Way Cool Wednesday – 13 April 2016

Hello, hello, hello! So this is unusual, right? I’m posting on a Wednesday rather than a Friday. Well, I wanted to post an additional little piece this week that I’d like to make a more regular fixture on the site. So with that said, what is Way Cool Wednesday? Well, it’s where I channel my inner Bill S Preston Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan and find things of the net that make me say ‘way cool’, and share them here.

The aim of this is to provide a cool little piece of positivity where I get to share some funky stuff I’ve found that either interested me, made me smile or made a compelling argument for something that I thought should be shared. And so, here we go …

 

WAY COOL WEBSITE: DEAR PHOTOGRAPH

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Dear Photograph is a site where you’re encouraged to take a photograph of a photograph from the past in the same place in the present. What this means in practice is that you have a little snippet of what things looks like now with what they used to look like laid over the top. Each photograph seems to come with a little story from the photographer too explaining the significance of the moment for them. It really is fascinating seeing how things have changed, and indeed, how some things have remained the same like this. It’s also nice to see a physical photograph rather than a digital image on a screen … well OK, they’re digital images of physical images, but it still counts. With the amount of old photographs that my parents have, things like this really hammer home how few most people have these days. In some ways, I think that’s a shame. Regardless though, enjoy a cool site!

 

WAY COOL BLOG POSTING: IN DEFENCE OF THE FAIRY DANCE ARC (SAO)

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So, as my reviews will attest, I rather enjoy anime. One that I have avoided thus far, despite a few recommendations, is Sword Art Online. My reason for this sit ha the set-up is rather similar to the Dot Hack franchise. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not dogging Dot Hack and other MMORPG based shows, it’s simply that I really love Dot Hack and so it would be unfair to compare them when the most likely result is that SAO will come out on the bottom due in a large way to my own love of the other series. Now, SAO has plenty of fans, and they have their own views on what parts of the series are good or bad. One thing that comes up a lot is that people seem to really dislike the second story arc, aka the ‘Fairy Dance’ story arc. Over at the Takuto’s Anime Café site, a five part series of posts went up to show that the story arc is not all bad. Now, like I said, I don’t atch SAO. Even so, I thought these were really cool postings and should get a little more love. That being case, feel free to click the link above and scroll to the bottom of the posting wherein you’ll find banners that link to each part of the set.

 

WAY COOL BLOG POSTING: WHY ALIENS 3 IS BETTER THAN ALIENS

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This is an older posting that I found way back when it was first posted. The thing is, I like Aliens as a film, but it is by far my least favourite of the original trilogy of films. In base terms, the reason for this was the lack of despair: In Alien, the crew were definitely not prepared to face the xenomorph. Come Aliens, a group of marines are added in and that kinda killed it for me. Sorry, but they’re trained to deal with dire situations, and so they have a pretty good chance at survival. Aliens 3 came out, and the despair returned. Convicts with no real weapons are not in the ideal position to face the terror that stalks them. Anyway, this posting raises a lot of good points in support of a horribly underrated film. Even if you disagree with the statement, it’s well worth reading if for no other reason that it is well thought out and puts things better than I tend to.

 

WAY COOL MUSIC: COUNTING CROWS – ROUND HERE [LIVE]

This is an official live video of Counting Crows performing ‘Round Here’ during their ‘August and Everything After – Live at Town Hall’ DVD/Blu-Ray. It’s a great performance of a great track, and Adam Duritz is on remarkable form on vocals. The emotion in the song gets me every time, especially from 03:50 onwards. Beautiful stuff.