I read the new Sirenia Digest over last night and this afternoon. A good issue, though, I think, by far the least "weird". "Charcloth, Firesteel and Flint" oddly enough reminded me of this recent, great Onion video about a "sexual arsonist" in Birmingham, Alabama, where, by another interesting coincidence, Caitlin used to live. Hmm.
"Charcloth, Firesteel and Flint" is obviously a less comical take on the subject, and returns to the recurrent theme in Sirenia of supernatural beings linked fundamentally to disasters or acts of violence.
The second story I liked even better. Called "Shipwrecks Above", it links the vampire myth with the myth of sirens. It explores a sense of entitlement felt by abusers that seems to be an important theme in Caitlin's work. I was reminded of recent discussions on The Howard Stern Show of MacKenzie Phillips' sexual relationship with her father and Robin Quivers', who had also been sexually abused by her father, describing the full access a father has to his daughter. That these guys are psychologically twisted into seeing opportunities with their kids--Howard Stern's been talking lately how he feels men who commit violence towards women are used to be being rewarded for efforts they make because it's the system they were taught by their parents, and they're frustrated when the women they desire don't bestow a reward corresponding to the labour they've put as collateral. Stern didn't put it this way, but to me this seems indicative of sociological damage inflicted by capitalism--the hardwired idea that a hard day's work is compensated by pay. It reminds me of how Michael Moore's been saying lately that capitalism is antithetical to democracy--its presumption of rights to responses to stimuli often conflict with the democratic ideal of everyone's equal right to happiness in society.
But back to "Shipwrecks Above"--again, it shows an abuser creating, through his abuse, another abuser, or creature like him. The aesthetic of this piece is particularly nice, just the use of words like "strigoi" and "Carpathian"* conjure the texture of Dracula and the mixture with the imagery of sea life creates a great sensual cocktail.
With breakfast to-day, I watched the second or third episode of Twin Peaks (depending on whether you count the pilot), the second one directed by David Lynch. His episodes are so much greater than the others, and they always leave me unenthusiastic to watch the next non-Lynch episode. To-day I was reflecting on how one of the things that set them apart is his talent for stepping back--audiences like to figure things out on their own. It's like Gavin Elster in Vertigo--the best way to manipulate people is to let them feel like they're manipulating themselves. So the episode begins with a static camera remaining all through the episode credits on the Horne family's dinner--no character is really given central focus, except a slight suggestion of Ben Horne's POV by putting him closest to the camera with a slight over-the-shoulder angle. So we're invited to make our own conclusions about Ben, Johnny, Sylvia and Audrey--a main character on the show, Audrey's incredibly never focused on in this scene. We stop thinking about what the episode is or is going to be, and we sort of glean this is a drab family ritual that Sylvia forces them to go through in some vain attempt at creating a real family dynamic. When Ben's brother Jerry bursts through the doors, we instinctively feel better at the injection of warmth that is his and Ben's relationship. And all this to help establish Ben, who's been positioned as a potential villain on the show at this point. This fits also with the tapestry of multifaceted humanity which is partially the essential nature of Twin Peaks.
Audrey's conversation with Donna at the RR is another highlight of subtle characterisation--Audrey putting her face close to Donna's when she tells her "Agent Cooper likes his coffee black" gives us superficial subtlety--Audrey and Donna giggle because they both know Audrey's telling Donna she likes Agent Cooper without explicitly saying it. It's a game of unintentionally revealed romantic motives that aren't truly unintentional--it lets Donna in, and in a way, let's "us" in, and we warm to the situation.
Then Audrey gets up and starts to dance. It's strange, and it puts Donna off--Donna's no longer allowed in, she doesn't quite understand what Audrey's up to, and Audrey knows this too. She's distancing herself from Donna after hinting at a darker relationship with her own father. This is Audrey the manipulator's defence mechanism, but also, I think, it's Audrey saying to Donna, "Hey, this girl you were laughing easily with a moment ago is actually far stranger than you can imagine."
My tweets from last night;
I don't know what anyone really wants.
Familiar faces peer across a bean.
Vegetables and legumes cruise the old haunts.
Somehow a brunette stripper made the scene.
*Apologies to anyone living in or near the Carpathian Mountains. Sorry, you're stuck with Dracula flavour.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Venia Wins (Best) Dressed in Vyurel
The new Venia's Travels is online. References to Oscar Wilde, The Thief of Bagdad, Salome, and unintentional references to Roman Polanski and the economic crisis. LOTS OF WORDS. Fear not, though, for there are also naked breasts.
And Rolethir looks pretty snazzy in this chapter, if I do say so myself. Or maybe he looks like Judd Nelson dressed as Elvis Presley. YOU BE THE JUDGE.
And Rolethir looks pretty snazzy in this chapter, if I do say so myself. Or maybe he looks like Judd Nelson dressed as Elvis Presley. YOU BE THE JUDGE.
When the Chips are Asleep
Twitter Sonnet #66
Warily translate overheard statements.
The thin woman lives in a secret well.
Allen Ginsberg hears from under pavements.
Much to authority shall tea stalks tell.
Time sneaks suits onto silver bullet trains.
Flight of Roger Thornhill's not for the meek.
Grey undead rain clouds grab broadly for brains.
Blue wallpaper's the sad meat from last week.
Green are the artichoke and spinach chips.
Wine is the last colour of thought spectrum.
Gnomes are naught but Duke Ellington's bli-blips.
A city's powered by hydraulic rum.
Powerful white apes in bed want you gone.
They aged in sleep before songs switched you on.
To-day I was dreaming something about car dealerships and Australians when the dream was abruptly interrupted by another where I saw my bed occupied by two small, angry figures. They looked like the tiny old crime bosses/politicians you see in a lot of anime--Akira, the syndicate leaders in Cowboy Bebop, or the council in Top wo Nerae 2. But for some reason, I was absolutely certain they were gorillas.
They had white hair and pale, pink skin with completely black, beady eyes. Their mouths were moving but no sound seemed to be coming out--finally I deciphered from the lip movements the words, "Go away. Go away right now. Go away." I woke myself up in half a panic with a feeling that I ought to leave the house, but the longer I was awake, the more rational I became and realised I simply couldn't afford to get up at 10:30am with everything I needed to do to-day.
I ended up getting around six hours of sleep, but I still feel a lot better than yesterday--that headache is totally gone, and I guess it might well have been from the previous night's gin. Headache hangovers are pretty rare for me, but this appears to be the second one I've gotten from this gin, which is really too bad as it's a marvellously smooth gin (Bombay Sapphire).
Warily translate overheard statements.
The thin woman lives in a secret well.
Allen Ginsberg hears from under pavements.
Much to authority shall tea stalks tell.
Time sneaks suits onto silver bullet trains.
Flight of Roger Thornhill's not for the meek.
Grey undead rain clouds grab broadly for brains.
Blue wallpaper's the sad meat from last week.
Green are the artichoke and spinach chips.
Wine is the last colour of thought spectrum.
Gnomes are naught but Duke Ellington's bli-blips.
A city's powered by hydraulic rum.
Powerful white apes in bed want you gone.
They aged in sleep before songs switched you on.
To-day I was dreaming something about car dealerships and Australians when the dream was abruptly interrupted by another where I saw my bed occupied by two small, angry figures. They looked like the tiny old crime bosses/politicians you see in a lot of anime--Akira, the syndicate leaders in Cowboy Bebop, or the council in Top wo Nerae 2. But for some reason, I was absolutely certain they were gorillas.
They had white hair and pale, pink skin with completely black, beady eyes. Their mouths were moving but no sound seemed to be coming out--finally I deciphered from the lip movements the words, "Go away. Go away right now. Go away." I woke myself up in half a panic with a feeling that I ought to leave the house, but the longer I was awake, the more rational I became and realised I simply couldn't afford to get up at 10:30am with everything I needed to do to-day.
I ended up getting around six hours of sleep, but I still feel a lot better than yesterday--that headache is totally gone, and I guess it might well have been from the previous night's gin. Headache hangovers are pretty rare for me, but this appears to be the second one I've gotten from this gin, which is really too bad as it's a marvellously smooth gin (Bombay Sapphire).
