PixlBit

That's right, friends. I failed to post on either Saturday or Sunday. I think my focus on those days were devoted to work (the last pee-wee basketball game on Saturday, as well as regular cleaning duties at the middle school) and other activities on Sunday (sleep, church, gaming, rest, some of Super Bowl, more sleep). I got distracted and then I got lazy. But, that rough weekend is over and I feel revitalized so my blogging continues:

This morning I wrapped up the 2nd and 3rd films of the Rurouni Kenshin live action trilogy. 

I'm a fan of the director Gareth Evans (The Raid, The Raid 2, Merantau, the "Safe Haven" segment of VHS 2, the upcoming "Apostle") and while he stopped using Twitter over a year ago, he's kept his Instagram account active. In the past 2 years, he's often geeked out about this trilogy for the overall quality of their production, set design, visual effects, cinematography, acting, directing and so forth. He also highlighted the sword fights and as Evans is responsible for two of the best modern action films (The Raid films), when an action film wows him, I take note. The problem was, for a while, these films weren't available in North America unless you can acquire Region Free dvd or bluray copies. They're available for digital rental or purchase but are not streaming anywhere. 

A couple of weeks ago, I had some disposable money and a Walmart giftcard from Christmas and visited a local Supermarket, not intending to buy any movies (just groceries) and, lo and behold, in the blu-ray section were all three films. Apparently, Warner Home Video and Funimation have distribution rights for the films here in the States. I was able to pick up all three. 

I knew nothing about the manga or the anime series it inspired but the films do a good job setting up the characters. Got to hand it to the writers for condensing 25 volumes of manga into 3 2-hour films. Anyway, Evans wasn't mistaken: these films are amazing, great entertainments. Every aspect of the production is admirable; the plots and the characters all have moments to shine; and those sword fights.....great googly moogly. 

I highly recommend these films. I plan to revisit them in the future or to dig into the supplemental features. 

Also, on Friday night, I guest starred on an episode of the Chuck Series Companion, a podcast that is dedicated to recapping and providing commentary on each episode of the show's 5-season, 91-episode run. The host, Jason Walstrom, also runs the pop culture podcast Entertainment Landfill. I was invited to provide my thoughts on the recent episode which covered the finale of season 2 and it was a great and lengthy discussion. It was a pleasure to be involved in this.