NY Comic Con and Anime Fest Roundup

This past weekend was the NY Comic Con & Anime Festival. For the first time, they combined the Con and the Fest. I was a little disappointed in that decision because I knew the comics portion would have a much larger presence than the anime (and I was right), but then I remembered that the Anime Fest sucked last year... There weren't that many vendors, there weren't any screenings or panels I was interested in, and it seemed smaller than the 2008 Fest. So I stopped worrying and got really excited instead.

And that was an excellent choice because the Con was awesome! Easily the best Comic Con yet (I've attended the last three years). There were tons of vendors that spanned so many interests...classic comics, manga, small press, publishers, gaming... The convention was incredibly well-organized (well, except that it was difficult to find the guidebook), the main dealers' floor was huge, and there were a lot of great panels. In fact, there were so many I wanted to attend that they ended up overlapping and I couldn't get to everything. Here are the panels I did attend, and my impression of them all:

Saturday:

"Comics, Graphic Novels, And Manga For Adults"
With moderator Martha Cornog (graphic novel columnist and librarian), and panelists Robin E. Brenner (Massachusetts librarian), Ryan Donovan (NYC librarian), Karen Green (Columbia University librarian), and Natalie Korsavidis (Farmingdale, NY librarian).

This panel followed two others about comics for children and comics for teens and young adults. Discussion focused mainly on the difficulty the librarians have in convincing their co-workers and patrons that comics are not just for kids, and the resulting fight they go through to get those comics on the shelves. All the panelists were very clear in their opinion that comics are just as viable a reading source as conventional books. What I mostly took away from the panel was that comics still have a stigma of being "kids' stuff" despite the existence of titles like Maus, Persepolis, and all the adult-themed manga out there, but there are adults in academic positions who are working to erase that stereotype. Yay for librarians! I also learned that 95% of the time, if you ask your local librarian to get a particular book or book series, they will actually do it. And if your library doesn't have any comics on the shelves, check their inter-library loan. Sometimes all the comics are housed at a central library.

"MARVEL Television Presents MARVEL Anime"
I almost skipped this, but I am so glad I went! Marvel has been working with Studio Madhouse (a really, really great anime studio) to create anime shows about Iron Man, Wolverine, and Blade. These are going to be real anime, created by a Japanese anime house, not an anime-style American show. They're even all set in Japan and have Japanese dialogue with English subtitles. In this panel, we got to watch the first full-length episode of Iron Man and see a trailer for Wolverine. Iron Man was...pretty good. It was a bit flat, both in appearance and action, but I still have high hopes for it as the series progresses. The one thing I really didn't like were the scene transitions. They weren't smooth and felt unnatural. It was things like, there'd be two people in a car talking for a minute, and the next scene would be one of them getting off a plane that just landed. What about all the time between the car and plane? Where'd the other guy go? It's not really action you want to see, but the sequence was still jarring.

The Wolverine trailer, on the other hand, looked amazing. The only trailer on YouTube is an older one that looks quite different. The Comic Con trailer was modern while staying true to the Wolverine aesthetic, whereas the YouTube clip is too stylized and looks dated (Wolverine has a huge Labyrinth-style David Bowie mullet!). Wolverine already has a back story rooted in Japan, so it's a natural fit for him to be turned into an anime. Both these shows will begin airing on the G4 network in 2011. (I don't remember when they said Blade would air.)

"Indie Cred - Why Indie Comics Matter"
With moderator Tracey John (UGO's Comics, Toys, and Collectibles Editor), and panelists Julia Wertz (author of Fart Party), Jason Little (author of Shutterbug Follies), Mike Dawson (author of Troop 142), and Alex Robinson (author of Tricked).

I only went to this panel because I freaking love Fart Party! (Seriously, go read it. It's not about farts or parties, I swear.) It was basically what I expected. The panelists talked about how they got into comics, how they managed to get picked up by large publishers, and the differences between working with small press vs. "real" publishing houses. I thought the tone was awfully pessimistic, though. Little at one point said comics "are not a career" when an attendee asked for advice for aspiring comic artists. God, what a downer. When I spoke with Faith Erin Hicks, another indie and online comic writer who I love, she was all happy and said she couldn't believe she's being paid to do comics, and gave advice that can actually be acted upon (i.e. publish your work online immediately).