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Cats On Trains or Brains or Cats On Trains In Brains or Brains with Whiskers
The desire to writhe in comfort may strike a cat with sudden urgency;
That footage of Snow is from a couple nights ago, I just haven't had time to upload it. I was happy to see him since the coyotes had been so noisy the night before, I thought he'd met the fate of too many cats around here. But the coyotes were probably just going on about the legions of rabbits around here. The music's by Bernard Herrmann from the North by Northwest soundtrack--it's the first train station scene.
Last night's tweets;
Time sneaks suits onto silver bullet trains.
Flight of Roger Thornhill's not for the meek.
Grey undead rain clouds grab broadly for brains.
Blue wallpaper's the sad meat from last week.
Huge headache to-day, and my brain was pretty dull yesterday. I started to wonder if it was my new blue wallpaper, but I really can't take issue with Kiri Komori.
I signed onto Second Life briefly before bed last night and actually found someone willing to play chess with me. It was a place called the Isle of Lesbos, a women's only place, and I hope I don't get banned for being a guy in real life since it's the first place I've found in months where it looked like people might actually be willing to play chess. I considered joining the Internet Chess Club, which Howard Stern uses, but it costs money, making Second Life, ironically, the better deal. Well, provided I can find people to play.
That footage of Snow is from a couple nights ago, I just haven't had time to upload it. I was happy to see him since the coyotes had been so noisy the night before, I thought he'd met the fate of too many cats around here. But the coyotes were probably just going on about the legions of rabbits around here. The music's by Bernard Herrmann from the North by Northwest soundtrack--it's the first train station scene.
Last night's tweets;
Time sneaks suits onto silver bullet trains.
Flight of Roger Thornhill's not for the meek.
Grey undead rain clouds grab broadly for brains.
Blue wallpaper's the sad meat from last week.
Huge headache to-day, and my brain was pretty dull yesterday. I started to wonder if it was my new blue wallpaper, but I really can't take issue with Kiri Komori.
I signed onto Second Life briefly before bed last night and actually found someone willing to play chess with me. It was a place called the Isle of Lesbos, a women's only place, and I hope I don't get banned for being a guy in real life since it's the first place I've found in months where it looked like people might actually be willing to play chess. I considered joining the Internet Chess Club, which Howard Stern uses, but it costs money, making Second Life, ironically, the better deal. Well, provided I can find people to play.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Need More Caffeine
Last night's tweets;
Warily translate overheard statements.
The thin woman lives in a secret well.
Allen Ginsberg hears from under pavements.
Much to authority shall tea stalks tell.
I went to Mitsuwa, the Japanese market, yesterday and bought some kind of apple flavoured green tea. The bags are those cool, balloon kinds were you can see the big leaves and, in this case, apple matter instead of just mulch grain you see in the standard 2D teabag. It was decent tea, not nearly as sweet as I thought it was going to be.
I had no energy whatsoever yesterday for some reason. I drew and inked a page of comic rather late in the day after running a few errands and then just could not rouse myself sufficiently to colour. I ate dinner early, watching the two hour premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's sixth season. Much better than the season finale of the fifth season with kamikaze Buffy which didn't work plotwise, though I presume Whedon thought it worked thematically somehow. I haven't put it together myself.
The first episode of the sixth season, though, holds together a lot better than I remember--Buffy's perspective immediately upon being resurrected was interesting, and Willow's at her absolute best, not only in terms of how she's written, but she's light years from her terrible season four Robin Williams-esque wardrobe. She wore a black and dark plum dress last night I particularly liked.
The word "avoidy" was used a couple times in the episode, in true Whedony fashion, and I found myself wondering if Sarah Palin's a big Buffy fan--she has a daughter named Willow and she infamously coined the term "Mavericky".
Sorry if I put a piece of tin foil in your teeth, Buffkateers.
I found myself watching a 1989 Barbara Walters interview with Audrey Hepburn on YouTube just before I went to sleep. It's interesting how Walters already looked 80 and Hepburn looked so incredibly vibrant just a few years before she died.
Warily translate overheard statements.
The thin woman lives in a secret well.
Allen Ginsberg hears from under pavements.
Much to authority shall tea stalks tell.
I went to Mitsuwa, the Japanese market, yesterday and bought some kind of apple flavoured green tea. The bags are those cool, balloon kinds were you can see the big leaves and, in this case, apple matter instead of just mulch grain you see in the standard 2D teabag. It was decent tea, not nearly as sweet as I thought it was going to be.
I had no energy whatsoever yesterday for some reason. I drew and inked a page of comic rather late in the day after running a few errands and then just could not rouse myself sufficiently to colour. I ate dinner early, watching the two hour premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's sixth season. Much better than the season finale of the fifth season with kamikaze Buffy which didn't work plotwise, though I presume Whedon thought it worked thematically somehow. I haven't put it together myself.
The first episode of the sixth season, though, holds together a lot better than I remember--Buffy's perspective immediately upon being resurrected was interesting, and Willow's at her absolute best, not only in terms of how she's written, but she's light years from her terrible season four Robin Williams-esque wardrobe. She wore a black and dark plum dress last night I particularly liked.
The word "avoidy" was used a couple times in the episode, in true Whedony fashion, and I found myself wondering if Sarah Palin's a big Buffy fan--she has a daughter named Willow and she infamously coined the term "Mavericky".
Sorry if I put a piece of tin foil in your teeth, Buffkateers.
I found myself watching a 1989 Barbara Walters interview with Audrey Hepburn on YouTube just before I went to sleep. It's interesting how Walters already looked 80 and Hepburn looked so incredibly vibrant just a few years before she died.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Love Stories, Fairy Tales, and Fabrications
I've put my skills as webcomic writer/artist, such as they are, up for auction at Care Faith Hope, a live journal community dedicated to raising money for my friend Moira and her husband T, who's in need of heart surgery. The two don't have health insurance, so they're very much in need. Aside from my offer, there are a lot of other cool looking items and services up for auction, so please check it out.
Twitter Sonnet #65
My arrabbiata's nude of noodles.
Garlic's the goal of the noblest searches.
Sweetly physical are the heart's doodles.
Strange women smoke in the biggest churches.
Zombie Jabba spies his favourite Twi'Lek.
Dancing alone in a noisy strip mall.
She's sacred as a barber pole's phallic.
Distracted cartoon angels never fall.
Planets orbit thanks to networked rabbits.
Many Alices aren't really crazy.
Cross hatched holes make efficient travel nets.
While a fierce cat's motives might be hazy.
Beauty's on the edge of a screen by Sartre.
Stars mark the limits of a young dom's heart.
I watched the last episode of Bakemonogatari to-day, which turned out to be very sweet. Senjoghara's vulnerabilities came through subtly enough from behind her latent dom personality, and Araragi's inexhaustible shyness wasn't quite as annoying to me as it once was. I still definitely sympathise more with Senjogohara, though I am usually the one who likes to get the ball rolling in relationships.
I can see now that Senjogohara's sexual advances were entirely aimed at making Araragi uncomfortable--I still wish there had been at least one real, juicy make-out scene. Oh, well. The show's still 8 billion times better than most anime. It certainly blew CANAAN out of the water, which suffered from having its finale released at the same time. CANAAN was an example of arbitrarily assigned melodrama to character types, and Bakemonogatari turned out to be subversions of anime character types to illuminate human, otaku depth. Very nice.
Roger Ebert conducted an interesting interview with Michael Moore about his upcoming film, Capitalism, a Love Story. This was the most fascinating part to me;
"Nobody wants to look stupid, " he told me, "so everybody sort of nods their heads and goes, Oh yeah, yeah, I understand that. You're not supposed to understand it. It's like a snipe hunt on Wall Street.
It's amazing to me how much trouble was caused simply because some people weren't willing to look stupid. Partly I blame internet culture--I think a lot of people have grown so comfortable substituting googled knowledge for their own, and the past nine years have been so much about taunting public officials for being stupid, that now people are absolutely terrified to look like they don't know something. Though there's also the possibility that many of these people didn't necessarily get through all their college classes in a totally honest fashion and they don't know what they are and are not supposed to know.
Twitter Sonnet #65
My arrabbiata's nude of noodles.
