Kari and Maurice

I finally received an order from Amazon the other day. Usually very quick, but the Pacific ocean really slows them down I guess. Amongst the items received was "Steamboy", the new Anime feature from Katsuhiro Otomo (of Akira "fame" (if you can call it that)). A very fun movie. Excellent, excellent animation and just non-stop thrills. Storywise it suffers a bit. It is good enough, but offers nothing new. Basically, take the latter part of the 19th century, add a standard 1950s "humans abusing science" storyline (the kind that drive most MST3K experiments), and then try to tell the story of the Rocketeer. Keep in mind, it's not bad. It's all skillfully done, but it doesn't have that...Grambaldo (for lack of a better term) to take it to the next level, but that's not what I wanted to talk about.

As I was watching the film I was constantly distracted by the voice acting and not just because Anna Paquin plays the male lead. My problem was that whenever Miss Scarlett talked, all I could hear was Lavie Head from "Last Exile" (the best anime series...EVER). So, being the ambitious nerd I am, I IMDB'd it and found out it was Kari Wahlgren in both roles but the list didn't end there. She is in basically everything that has ever been made as far as I can tell. Seriously though, she does a lot of anime revoice work and also a bunch of video games that I remember playing. I'll have to listen to that one voice next time I'm playing Halo 2 (for example).

Voice actors are an interesting breed. It is a small community that works hard on a broad spectrum of projects that are often overlooked or just ignored. It's like for "The Critic" (an underrated show), everyone knows it's Jon Lovitz doing Jay Sherman, but they may not realize that about 90% of the show's voices are done by 1 guy, the extremely talented (as well as busy and almost unknown) Maurice LaMarche. I'm not sure what exactly drives these people. They obviously don't have the same affinity for fame and noteriety that most stage/screen actors have. I'm sure the money is decent, but I doubt it's an insane amount. They seem to just thrive off the work. A lot like us musicians. Maybe that's why I care.

P.S. Try to work in "grambaldo" into your everyday speech. I think it's a good expression for "that little extra something". We'll see if Webster's picks it up next year. Probably alongside bling or some other stupid new word.