"Unusual Manga Genres"
With moderators Erin and Noah from the Ninja Consultant podcast.

I wish this panel had been longer. The moderators were only allotted an hour, so they (admittedly) rushed through it somewhat. Erin presented a slide show of all the "weird" manga that's not published in Japan. She spent the most time on games and sports-based manga. Japanese readers apparently really like reading about boring sports. There are literally dozens of titles based on golf, and numerous ones about...badminton! And...curling?? There is probably a manga title for any topic you can think of. Wheelchair basketball? Check. Baking bread? Check. Board games? Check. This was a really fun panel.


On to Sunday!

"MARVEL: The Women of MARVEL"
With moderator Jeanine Schaefer (editor), and panelists Lauren Sankovitch (editor), Colleen Coover (artist), Rachel Pinellas (writer), Christina Strain (colorist), Sana Amanat (editor), Grace Randolph (writer), and Stepanie Hans (artist). 

I got up early to catch this panel. It was about the women who work at Marvel, not Marvel's female characters. It was the best panel! The discussion didn't really focus so much on the fact that they were women, but focused more on how they all first got interested in comics, and how they all got into comics as a career. Interestingly enough, most of them came from unrelated backgrounds (architecture, publishing, musical theatre...). I asked the first audience question, which was how the editors got their jobs. Only one started out as an intern, and all but one of them came into it with no comic editing experience and were really taught the ropes once they got the job. I've wanted to work in comics for a long time now (applied to DC three times with no response), so this was pretty inspiring. 

"Black Butler Screening & Panel"
Sigh... This was the only panel I didn't like. It was a screening of the first two dubbed episodes of the anime show Black Butler. This title has gotten really big in the U.S. in recent months. The comic it's based on has been on the NY Times bestselling manga list for the last few weeks. So I wanted to see what the big deal was. But oh my god this show is not funny! It's full of all the standard anime humor tropes, so I feel like it's nothing new. It's about a rich British child whose parents have passed away, and the butler who is supernaturally tied to him and is tasked with keeping the home in order and protecting the child. God, the fans of this show were annoying. Every time the child was on screen, girls in the audience would scream like they had crushes on him--and bear in mind that this is a 12-year-old character (Ew! Stop lusting after a prepubescent cartoon!). Every time the butler was on screen or said his catchphrase of "I'm just one hell of a butler," the entire audience would break out in cheers. This response also happened every time something "funny" happened, to the point that you couldn't hear the dialogue. Ugh. As much as I love anime, I have to say, I hate anime fans! I left after the second episode, as I had no interest in listening to the creators and voice actors talk about the show. 

"The Changing Faces of Anime"
With moderator Join Evan Minto (of AniGamers.com).

This was a fun panel. Minto went through the history of character design in anime, all the way from Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy to today's American anime-style shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender. Minto narrated a slide show that went through character styles chronologically. The takeaway was that anime started out being influenced by Disney, and eventually came full circle to have American shows today highly influenced by anime.

Art Cake

I found this great collection of pop culture-themed cakes on Flavorpill today. One of them was just so great that I had to publish it here:

It's a Mondrian rainbow cookie! I really want to try making this myself...

Oh, and here's the full article: http://flavorwire.com/123229/50-pop-culture-cakes

Modest Mouse at Williamsburg Waterfront

Last night I went to see Modest Mouse play a show at the Williamsburg Waterfront here in Brooklyn. The show was originally scheduled for July, but three songs into their set that day, a massive lightning storm blew in and the NYC Parks Service cancelled the rest of the show. Luckily, Ticketmaster rescheduled for September 14. This ended up being better anyways, because it was sickeningly hot in July and the show started later. Last night, the temperature was a comfortable low-70s with a little breeze and the show began relatively early (doors at 5 p.m.), so I was able to get home and go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

As for the show itself, it was my favorite time I've seen them yet. The first time I saw Modest Mouse was summer 2003 as part of the free Siren Music Fest at Coney Island. I don't honestly remember that much about the show or what songs they played. The next time I saw them was at Irving Plaza in NYC about a year later, right before the album "Good News For People Who Love Bad News" was released. This was actually one of the best shows I'd ever seen at that point. As the new album was being promoted but not yet available for sale at the time, it was all new music to me. And they played so well that night! Everything was super tight and singer Isaac Brock was really on top of his game. Plus they played an encore that was almost as long as the set, so it turned out to be a pretty long show. When I finally bought the new album, I instantly recognized the songs they had played at the show, but it was actually almost a bit of a letdown because they'd sounded so good in person that the studio album paled in comparison. It stuck with me so much that I can still hear the live act in my head when I listen to the album today.

