the movie cater to the “emo” side of Peter Parker as he deals with a lot of issues and is psychologically affected by the alien costume. Since Peter Parker is a raging geek in the extreme and has had a particular ‘look’ going for him throughout the previous films, most of his “emo” was just utterly hilarious, and appreciated as such with peals of laughter from the entire audience. As were his John Travolta moments, for that matter.

I really enjoyed a lot of the CG scenes, particularly with the alien costume. I thought Thomas Hayden Church did a superb job as Flint Marko as well.

The movies on the whole have screwed around with some of the chronology of character introductions and so on, but generally they have kept true to the character intentions. This movie did some more messing with things as they introduced Gwen Stacy, the new Green Goblin and so on… they set out to achieve an awful lot and they did pretty well, I think.