HB2M Dept.

I turned 36 today.  The festivities were myself and the missus in NYC, meeting my parents for a really lavish lunch, and relaxing at home afterwards.  Most of the actual gift-giving will probably happen around Christmastime (that's usually the case anyway), but I did get one gift so far that was a real joy: the Art of Vampire Hunter D book.  Leafing through it reminded me all the more that there needs to be a live-action D movie.

I also checked out Hellboy on BR-D and was deeply impressed - actually, being impressed with the movie was kind of a foregone conclusion since I'm already a Guillerimo del Toro fan, twice as much so now after Pan's Labyrinth.  He might be a fine choice to bring D to the screen; his directorial flourishes make this kind of material feel fully-rounded and human, and not just a way to mount a bunch of special effects.

The only reason there are no reviews of BR-D titles yet on the site is because the software bundled with the BR player has no screen capture function, which is incredibly dismaying.  Then again, that software in general is so crippled as to be almost useless, and copy-protection has absolutely nothing to do with it — how smart is it to create a media player that can't even seek to an arbitrary point on a disc when you know darn well the title in question is authored to have that ability?  Dumb, guys, just dumb.