Returner with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Anne Suzuki. Pretty much your standard sci-fi movie complete with aliens and time travel, but with some notably cool action scenes. I remember seeing a trailer for this at the Loft a few years back and based solely on some scenes with transforming airplanes I was determined to watch it. I was a little disappointed by the plot, but such things are to be expected with foreign films. Why do the aliens have to be so damn unreasonable? One thing I thought was pretty funny is in the future "flashbacks" there are a lot of Americans. Their lines are so horrible and over the top I'm not sure if it's cuz the actors are so bad they couldn't find work in any English speaking country or if the lines were written in Japanese and translated directly into English. Or both. Lastly, the villain was pretty good too. That is, he's one of those really despicable characters, not just the "I'm a bad guy because the script says I am" types. His mannerisms are quite similar to a bad guy character in another Japanese movie Versus. I wonder if the bug-eyed, tongue flicking psycho is an archetypical Japanese character.

In a remarkable instance of serendipity, my schedule has changed enough to dramatically increase my fun time. It turns out one of the classes I took in Uppsala counts as a GenEd credit here, meaning I can drop one of the ones I'm taking now. I could either drop my first class of the day and sleep in or drop the last one and go home early. I chose the latter, Chinese Civ, since it's boring (but really interesting) and dropping it means I can go to work an hour earlier and work 8 hours every shift. Now I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday and get off work right before the dreaded closing shift. That means I can go to the dojo Tuesdays and Thursdays, just like old times plus have Saturday free for sparring. And in a remarkable coincidence, my high school drama teacher is directing a play at the U of A and an opening for a part appeared. The rehearsal times happen to match my new schedule *exactly*. There's a Swedish word for windfall, but I can't remember what it was. That's how I would best describe this series of developments. Anyway, "Southern Fried Murder", on October 20th, will mark my triumphant return to the stage!

Speaking of Swedish (yeah that's gonna keep popping up. What can I say? It's still fresh in my mind.) the customers at Beyond Bread, interestingly it's often the crabby ones, will ask for wheat bread but always put too much air into the 'wh' producing the Swedish word for 'shit'. It gets me every time, and with some customers I really wish I could give them what they asked for.

And also, after a bit of a break, I now have new Flickr pics.