Garlic's the goal of the noblest searches.
Sweetly physical are the heart's doodles.
Strange women smoke in the biggest churches.
Zombie Jabba spies his favourite Twi'Lek.
Dancing alone in a noisy strip mall.
She's sacred as a barber pole's phallic.
Distracted cartoon angels never fall.
Planets orbit thanks to networked rabbits.
Many Alices aren't really crazy.
Cross hatched holes make efficient travel nets.
While a fierce cat's motives might be hazy.
Beauty's on the edge of a screen by Sartre.
Stars mark the limits of a young dom's heart.
I watched the last episode of Bakemonogatari to-day, which turned out to be very sweet. Senjoghara's vulnerabilities came through subtly enough from behind her latent dom personality, and Araragi's inexhaustible shyness wasn't quite as annoying to me as it once was. I still definitely sympathise more with Senjogohara, though I am usually the one who likes to get the ball rolling in relationships.
I can see now that Senjogohara's sexual advances were entirely aimed at making Araragi uncomfortable--I still wish there had been at least one real, juicy make-out scene. Oh, well. The show's still 8 billion times better than most anime. It certainly blew CANAAN out of the water, which suffered from having its finale released at the same time. CANAAN was an example of arbitrarily assigned melodrama to character types, and Bakemonogatari turned out to be subversions of anime character types to illuminate human, otaku depth. Very nice.
Roger Ebert conducted an interesting interview with Michael Moore about his upcoming film, Capitalism, a Love Story. This was the most fascinating part to me;
"Nobody wants to look stupid, " he told me, "so everybody sort of nods their heads and goes, Oh yeah, yeah, I understand that. You're not supposed to understand it. It's like a snipe hunt on Wall Street.
It's amazing to me how much trouble was caused simply because some people weren't willing to look stupid. Partly I blame internet culture--I think a lot of people have grown so comfortable substituting googled knowledge for their own, and the past nine years have been so much about taunting public officials for being stupid, that now people are absolutely terrified to look like they don't know something. Though there's also the possibility that many of these people didn't necessarily get through all their college classes in a totally honest fashion and they don't know what they are and are not supposed to know.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Guns, Girls, and Gin
Last night's tweets;
Zombie Jabba spies his favourite Twi'Lek.
Dancing alone in a noisy strip mall.
She's sacred as a barber pole's phallic.
Distracted cartoon angels never fall.
And then, to-day, I found I'd gotten an @reply from someone named Gold Five; "Stay on target!" I looked at his profile and saw that he says that to anyone who makes a Star Wars reference. I love it.
I finally got a good day's sleep to-day. I had my alarm wake me at 2pm and I fell asleep at around 5:30am. I think I only woke up twice during that period, and I had a dream that there was a bar I went to every day after some undefined blue collar job. One day, I was surprised to find the bartender had been replaced by Megan Fox. She smiled at me and said, "You want a gin and tonic, don't you?"
"No, actually," I said, "a gin martini with garlic stuffed olives." She delivered. I'm still thinking I might see Jennifer's Body.
I'm so glad to feel awake to-day. Yesterday just sucked. I didn't get anything done, either, and I've got to finish two pages to-day. I spent some time in Second Life last night and ended up just wanting some plain brilliant movie that went down smooth, so I watched Goodfellas. I love when Lorraine Bracco says, "I know there are women like my best friends who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriends gave them a gun to hide, but I didn't. I gotta admit the truth, it turned me on."
Wow, googling to find the exact quote, I found this site which not only has mp3s of Goodfellas quotes, but ringtones of them. Sugoi.
I probably oughta mention I watched the last episode of CANAAN with breakfast to-day. The show kind of hadn't been good for about six episodes, though. It was strange--the first five or so had great animation, imaginatively sensual direction, and complicated stories. But suddenly the backgrounds became very plain, all the situations the characters were in suddenly became just excuses for them to say extremely emotional things to each other without them having been earned by any established characterisation, and everything I was interested in was left unaddressed, or they were resolved rather arbitrarily. Hugely disappointing for a show that'd had such promise.
Zombie Jabba spies his favourite Twi'Lek.
Dancing alone in a noisy strip mall.
She's sacred as a barber pole's phallic.
Distracted cartoon angels never fall.
And then, to-day, I found I'd gotten an @reply from someone named Gold Five; "Stay on target!" I looked at his profile and saw that he says that to anyone who makes a Star Wars reference. I love it.
I finally got a good day's sleep to-day. I had my alarm wake me at 2pm and I fell asleep at around 5:30am. I think I only woke up twice during that period, and I had a dream that there was a bar I went to every day after some undefined blue collar job. One day, I was surprised to find the bartender had been replaced by Megan Fox. She smiled at me and said, "You want a gin and tonic, don't you?"
"No, actually," I said, "a gin martini with garlic stuffed olives." She delivered. I'm still thinking I might see Jennifer's Body.
I'm so glad to feel awake to-day. Yesterday just sucked. I didn't get anything done, either, and I've got to finish two pages to-day. I spent some time in Second Life last night and ended up just wanting some plain brilliant movie that went down smooth, so I watched Goodfellas. I love when Lorraine Bracco says, "I know there are women like my best friends who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriends gave them a gun to hide, but I didn't. I gotta admit the truth, it turned me on."
Wow, googling to find the exact quote, I found this site which not only has mp3s of Goodfellas quotes, but ringtones of them. Sugoi.
I probably oughta mention I watched the last episode of CANAAN with breakfast to-day. The show kind of hadn't been good for about six episodes, though. It was strange--the first five or so had great animation, imaginatively sensual direction, and complicated stories. But suddenly the backgrounds became very plain, all the situations the characters were in suddenly became just excuses for them to say extremely emotional things to each other without them having been earned by any established characterisation, and everything I was interested in was left unaddressed, or they were resolved rather arbitrarily. Hugely disappointing for a show that'd had such promise.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Perfecting Dolls
Last night's tweets;
My arrabbiata's nude of noodles.
Garlic's the goal of the noblest searches.
Sweetly physical are the heart's doodles.
Strange women smoke in the biggest churches.
Oof. Bad headache to-day. I don't think I had enough caffeine yesterday because I barely slept for the fact that my head felt like it was shrinking every few minutes. I stayed in bed until 3pm, but still crawled out feeling oh so shitty. Must press on . . .
In Second Life last night, Toubanua gothed it up at Edelweiss' absolutely amazing recreation of Mount Saint Michel;
I found myself noticing how odd Toubanua looked last night compared to everyone else. This is a pretty typical look in SL;
No-one seems to feel funny about having Michael Jackson noses in Second Life. Which really brings home the reality that Jackson wasn't so strange, just in a peculiar position. I have a feeling Toubanua's pretty unnattractive by the standards of most SL people for her actually larger than average nose. What is this aesthetic humanity's moving towards? If it weren't for the huge lips, I'd say it's all about easing into people just having fleshless skulls.
Give me Barbara Stanwyck and Audrey Hepburn.
Instead of Buffy the Vampire Slayer last night, I watched the season premiere of Dollhouse. Very nice. I especially liked Whiskey/Dr. Saunder's business with Topher. It reminded me of Roy Batty with Tyrell except Tohper's a little more sympathetic. It was a good exploration of the possible psychological implications of living and working alongside the person who created you--her attempts to guess Topher's intentions with her by reverse deduction using her own personality as clues was great. The very human network of excuses she tells herself to prevent her from leaving the dollhouse had great resonance. This was some of the best writing in Joss Whedon's career.
At Tim's house last night, I watched a bunch of production diaries for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the upcoming Star Wars MMORPG. On the one hand, I love BioWare's attention to dialogue and player interaction through dialogue. I think it might add the story element that's sorely lacking in MMORPGs to-day. On the other hand, I wish the dialogue trees were written by people with a better grasp on human nature. An example Tim and I watched of someone getting dark side points for killing a guy where he wouldn't have gotten dark side points for not killing him and using him to kill lots more people was sadly indicative of something too common in computer RPGs--it's not really a simulation of human interaction, it's a puzzle box dressed as human interaction. But I can't help feeling a system like this could be used to tell stories about characters.
