I passed my admission exams! I can finally breath!

Thank you very much to all of you who wished me good luck in the exams. *superhugs*

Apparently, now I'm stuck in the exams hell! So, until I'm done with my studying, I can't be very active here. When I finish my exams, I swear I'll start posting, faving and commenting like before.

Probably, by the end of this month, I'll be online like before. x-) Wish me luck!

I'm sorry for not updating in a long time but, this past week, I had the most horrible headaches ever! I'm still fighting with my strong desire to rewatch Pride and Prejudice ([link] and you can pass by [link] for more Jane Austen's discussion), but I did a little surprise for Miriette last night: a banner for her poems blog!

I'm loving a shoujo fantasy/horror manga called Selected Pandemonium (in japanese, Hyakkiyakou Shou or Tales of a Hundred Ghosts Traveling by the Night) made by Ima Ichiko, who also made some interesting shounen-ai manga. I love the mangaka's watercolored art ([link] and [link]) and the way she tells her gothic ghost stories. Selected Pandemonium ([link]) is the tale of Ritsu's encouters with ghosts after the death of his grandfather, who was a summoner of demons. The manga isn't too violent and it's more fantasy than horror. This's one of my favourites (it's a shame it's not more popular) and there's even a japanese series based on it ([link]).

Since we're talking about japanese ghost stories, there's a good shoujo manhwa called Ban Hon Sa or The Spirit Returner ([link]), with very fairytale-like stories and many dokebi or other korean spirits. The manga Tales of a Midnight Sun ([link]) is also a very good recommendation with a beautiful artwork and creepy stories.

Ueda Akinari, a famous japanese author, wrote two famous collections of ghost stories: Tales of Moonlight and Rain or Ugetsu Monogatari ([link]) and Tales of the Spring Rain or Harusame Monogatari. A famous movie based on the Tales of Moonlight and Rain was made. It's called Ugetsu and is also known as Tales of the Pale and Silvery Moon after the Rain ([link]). It tells the story of an encounter between a married craftsman in Medieval Japan and a beautiful ghost lady. Mizoguchi’s artistry is perfect while expressing the suffering of women at that time.

There's another book that features several japanese ghost stories. It's Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things ([link]), wrote by the most famous japanophile Lafcadio Hearn (some of his fairytales are in [link] and some of his books in [link]). Four of Hearn's stories were made into a beautifully creepy movie called Kwaidan ([link]): "The Black Hair", "The Woman of the Snow", "Hoichi the Earless" and "In a Cup of Tea". The last one is specially surreal, but my favourite one is the third.

Chinese ghost stories are very good too, specially the Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio ([link]), a collection of nearly five hundred supernatural tales ([link]) that were used as inspiration for the famous movie series A Chinese Ghost Story ([link]).

Of course I can't finish my post without one of my favourite movies of all time: Dreams aka Yume ([link]). It isn't exactly a ghost story, but a surrealistic movie with eight stories based on the dreams of the film's director, Akira Kurosawa, at different stages of his life: Sunshine Through the Rain (about a boy trying to spy a kitsune's wedding), The Peach Orchard (where a little boy finds out that his dolls are alive), The Blizzard (a take on the Yuki-onna's myth), The Tunnel (a group of dead japanese soldiers march throught a tunnel), Crows (a student finds himself inside Van Gogh's painting "Wheat Field with Crows"), Mount Fuji in Red (radiation starts killing all the people near Mount Fuji), The Weeping Demon (after the apocalypse, a man meets a strange oni-man) and Village of the Watermills (a village where people are truly happy and celebrate a funeral with joy instead of mourning). Kurosawa's message that people are spoiling the world with pollution, consumerism and ignorance is perfectly clear in this movie. In the last dream, a villager said: "What's important is clean air and clean water."

This's the biggest truth of all times.

January 11, Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest, died at 88 ([link]). Sir Hillary was an adventurer and a philanthropist, and I'm sure his death will leave us so much poor inside.

Me and Miriette watched the silent sci-fi movie Metropolis ([link]). This was my first silent movie and I liked it very much. Metropolis is Fritz Lang's masterpiece and was influenced by the German Expressionism ([link]). The film is set in the futuristic citie of Metroplis, where the society is divided in two groups: the ones who think and live in luxury (the Head), and the ones who work (the Hands) and live in the underground. The son of the city's ruler falls in love with an angelic woman who advises the poor workers and starts to understand the injustice of his society. Only with the Mediator's arrival will the two groups unite.

I'm reading the fourth book in Asimov's Robot Serie ([link]), The Rest of the Robots. One thing I love about Asimov is the way he expresses the positronic robots's psychological traits while always explaining them throught the Three Laws of Robotics ([link]). It reminds me of a shoujo manga called Milky Way([link]), written by Princess Kaguya's mangaka Reiko Shimizu. It tells the story of a robot called Jack who's immortal but lonely until he meets another robot, Elena. Reiko Shimizu's art and plots are always creative and interesting. The first chapter was scanlated by [link]

Things are going on pretty well, for a change! Past Friday, I decided I'll enroll as a History major and a Culture & Religion minor on a portuguese college! My first choice was going to be Languages, Literature and Cultures - Portuguese Studies, but I thought more and came to the conclusion that History would be better (specially because my minor will be Religion!).

I'm having a lot of fun listening to Blasted Mechanism ([link] and [link])! They're my favorite portuguese musics and my favorite alternative rock band of all time! They're just so alternative and their music is very tribal! There's nothing like that in Portugal. I like writing poetry and listening to their music is like listening to singing poetry. There's one part in one of their musics, "All the Way", that goes on like this:

"Unite your brothers, unite your tribes
Unite yourselves, yeah just tonight
Unite the sun, unite the child
Unite in one, unite and fly
Unite the sound, unite the light
Unite in truth, unite and fight
Unite your world, unite tonight
Unite yourselves, yeah just tonight".

Go watch them: [link]

I stumbled upon various cool posters from [link] They're funny and serious at the same time, while expressing the situation of women in arts. They're here:
[link]
[link]
[link]