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"That I don't ....want....to..get caught up in anyathat, funky shit going down in the city..."
2002-02-25 12:59:20
Second try. The title line from last time came, of all places, from the Prarie Home Companion.
Warning, the paragraph below contains a major spoiler for those of you who haven't seen "Brotherhood of the Wolves."
OK, am I the only person on earth capable of figuring out that the monster is a Lioness? Come on people! I got conned into going to see it again on friday (long story, but it involves chaperoning a polite girl and the guy who annoys the hell out of her) and I spotted a few corrections I need to make to my review from two weeks ago, but this is something that really bugs me. I've spoken to eight people now who've seen the film, and, when asking about the creature, I get answers from "we'll never know" to "an animal brought back from Africa." I mean really! Look at its stance, the way it moves, crouching low in a "boxer's walk" as it sneaks up on the cabin! The way it swats sideways at the pitchfork it's prodded with! The tawny yellow fur around the eyes! The dimensions and shape of the jaws (within the iron jaws) that we see reflected in its victim's eyes! Really, anyone who owns a cat should be able to spot the similarities here immediately.
Now, on to my corrections. Other than missing an obvious joke about the similarity of the opening scene to that of "The Sound of Music" (the von Trapp family was found hideously mangled today...) which was emphasized by a TOTAL LACK OF SOUND (movie had to be restarted), I did notice that it was Mani in the first fight. (Hey, gimmie a break, that was a heavy raincoat.) Also, I am willing to concede that the moves of most of the native French fighters have at least a passing resemblence to kickboxing, and thus (AFAIK) bringing it closer to savat. The moves were still pretty ludricrous, though. That's all the corrections I'm willing to admit to.
"Work" has begun on my next video. I put "work" in quotes because, thus far, the work consists entirely of watching through the entire series looking for material. I'm starting to get a bit nervous because some key footage has failed to materialize as of yet (...when the books were found by the golden ones...) but I'm only halfway through the series. Man is it ever LONG, and not nearly as clever as I remember it being. Still funny in places, though.
Well, it appears that national security has trickled down to my level. We've recieved a few notes lately along the lines of "Please notify the university if you are using any of the following materials." Bit of an annoyance, but also rather surreal for your boss to stop by and go "sayyyyy.....You wouldn't happen to be using any VX nerve gas, would you? No? How about Ebola?" (The correct answer is "good heavens! I hope not!)
Along similar lines, all of my work has been ruined for a week by that darn Mad Cow disease. (Pause) Apparently several companies have put all bovine-based products on a list of "controlled materials," and the ECGF I use is from bovine brain. Thus, instead of sending the material to me the next day, they wait a week and then send me a stack of paper that has to be signed by a NOTARY REPUBLIC, stating that I don't plan on doing anything like EATING the stuff. Gahh. Meanwhile, my cells are dying.
To all those disappointed at the lack of multiple updates over the weekend...tough beans. I was tied up by the movie until 1:30 friday night, Saturday night was my regular game, and Sunday I went home for my father's birthday. I'm beginning to rethink the manner in which I do these anyway. It's occurred to me that the movie reviews that I've been doing are acting as a crutch for me. I'd originally intended to use this area as practice for my writing, but now I find myself settling into a rut, the reviews becoming humdrum, dull, and repetitive. It gives me an excuse to natter on for a page or two without really thinking about my writing, since all I'm doing is criticizing someone else. This repetition is especially depressing, since becoming predictable in your creativity is one of the worst things you can do (in my humble experience), and is also the reason I try to jump around in style and substance of my AMVs. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do to remedy this situation, but keep an eye out for format changes.
In going home for my Dad's birthday I hauled along two cartons of comics just to get them outta my room. I pulled all my comic boxes (3 1/2)out from under my old bed, assembled a new box, flipped the lids off, and prepared to get to work.
Apparently, I used to be an idiot.
I quickly discovered that my old method of organization was to have one box open, into which I would deposit each month's purchases, organized by title. When one filled up, I assembled a new one and started again. Thus, all of my collections are spread out through every box of comics I own. I tried to organize them for about an hour and a half, and finally gave up, dumping hanfuls of random issues back into the boxes pell-mel. I hope they don't revoke my nerd license for this. Oh well, at least they're out of my room.