There just needs to be more imaginative people at the helm. I noticed nearly all the male characters sounded like Clint Eastwood and all the female characters sounded like phone sex operators. Not to mention it features more of the intensely loud, silly, and ugly wardrobe designs of the Knights of the Old Republic series.
My arrabbiata's nude of noodles.
Garlic's the goal of the noblest searches.
Sweetly physical are the heart's doodles.
Strange women smoke in the biggest churches.
Oof. Bad headache to-day. I don't think I had enough caffeine yesterday because I barely slept for the fact that my head felt like it was shrinking every few minutes. I stayed in bed until 3pm, but still crawled out feeling oh so shitty. Must press on . . .
In Second Life last night, Toubanua gothed it up at Edelweiss' absolutely amazing recreation of Mount Saint Michel;
I found myself noticing how odd Toubanua looked last night compared to everyone else. This is a pretty typical look in SL;
No-one seems to feel funny about having Michael Jackson noses in Second Life. Which really brings home the reality that Jackson wasn't so strange, just in a peculiar position. I have a feeling Toubanua's pretty unnattractive by the standards of most SL people for her actually larger than average nose. What is this aesthetic humanity's moving towards? If it weren't for the huge lips, I'd say it's all about easing into people just having fleshless skulls.
Give me Barbara Stanwyck and Audrey Hepburn.
Instead of Buffy the Vampire Slayer last night, I watched the season premiere of Dollhouse. Very nice. I especially liked Whiskey/Dr. Saunder's business with Topher. It reminded me of Roy Batty with Tyrell except Tohper's a little more sympathetic. It was a good exploration of the possible psychological implications of living and working alongside the person who created you--her attempts to guess Topher's intentions with her by reverse deduction using her own personality as clues was great. The very human network of excuses she tells herself to prevent her from leaving the dollhouse had great resonance. This was some of the best writing in Joss Whedon's career.
At Tim's house last night, I watched a bunch of production diaries for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the upcoming Star Wars MMORPG. On the one hand, I love BioWare's attention to dialogue and player interaction through dialogue. I think it might add the story element that's sorely lacking in MMORPGs to-day. On the other hand, I wish the dialogue trees were written by people with a better grasp on human nature. An example Tim and I watched of someone getting dark side points for killing a guy where he wouldn't have gotten dark side points for not killing him and using him to kill lots more people was sadly indicative of something too common in computer RPGs--it's not really a simulation of human interaction, it's a puzzle box dressed as human interaction. But I can't help feeling a system like this could be used to tell stories about characters.
There just needs to be more imaginative people at the helm. I noticed nearly all the male characters sounded like Clint Eastwood and all the female characters sounded like phone sex operators. Not to mention it features more of the intensely loud, silly, and ugly wardrobe designs of the Knights of the Old Republic series.
Friday, September 25, 2009
The Fish Who would be Girl and the Sea that would Keep Her
The first hour or so of Gake no Ue no Ponyo is so good I was crying. Just looking at it made me impossibly happy. It was like a new Disney movie from the 1950s directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Which is not to say it's exactly like a production from either man, though I realised that Miyazaki is more truly an heir to both than anyone in America or Japan.
I think this is the most dreamlike Miyazaki movie, there's less of a clear distinction between the real world and the magic world, mainly because of its fantastic stylisation, my favourite example of which were the waves which were apparently animated by Miyazaki himself;
They look like waves in old Japanese paintings and yet they move like real water. In my favourite scene of the film, when Ponyo unlocks a great power hoarded by her mad scientist/sorcerer father, the water and the meticulously animated legions of ever present sea life seem to become one. Ponyo, whose father had named her Brunhilde, rides a massive tsunami composed of deep blue, enormous fish waves and Joe Hisaishi's score, especially with undulating, high strings in the background, sounds so close to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" that one suspects Miyazaki only refrained from using the actual music because it's become too familiar.
The story is an interesting fusion of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and Richard Wagner's Die Walkure, but this may be the Miyazaki film with the least relevant plot. The characters are wonderfully alive, but they mainly seem to exist in this world just as an excuse to animate what Miyazaki wanted to animate. It's for this reason I found the first hour much better than the last forty minutes, though those last forty minutes are far greater than most movies out there right now. They contain, for one thing, a glorious sequence of prehistoric sea life roaming a flooded village as the children gaze at them from a small boat and recite their names.
I watched the Japanese version, and it's hard for me to imagine Disney broodlings Noah Cyrus and Frankie Jonas delivered better performances than the actors Miyazaki picked out himself, but I might want to check this movie out on the big screen anyway. I recommend you do, too. Disney's certainly very unfortunately undersold this beautiful thing.
Twitter Sonnet #64
The giant squid are growing in number.
The pigeons have been dreaming about it.
In their high shopping mall, wide-eyed slumber.
They woo amateur models through the net.
Girls drawn by a solo singing goblin.
Most coffee places have useless hours.
Daytime caffeine is somehow so maudlin.
In sunlit aqueducts wine soon sours.
Honey's good to give a girl from the sea.
Or Valkyrie riding on hand-drawn wave.
Have at twelve an extra cup of green tea.
Better than you'd like sometimes clocks behave.
Brynhild didn't need to become human.
Link went to Hyrule to find elf women.
This spider sprang out from behind my computer last night;
The music is "Gouin ni Mai Yeah" from the Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei soundtrack by Hasegawa Tomoki.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Passive Cruelty to Self
I love how no-one told David Bowie to wear a cup with his tights in Labyrinth. Or maybe it was intentional, since the movie's about a girl coming of age, a girl resisting growing up--It makes sense the most threatening thing is this attractive, strange guy. The fact that he's a goblin king, very "snips and snails and puppy dogs, too" is perfect.
So, I'm kind of torn about how I feel about Jennifer Connelly in the movie. On the one hand, I want her to be a stronger presence, and for her to exhibit more attraction to Jareth, or at least more complicated feelings about him. But on the other hand, the fact that she is very plain makes her a sort of "every-girl" for an audience of young girls to project their own feelings on. Aside from the fact that she's clinging to childhood a bit, she doesn't have many distinguishing characteristics.
There are things I'd prefer that the movie had included that I don't think would objectively improve it--I think I might simply have been hungering for a slightly different movie. I wished the girl in the part of Sarah had as good a singing voice as David Bowie and that the movie had been a full-fledged musical, though, on the other hand, the fact that Bowie's voice is used to convey her feelings at the beginning and the end of the movie is interesting, too.
I would certainly have liked more scenes like this one;
She's in frumpy, boring clothes for almost the whole movie, it's nice to see Sarah looking great, though, again, sort of blank here, almost a Twilight performance. But then, again, that's sort of perfect. Jareth and everything in the labyrinth is full of tonnes more personality than Sarah. I love Brian Froud's designs, especially these little foetus monsters on sticks;
There's a logic implied by their appearance--they got great choppers, but they're not so much for getting around on their own. Stories pop out of the landscape seemingly without even trying, and then there's the curious moments of Bowie in the Escher sequence where we go to him music video style. It seems we're meant to feel for him, but Sarah's not privy to this stuff--are we breaking from her perspective?
Then we get to the stuff in the final confrontation where Jareth says he'll be her servant if she just lets him rule her. Superficially, this is a good setup for the, "You have no power over me," key line, teaching girls not to let pretty boys prey on their emotions. But was that really what Jareth was all about? He points out that everything he did was because she asked him to, including kidnap the kid. He points out that he was frightening for her, as though she'd requested that he be, and one considers that if this is all her fantasy come to life, then this is what she wanted. Maybe he represents an internal mechanism of hers to teach her how to handle boys.
But damnit, I want them to fall in love. Don't you? And by "you" I mean anyone who's ever watched the movie.
I also thought maybe the movie could be seen as a version of Eyes Wide Shut, with Connelly in the Tom Cruise role. Though I guess lack of sexual desire can't really be seen as odd in a girl her age.
There are a couple things I think are just plain strikes against the film, regardless of my own selfish desires for it--I don't think the battle sequence works at the end. It's a lot of chaotic shuffling about, and it lacks the personality of most of the other scenes. Jim Henson, as a director, I'm afraid might be the weakest link in that the movie feels like a television show, even with the very wide aspect ratio. Though Henson's talent for making puppets seem alive was certainly phenomenal.