Last night's show was actually a bit of a departure from that Irving Plaza set I loved so much. I thought everything last night sounded much more loose. It wasn't messy, but it had an element of improvisation. All the songs sounded a bit off, a little more experimental than the album versions. It was also very loud, and the "big" parts of certain songs were played louder and louder. I wouldn't go so far as to call the show "epic," but it was pretty close. They had six musicians on stage and really took advantage of the instruments besides guitar, bass, and drums. An electric upright bass, banjo, pump organ, glockenspiel, accordion, and trumpet all made appearances throughout the night. I especially appreciated the trumpet, which was literally front and center on the stage, and stood out much more so than it does in the studio tracks. Also, the sound quality was surprisingly good for an outdoor show. Everything sounded very clean and you could pick out the details. As for the set list, they played a wide range of songs, a pretty even amount of stuff from all their full-length albums, plus a few appearances from some EP's. Since they don't currently have a new album to promote, I guess they had as much freedom in their song choices as they felt like taking.

I also need to point out how great I thought the lighting was. It being a rock show, there was of course fake smoke pumping out all night. But since it was so breezy, the smoke would immediately blow away if it wasn't constantly pouring out of the machines. This made it look like the band was playing in a storm--it was a really cool effect. Then you had a lot of backlighting, which made the bandmembers look like silhouettes in a cloud half the time. Bright colors were the lighting choice for most of the night, so the swirling smoke was colored, the silhouettes were colored, and the front of the stage would be another color. I saw tons of people taking sweet photos all around me, and it made me wish my cell phone took better shots (real cameras weren't allowed, natch). This added to the "epic" feeling I got from the whole shebang.

So, yeah, definitely my favorite Modest Mouse show I've seen to date. Here's the set list:

1. Gravity Rides Everything
2. Black Cadillacs
3. Satin in a Coffin
4. Here It Comes
5. Float On
6. Cowboy Dan
7. Dashboard
8. Blame It On The Tetons
9. King Rat
10. 3rd Planet
11. Tiny Cities Made of Ashes
12. Bury Me With It
13. Autumn Beds
14. Here's to Now (Ugly Casanova cover)
15. The Whale Song
16. The View

Encore:

17. Guilty Cocker Spaniels
18. Dramamine / Life Like Weeds
19. Baby Blue Sedan
20. Spitting Venom / I Came As A Rat
21. Alone Down There

What Is It About 20-Somethings?

I just finished reading this infuriating article on the NY Times website about 20-year-olds and how we all refuse to grow up (read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine). This is only one out of dozens of articles I've come across in the last couple years, and I'm really tired of reading the same thing over and over: I know, Baby Boomers are awesome and we 20-year-olds are lazy bums. Enough already! Rather than launch into a rambling, raving rant, though, I'm going to pick out some points from the Times that angered me the most and respond to them.

1. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un­tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

My argument: As a 20-year-old who is competing for those jobs, this is an absolutely unfair assessment. I don't want an unpaid internship or grueling underpaid job, but oftentimes this is all that's being offered. I have a masters degree and more than four years of working experience, and yet I'm in a constant struggle to find a job that pays the bare minimum for survival. I just want enough to pay all my bills and put away 10% of my salary into savings. And I don't even have any student loan or credit card debt...but more on that later... And forget about benefits (health care? Who needs that?). In the course of my job search, I've seen dozens of job listings for unpaid internships and entry-level editorial assistant positions, only to discover, upon reading the full job description, that the duties required of the position go above and beyond what a reasonable person could construe as "intern" or "assistant" tasks. Knowing how desperate the competition is for jobs, particularly in this economy, employers know there will always be someone who will take these positions for little or no pay, simply because it's at least something. It's better to have an unpaid internship than a gap on your resume. A friend once explained to me that the reason there are no jobs for us young people is because the older generations, who should have retired by now, are still working. So no one's moving up in their current place of employment, and there's no space for anyone new to move in. So I blame this lack of real, long-term jobs among 20-year-olds on the people who destroyed the economy and now can't (or won't) retire to let the next generation in (and then of course those same people complain about how lazy we all are).


2. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year.

Again, does the writer think we like moving every year? Moving is a big expensive hassle. Taxes go up, rents go up, but our salaries get cut or lost. Young people are constantly moving because we can't afford it when our rents are raised but our salaries are still dismally low. Sure, homeowners who lost their houses should be pitied and should receive help, but if we're young with no savings and crippling student loan debts, and we can't afford our rent, well then we're just lazy and immature.


3. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch.

Again, not something I want in my life. But when job after job has no benefits and doesn't pay enough to afford a visit to the doctor, how can people possibly be expected to stay there forever? Additionally, what's that old phrase--last hired, first fired? Well with layoffs happening everywhere, that leaves pretty poor prospects for those young people in their first job, huh?


4. Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever.

Well considering that "masters degrees are the new bachelors" (apparently), we're staying in school far longer than any generation in history. Again, it's not a choice that is being made by us, but for us, due to the dictates of the employment industry. At this rate, eventually we'll all be expected to have PhD's!


5. Is emerging adulthood a rich and varied period for self-discovery...Or is it just another term for self-indulgence?

So we're told during our childhoods that we should follow our dreams and that we can be anything we want--but once we grow up and actually try to pursue that dream career, we're scolded and told that we should have a long-term job, wife/husband, and babies all by the age of 30. But it's simply not that easy to find all that! There are massive obstacles in the way that are, at least to some degree, out of our hands. It's particularly difficult to "grow up" when one has been in college through the age of 23, followed by six figures of debt from attending said college, and bleak job prospects in a broken economy.

6. But the expectation that young men and women won’t quite be able to make ends meet on their own, and that parents should be the ones to help bridge the gap, places a terrible burden on parents who might be worrying about their own job security, trying to care for their aging parents or grieving as their retirement plans become more and more of a pipe dream.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but once again, the broken economy is not our fault! We're being punished because people two or three generations above us thought it would be a better idea to fulfill their own greedy ambitions at the expense of the entire country. So enough with the wailing about how we're a drain on society and our parents. And let's touch on the "being unable to make ends meet" just one last time--the reason we have trouble making ends meet is not because we're just lazy. There are millions of people all over the US having trouble making ends meet thanks to a bad economy, widespread unemployment, credit card debt, and more. Unemployment benefits have been extended to 93 weeks--nearly two years! And I'm not saying that those benefits should not last for that long, but why is it better for a 30-year-old to depend on the government than a 20-year-old to depend on her parents? What's the difference?? Both ages can't make ends meet for a variety of reasons, but no one's demonizing the 30-year-old.

Last thoughts: I certainly don't advocate goofing off and living off your parents until the age of 30. But there are lots of other factors at play beyond sheer immaturity that aren't allowing 20-year-olds to fully "grow up." This whole article, and the ideas it's espousing, are the same generation gaps that have always existed. Old and young resent each other. The battle wages on. But I, for one, am sick of reading about it, and am sick of being demonized as lazy and immature. And, for the record, despite my current lack of a full-time job, I work my butt off at two part-time freelance jobs, have not received benefits or health care (even when I held a full-time job) since 2007, and somehow manage to pay all my bills each month without the aid of my parents. I was forced to move a year ago due to raised rent, fear every day that I'll need a hospital trip that will bankrupt me for the rest of my life, and worry that I'll never be able to afford a wedding, a child, or a house.

So yeah, give me a job or get off my back. 

Book Review: I Don’t Care About Your Band

Full title -
I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated

I randomly stumbled upon this book while browsing in a bookstore. The cover was cute and the title really caught my eye. After getting it from the library, I finished it in two days. However, that’s not to say that I “couldn’t put it down.” Rather, I breezed through it so quickly because I constantly wanted to get on to the good parts. Unfortunately, though, there weren’t many of those. This book was nothing more than a big disappointment.