In other, entirely depressing, news, Chuck Jones has died. I wish there was something I could add to what has already been expressed, but the truth is its all been said. He was one of the greatest directors WB or MGM ever saw. He gave us the best either studio ever had to offer and, fortunately, was widely and well recognized for his contributions before he died. In considering his rememberance, I'm reminded of the best obituary I ever saw. When Jim Henson died, the local paper ran a political cartoon that was just Kermit saying "So long Jim" as he receeded into darkness. Had I the skill with a pencil I'd do something similar with Wiley Coyote and a hand-sign, or Porky Pig's famous "That's all Folks," or just Bugs with a "See 'ya Doc."
Damn, now I'm too depressed to write a review.
EK: Two things, one short, one long. 1) What's the name of that jazz album? Sounds like something I might pick up, if only for the "Strange Fruit" song. I was so surprised this past year when someone submitted a video with that song and obviously KNEW WHAT IT WAS TALKING ABOUT.
2) Leave competition (except for Expo)? Hrm. That is entirely your decision, natch, but I would debate against it for the following reasons. a) What you're seeing now is really only a couple of people out of the several hundred regular posters to amv.org. There's always someone who'se gonna complain. In truth, this much complaining has probably ALWAYS occurred, it was just in discussion among friends, not posted out where everyone could see. Further, the argument is being exacerbated beyond it's original fairly small dimensions by the inability of several people to tell the difference between humility and false humility. Come to think of it, I think one of the problems here is that not EVERYONE knows when it's better to just walk away from a stupid or ignorant comment. Instead, someone just has to take things personally, return comment, others correct, acellerate to winstorm proportions. Bleh. Personally, I've gotten really tired of the hero-worship that appears to be standard issue for the past few generations (years) of new AMVers, but never having been the subject of same, I've never really felt it was my place to say. b) The AWA Masters' contest was specifically made to coax several of the more experienced hobbyists back into the fold after they left for fear of engendering the sort of petty spite and jealousy we're starting to see here. In theory, the blind judging, high standards, single entry, single winner format should prevent any sort of bad feelings on the matter, since the contest is always so close. Of course, that should have been the case with the logos as well... c) I don't know about you, but without regular competition, I'd never get anything done. The competition prompts me to try something unique and put more time and effort into the vid. Without a deadline, I'd still be working on my second vid. d) Purely selfishly...Awwwww Come on! I take over one of the major contests and people start dropping out of competition! How fair is that? :( (kidding)
Of course, all this is mediated by your statment that you wanted to keep competing in Expo. Is it just because of the judging by someone other than the other competitors? Do you consider it a "less targeted" competition than the others? Or the "make up whatever goofy awards we wanna give" aspect? Just curious.
Feeling a bit better now. Let's see if I can get through this review (again!) I've already cut sizeable portions of what I remember from the sections above, so this may be rather short.
In order to counteract the effects of seeing such an American French film as "Brotherhood" twice, I counteracted the effects by watching a terribly French American film, "The Professional." (No, not Golgo 13.)
Despite the fact that this film is an action film concerning a professional hit man in Chicago, despite the presence of ludicrous amounts of killing and fight scenes and the use of ordinance that, I'm sorry, would never be authorized for use inside of an apartment complex, despite the presence of a cooly-unkillable juggernaut of skill and professionalism in the main character, an assassin, this is still a remarkably European-feeling film. The pacing is remarkably languid, gliding from scene to scene and concentrating on closely controlled character development. There's none of the "ohmyGodwe'regoingtoloosetheaudience becausetheyhavealltheattentionspanofacaffinatedferret!" pacing that we normally see in American action films.
(to be continued.....again.....when I find the time.) -
"Well....things look different when you're on heroin."
2002-02-25 00:19:38
There was an exceedingly large entry here. I covered the death of Chuck Jones, EK's decision to step out of competition, my roomate's homicide attempt on our refridgerator, My father's birthday, my comic collection and the idiocy of it's organization, and a review of "The Professional". Then my fucking browser crashed. God Damn it.
Fuck.
Short version; Bad, please rethink, caused by roaches, went well, nerd license revoked, very good movie.
Fuck.
I may rewrite this again later. There went an hour and a half. -
2002-02-20 21:34:31
Whoop, forgot something.
