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Karate Kid, IF "Similar" and SCBWI Tokyo Art Show

The Karate Kid changed my life. The movie, of course. Not the Legion of Superheroes comic character. I'm watching it right now as I type this blog and I was thinking about how many of my perceptions about karate were shaped by Mr. Miyagi. I was never big on "sports" movies, I never saw Rocky. But I knew what it was like to be the little guy. The new kid on the block. And I knew what it was like going up against an institutionalized system of separating the "winners" from the "losers". Luckily, I had friends in and out of school that liked me for who I was and not for who I desperately thought I wanted to be. It took me a little while and Karate Kid 2 to realize what I did want. The summer that KK2 was the summer where I decided to take control of my life and stopped worrying about what the @$$holes thought. It wasn't even a gradual thing. Once I had made that decision, suddenly things started changing around me. I had confidence and that made it ea
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FLESH + BLOOD mini-review (Rutger Hauer, Verhoeven)

I'm trying out a new format for talking about movies. It's a work in progress. I actually want to do more illustration and the sketch of Jennifer Jason Leigh doesn't do her any justice. Once I turned on this movie, I wanted to look into Susan Tyrrell as she always plays highly-interesting broken characters. I plan to rewatch her in Angel (1984) sometime soon. She has a great quote on IMDB : I'm a loner. I don't like beautiful people, but I find beauty in the grotesque. And in the sweet soul inside someone who has been able to get through their life without being a rat's ass. I love all the connections that I listed up here. Hauer is one of my absolute favorite actors and I can't believe I waited so long to see him in this. Or maybe I saw the casting and ran far away, cuz this is some bizarre casting! Verhoeven is a very interesting director as in he's not afraid to do things differently. He apparently experimented while making this film and
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Tokyo Akahon Manga “Gulliver’s Travels” by NAKAMURA Hiroshi

According to a post by akahon manga researcher Yuuzora Retro (pen name), the Tokyo-based publisher Taikōdō ( 泰光堂 ) created their Manga Classics series in response to the PTA backlash against manga contributing to delinquency in Osaka. This is Gulliver’s Travels by NAKAMURA Hiroshi (中村ひろし), a B6-sized 3-color akahon* printed with red ink fills on either blue or green lines costing 85 yen. NAKAMURA seemed to be the main artist for Taikōdō as evinced by the ad pages at the back. There is no publishing date, but it probably wasn't too far from 1951 when "Cinderella" and "Snow White" from the same series were published. Looking at the stamps on the endpapers on the back, we can see that this particular book was rented out at a kashihon-ya (rental comic shop) in Saga, Kyushu called Imazato Neo Shobō. It was lent to me by a Mr. Fujita, a collector heavy into Showa-era items. I will continue to introduce the books I was able to borrow from his
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