Category: Other Peoples’ Work!

Man, only for Search the City would I have so many feelings I have to write about a digital concert experience. I’ve loved this band since 11th grade. I’ve carried their songs all the way through graduation and through three and a half years of college, the most recent of which is 10,000 miles away from their base in Michigan. They’re the kind of approachable guys that still work their own Facebook page, and respond to their fans, and make their shit public enough for you to know that just because they’ve got a solid fanbase, and are very talented musicians, they’re still human and prone to drama like the rest of us. I’ve incorporated them into my art and my webdesign on a number of occasions, and picture designs besides. I got my high school group of friends as addicted to The Rescue as me. And today, I skipped my lecture and was with them for an online performance approximately 10,000 miles away from them. Fortunately I’m here, because the internet’s so much faster I’m not sure Minnesota internet would have let me see them.

I guess there’s a few things that have combined in Search the City to keep them as my longest-running favorite band. First of all, falsetto. I figured out I can’t like a male singer without the ability to go into falsetto. No, I don’t want some guy crooning/squeaking for the whole song, but I’m a sucker for a sweeping chorus with some peaking notes. Not shrill, but richly high. Okay, so there’s that. Secondly, poetic lyrics. Songs that are about life. Not just love lost or found.
You will never be prepared for this, there’s no use in being scared…
I’ll take these chances, just like the way you took a chance on me…
I’ve got this half-moon; I’ll save the other half for you…
streetlights carry me home tonight…
And I know you’re sharp, but sharp just doesn’t cut it anymore.
You will be missed; you were always here to get us through times like this…

And also, instrumentals. I will admit to being a little daft about instruments: I’m not attuned to guitar or piano chords or whether something sounds “complex” or not. But I will “sing along” to all the guitar riffs in StC like I do for few other bands. And “singing along” to guitar riffs is usually unpleasant to hear but very nice to do.
Today with drizzly weather alternating with nice midday sunshine, I sat down to my first Search the City concert, 10,000 miles away, with headphones on, in my bedroom in Auckland with a cat on my bed with me. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think the distance injured the experience. Indeed, I think it was better for it — the arrangement, anyway. On the right was a little scrolling chat room for the fans, which meant there was a constant commentary through StC’s set…which meant they were constantly stopping to interact with us. Jim, Travis, and Alex stayed on camera with their guitars (which were heavenly) while Joe and Chris were on the sides reading out funny comments or fiddling with the sound levels. On several occasions, I heard them saying my comments, and of course this could only be in a digital concert because I’d never be that loud live. I got to hear the guy on the left read my greeting from NZ and go “New ZEALAND!” with a level of enthusiasm I won’t soon forget. Then before they sang The Rescue (duh, my all-time favorite song in the history of my life) I wrote “hit those high notes, man!” ’cause man are they BEAUTIFUL and then they read that out loud back in Michigan so I could pretend like I was the reason why Travis sounded so damn good on that song.

Not to mention, the guys were so alive. I loved hearing their new (breath-taking, heavy) demo from someone’s iPod held up to their mic, because I loved watching their eager faces watch their computer screen, to see our scrolling praise in our little fan box, to smile like little boys that love what they’re doing. They’ve got enough to make an outsider to the musical industry/field of musical production understand what drives people to make music to share with people in the first place.

No but really, rolling around on my bed to their new songs and singing badly to their old songs…it was so great. In so many ways. I felt like they gave me sunshine and made me feel completely like myself, alive and on fire.

Vampire stories as they should be

I usually don’t have much luck with random movies I decide to watch by myself, but once in a while a friend’s “like” on Facebook will lead me to a surprisingly superb film like Let the Right One In. After admittedly struggling with finding a good link and then trying to find the Swedish one instead of a terrible English dub, I was happy I struggled through this because even the first few minutes of the film are captivating.

There’s always something to be said for films that manage to have a very strong narrative quality with very little dialogue. It wasn’t even a film that had actors with those great subtle facial expressions, but somehow, by some creative genius, it survived all the same.

You can tell right away when a film is not aiming to be sensational. When it’s too quiet. When they let the camera linger on scenery or when they draw out a new scene or don’t cut from one image to the next so quickly you don’t know what you’re looking at. This has the uncomfortably hyper-realistic pacing of a lot of indie films. There’s no real sense of time passing; you sort of sit in a stasis, and it’s the events which indicate progression and nothing else.