My tweets from last night;
Girls drawn by a solo singing goblin.
Most coffee places have useless hours.
Daytime caffeine is somehow so maudlin.
In sunlit aqueducts wine soon sours.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
What Can't Happen in Places that Don't Exist
Last nights tweets;
The giant squid are growing in number.
The pigeons have been dreaming about it.
In their high shopping mall, wide-eyed slumber.
They woo amateur models through the net.
A picture I took of pigeons I found hidden at the mall, outside the JC Penney. There was a hokey try-out catwalk for aspiring models inside the mall last night. Maybe I shouldn't make fun--I'm sure it's possible I saw the Tyra Bankses and Elizabeth Hurleys of the future lined up for it. Is Tyra short for tyrannosaurus, do you suppose?
I was at the mall getting tea--not herbal tea, before you even ask. Pure, mean, caffeinated tea, the way the angry bull gods of the underworld intended. Though I guess just being at the mall, combined with the fact that I spent an hour playing World of Warcraft last night, would probably earn me enough demerits at Werner Herzog's school to make the tea question moot.
I've already pencilled, inked, and gotten halfway through colouring a page of comic to-day. Maybe I'll watch a movie when I'm done. I kind of wish I had last night instead of whiling away two hours with Second Life and WoW. I saw that Second Life's website has a couple recommended places to visit, so I visited a couple art and museum places. I visited a place that had sets based on famous paintings with poseballs to put your avatar in the painting. Most of them were nude paintings, oddly enough. The thing was set up so that you clicked on the painting you wanted on one floor and then you were teleported to the floor below where the set was generated. I clicked a black and white picture of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in a scene from Pulp Fiction (you know, that famous painting) and was teleported to a street and bright red brick building facade that looked like Sesame Street. Two avatars were there, jumping around and talking to each other in gibberish, a non-descript woman and an astronaut in a space suit. They seemed to be trying to talk to me at one point, and I don't know if they were trying to fuck with me or if they were genuinely lost and confused and for some reason expected me to have the dialogue decoder they were using.
I finally got to the first episode of Angel to feature Fred (technically the second episode, but the first where she has a speaking part). It took way too long for her to show up. I hear in the official comics Ilyria gets some of Fred's memories at one point. I might have to check that out.
Boy, that girl got a raw deal. They find her as a slave in a demon dimension, and then she dies a couple years later and has her soul destroyed. I mean, that's gotta be a mindfuck for the Christian viewers. I can imagine the conversation; "Death is when God accepts your soul in heaven." "But what if the soul was destroyed?" "God would never let that happen." "I understand, but what if, for some reason, he did?" "He wouldn't, though, it's a pointless conversation." "But I'm asking you to imagine." "But it wouldn't happen." "I understand, but . . ." And so on. You can tell I've talked to some zealots in my time, can't you?
The giant squid are growing in number.
The pigeons have been dreaming about it.
In their high shopping mall, wide-eyed slumber.
They woo amateur models through the net.
A picture I took of pigeons I found hidden at the mall, outside the JC Penney. There was a hokey try-out catwalk for aspiring models inside the mall last night. Maybe I shouldn't make fun--I'm sure it's possible I saw the Tyra Bankses and Elizabeth Hurleys of the future lined up for it. Is Tyra short for tyrannosaurus, do you suppose?
I was at the mall getting tea--not herbal tea, before you even ask. Pure, mean, caffeinated tea, the way the angry bull gods of the underworld intended. Though I guess just being at the mall, combined with the fact that I spent an hour playing World of Warcraft last night, would probably earn me enough demerits at Werner Herzog's school to make the tea question moot.
I've already pencilled, inked, and gotten halfway through colouring a page of comic to-day. Maybe I'll watch a movie when I'm done. I kind of wish I had last night instead of whiling away two hours with Second Life and WoW. I saw that Second Life's website has a couple recommended places to visit, so I visited a couple art and museum places. I visited a place that had sets based on famous paintings with poseballs to put your avatar in the painting. Most of them were nude paintings, oddly enough. The thing was set up so that you clicked on the painting you wanted on one floor and then you were teleported to the floor below where the set was generated. I clicked a black and white picture of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in a scene from Pulp Fiction (you know, that famous painting) and was teleported to a street and bright red brick building facade that looked like Sesame Street. Two avatars were there, jumping around and talking to each other in gibberish, a non-descript woman and an astronaut in a space suit. They seemed to be trying to talk to me at one point, and I don't know if they were trying to fuck with me or if they were genuinely lost and confused and for some reason expected me to have the dialogue decoder they were using.
I finally got to the first episode of Angel to feature Fred (technically the second episode, but the first where she has a speaking part). It took way too long for her to show up. I hear in the official comics Ilyria gets some of Fred's memories at one point. I might have to check that out.
Boy, that girl got a raw deal. They find her as a slave in a demon dimension, and then she dies a couple years later and has her soul destroyed. I mean, that's gotta be a mindfuck for the Christian viewers. I can imagine the conversation; "Death is when God accepts your soul in heaven." "But what if the soul was destroyed?" "God would never let that happen." "I understand, but what if, for some reason, he did?" "He wouldn't, though, it's a pointless conversation." "But I'm asking you to imagine." "But it wouldn't happen." "I understand, but . . ." And so on. You can tell I've talked to some zealots in my time, can't you?
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
How to Find a Real Cat?
Twitter Sonnet #63
Merlin's the least canny man in England.
Sometimes the flora isn't green enough.
That's when bright green coloured light lends a hand.
Finding just grey punctuation is rough.
Story's the scrabbled eggs in the muffins.
Contrary instincts make mages aloof.
Delivering plate mail are fey dolphins.
Silver scale faerie gowns are waterproof.
No-one told me that the blinds fall slowly.
Alcohol eliminates dust and air.
Perhaps helping hands are badly holy.
Rarest pleasure is the honest nightmare.
Memories are in one hundred percent.
And to that much the fake cat won't assent.
People on the internet sure like to be bulbous. One of the things that kept me away from World of Warcraft was all the Popeye arms and legs, and how everything seemed to have a big stumpy end. It was cute in Warcraft 2, but I felt a whole World of Warcraft needed something a little subtler. I've noticed Blizzard's been moving away from that aesthetic, most notably with the Blood Elves, but I see it elsewhere too--I was noticing it in Second Life last night, where I wandered a while. I got myself "age certified" as part of Second Life's new content restrictions, and I actually had to jump through a few hoops to get it, so I figured I might as well enjoy it. But, as I remembered, most of the "adult" areas were made up of basic, bright coloured shapes. I guess people are too busy boinking on poseballs to work on the scenery.
But I also noticed the few people I saw roaming around were either of the scary skeleton variety or the oddly protruding lumps of flesh variety. In both cases, tentacles of gaudiness invariably seemed to be reaching from them in the form of platinum hair or cartoonishly gleaming bling. I don't mean to sound so superior, I know not everyone's an artist, and everyone should be allowed to get their kicks, provided they're not hurting anyone else. But I offer this piece of gentle advice--maybe try toning it down a little? Imagine an entire world populated by a sitcom "annoying uncle" character in a loud plaid suit carting around his "inventions". That's mostly what Second Life looks like to me nowadays. And the internet in general, for that matter. I suspect this is not the sexiness you really dreamed of.
I suddenly wish I had a spare 1500 dollars, as I would certainly like to enrol in Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School. One of my favourite bits from the website;
Censorship will be enforced. There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values, herbal teas, discovering your Boundaries, and Inner Growth.
Oh, yes. I want to say this as plainly, and as loudly as possible--
FUCK HERBAL TEAS.
I mean that.
I also like this;
Follow your vision. Form secretive Rogue Cells everywhere. At the same time, be not afraid of solitude.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Shiny Kings
Last night's tweets;
Story's the scrabbled eggs in the muffins.
Contrary instincts make mages aloof.
Delivering plate mail are fey dolphins.
Silver scale faerie gowns are waterproof.
Feeling a little more energetic to-day, but I still have this feeling that time's slipping out of my hands at lightning speed.