I expected “I Don’t Care About Your Band” to be composed of a funny chapter devoted to each crazy boy author Julie Klausner dated. But the complete picture was more of a personal ramble that never concretely nailed down the men. Based on the description on the back of the book, I also expected it to have a witty, sarcastic tone. But the self-deprecation in “I Don’t Care…” wasn’t funny. It reads like a case of low self-esteem. Klausner spends more time talking about her insecurities and why she dated such duds than she spends discussing the duds themselves. And it’s no wonder she dated such losers—she acts desperate, jumps into bed with any guy who’ll have her, and displays a complete lack of self-confidence. It’s infuriating when Klausner notes that this or that man was so much hotter than she—especially since the photo on the cover proves that she is, in fact, very pretty and thin. It made me think that the men weren’t so bad after all, if only because Klausner encouraged their behavior by being so desperate and pathetic.

Unfortunately, most of the men are not fully fleshed out, but rather woven into Klausner’s self-description rambles. I wanted them to be distinct characters at the center of their own tales, but they were actually pretty boring. Only a couple come off as being truly ridiculous; the rest are just mild jerks—but, again, why should they have been anything more when Klausner was such a doormat? Those titles on the cover—indie rocker, hipster, porn star, etc, give the men too much credit. Her beaus are so normal and boring that whittling their personalities down to cliché labels just doesn’t work.

Klausner herself also isn’t much more likeable than the men she dates. She makes a lot of offensive and misogynist statements, such as claiming that bisexual women are just horny but bisexual men are “actually gay men,” and that women don’t maintain female friendships without backstabbing and competing with each other (and, as such, all women should have a gay male best friend). She also makes a crack at one point about the Holocaust not being real. I’m sure she thinks she was being funny and sarcastic, but the statement comes out of nowhere and doesn’t belong. Aside from its inherent offensiveness (whether joking or not), it just doesn’t make sense in the context of the story.

The only parts that really intrigued me are when Klausner discusses pop culture relationships, including Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog, and Pam and Jim from the show “The Office.” Kermit is the sensitive eternal bachelor, a musician who never bothers to settle down while every step of the way leading Miss Piggy to think he will eventually do so. This part actually made me get mad at Kermit! I’ll never be able to look at The Muppets the same way again. Jim and Pam represent Klausner’s thesis that all men want a woman whom no one else knows is pretty, possibly the only original idea contained in this book.

To be fair, there are some laugh-out-loud funny lines in this book, but they were few and far between. If I wanted to read a book about one woman’s self-esteem issues, I’d hang out in the Self Help section at the bookstore, not Humor.

fashion copyright

Really interesting presentation about fashion copyright. It's kinda long, but really worth watching. I found it through my favorite blog of the moment, youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com.





I had no idea that there are no copyrights for clothing in the U.S. So all those Chinatown knockoffs would be legal if only they stopped using the brands' logos on the fakes!

Movie Review: "Public Sex" (2009)

WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW

I watched the British movie "Public Sex" on the Sundance Channel last night. The US release really should have stuck with the UK title, "Dogging: A Love Story," because "Public Sex" is misleading. "Public Sex" does not focus on sex, rather it focuses on Dan, an unemployed journalist (HEYYY!) who wants to write an expose about "dogging"--the British practice of having sex in cars in a public space while others watch and sometimes participate.

Dan starts by simply researching dogging online, but soon his obnoxious room mate Rob brings Dan with him on a dogging excursion. Meanwhile, under the pseudonym "East of England Eight Inches," Dan strikes up a friendship with "Horny Geordie Lass," a person he meets in an online dogging forum. Horny Geordie turns out to be Laura, a pretty university student who explores the dogging scene to escape her overprotective father (though she never actually participates in the act herself).