That being said, this is still a gory film about the lifestyle that must (MUST) be maintained by a realistic vampire that must kill to stay alive. It dealt with all the traditional vampire lore, including one character that gets bitten by the vampire Eli but doesn’t die — so she changes, and the change drives her mad, so in the hospital she has her doctor open the blinds and she bursts into flame. A little cheesy with the special effects in this moment (also when she got attacked by cats…I guess that explains why Danyil’s never liked cats), but it was still refreshing to see vampire lore followed so far like this. Additionally there is the aspect where Eli starts bleeding from every pore of her body if she enters a house where she hasn’t been verbally welcomed. I enjoyed that aspect. Grim, but hey, I guess that explains why that rule would be in place.

Another aspect of the film I enjoyed is Oskar’s…pasty whiteness. I mean, he’s your typical Swede — big, clear blue eyes; WHITE blond hair (straight as fettuccine); virtually transparent skin. But it played well in one of the final scenes when Eli wakes up to this guy that’s trying to kill her because she killed his best friend and his girlfriend, and she kills him in your typical nasty bloody fashion, so she comes out to Oskar and says she has to leave, and she kisses him, and it’s like Eli come on, couldn’t you wipe your mouth first. But when she pulls back and Oskar’s white white whiteness is corrupted just around his lips by a bloody kiss, it’s like DAMN, way to reverse stereotypical gender roles!

Let the Right One In is set in a cold white winter that painfully reminded me of Minnesota winters. The main boy, Oskar, is a little white creature struggling with bullies and mildly dysfunctional parents. He’s quite mild himself, keeping his cool most of the film so that even in the more violent moments he’s not squealing or freaking out in an annoying way, as children (and all people involved in vampire stories) have the tendency to be.

This was a good random film to find to keep my mind off my 4-hour flight in the morning, but it might have kept me up a little later than intended. The weird thing about films like this though is that they can be bloody as fuck and still not really scare me. I guess I’ve written so many scenes like that myself I just don’t expect anything different.

This was the second film I got to see at the Civic Theatre in downtown Auckland, this time with my host-sister. I got to get pretty excited for it via an impromptu Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli marathon that’s been going on for the past week and a half or so. Since we decided to go see this I’ve watched The Cat Returns, Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and half of Porco Rosso. Also, I’ve been reading Ursula K Leguin’s Tales from Earthsea, which is of course eons better than Goro Miyazaki’s film adaptation and thus the source of slight uncertainty about how much I would like From Up On Poppy Hill. This film came out in Japan last year and its writing team included both Goro and his dad the legendary Hayao Miyazaki.

It was absolutely breathtaking seeing a Studio Ghibli movie on the silver screen. The last film I saw like this was Spirited Away 10 years ago when I was in the 6th grade. Thus the fact that I watched this one here in New Zealand was special in its own way.

Anyway, the thing about this on big screen was how I got to see its stunning scenery and landscapes and characters so life-size. It was truly enthralling.

The story was incredibly complex in a mundane (that is: lacking fantastical qualities) sense, centering on the relationship between high schoolers Umi and Shun. Their budding romance against the backdrop of a student-led movement to save a historical clubhouse “The Latin Quartier,” reminiscent of Howl’s bedroom. And really if I say much more than that about the plot I’ll give the whole thing away. And I might give the whole thing away by saying the following but who cares. It was an awesome story that reminded me strongly of Fiela’s Child by Dalene Mathee which is cool ’cause that was one of my favorite international books I read in high school.

I thought it was wonderful how well the plots and sub-plots were woven together. There were even moments when Tina and I exchanged glances that said, Wow, I actually have no idea what’s going to happen. All the minor characters were, as usual, stunning, but I’ve got to say that my favorite minor characters were the Philosophy guy (this huge dude with a hilarious face who would work himself into huge fits of fervor and sweat and cry through his nose and stuff) and the artist that stayed with Umi. Seeing this on big screen meant not having to miss the shots where people were FREAKING OUT in the background and that was the source of a lot of really hard laughs.