I had a lot of trouble getting to work on the script for Chapter 25 last night, though, fortunately, I'd written half of it already at the same time I wrote 34. It wasn't until I took my notebook to Denny's last night that I finally managed to finish writing the thing--my will was just too weak yesterday. Sometimes I have to go somewhere without distractions. I was so out of it yesterday, I actually sat down and watched television for almost an hour.
And I watched Excalibur over the past couple nights. This is a movie my opinion on which goes back and forth. I absolutely loved it when I was a kid and well into my adolescence--it has a very unique atmosphere, though it was only later I learned how much of its music was not written for the film. What's identified as the "Excalibur Theme" on the soundtrack is actually "Trauermarsch" from the fourth in Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen series of operas. It makes sense that it's a song associated with the end of the world, or the world of gods and heroes, because it always implied to me a reality of darkness bigger than I could comprehend.
I don't really hold that against the film, but knowing this, for a while, kind of disassociated the film from its soundtrack in a weird way for me. Almost like, watching it, I was thinking to myself the whole time, "Well, this music isn't really about what's happening." Maybe it's Quentin Tarantino and his use of Ennio Morricone music from unrelated movies that have helped me to appreciate it again.
So I enjoy the movie again, and not just as a nostalgia thing, but also I've come to appreciate that John Boorman really did have a very good eye for composition. There's something so wonderfully old school fantasy about so many beautiful shots of Irish forest in a medieval fantasy film now that New Zealand's become the go-to cinematic fantasy locale of the past decade. Yes, New Zealand is beautiful and great, but it's just not the same. It doesn't have quite the same peculiar combination of gloom and bright green.
To this latter point, I was fascinated by Boorman's lighting choices. The sets are often lit with intensely artificial blues and purples, and even outdoor, daytime forest settings are often augmented by intense green light, making the foliage an unnatural, intense brilliant green.
And he uses this green light on Excalibur's gleaming blade to interesting effect, and I was reminded that Ang Lee did something similar with the Green Destiny in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Though, on the subject of the sword, one thing that still bothers me about the movie is John Boorman's daughter playing The Lady of the Lake.
This is a movie I actually applaud for not being historically accurate (no one really wants to see Anglo-Saxon chieftain Arthur) but, jeez, not only is this hair not remotely medieval, it's just too casual. It says, "Hi, I'm Cindy, and I'll be your aquatic apparition for the day." Otherwise, the 80s inclination towards trapezoidal hair shapes actually kind of fits the milieu.
The costumes I don't have a problem with either, not even the "let's do absolutely everything in full plate mail" mentality of the knights. Anyway, it's really great plate mail, of the kind you don't see much in movies otherwise.
I've always gone back and forth about how I feel about the "series of parables" quality the movie has. Taken as stories of characters over a period of time, it doesn't make any sense. We jump immediately from a scene of noble young Arthur to one where he wants to fight to the death with Lancelot over the right to cross a bridge while Lancelot's only offering his services as a tutor. How insightful can Merlin be if he can't tell from the beginning the kind of guy Uther is? Nearly every miniature story in the movie relies on the characters having learned nothing from any previous story. Because the point is to teach the audience ethics and self-reflection--don't covet your neighbour's wife, don't be controlled by your pride, and if you let yourself go, the people and house around you suffer as well.
Which makes it all the more curious that this movie is definitely a hard R--they're morality tales for adults, though gods know they need them nowadays. I'll never cease to be amazed that John Boorman directed a scene of his daughter, topless, essentially being date raped by a guy full plate armour. Now that's focusing on telling a story. And that's just one scene among many of unabashed, extreme brutality in this movie. There really needs to be more medieval fantasy like that. Or maybe I'm just getting sick from all the Warcraft candy.
I find the performances I appreciate in the film have changed a bit. I liked Merlin when I was a kid, but now find Nicol Williamson's performance the least interesting in the film. I know Boorman intentionally cast him and Helen Mirren as rivals in the film because they didn't like each other in real life, but I wonder if their mutual dislike had anything to do with the fact that they appear to subscribe to two different acting philosophies. You can see Williamson trying to think of the most interesting way of delivering lines, while Mirren's solely concerned with figuring out how her character feels about what's happening and creating deliveries that reflect those feelings.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Ghost Pirates in Ghost Worlds
Last night's spider in my bathroom;
That's the clearest shot I could get. My unsteady hands thwart so many of my artistic endeavours. It's amazing I'm able to type.
Played a lot of World of Warcraft at Tim's last night, getting the special pirate day outfits for both my undead warrior and my human rogue;
It was hardest to do with my level 23 rogue, who I had to take through Stranglethorn to get it. I basically had to corpse jump a lot of the time--in WoW, when one dies, they have to run back to their corpse from a graveyard as a ghost, and you can resurrect a few feet from your corpse in any direction, so in this way you can progress through dangerous areas very slowly.
I had a problem resurrecting my undead warrior at one point last night, too, when she accidentally fell into the crater next to Tanaris into a spot I could only access as a ghost by running all the way back to Tanaris. Which I did, only to fall into another hole as a ghost, and I was forced to use the "character stuck" button in the help options. At least there is such a thing--how horrible to be a spirit trapped forever in some geometrical accident in the landscape.
I'm running behind to-day and feeling very sluggish . . . Maybe it's all this Leonard Cohen I've been listening to.
Last night's tweets;
Merlin's the least canny man in England.
Sometimes the flora isn't green enough.
That's when bright green coloured light lends a hand.
Finding just grey punctuation is rough.
That's the clearest shot I could get. My unsteady hands thwart so many of my artistic endeavours. It's amazing I'm able to type.
Played a lot of World of Warcraft at Tim's last night, getting the special pirate day outfits for both my undead warrior and my human rogue;
It was hardest to do with my level 23 rogue, who I had to take through Stranglethorn to get it. I basically had to corpse jump a lot of the time--in WoW, when one dies, they have to run back to their corpse from a graveyard as a ghost, and you can resurrect a few feet from your corpse in any direction, so in this way you can progress through dangerous areas very slowly.
I had a problem resurrecting my undead warrior at one point last night, too, when she accidentally fell into the crater next to Tanaris into a spot I could only access as a ghost by running all the way back to Tanaris. Which I did, only to fall into another hole as a ghost, and I was forced to use the "character stuck" button in the help options. At least there is such a thing--how horrible to be a spirit trapped forever in some geometrical accident in the landscape.
I'm running behind to-day and feeling very sluggish . . . Maybe it's all this Leonard Cohen I've been listening to.
Last night's tweets;
Merlin's the least canny man in England.
Sometimes the flora isn't green enough.
That's when bright green coloured light lends a hand.
Finding just grey punctuation is rough.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The Sounds You're Permitted to Hear
My sister's cat, Saffy, from last night;
Music by Wojiech Kilar from the soundtrack to Bram Stoker's Dracula. I originally used some music from the first season Twin Peaks soundtrack, but YouTube disabled the audio before I'd even finished uploading it, as apparently it's owned by Warner Brothers. Wow. I mean, it was an excerpt of a song, it didn't even start at the beginning, but somehow YouTube has a mechanism that was able to recognise music from a soundtrack released in the early 90s from that much. Fortunately, it looks like the Dracula soundtrack's been out of print for a while except as part of a compilation of Wojciech Kilar and it looks like that compilation is put out by a group that's not a bunch of dipshits.
And, because I woke in the middle of the day and decided to tweet before falling back to sleep, it's already time for;
Twitter Sonnet #62
There's always room for penniless barons.
Sometimes there's no room for English muffins.
Memory fey are far from their warrens.
Hard peas rattling safely in their coffins.
There's never a ghoul here when you need one.
Consummate cowards are without limits.
Upon zombie resurrection they run.
Into fast centuries they turn minutes.
All my online friends look like Lily Cole.
I don't wake up when I wake up early.
Your tongue key can plunder a pirate's soul.
Old batteries make sailors so surly.
Your power's in potatoes and lemons.
Give your period piece to Jean Simmons.
It was actually only Moira I dreamt had posted a bunch of pictures of herself that revealed she looked exactly like Lily Cole.
