Rémino is the personal Web site and journal of Rémi, a trilingual Acadian Web developer and Japan enthusiast in his 20's from New Brunswick, Canada who resided in Ottawa and is currently in Saitama near Tokyo. He publishes photos and videos and writes here about anything. He also writes a lot on Twitter and about his life in Japan on Edojin.

Yuki & Nina: Two Characters by Two Directors

Tue 2 Feb 2010

Yuki & Nina

Minmin and I went to watch Yuki & Nina near the Ebisu station in Tokyo.  This bilingual French and Japanese movie among the titles of last year’s Cannes selection is a collaboration of the Japanese author Nobushiro Suwa and the French actor Hippolyte Giradot.

The story revolves around Yuki (Noë Stampy), a young Japanese French girl whose parents are about to divorce, forcing her to move from France to Japan with her mother.  This prompts her to join her best friend, Nina (Arielle Moutel), who just had an argument with her mother, to run away from home together.  They hope their disappearance will give Nina a break from her mother and help Yuki’s parents get back together.  

That’s when it gets weird.  After the drama in the first half of the film and a short transition, the plot suddenly twists into surreal where logic is replaced by the imaginary.  

Perhaps this is why I do not understand what the movie tries to be.  Then again, maybe this simply reflects how differently the directors were thinking from each other.  (One of the girls being French while the other being half-Japanese may also be another representation of the collaboration on this work.)  The first hour or so describes Yuki’s situation like a typical TV kids drama series while the other one subtly reminded me of the wonderful magical realism title Yume (a.k.a. Akira Kurosawa’s Dream).

I understand the strange bits may have helped Yuki see her own future and to accept her faith willingly.  Yet, I wish the story line would have been of just one kind or the other rather than trying to force the two together.

Nevertheless, despite the ending that may perplex many, Noë’s performance and the beautifully framed scenes can still be appreciated.

3.5/5

Photo from The Daily at IFC.

Google Apps to Phase Out Support for IE6

Tue 2 Feb 2010

After Digg and other big Web sites, it’s about time for larger players to finally drop support for Internet Explorer 6 and other old browsers.  Google Apps will slowly drop support for legacy browsers starting March.  This includes functionality for Gmail and Google Docs.  Here’s an e-mail I received from Google today as an administrator of Google Apps:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

The More You Know

Tue 19 Jan 2010

After reading the newest 264th comic strip of LOL Comics, I noticed a comment that I found to be very true. The only thing that is missing from that strip is the “The More You Know” star. Someone else suggested the “Knowing is half the battle” line from G.I.Joe, but I’ve seen a lot of that recently.

So, here it is!

LOL Comics: The More You Know

I posted it on the comic’s site and its content mirror on LiveJournal, but I think nobody cared.

Update:  I guess someone cared.  The author of the comic strip thought my edit was so awesome, that he replaced his original with my version!

This Is It = This Is Shit

Mon 18 Jan 2010

I just saw the re-release of This Is It yesterday. I guess they couldn’t get enough money from the first release in the Japanese theatres — which I now know why — and the producers got desperate.

First, I’ll set the record straight. I like the early music of Michael Jackson. The songs are catchy and share a good beat. As for the man himself, however, I don’t really have much of an opinion. All I know is he can dance and he can sign like many artists can just dream to do. He may have sounded like a megalomaniac sometimes, but I’m sure he meant well.

I didn’t know what to expect since I had no idea This Is It was supposed to be the name of the tour. Having managed to release a postmortem flick about the “King of Pop” so quickly baffled me at first. However, after watching that poor excuse of a movie, I understood everything.

It was certainly nice to see MJ back on the stage again after his long troubled time. A real pop flashback from the 80’s for the modern days. But really, if a famous signer dies during the preparation of his long-awaited stage comeback, it doesn’t mean that you should just take the bits some cameramen filmed during its making and just slap it together into a shitty movie with sprinkles of cheesy CG animations of what the concert would have been.

It feels like the people practice on stage and everyone else working around Michael were part of a big family, and the film felt like a feel-good family movie that should have just went straight for home release. Watching him dancing and signing his old hits like Billy Jean and Beat It was nice, but I felt the song quality from the original 80’s music videos were better. Maybe it would have been better to be there in person.

This is not a biography nor a documentary. It’s a typical concert movie that you would find in music shops, and I’m sure while you can’t find a better pop-star, you’ll find a better movie. There was no narration, really little background story, and no details whatsoever about the last days of Michael. The film went on and on for too long, and I was tricked into thinking several times that it reached a conclusion, but no, there were always more “surprises,” even after the credits.

They forgot the “sh” in front of the third word in the title. Maybe this waste was made to make Michael spin in his own grave and do a last Thriller, or a sad attempt to recoup all the money lost from the tour that never came to be. It’s a reward to all the hardcore fans. Still, to people like me who just enjoy its music a little bit, it’s a pile of steaming feces smeared in the face, and I wouldn’t even bother watching the release on DVD or Blu-ray which is coming out at the end of the month. James Rolfe did a better job.

1/5

Firsts of 2010

Thu 14 Jan 2010

Belle journée au Parc Duguay-Mallet

See this photo above? I’m using this to brag that up to this day here in Japan, there hasn’t been a single snowfall! This is the best winter I’ve had since a long time. Sure, I loved playing in the snow and dig tunnels of doom when I was a kid. But, once I grew up, it’s funny I can only appreciate the first beautiful white snowfall of the year and hate the rest of the cold season just an hour later.  So, I will gloat in delight, because all you can do, my dear friends and family members in Alberta, Ontario, and New Brunswick, is to stare at this picture above and weep when you remember of the warm fuzzy days of summer.

Okay, moving on…

Now that we’re in the middle of the first month of 2010, I thought I’d publish a few firsts of the year that I recorded.  This is important.  (Times are in Japanese standard time, and those without dates happened on January 1st.)

  • First breakfast at 10:16. Ate osechi ryouri, the traditional bento, or Japanese boxed meal set, eaten on the first day of the year.
  • First movie watched: Avatar on January 4.
  • First people we visited: my girlfriend’s former colleagues and students for the usual Japanese first lunch.
  • First place we visited: the small Shinto shrine near my girlfriend’s parents where we drank a few cups of sake. (Alcohol and religion is a perfect mix.)
  • First picture I took: me eating some soba noodles at around 1 AM after the 108 bells chimes of the new year. (This needs some explanation… with the actual photo.)
  • Most crucial datum: first flatulence occurred at 0:59 followed by the first urination at 9:55.

There you have it. You can finally sleep well tonight. My apologies if I caused you insomnia for the past fortnight.

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