EK: Hadn't heard of the movie. Looks from the IMBD summary I'll have to check it out, though. -
"Doyle was the High school star / Everybody thought he'd go real far / but he didn't learn a thing from the classes he took, / you know he just wasn't interested in his books."
2002-02-20 21:33:22
Anyone else feeling like this place is getting a bit out of hand? Not that I'm objecting exactly, but the number of people keeping regular updates in their journal has officially gone beyond my ability to keep up as of about two months ago, and appears to be accelerating. Contrarily, the message boards (other than the recent rant of a flare-up on the awards and the logo) have been slowing down. Hmm. Not sure what to think.
I've started getting really frustrated with my computer as of late, mostly because my high-tech spiffy CD burner is malfunctioning. I mean, it's been doing that since the very first day I got it, having trouble getting it to recognize discs or properly upload off of them or suddenly booting from them in the middle of something else, but now it appears to be refusing to even play an album through without crashing my computer in the middle of the last three tracks. Bleh. The CD in question (though I don't blame the CD...experience has taught me that this particular piece of hardware doesn't care about content, it'll crash regardless...) is "Fantomas, the Director's Cut," a CD that Lord Rae lent me at the last Anime Meeting. Appropriately, it's a remix of sixteen themes from mostly horror films (although "The Godfather" and Twin Peaks is in there). Ironically, I haven't seen any of the films these are remixes of, so I'm in no position to comment on how they compare. Thus far (computer crashed on track 12), however, I think Jimmy picked the best of the bunch when he went with the "Rosemary's Baby" theme remix for his Key video. Nice little haunting tune with occasional thunderous intercessions by heavier-metal-style attack lyrics. The next best one is the tune they took from "Spider Baby," the "other" film that Carol Ohmart was in, which I mentioned in my "House on Haunted Hill" review.
Not feeling up to doing a review of the first DVD of "Boogiepop Phantom" tonight...in fact not at all certain that I should review the DVDs separate from the entire series since I've only seen the first 3 eps., but I'll debate a bit more before deciding. The series has such great potential, but also has some trappings of a descent into utter crap from a highpoint on the first DVD...
Instead, I'll give ya'll a cautionary review. I picked up a copy of "Beyond the Mind's Eye" last week and ended up watching it last night. I mentioned here before that I picked it up mostly for the fish/bird animation and the Thomas Dolby song. Well....
I was robbed.
The Thomas Dolby song was "Quantum Mechanic" which someone did an AMV to several years ago, and I've been causally searching for the song ever since. It's a really neat example of where "electronica was supposed to take music" and never really did. I'd been told repeatedly that the song was on a CD "Soundtrack of Beyond the Mind's Eye", thus leading me to assume that the song was IN THE FRICKIN' FILM. It ain't. Apparently, it's in "The Mind's Eye", the "prequel" to this. Crap.
OK, this I can deal with. However.
When I was a kid, and the big projection TVs were coming out into the consumer market, there was a store in the mall back home that put it's biggest model halfway out the front door. In order to show off the coolness of the TV, they played this one computer animated short over and over in a constant cycle. CG was pretty new then, so I was absolutely awed by this little short. It was a hollow sphere-world floating in space and divided down the center. The bottom half was water, the upper half air. We could tell this because the lower half was filled with schools of fish, the upper with flocks of birds. A bird and fish get into a "conversation" mostly through imitative motion, and the bird is convinced by the fish to dive into the water. However, when he hits the surface, it shatters, and we see that it was just a pane of glass separating the two. I remember this little short quite clearly as the shop played it in a constant cycle for over a month.
Turning over the DVD case, I spotted a frame from this short. There is NO possible way that I am mistaken in this, so clearly do I remember it, and so evident is the frame. However, this bit of animation is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND in the disc, not even partially. Thus the two reasons that I picked the DVD up turn up empty.
That major (and extended throughout the entire disc) disappointment colored my reception of everything else in this little collection. I pick up random pieces of animation on a whim, looking for that rare bit of gold, so I'm not TECHNICALLY disappointed, but it's gonna take me a good bit of time to get over being personally burned by this DVD.