Last night I watched "Dead End", which wasn't one of the better episodes of Angel, but I still greatly prefer the basic high stakes feel of the show compared to Buffy. Although, the previous episode, "Disharmony", is one of my favourites for being an exceptionally good comedy episode. I don't normally dig the sitcom humour, except it seems perfectly plausible in this case--Cordelia hanging out with vampire Harmony makes sense when you realise Harmony was shallow and obnoxious before she was a vampire, and talking to her allows Cordelia to take a break from her new, more serious perspective on life.
I guess this is my favourite era of Cordelia--she's not the irritating saint yet, and she's not the cruel popular girl anymore either, though her moments of "truth-teller" in that first incarnation occasionally reached highs her character never achieved again.
The episode actually plays around with the somewhat murky definition of the "soul" that the two Buffy shows kind of stepped into. I realised that the only difference it seems to make is that people without souls in the Buffy-verse don't mind when people they don't know die. Which, oddly, is what makes Spike such a sympathetic character--he only cares about the people we care about. It makes him actually more sympathetic than any of the characters with souls, as we all tend to see the lives of fictional characters as having value only in relation to how interesting they are.
I have still been watching Buffy, as this screenshot I took of Buffy and Giles wearing thick sweaters and suede jackets in the middle of a desert attests;
She was out there on a vision quest so maybe they figured delirium from heat stroke would speed things along.
Music by Wojiech Kilar from the soundtrack to Bram Stoker's Dracula. I originally used some music from the first season Twin Peaks soundtrack, but YouTube disabled the audio before I'd even finished uploading it, as apparently it's owned by Warner Brothers. Wow. I mean, it was an excerpt of a song, it didn't even start at the beginning, but somehow YouTube has a mechanism that was able to recognise music from a soundtrack released in the early 90s from that much. Fortunately, it looks like the Dracula soundtrack's been out of print for a while except as part of a compilation of Wojciech Kilar and it looks like that compilation is put out by a group that's not a bunch of dipshits.
And, because I woke in the middle of the day and decided to tweet before falling back to sleep, it's already time for;
Twitter Sonnet #62
There's always room for penniless barons.
Sometimes there's no room for English muffins.
Memory fey are far from their warrens.
Hard peas rattling safely in their coffins.
There's never a ghoul here when you need one.
Consummate cowards are without limits.
Upon zombie resurrection they run.
Into fast centuries they turn minutes.
All my online friends look like Lily Cole.
I don't wake up when I wake up early.
Your tongue key can plunder a pirate's soul.
Old batteries make sailors so surly.
Your power's in potatoes and lemons.
Give your period piece to Jean Simmons.
It was actually only Moira I dreamt had posted a bunch of pictures of herself that revealed she looked exactly like Lily Cole.
Last night I watched "Dead End", which wasn't one of the better episodes of Angel, but I still greatly prefer the basic high stakes feel of the show compared to Buffy. Although, the previous episode, "Disharmony", is one of my favourites for being an exceptionally good comedy episode. I don't normally dig the sitcom humour, except it seems perfectly plausible in this case--Cordelia hanging out with vampire Harmony makes sense when you realise Harmony was shallow and obnoxious before she was a vampire, and talking to her allows Cordelia to take a break from her new, more serious perspective on life.
I guess this is my favourite era of Cordelia--she's not the irritating saint yet, and she's not the cruel popular girl anymore either, though her moments of "truth-teller" in that first incarnation occasionally reached highs her character never achieved again.
The episode actually plays around with the somewhat murky definition of the "soul" that the two Buffy shows kind of stepped into. I realised that the only difference it seems to make is that people without souls in the Buffy-verse don't mind when people they don't know die. Which, oddly, is what makes Spike such a sympathetic character--he only cares about the people we care about. It makes him actually more sympathetic than any of the characters with souls, as we all tend to see the lives of fictional characters as having value only in relation to how interesting they are.
I have still been watching Buffy, as this screenshot I took of Buffy and Giles wearing thick sweaters and suede jackets in the middle of a desert attests;
She was out there on a vision quest so maybe they figured delirium from heat stroke would speed things along.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Depth and Quality of Illusion
Last night's tweets;
There's always room for penniless barons.
Sometimes there's no room for English muffins.
Memory fey are far from their warrens.
Hard peas rattling safely in their coffins.
I guess because I was in a Jean Renoir mood last night, I watched his 1936 adaptation of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths. Criterion packaged it with Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of the play, inviting the viewer to compare the two films in an interesting little marketing strategy. Of course, I was mostly interested in the Kurosawa film (which I wrote about back in May), but I like Renoir okay. I've only seen two other movies by him, The Rules of the Game, which I really liked, and The Woman on the Beach, which I thought was a decent film noir, though not one I'd place among the greats.
His version of The Lower Depths is a completely different story than Kurosawa's and, I would say, much inferior. Renoir himself, apparently, shared this opinion, as, according to this essay included with the Criterion DVD set, Renoir said of the Kurosawa film, "That is a much more important film than mine."
It's amazing to note, then, that Renoir's script had Gorky's seal of approval, particularly since it deviates so wildly from the source material. Gorky died long before Kurosawa's 1957 extremely faithful adaptation and it would be interesting to know which he'd have preferred.
Maybe he simply read Renoir's script from the standpoint of whether or not it would be a good movie, for it certainly isn't bad. But wildly different--it's like a different person wearing clothes woven from thin scraps pulled from the original play. The first hour and fourteen minutes deal with the Baron's fall from grace--the Samurai in the Kurosawa film, who was a minor character who only may have actually had the prestigious social position he claims to have had. In Renoir's film, the question is obliterated, one of many instances where the question about the value of illusion and reality is diminished or avoided. It's not totally absent, but not only is it less prevalent, at times an almost opposite viewpoint is expressed.
In the Kurosawa film, one finally reaches the conclusion that delusion is necessary for the poor to survive but that it was destructive at the same time. In the Renoir film, such dreams are presented as the meaning of existence, and beneficial so long as they're seen for what they are--the difference is most plain in the death of the actor, who, in the Kurosawa film kills himself in an attempt to reach the heaven the monk had described to him, while in the Renoir film he kills himself after contemplating the fact that no-one remembers his stage name, that he's lost his persona. In the Kurosawa film, the dream kills, in the Renoir film, the absence of the dream kills.
But most of the Renoir film centres on the Baron and the thief, who are both presented as almost supernaturally calm and cool gentlemen. They're likeable just for being so cool and actually, since the female lead, as Renoir himself observed later, was totally ineffective, I found the film to be mostly concerned with a barely sub-textual romance between the two men. The beginning of the film, in contrast to the play and Kurosawa film, takes place almost entirely in the homes and clubs of the decadently rich, and perhaps one of the main problems with Renoir as a medium for the Gorky play is that Renoir plainly has no idea what it's like to be poor. The Baron's story about a man who finds his bliss after he's lost everything and finds he enjoys sleeping in the grass on a summer's day would be insulting if the actor and the character he plays weren't so charming. Of course, on those rare occasions when he delivers lines from the original Gorky plot, he seems to be a completely different person.
One of the best scenes in the film was saved, many people believe, by the improvised addition of a snail--the Baron and the thief lying in the grass together discuss the different uniforms and roles they've adopted through life, which sort of touches on the theme of illusion and reality, but the whole time we're watching the snail on the Baron's hand, which plays off the charm of the actors by adding a slight carnal tinge.
Before the thief leaves with the Natasha, the woman he's in love with according to the dialogue, he kisses the Baron. It's only on the cheek, but it's done far more passionately than any of his interactions with Natasha.
The thief in the Kurosawa film was a live wire, a yakuza trying desperately to convince the young woman, frightened of the world, to share his dream of the two of them together and surviving as a couple in the world. Her skating on the edge of accepting that dream or running from it was one of the things that made the Kurosawa film incredibly beautiful.
The thief in the Renoir film is an elegant, easily confident man, somewhat reminiscent of Cary Grant's character in To Catch a Thief, sort of off-handedly pursuing a programmed relationship with a woman while mainly enjoying the time spent with the Baron, who's almost exactly like him.
So Renoir's film is a fun, slightly confused and subliminal romance, while the Kurosawa film is a real and unflinching glimpse into the inner workings of the human soul.
There's always room for penniless barons.
Sometimes there's no room for English muffins.
