• Iron Man (I) – the Origin Story – though with a modern twist. (I’m pretty sure the original origin story for Iron Man took place in Vietnam, though it’s been a very long time since I read it. The new one? Afghanistan? Or someplace similar in the Middle East.) Stick around past the end credits for a teaser to a future movie in the series.
• High points (in this order):
• Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts
• The Suit
•  Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark
• Meh…
• The Villain (of course, we wouldn’t want the villain to be too evil for an origin story… the Hero wouldn’t survive.)
• The government (First hints at S.H.I.E.L.D. – stay for the extra after the credits for a cameo)
• Tony/Pepper (Not sure what the point of that was… Sure, in the comic they have a complicated relationship…)
• Iron Man II – Tony meets his first post-Origin villain (Someone who builds his own Suit.). And finds out the perils of everyone knowing who Iron Man is (I could have sworn it was a secret in the comics) (He never could stay on script… the government should have known better.) (Once again, stick around for a teaser for a future movie (Thor))
• High Points
• Pepper Potts (again)
• Scarlett Johansson  as Natasha Romanov (aka The Black Widow) - She had the only non-Suit action scene in the movie
• The Suit-case
• The Tech!
• Mickie Rourke as a version of Ivan Vanko (maybe)
• Meh…
• Tony drunk at his birthday party in The Suit
• Tony vs The Government
• Tony’s competition (Hammer)

First-up… Summer Wars.

Verdict? Excellent movie. Even if it wasn’t a Studio Ghibli film (So it wasn’t translated by Disney) I can see why it won awards when it came out back in 2009.

Quick synopsis – Girl asks boy (math nerd) to go with her to her grandmother’s 90th birthday party, neglecting to tell him she’d told everyone he was her boyfriend. Oops. We then have some AI taking over some international VR social networking site (for which the boy gets blamed) and the rest of the movie is the fight to defeat the AI by the girls family + boy. The Wiki says it’s a romance… but just barely. It’s more about family.

Next up? Tales From Earthsea

This IS a Studio Ghibli film, directed by Goro Miyazaki. (See the wiki entry for the film for Ursula Le Guin‘s reaction to the film, which uses ideas and characters from her Earthsea stories.)

Quick synopsis – Heck if I know. But it had dragons, and magic and Ged (though he’s never called that) and Tenar and an evil wizard. So it wasn’t too bad. But not one of the best Studio Ghibli films I’ve seen.

One of the extras on the DVD is an interactive map that contains quick video blurbs about many Studio Ghibli films and trivia/info. And some games.

The 2012 International Day Of Femslash is on July 14th, just 3 months (and 1 week) from now.

NaNoWriMo? 6 months and a bit.

And ideas? I’ve got plenty:

For IDF 2012 – I’m thinking another episode in my Class of 99 series, but centered around Joyce. And that’s all I plan to reveal for now – it might change.

For NaNoWriMo 2012 – I’m thinking alien invasion. Not an original idea but I think I have a unique twist on it. We’ll see.

Instead of writing today, I read two books. Rocket Girls and its sequel Rocket Girls: Last Planet by Housuke Nojiri. (Note: Excluding tax, the Kindle edition is cheaper than the iBookstore ebook, and both are half the price of the paper edition. I actually bought the first book from Borders before they closed and that cost even more but it was an impulse buy – that took me a year to get around to reading. )

It’s about a girl who goes looking for her father in the Solomon islands and ends up falling into a job as an astronaut. The second book covers her further adventures along with several other girl astronauts.

Very science fiction YA feel to it. Sort of Heinlein-ish if you got rid of the rugged individualist, boy and his dog themes. So, basically, a Heinlein YA science fiction book (Podykane of Mars, Rocket Ship Galileo, etc.) if Heinlein were Japanese. Sort of.

The books are from 1995, and 1996 respectively. Took 15 years for an English translation to make to this side of the planet. Supposedly there’s an anime series based on the two books, which are very popular in Japan.

I thought they were very good in translation, even if they would be G rated, mostly. And it’s nice to have something to read that wasn’t full of vampires, werewolves, and assorted other supernatural creatures.

Here’s hoping April+ goes much better.