This is so ironic. Just as I started my one month relaxation leave, I got a sudden attack of lumbago. It's one of those really painful attacks that made it impossible to sit or lie down, even though all you want to do is relax. The doctors recommend walking, so I had to take long walks for about a week until the pain went down enough for me to sit in front of a screen. I guess my body is trying to tell me something after too many years sitting on my ass. It's time to get back to the gym, and I haven't been there since I was 18 years old, pumping muscles to impress the girls at school.

I got myself a step counter today. I thought it might be fun comparing how much a walk when I am at home, to when I am back at Toxic. It's 26 steps from my home desk, to the fridge, and back. I have to take plenty of trips to the fridge to make the recommended healty 10.000 steps-per-day. That's 385 trips to the fridge every day :P

Have you seen the new Animated Hellboy yet? I purchased the DVD this weekend, and watched it yesterday. Right after I was done with Hellboy, I also watched Screw-On Head, another film based on Mignola comics. The difference between those two films are really worth discussing. It seems like the makers of Animated Hellboy decided to take the characters, and make an superhero action-film for kids, effectively walking away from everything that made the comic books so cool and wonderful. You almost feel like Hellboy fell into a Scooby Doo episode. Looking at the credits and checking them against IMDB, I found out that a big chunk of the crew are ex-Disney people, working on several of the Disney spin-off TV-series. And this really feels like a cheap saturday morning cartoon. Every aspect of the production felt dumbed down, with the story going in all sorts of wrong directions. Technically, the animation was disappointingly bland, with characters that looked like they were from some Mulan cheapquel. Sorry for being so harsh, but I really like the Hellboy comics, and I don't see how this will bring more people into reading them.

But Screw-On Head on the other hand - that's really great stuff! Very quirky and fun, you really feel like you are watching something special. It's got everything Animated Hellboy should have had - a real Mignola story, great stylized animation done in the proper design, wonderful voice acting, and real character. So if you haven't watched Animated Hellboy and are considering purchasing it, go buy Screw-On Head instead!

spydaweb () (URL) - 25 March '07 - 03:13