Went to go see Genius Party last night at the Worldwide Short Film Festival. It was exactly what I needed. Masaaki Yuasa is the greatest thing to happen to anime in years. I fall in love with whatever he touches. Happy Machine was my favourite of the bunch— it reminded me of so many different things at once: Cat Soup, Fantastic Planet, The Maxx, etc.. I also kept thinking the score sounded like something Nobukazu Takemura would do and, lo and behold, he did. Besides Satoshi Kon and maybe a handful of others, it really feels like Studio 4°C are the only people keeping anime interesting anymore. I don’t know whether I’ve grown out of the majority of it or it has just drastically declined in quality, but it’s usually one extreme or the other for me nowadays— the bad stuff is pretty damn bad while the good stuff is pretty fucking incredible.
I haven’t had enough time to cope and try to come to terms with this, everything has been a surrealistic haze. I really don’t want to be working at this time, I just want to lay in bed.
Sleep is terrible. I’ve seen too many damn movies; I keep expecting someone to appear in my room. Once I get out of this state of mind, I expect my life to inadvertently change in many ways.
It’s both a tremendous loss and an exercise in existentialist grief. Combine all of that with an anxiety disorder and it feels like pure anarchy in my head. You haven’t lived until someone close to you dies.
The world feels considerably smaller when you know there once existed a person that you will never be able to see again.
This is the beginning of the end.
Foals - Electric Bloom (Plastic Handgun Remix)
Published May 17th, 2008 in Music and Remixes. 3 CommentsAnother remix for another contest. If you have a last.fm account, you should listen to it lots and lots.
Starting to explore some different territory. Two new songs that will both appear on upcoming EPs.
A remix of “Keisuke Itonoko ~ Itonoko Geijissu” from Phoenix Wright.
My submission for that remix contest that’s going on. This is probably going to be the first of many— getting Thom’s voice to do what I want it to is a lot of fun.
Almost a month since my last post. Shit. I didn’t think I’d end up ignoring this blog like that anymore. January and February passed me by at a comfortable pace, but March is moving too goddamn quickly. I’m starting to think the more I go out, get drunk and socialize, the slower time moves, which completely negates that “time flies when you’re having fun” cliché.
2008 has mostly been a year of music thus far. I have a couple of EPs in the works… I say couple because some of the new songs have no business being on the same album together, so I’ll have to split them up. I’m actually taking on a lot in the next while which is kind of exciting.
1) Continue working on solo EP stuff. Hopefully get one done before the summer.
2) Finalize my submission for G.A.M.E. 2.0. Pretty sure I’m gonna go with a ditty called “Think Orange, Count Two”.
3) Muster up something for an upcoming Lonely Robot Distress Beacon compilation.
4) Mother fucking video game remixes. I’m about to go all out on video game remixes. First project in my sights is remixing the Phoenix Wright soundtrack, bitches.
5) Oh yeah, I formed a band with a friend. We’re going to make electro, but it will probably end up sounding a bit weird since I’m involved. Our impromptu name is Speed Queen. That probably won’t be changing at this point, it’s really growing on me.
6) ???
7) Profit!!
Yeah, hopefully that all pans out.
Last night I watched the CN Tower get destroyed by “terrorists”, Adolf Hitler sang me “Drive My Car” by The Beatles on an acoustic in my basement, and I got prepared for a Daft Punk concert at a Church of Scientology.
When my sleeping reverts back to a normal pattern I have terrifying dreams, and I remember them for the most part.
There Will Be Blood - 2007 - Paul Thomas Anderson
Published February 15th, 2008 in American Film and Film Log. 0 Comments
Rating: 
I really didn’t expect to see a better film than No Country For Old Men this year, but somewhere in between making Punch-Drunk Love and acting as a back-up director for Robert Altman, P.T. Anderson became a master filmmaker. This is easily one of the best films of this decade, if not, the best. I’m looking through my DVD shelf and the last time I was this overwhelmed by a modern-day film was 5 years ago when I first saw City of God. I have a deep need to see it again as soon as possible— it’s a film that will unravel layer after layer with repeated viewings, as the characters nuances and their idiosyncratic language become more defined.
On a subjective level, it’s a pure treat to see just how drenched in Stanley Kubrick’s influence this film is. It has traces of A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Barry Lyndon all over it, and the overall tone of the opening twenty minutes has a lot in common with 2001: A Space Odyssey (and also Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West). Anderson has learned well from the right people in my books— his style of directing is so natural and effortless and without gimmick, it almost feels like an anachronism. At times during There Will Be Blood, I imagined that this is what it felt like to watch films in the heyday of the 70s.
Daniel Day-Lewis is simply on a different level. Jonny Greenwood needs to become a full-time film composer. I don’t have the superlatives to do the film justice, all I know is that I want to watch it over and over. I’ve always wondered what it would’ve been like to have been alive during Kubrick’s golden age, but the catch-22 is that the amount of waiting in between each of his films would’ve been nigh unbearable. P.T. Anderson’s next film better not be another 5 year wait.