Upon Dan's first trip to a parking lot with Rob and Rob's older girlfriend Sarah, Dan and Laura run into eachother without knowing that they've already met online under pseudonyms. The two of them awkwardly discuss dogging for a few minutes, and although Dan has a girlfriend, he invites Laura to meet again at a future dogging gathering. However, Dan ends up bringing his girlfriend Tanya to that gathering in order to "show her his research," but she is disgusted once she realizes what's going on. What follows is one of the funnier scenes in the movie, in which Tanya escapes Dan's car only to follow an older man into his trailer, where he and his wife serve her tea and explain that dogging saved their marriage (and ask if she'd like to see photos of their grandchildren while the wife is wearing a dildo, natch).

Tanya then decides to give dogging a try with Dan, much to his horror. Despite his curiosity, Dan is in actuality totally grossed out by the scene, and the act of performing public sex while other people jerk off (onto his car window, no less) makes him horribly uncomfortable. Tanya, on the other hand, likes it so much that she later tells him if he won't do it with her, she'll find someone who will.

The rest of the movie follows Dan and Laura meeting a few times more, usually at dogging events, until the film culminates at a huge dogging weekend in the countryside. By now, Dan and Tanya have broken up and Laura, after learning that Jim is East of England Eight Inches and catching him with his (now ex-) girlfriend, has dragged along Jim, a classmate who has a crush on her, to the weekend event. Jim, too, is not interested in dogging, so Laura ends up wandering off on her own. She's picked up by a large group of older men and the situation starts to turn dark until Dan shows up and takes her away, finally bringing the two together for good.

The best parts of the movie are the moments when people's true colors finally show. The awkward meetings between Dan and Laura; Rob crying and begging when Sarah indicates she prefers dogging to Rob; Tanya enjoying dogging while Rob halfheartedly fights it. The characters are truly what drive the film, not sex. Though there are plenty of prurient moments in the movie, including above-the-waist nudity and creepy sex scenes shot in night vision, those are nearly forgotten once you return to the main characters. However, I have to say that the love story itself is a bit convenient and cliche, so the dogging backdrop is what makes it different and interesting.

Despite the borderline weak story, I still really liked this film. There are lots of surprises and the characters all have depth. The story is sweet but still subtle, which presents a strong dichotomy against the stark and dirty dogging background.

vitamins for drunks

"drinkwel is the first multivitamin specifically formulated for people that drink alcohol."

WTF??? I mean, it's basically just a regular multivitamin with some trendy additions like superfruits and antioxidants, but seriously?? And would people who drink to excess really invest in new-agey vitamins?

This whole neutraceuticals thing has really gotten out of hand. Just eat real food, people! And practice moderation! It's really that simple.

Movie Review: "My Darling is a Foreigner"

Tonight, I scored free tickets to a Japanese movie called "My Darling is a Foreigner" at the Big Cinemas Manhattan (formerly the Imaginasian theatre). This was its American premiere, and was sponsored by All Nippon Air (ANA) and New York-Tokyo (NYT).

I've seen a lot of Japanese cinema, from Kurosawa classics to manga-inspired modern comedies. The manga-inspired modern comedies make up the bulk of the fare I get to see nowadays, though, largely because I get these free tickets from NYT on a regular basis. And as much as I love Japanese cinema, a lot of the modern flicks I see are silly to the extreme. The acting tends to either have a goofy, over-the-top quality (things like outrageous facial expressions responding to minor incidents, and a particular fake laugh that female characters always seem to do), or feels stiff and held back--even when someone is angry and the situation warrants animated acting, rarely does anyone raise his voice or yell. "My Darling is a Foreigner," then, came as a pleasant surprise. I expected it to be slapstick silly, and instead it was cute, touching, and, best of all, realistic.

"My Darling" is the story of the relationship between the Japanese Saori and her American boyfriend, Tony. Tony speaks perfect Japanese and is enamored with Japanese culture, though he doesn't always understand either the language or the culture. The young couple must navigate their relationship while dealing with the approval (or in many cases disapproval) from others who don't fully understand this Japanese-foreigner relationship.