Memory fey are far from their warrens.
Hard peas rattling safely in their coffins.
I guess because I was in a Jean Renoir mood last night, I watched his 1936 adaptation of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths. Criterion packaged it with Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of the play, inviting the viewer to compare the two films in an interesting little marketing strategy. Of course, I was mostly interested in the Kurosawa film (which I wrote about back in May), but I like Renoir okay. I've only seen two other movies by him, The Rules of the Game, which I really liked, and The Woman on the Beach, which I thought was a decent film noir, though not one I'd place among the greats.
His version of The Lower Depths is a completely different story than Kurosawa's and, I would say, much inferior. Renoir himself, apparently, shared this opinion, as, according to this essay included with the Criterion DVD set, Renoir said of the Kurosawa film, "That is a much more important film than mine."
It's amazing to note, then, that Renoir's script had Gorky's seal of approval, particularly since it deviates so wildly from the source material. Gorky died long before Kurosawa's 1957 extremely faithful adaptation and it would be interesting to know which he'd have preferred.
Maybe he simply read Renoir's script from the standpoint of whether or not it would be a good movie, for it certainly isn't bad. But wildly different--it's like a different person wearing clothes woven from thin scraps pulled from the original play. The first hour and fourteen minutes deal with the Baron's fall from grace--the Samurai in the Kurosawa film, who was a minor character who only may have actually had the prestigious social position he claims to have had. In Renoir's film, the question is obliterated, one of many instances where the question about the value of illusion and reality is diminished or avoided. It's not totally absent, but not only is it less prevalent, at times an almost opposite viewpoint is expressed.
In the Kurosawa film, one finally reaches the conclusion that delusion is necessary for the poor to survive but that it was destructive at the same time. In the Renoir film, such dreams are presented as the meaning of existence, and beneficial so long as they're seen for what they are--the difference is most plain in the death of the actor, who, in the Kurosawa film kills himself in an attempt to reach the heaven the monk had described to him, while in the Renoir film he kills himself after contemplating the fact that no-one remembers his stage name, that he's lost his persona. In the Kurosawa film, the dream kills, in the Renoir film, the absence of the dream kills.
But most of the Renoir film centres on the Baron and the thief, who are both presented as almost supernaturally calm and cool gentlemen. They're likeable just for being so cool and actually, since the female lead, as Renoir himself observed later, was totally ineffective, I found the film to be mostly concerned with a barely sub-textual romance between the two men. The beginning of the film, in contrast to the play and Kurosawa film, takes place almost entirely in the homes and clubs of the decadently rich, and perhaps one of the main problems with Renoir as a medium for the Gorky play is that Renoir plainly has no idea what it's like to be poor. The Baron's story about a man who finds his bliss after he's lost everything and finds he enjoys sleeping in the grass on a summer's day would be insulting if the actor and the character he plays weren't so charming. Of course, on those rare occasions when he delivers lines from the original Gorky plot, he seems to be a completely different person.
One of the best scenes in the film was saved, many people believe, by the improvised addition of a snail--the Baron and the thief lying in the grass together discuss the different uniforms and roles they've adopted through life, which sort of touches on the theme of illusion and reality, but the whole time we're watching the snail on the Baron's hand, which plays off the charm of the actors by adding a slight carnal tinge.
Before the thief leaves with the Natasha, the woman he's in love with according to the dialogue, he kisses the Baron. It's only on the cheek, but it's done far more passionately than any of his interactions with Natasha.
The thief in the Kurosawa film was a live wire, a yakuza trying desperately to convince the young woman, frightened of the world, to share his dream of the two of them together and surviving as a couple in the world. Her skating on the edge of accepting that dream or running from it was one of the things that made the Kurosawa film incredibly beautiful.
The thief in the Renoir film is an elegant, easily confident man, somewhat reminiscent of Cary Grant's character in To Catch a Thief, sort of off-handedly pursuing a programmed relationship with a woman while mainly enjoying the time spent with the Baron, who's almost exactly like him.
So Renoir's film is a fun, slightly confused and subliminal romance, while the Kurosawa film is a real and unflinching glimpse into the inner workings of the human soul.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Venia Tries to Sort Things Out
The new Venia's Travels is online. The chapter's title, "Rules", is probably a reference both to Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game and Thea Gilmore's Rules for Jokers.
Making Words Work for You
Twitter Sonnet #61
Drinking water's dismally transparent.
Normal substance is often a letdown.
Gilt masks to legends are heirs apparent.
Garbo haunts a deserted fashion town.
Let's see if I can walk with this much mead.
My balance remains irrepressible.
I have fewer tomatoes than I need.
My tea kettle's almost combustible.
Suddenly everything smells like garlic.
A fucking pinball game for vampires.
My cigars smoked by a Eli Wallach.
The next deal for stagnation transpires.
I do love you, unspecified reader.
Surely that must make you feel much better.
I've been chopping up bits of garlic for my spaghetti almost every night and I've noticed my fingers are starting to get a permanent garlic smell. I'm one of those people, too, who washes his hands after he does something even remotely dirty, so that stuff really sticks.
A while ago, I decided "ire"s in words like "vampires" and "transpires" counted as two syllables--I figured it was inarguable that "dryer", "higher", and "flyer" had two syllables, and had the same sound as words like "fire", "wire", and "hire". You hear "I-ur".
But then last night I was reading Shakespeare's sonnets, which I actually do more than you might expect, and I noticed the first line of the first sonnet, "From fairest creatures we desire increase" counts that "ire" in "desire" as one syllable. Which has given me some consternation. The only thing I can think of is that maybe it was pronounced more like "des-ur" in Shakespeare's day, which is entirely possible, from what little I know of English from the time.
Making sure Eli Wallach's name is pronounced like I think it is, I came across this video;
Looks like his wife's got a pretty good sense of humour.
It's weird how he's the only lead from The Misfits still alive.
You know, I've been thinking I was too hard on Lady Gaga yesterday. A song doesn't need complicated lyrics to be good--I was in a bad mood yesterday. And, hey, she's doing her part to make young people more comfortable with sexuality, sort of. I like how she wears masks all the time. Which reminds me, why isn't there more porn with the female members of Batman's rogues gallery? Someone needs to get on that.
Anyway, I still say Gaga's not as daring as Josephine Baker.
Drinking water's dismally transparent.
Normal substance is often a letdown.
Gilt masks to legends are heirs apparent.
Garbo haunts a deserted fashion town.
Let's see if I can walk with this much mead.
My balance remains irrepressible.
I have fewer tomatoes than I need.
My tea kettle's almost combustible.
Suddenly everything smells like garlic.
A fucking pinball game for vampires.
My cigars smoked by a Eli Wallach.
The next deal for stagnation transpires.
I do love you, unspecified reader.
Surely that must make you feel much better.
I've been chopping up bits of garlic for my spaghetti almost every night and I've noticed my fingers are starting to get a permanent garlic smell. I'm one of those people, too, who washes his hands after he does something even remotely dirty, so that stuff really sticks.
A while ago, I decided "ire"s in words like "vampires" and "transpires" counted as two syllables--I figured it was inarguable that "dryer", "higher", and "flyer" had two syllables, and had the same sound as words like "fire", "wire", and "hire". You hear "I-ur".
But then last night I was reading Shakespeare's sonnets, which I actually do more than you might expect, and I noticed the first line of the first sonnet, "From fairest creatures we desire increase" counts that "ire" in "desire" as one syllable. Which has given me some consternation. The only thing I can think of is that maybe it was pronounced more like "des-ur" in Shakespeare's day, which is entirely possible, from what little I know of English from the time.
Making sure Eli Wallach's name is pronounced like I think it is, I came across this video;
Looks like his wife's got a pretty good sense of humour.
It's weird how he's the only lead from The Misfits still alive.
You know, I've been thinking I was too hard on Lady Gaga yesterday. A song doesn't need complicated lyrics to be good--I was in a bad mood yesterday. And, hey, she's doing her part to make young people more comfortable with sexuality, sort of. I like how she wears masks all the time. Which reminds me, why isn't there more porn with the female members of Batman's rogues gallery? Someone needs to get on that.
Anyway, I still say Gaga's not as daring as Josephine Baker.