The best Manga you're not reading

It's very rare that I introduce shadesong to a manga -- she's the otaku, and I'm just a dabbler. But I've gotten her hooked on what I consider the best damned manga ever. It's called Eagle: The Making of an Asian-American President, and you all need to be reading it. We just got volume 4 last night (each volume is about 500 pages), and the story just keeps getting better.

It's not fantasy or sci-fi, or the plot-for-the-sake-of-fan-service of Gunsmith Cats. It's just a solid political story, following an alternate 2000 election, with an Asian-American candidate's rise from obscurity to become the Democratic nominee for the presidency. And in spite of being written by a Japanese citizen, it's got a better understanding of American politics than most America-written novels (although I won't deny that the author is a tad naïve at times). Read this. Now.

28 Days Later (Alex Garland)

Just read this last night. It's the screenplay (released in book format) for the upcoming zombie film of the same name. Garland is the guy who wrote The Beach (which was a much better book than movie), and The Tesseract, which is fucking brilliant. WHen I heard that he was writing the screenplay for a zombie flick, I was stoked. When I heard that Danny Boyle (who gave us Trainspotting), I knew I'd want to see it opening day.

The film still isn't out, but the screenplay makes it look damned good. It's not quite as original as I'd hoped for -- Garland acknowledges the influences of Cronenberg (huge), Romero (unavoidable), and others (he fails to mention Peter Jackson, but he's there too) -- but it's very nifty. And I'm looking forward to seeing how it was filmed (as Boyle's style could drastically change many of the scenes, even though this was the shooting script). You can get info (including trailers) at http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk/main.html (warning: The site has a lot of Flash that you can't skip, so mute your computer first if you're at work w/o headphones).

Interestingly, the final twenty minutes or so remind me, of all things, of Dog Soldiers. Will be interesting to see how it comes across on screen.

Happy Birthday!

To mactavish!

Damn sales

Note to any other Mac folks: Macplay is having a sale on 14 of their titles, $5 each through April 20, over at http://www.macplay.com/specials.php

Figured I'd share the credit card danger. :-)