Reuters: Sri Lanka Tsunami suffering may inspire Sting song

Haven't they suffered enough?

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence DVD

Yesterday, I went to Rasputin Records and bought the DVD of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. It's a great movie, but the US import DVD (Dreamworks Home Entertainment) sucks.

What's so bad about the import? The subtitles are for the deaf. Every character name is spelled out. Every sound effect is spelled out! Atmospheric scenes are broken up by jangling subtitles announcing "[background chatter]", "[female voice on loudspeaker]". A major character gets shot and the subtitles helpfully add "[screaming in agony]".

"[Batou] At least this holo isn't subtitled"

The annoying subtitles take away from a great movie and make amateur fansubs look professional. I wish Dreamworks had taken the tiny extra step of, say, watching this DVD before shipping it. I mean, this must have been an error -- all Dreamworks had to do was strip out all the [words] [in] [brackets].

I'm tempted to rip this DVD and download a fan-created subtitle track. No, even better, I'll rip the DVD and write a dorky Perl script to strip out the bracketed words. Then, I can recombine this track with the movie and burn a new DVD and ...

If you want to see this movie, wait until Dreamworks fixes the subtitles.

On the plus side, the video on this DVD is quite clear, and the audio (Japanese and Director's commentary in Japanese) is crisp.

And, of course, the movie is great.


Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Director: Mamorou Oshii
2004
$22 Amazon

Pepakura Designer

This is so cool. Pepakura Designer is a program that takes a CAD file as input and prints out paper with the folds and cuts indicated so you can make your model.

Pepakura Designer software

"Pepakura Designer allows you to create a development for paper craft easily from 3D data used in 3D CG software.

This software is open to the public as shareware....You need to create own 3D models with another 3DCG software (ex, 3D Studio, LightWave, Softimage and so on). If you don't have any 3DCG software..."

Runs on MS Windows. Free trial download. ~$40 if you continue to use it.

Here are some models people have made with Pepakura Designer.



Images from http://www.ne.jp/asahi/to/n/ and
http://www006.upp.so-net.ne.jp/zen/