HUPOMNEMATA

HK Video recently started releasing (in France) dvd’s of Seijun Suzuki movies starring Joe Shishido.

“Shishido made his screen debut in the February 1955 release Keisatsu-ki (Police Report). Shishido initially played the role of a lover with a skinny face, but decided to puff up his cheeks by plastic surgery in an attempt to emerge as an impudent bad guy. This bold decision paid off when he won a major role in the 1958 Moeru Nikutai (Burning Flesh)”

This is the result of the surgery, one of the strangest face in film history. You can find a lot more info on this beautiful website. (including a before/after photograph and images from his cooking television show!)

“A modern day woman is given a task by God–what if she refuses?”

There is a new short story (The book of Martha) by Octavia Butler on SciFiction this week.

At least in the United States.

Wong Kin Yuen writes (in Science Fiction Studies) about why cyberpunk stories always end up happening in Hong Kong

“Science fiction has not fared well in Hong Kong (either in terms of production or consumption), nor is there a cyberpunk culture among Hong Kong’s young computer users. So the question arises: what elements in Hong Kong provided inspiration for this cinematic representation of a near-future city characterized by decadence, anarchy, and fantasy on the one hand, and a mistrusted, high-tech hyper-reality on the other? Taking up this question, I will first suggest a reading of a shopping complex in Hong Kong that emphasizes its fragmentation, disjunctiveness, and ephemerality. Like Blade Runner’s “Ridleyville,” this Hong Kong shopping complex intertwines past and future, memory and desire. Finally, I will analyze the setting of Ghost in the Shell, especially the parts that are clearly modeled on Hong Kong street scenes and architecture. I hope to validate Anthony King’s argument that colonial cities have the best chance of establishing a cityscape of the future that embraces racial and cultural differences.”

Full text there

Currently, the comics books writer Warren Ellis is obsessed with Sumo Wrestlers and with Japanese suicides as you can see in his very nice blog.

Fascinating news in the New Scientist

“A prototype GPS tracking device, designed to be implanted inside a person, has been successfully tested, claims its manufacturer. However, technical experts are questioning whether the system could really work.
(…)
Applied Digital Solutions (ADS) hopes the device will appeal to people who might be a potential hostage target, as well explorers and mountaineers who risk being stranded in remote locations.”

There are still some difficulties. More there.

Just finished “the collapsium” by Wil Mc Carthy, in which people can fax themselves to the other end of the galaxy, or even just send copies if need be. Some nice plot twist about the legal status of these copies : who are they? Do they belong to their “original”? What happen if someone make an illegal copy of you? Is what happen in the head of your copy your intellectual property?
And, when you’re faxed, what happens to you?

« Bruno marveled again that faxing now seemed to provoke no sensation at all, though their bodies were sundered, atomized, quantum-entangled and finally recreated. Exactly as before? Indistinguishable, anyway. The soul, it was imagined, followed the entangled quantum states to the new location. Inconvenient to think it might be destroyed and duplicated along with the body, or worse, that copies of it might be piling up in an afterlife somewhere. But weighed against crowds and traffic and bad weather and all the other inconveniences of physical travel, people were surprisingly willing to take the risk. »

” One pathologist is holding the esophagus, stomach, pancreas, duodenum, and spleen. He will open these, and may save a portion of the gastric contents to check for poison.

Another pathologist is holding the kidneys, ureters, and bladder. Sometimes these organs will be left attached to the abdominal aorta. The pathologist will open all these organs and examine them carefully.

Dissecting the lungs can be done in any of several ways. All methods reveal the surfaces of the large airways, and the great arteries of the lungs. Most pathologists use the long knife again while studying the lungs. The air spaces of the lungs will be evaluated based on their texture and appearance.”

more!

from an interview with Rob Vollmar

“Q: I’ve noticed that some (though certainly not all) female artists draw in a style that has some relation to manga art (Lea Hernandez, to give one example), presumably as a reactionry stance against masculine western art. Do you think there’s any truth to this statement, or is the western feminisation of manga too broad a topic to draw definite conclusions (especially since said style in adult manga is already perceived as masculine in Japan anyway)?

A: Actually, let me answer those in reverse…

Manga has its own very defined standard of femininity in its shoujo tradition. Shoujo manga is loosely defined as “manga for girls” and not only are most of its most celebrated mangaka women, but the broader category of shoujo has, in turn, produced a vibrant tradition of women’s manga in Japan that puts the blatant sexism of the comics publishing industries in a much clearer light in contrast.

““I’ve noticed that some (though certainly not all) female artists draw in a style that has some relation to manga art…”

This tradition began, as I can peg it, with Wendy and Richard Pini’s ELFQUEST which is an almost perfect marriage of shoujo manga aesthetics with comics storytelling methods. I think it is perfectly valid to see this as a protest, as women were all but excluded from comics for several generations beginning in the late 1950s until the 1970s. But, as I see it, the protest comes not in the incorporation of a “foreign style” but in the reinforcement of a singularly female tradition, ie shoujo manga. Lea Hernandez RUMBLE GIRLS’ is also an excellent example of an adept Western mind adapting not just the visual stylisms of shoujo manga but also the core themes of the form. ”

You can read the rest on the interview there

If you can’t wait to read something about Matrix reloaded actually written by someone who has seen it, I guess you could choose worse than this.