Upon the wedding of Saori's sister, Saori and Tony each start thinking about where their relationship is headed too. At this very wedding, Tony meets Saori's parents for the first time. Tony had wanted to meet formally and follow Japanese custom, but Saori insisted it was no big deal. And at first it appears not to be. Saori's mother takes a quick liking to Tony, and the rest of the family immedately follows...except for Saori's father. He tells her that he cannot approve of her relationship with a foreigner. Saori opts not to tell this to Tony, and thus begins a troubled patch for their relationship. Saori soon becomes immersed in her work as a struggling manga writer, further pushing Tony away. Things come to a head when Tony disinvites Saori from a trip they had planned to the U.S. (where Saori was to meet his family for the first time).

So as to avoid spoilers, I won't describe any more of the plot. However, I will say that this movie had some of the best acting I've seen from a modern, young Japanese cast. Mao Inoue, who plays Saori, has large, expressive eyes, yet she doesn't fall back on sad puppy dog faces to express her character's feelings. Her shock at being disinvited from the trip is palpable through both her face and her stammering, and a scene of her crying upon Tony's leaving her behind is truly moving. (I'll be honest, I teared up a little--who can't relate to her feelings of sadness and disappointment??)

Jonathan Sherr, who plays Tony, is also great. He never rests on silliness even when asking Saori silly, amusing questions. He demonstrates a genuine curiosity and eagerness. Even the scenes that are downright goofy (such as Tony cleaning the house in Saori's apron with a hot pink duster) remain grounded in reality thanks to Sherr knowing just how far to take things.

"My Darling is a Foreigner" may be a romantic comedy, but it's still subtle, a rarity in this genre. The end of the movie does wrap up a little too neatly and abruptly, but the movie as a whole is touching without being saccarine.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that "My Darling" is playing on any sort of regular schedule at Big Cinemas Manhattan. This may be because this particular showing was part of the Nippon Eiga Series, which is sponsored by (and used as a marketing tool for) ANA, but maybe Big Cinemas will play it further once their current roster of films ends?

Also, anyone who likes Asian cinema should really sign up for NYT's emailing list. I get these free movie invites at least once a month. And the theatre just got swanky new seats courtesy of ANA. I don't know how or why I originally got onto this mailing list, but it is probably the most useful out of all the ones to which I subscribe (Urban Daddy, Flavorpill, 3rd Ward, Todd P, Thrillist...).

Bacon Ice Cream!

For those of you not in the know, Shake Shack is something of a New York institution. It's a stand (or shack, if you will) that sells milkshakes (and burgers, fries, and frozen custard), and is known for its regular wait of an hour or more. It started with one location in Madison Square Park, and expanded not too long ago to an indoor spot on the Upper West Side, and more recently to Citi Field. There will also be two new openings this summer, according to the Shake Shack website. Though the UWS spot tends to have shorter lines (and it's open all year-round and you can feasibly eat there when it's raining), the Madison Square Park location is still king. Plus, after eating burgers at dozens of places in NY, I think Shake Shack's are the best in the city. But that's another story--the frozen custard is the focus today!
Shake Shack has a rotating roster of unexpected frozen custard flavors. You get a different one each day of the week, and the schedule changes each month. This month, flavors include such yummy-sounding fare as "milk & honey" (Thursday) and "carrot cake" (Sunday). I was there on a Saturday, for which the flavor was--ready for this?--"pancakes & bacon."

Seriously?

Skeptical as I was at first, I simply had to remind myself that I love bacon. I love it in drinks (the Spotted Pig's bloody Mary, made with bacon-infused vodka, is to die for), I love it in chocolate (try Vosges Haute Chocolate's dark chocolate bacon bar), and I certainly love it nestled next to a plate of pancakes at brunch--so why not as a custard flavor? I tried a sample of it before totally taking the plunge, and, much to my surprise, it actually tasted like pancakes and bacon! I don't know what kind of weird lab-grown chemicals went into the making of this stuff, but at that point I didn't care. I got a Concrete (custard blended with toppings of your choice), and kept it simple with chocolate fudge sauce mixed in (I said I love bacon with chocolate, didn't I?) and whipped cream on top. It was amazing. The sweet chocolate tempered the pancake and bacon flavor quite a bit, but you could still get a hint of bacon coming through, which is usually all you really need anyways.

I sat in the park eating my bacon custard and watching squirrels for a good half-hour, enjoying the fact that summer is finally almost upon us. (And it just wouldn't be a NY summer without a few more trips to the Shack to come!)