A note on footnotes

Jan01
by on January 1, 2010 at 12:50 am
Posted In: Blog

So I was reading Jorge Luis Borges when, upon scanning the footnote, it metioned that Borges got his version of the 47 Ronin (Japan’s most bad-ass true story over the last 400 years) from Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan. Now, as little as 5 years ago, the sources quoted from any footnote you read would most likely be inaccessible to you: they’d either be out of print or just available to the library of the township where the author resides. But now, in the age of gutenberg.org, a lot of books from more than a century ago are available online without copyright restriction (check out the entire Sherlock Holmes collection for free before the movie arrives here in a few weeks!)

So I visited the site, and behold! Mitford is available online, and you can now read Borges’s source story they way he read it. I’m now reading Mitford talk repeatedly about Yedo, and I just realized he’s referring to Edo, the modern-day Tokyo.

I think I will revisit a few of my favorite books and check the footnote section…

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I watched Ang Panday in Trinoma with Chompy

Dec27
by on December 27, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Posted In: Blog

Cons:

  • Lizardo’s Mordor-like fortress. Complete with camera pulling back to reveal the thousands of spears and pikes ala TTT.
  • Lizardo’s trickster god portrayal.
  • The plot skipping. Why is Maria important? How did Maria escape her prison guards? Why did the duo with the speech-impediments abandon the village they were guarding in the end?
  • The way they squeezed the teen love team in the story. Where did THEY come from? Of course, 20 minutes in, I was telling Chompy that all the film needed was a teen love team. And there they were.
  • I miss the original Panday’s conflicted backstory that shows him to be the very man who brands the villagers with the mark of Lizardo, hence he was an accomplice to the evils of his generation.  Now, he’s just a reluctant hero.

Pros:

  • I liked that they created a fantasy village from scratch.
  • Rhiann Ramos’s adventuress chic. Very stylish and practical.
  • The speed in which they killed off the teen love team. Yey!
  • The way they explained the disappearance of Flavio’s pet dragon for most of the story. What’s LotR’s excuse for not using the eagles?
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