I am so fucking jazzed! One of my all time favorite directors, Satoshi Kon (the main main behind such gravy hits like Paranoia Agent, Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers) has another flick coming out early next year. For people who only know American movies it's the equivalent of being back in the early 80s and being told that Spielberg was planning to make another "Indiana Jones" picture!... Granted, Steven's project turned out to be the sub par Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but before you knew that you were still shitting your pants in excitement.

Yeah, Kon's next movie is going to be called "Paprika", which I admit is really gay for the name of any movie that isn't based on Iron Chef's Chairman Kaga's biography, but you gotta understand that 99% of the time that any Japanese person tries to use an English sentence, phrase or word it's usually out of context and pronounced like an American two-year-old with a mouth full of marbles. The title isn't important anyway. What makes me all giddy though is the strange trailer that's already hit the net and Anime News Network's genre description of the project: Horror, Mystery, Psychological, Science Fiction. This is what the Konster does best. Yes, Godfathers and Millennium Actress were fun and still strange enough to be associated with the man, but the psychological mindfucks of Perfect Blue and Paranoia are pure art. Pure, twisted, mindfucking art.

In other news, Penny Arcade dropped the bomb that E3 has essentially been cancelled. I found out about this within five minutes of finding out about Paprika, and my mind went on a roller coaster ride of conflicting, head-banging emotions strong enough to screw up Margot Kidder's mind even more than that bag's head already is... God I loathe Margot Kidder.

Yeah, it may have been years since I last attended a most excellent E3 adventure (2001 being the last), but I always planned on going back some day. '98 through '01 were the glory years of my life... Writing for a soon-to-be bankrupt online gaming/entertainment magazine and being put up in the glorious Universal Sheraton with day trips to DisneyLand, Universal Studios and Magic Mountain, and dinner at fancy-schmancy restaurants like Bucca di Beppo (sp?) and Filo's Taco Shack... Then 3 full fucking days of playing the greatest games months, if not years, before the rest of the world got a chance... Never again. Christ! Now I have to hang my dreams on and settle for shit like Comic Con or LesboFair. What a let down.

-the Rossman