JOURNAL: kaitoujuliet

  • Well, that was my second ACen... 2003-05-19 15:40:46 I volunteered to work staff this time, which made the con kind of a weird experience since I spent basically the whole weekend in one video room or another. I didn't get to go to any of the panels or events, and I hardly had any time to shop.

    One side benefit, though, is that I got to run the video room for the showing of the AMV contest tapes! So any of you who were in that room would have seen me, though none of us knew it. I didn't know ahead of time that I would be doing this, or I'd have made a journal entry and encouraged everyone to say hi. It was great to sit down and watch three solid hours of amv's! Makes me inspired to start another one myself. 
  • So much for good intentions. 2003-04-30 15:02:58 I haven't been very good about keeping this journal updated this spring, I guess! Part of it's due to business and part to the fact that I feel like I don't have much interesting to say right now! But sometimes no news is good news.

    In any case, I can announce that I've uploaded my two videos to the Dangling Carrot:

    Rest
    http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=6633

    Ringvision
    http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=15804 
  • Japanese Film Festival, plus A Full Draft! 2003-03-19 15:18:39 The East Asian Studies department at the university sponsored a Japanese film festival last weekend, and since I had no other plans and admission was free, I decided to check it out. Here's what I saw:

    - "Oriome": I only caught the last 20 minutes, but it seems to be a heartwarming movie about a family dealing with the grandmother getting Alzheimer's.

    - "All About Lily Chou Chou": a somewhat experimental movie about a group of teenagers being extremely unpleasant to each other. Very interesting though, and it's left me with lots of food for thought.

    - "Spirited Away": Even on my fourth viewing, I caught myself grinning at several points! I spotted several additonal appearances of the giant Peeps. Can't wait until this comes out on DVD so I can have it on my shelf to watch whenever I like.

    - "Gohatto" (English title "Taboo"): I wasn't sure I was in the mood for a gay samurai movie, but I'm very glad I went. It turned out to be set in the Shinsengumi during or just before the Meiji revolution, so it was kind of like seeing the other side of Rurouni Kenshin. Okita was a main character, although we never saw Saitoh. It was funny and exciting to recognize a few locations in Kyoto just from seeing them animated! Lots of good swordfighting too.

    =========

    And in other news, I finally have a complete draft of my LOTR video! I'll have to enter it into the database soon. Now I'm already looking ahead to my next amv project. I want to do something fun and romantic this time. 
  • Progress at last! 2003-03-12 13:11:43 I don't know what broke the wall, but I finally got going on my LOTR video again! I had about 40 seconds left to fill and I knew basically what I wanted to do with them, but I just couldn't seem to get the clips to fall into place. I'm still not done now, but at least I've got ideas to play with. Once I finish that, I hope I can get to work on another anime video. I've got several ideas to play with, although it might be too late now to get anything ready for the club contest in April. 
  • Birthday in Chicago 2003-02-03 16:29:35 Last Saturday (February 1) was my birthday. I went into Chicago to see the special exhibit on the Medici at the Art Institute. The crowds were unbelievable, but there was lots of good stuff, most of which I didn't recognize. One thing which impressed me was a portrait of one of the Medici Grand Dukes with his hand on an ornamental helmet that had belonged to his wife's grandfather, King Henry II of France. In a case next to the portrait was the actual helmet, looking none the worse for wear despite the passage of 450 years or so. Amazing.

    I had supper at a Panda Express and they were giving out little red envelopes with chocolate coins in them because it was Chinese New Year. This was the first time I've ever been aware of my birthday falling on Chinese New Year, although it has probably happened before.

    Then I took the train out to the suburbs to see my friend Dree. Played Dungeons and Dragons with her gaming group until the wee hours of the morning. I actually got to create a character to run with that group, instead of running someone else's.

    On Sunday we did a little shopping, worked on riffs for our next MiSTing, and hung out at a coffeeshop for a while drinking chai and arguing over which of the guys in Lord of the Rings is the best. She's got eyes for no one but Aragorn, while I'm a Faramir fancier. Too bad about what they did to him in the movie, but that's a rant for another time. The problem is that I'll acknowledge that Aragorn is a very cool character and Viggo Mortensen is a very good-looking man, but I can't get her to budge on Faramir. She says he's "too perfect"...yeah, and Aragorn has all these glaring flaws?

    We also tried out a new Chinese restaurant. I now have leftover pressed duck in my refrigerator, just waiting to be reheated for lunch. Yummmmm.

    So all in all, a very good weekend. Telling myself I'm 35 years old still makes me a little dizzy, but I had a great time anyway.

    I hope I'll be able to get back to my video soon.... 
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