So, I know everyone else here is like I was, and has seen this sitting in tape form, heavily discounted, in the back of a movie store, probably miscataloged or shoved in with the anime for lack of anywhere else to put it. You wondered, what exactly is this thing? Is it a collection of shorts? Early music videos? Someone's term project? Tron ripoff? What? Briefly you entertained the thought of buying it to find out, but the price (whatever it was) was too much to consider.
What it is, is a series of AMVs. Sort of. I was fooled at the beginning, which just goes to show how good they were at putting this together. I thought each vid was an effort by a single studio to showcase their editing abilities. Turns out when you watch the credits that it's actually a series of videos assembled out of all the available CG animated bits from movies, TV, ads, what have you, and pasted together quite professionally to form these videos. The most easily recognizable bits are from the Tron ripoff "The Lawnmower Man," but if you watch closely you'll see the CG bit demonstrating the assembly of a Patlabor from the TV series (uhh...first series I think), a piece from a Hawaiian Punch ad, a Samsung ad, and, get this, the old roller coaster program intro for the NBC Saturday morning cartoon lineup. Anyone but me remember that?
There's some remarkably good stuff in here. CG has gone a long way in the past 12 years, no doubt, but some of the stuff is still amazing regardless. So long as you stay away from the actual human form. Every time a human figure shows up in the CG rendering, it only proves to demonstrate how far we had to go to actual photorealism. The human figures are that laughable grade of doughy, stilted, rubbery crap that wouldn't look out of place as a "Resident Evil" figure, the worst being "Nothing but Love," which also needed a bunch of work on the voice acting. All but one of the videos is done to instrumental work, and the only one with a few lines is by far the best of the lot. "Too Far" incorporates a bunch of pieces I actually recognize and a few that I wish I did. The tune itself is that odd late-80's synth-with-minimal-lyrics creation and reminds me for all the world of the cartoon "Galaxy High"'s theme. The only ones worth watching here are "Seeds of Life" that's assembled from half a dozen sources but looks relatively cohesive to actually tell a story, and "Afternoon Adventure" which is a single continuous video following the chase of a wasp after a bumblebee. (Yeah, yeah, but it's overlaid relatively seamlessly on the verdant undergrowth of a deciduous forest.) The music on neither of them is much to write home about, but it's not unbearably bad. Most of the rest is wandering instrumentals matched fairly tightly but unremarkably to the graphics. Way WAY too much of the "weird geometric shapes/oscillating fluid bubbles in free form" that everyone was fascinated with when CG was just starting up. In fact, much of this feels like test-runs of ideas at full speed with no real idea where to go with the project. All the tech specs check out...now do we have a story? Like the early seasons of Reboot, a lot of initiative, but not enough ideas to really fill the gap and make likeable, repeat-watchable visuals. (Reboot's script was pretty awful until 3rd season as well). We can only wander through CG cityscapes so many times before we get bored.
All in all, it's worth your seven bucks (six on sale) only if you have an incurable curiosity about animation like me. -
"...I fear no evil, I feel no pain..."
2002-02-19 10:22:48
HEY! Lileks is stealing my job! (http://www.lileks.com/bleats/index.html) Oh well. Haven't actually seen "Jeepers Creepers" yet. Brunching Shuttlecocks lambasted it rather heavily, but it's been tempting me from the DVD vending machine in the student center for a while now. (Yes, GA Tech, in their infinite wisdom decided to put a vending machine full of DVDs in the student center. "Let's put a vending machine that charges DIRECTLY TO YOUR CREDIT CARD in an area where traditionally new-to-controlling-your-own-expenses individuals can have maximum access.) Of course, it's a little less tempting that it costs $28.99! Jeez! Thats 8 bucks more than Buckaroo Banzai!
In other news, those of you keeping up with the crematorium story here in Georgia have probably heard a statment or two from Dr. Sperry, the medical examiner for the state of Georgia. Thing is, I've met him. Every year he comes to Dragon Con with a box of mortuary slides for Forensics presentations to anyone who's interested. (Last year it was a presentation to Penal Officers detailing deaths of people while in police custody, and an elaborate display of the details of gunshot wounds.) His shows are always great and packed to the gills.
Looks like he'll have a few more interesting slides for the coming year.
The whole thing sounds like a horror film in the making, or perhaps the denoument after one has concluded. Present estimates put the total at 200 bodies stored in and around the non-functional crematorium for the past 8 years. Wow.
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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