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Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (movie site | imdb listing) is being made into a movie by the Wachoski brothers and will star Natalie Portman as Evey Hammond and Hugh Weaving as V. There's a June 19 NYT article about the filming closing down Whitehall for three nights earlier this month. According to the article, the movie will be released in the US on Nov. 4, the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes Day. Link to the NYT article found on Jonathan Goodwin's blog.

I've been watching the reruns of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Having now seen the whole show, it's cool to see just how tied together the series is, which is a definite contrast to most animated shows which originate in the US. I've also come to appreciate the Tachikomas, which I had originally found childishly annoying, as have many others based upon comments I've read in the Amazon DVD customer reviews. The idea behind the subtitle Stand Alone Complex is that despite the digitization networking of information and cyberization of humans, people still function as autonomous stand alone agents. The Tachikomas, on the other hand, while physically stand alone agents, become increasingly unified as a single consciousness even as they begin to develop "ghosts," which seems to include freewill. A number of the middle episodes focus on the Tachikomas, and I found them so annoying that I almost stopped watching the show, which makes this new understanding of them that much more interesting to me.

The show's very worth watching, though I don't know that I start watching it at this point in the story arc (I originally caught it in the 5 episode, where the main story arc begins taking off). If I find out Cartoon Network's going to rerun from the beginning again, I'll post it here. Otherwise, all 26 episodes are available on DVD. Well, vol. 1-6 are. Vol. 7 won't be out until late July. But you could rent the earlier volumes and catch up. This week they broadcast episodes 16-18 and next week should be 19-21.

I've decided that I do like Samurai Champloo and Paranoia Agent has proven to be as weird and dark as I expected.

Adult Swim | Alan Moore | anime | Cartoon Network | comics | Ghost in the Shell | graphic novels | V for Vendetta