Yes, yes, death-gods love apples. Okay.

Death Note (2006), Shusuke Kaneko. January 21, 6pm. View count: One.

This is essentially part one of what seems to be a two-part TV-movie, adapted from a fairly long-running manga. It's not a particularly good adaptation, but then I couldn't get through more than the first 40 or so chapters of the manga. It just got too insufferable. Two supergeniuses who know everything the other does almost instantly, playing cat and mouse with one another is just not terribly suspenseful or indeed interesting. It starts out well, with good intentions leading to complete nutjobness, but from there it's just downhill. The movie doesn't help that at all; in fact it rockets into the nutjob realm almost immediately, so that the 'pure' original motives are all but lost.
I'm not actually sure why we watched the movie; I guess I was hoping it would be redemptive (despite reviews to the contrary). The casting was okay; I felt like they cast the main character because he was the most abstractly manga-looking person available. Ryuk was cute in 3d, but he was so inexpressive and his Sci-Fi channel lighting and animation didn't help. The guy they cast as L was pretty good, and he sure tried with all the little weird character traits.
We will probably watch the second part, since I have heard it is better, and I'm curious as to how they wrap things up (since in the manga I think the torch is passed on to Death Note Babies or something? Man, I'm so glad I stopped reading it.)

The Doctor falls in a hole!

Doctor Who, season 13, episodes 5-9: Planet of Evil. (BBC).

The Doctor and Sarah Jane land on some planet, where there's a scientific investigation of some sort of energy source (which turns out to be ANTIMATTER!). People die mysteriously. The planet is pretty nice-looking, for once.

Sarah Jane is surprised. She is wearing an outfit that I can imagine my mother making me wear at about age seven.


A professor is 'possessed' by 'antimatter' and kills a lot of guys by draining their precious moisture.


I am increasingly convinced that this is in part a homage to Forbidden Planet.


(the monster is done in a blue-screen find-edges version of the invisible-but-outlined Monster from the Id, and the sound effects are awfully reminiscent of the thereminny score. There is no Dr. Morbius, Krell, or Altaira though.)


Aquabats - Anti-Matter