Okay but I just need to say that I’m really waiting for a Ghibli film that has an excitable main female character. Gosh I mean aside from bursting into tears at one point, she was quite taciturn and soft-spoken. That certainly has its place, but that archetype seems to be held in some sort of reverence in a lot of Japanese/Asian works I’ve seen. I’m sorry but I connect more with a girl that randomly starts laughing or yelling at someone, more like Ponyo except she’s five so that’s not exactly a good example. And I guess Chihiro does that but again she’s like 12. I’m sorry to say that I kind of found her boring. Shun wasn’t much better but he at least had a really strong reaction to [certain plot points that shall remain undisclosed] that carried the tension a lot further than Umi did.

That’s really my only complaint though, and it’s not exactly a huge one. Over all, what a lovely experience!

I’m going to write the skeleton for this post and come back to it in the morning, because I so did not notice it’s already 11:30. The Civic Theatre was oh so awesome and reminded me of the Orpheum, with its grandiosity and decoration and the general air of awesomeness.

Okay sorry but I need to go to bed. Sorry if people are reading this from Far, usually I’m pretty sloppy in here BECAUSE I CAN BE.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is going to be one of those movies that wins all the awards even people can’t quite say why. By means of describing it, I would say it will be a story that one day becomes fable. Set in the harsh reality of an impoverished bayou community, the viewer quickly finds beauty in this rich setting even if only thanks to the film’s charming narrator, 6-year-old Hushpuppy. She weaves magic into this gritty scene and helps the film to walk the line between fantasy and reality.

One of the best-told, tensest moments in the film was when Hushpuppy’s daddy came home in hospital scrubs with a patient bracelet around his wrist, angry and disoriented, and unable to answer Hushpuppy’s cries of concern for him. So she runs back to “her house” and turns on the stove burner as high as it can go, watching her pot of cat food and condensed milk start to smoke and hiss. She starts her house on fire and climbs under a cardboard box, and her narration tells of how she’s left her story behind for the scientists of the future, and it’ll tell them everything.
She and her daddy get out of the burning house just in time but she runs from him. When he strikes her in the woods she declares, “I hope you die! I hope you die, and when you die, Imma go to your grave and eat all the birthday cake by myself!” (best line of the movie, in my opinion).
It’s not just for that line I liked this scene. It just set an incredibly intense dynamic for the father and daughter relationship, because we see he’s vulnerable even if Hushpuppy doesn’t understand, and we see she cares for him but he doesn’t know how to let her.
This, too, is the scene that heralds in the tropical storm to which the rest of the movie responds.

The whole film is wrought with spine-tingling moments, scenes and images that brought my hand to my heart or over my mouth, and the kind of beauty that makes you cringe but doesn’t fail to take your breath away.

There are a few “hiccups” I can’t overlook, though. The theme of the “beasts,” which are huge physical boars reminiscent of “Princess Mononoke,” was not satisfyingly developed. Fernando and I were sort of guessing what they really meant to the film. While the point at the end when Hushpuppy turned to face them still gave me chills, I for all my literary analysis can’t quite sort out what they meant. They might have been a metaphor for Hushpuppy’s character, or for the weather, or for fortune…it’s ambiguous in a way that’s more annoying than helpful.

I had a pretty neat experience seeing this film, at the premiere show for the Auckland International Film Festival with my new Spaniard friend Fernando. The Civic theatre is on the corner of two major metropolitan roads, Queen and Wellesley. You reach it on foot, crossing huge intersections with swarms of people, and walk into an old-fashioned building that would have been much cooler if my European companion hadn’t been dissing my standards of old architecture :P.
The actual cinema, as pictured in this sample I found (no photography inside, we found out the hard way), is breathtaking. Reminding me of the Orpheum with its grandeur and decoration, I loved the Siamese-style pillars and of course the stars that lit up over our heads with drifting clouds. It made me feel like I was really at an event, coupled with the fact that the director of the festival opened with a speech for the premiere show. I really enjoyed it and I am so excited to have 2 more films to look forward to at the Civic!

Okay, so, I’ve been feeling a little impulsive lately and I believe six seasons of Doctor Who has left me craving a good story. For most of my life I’ve avoided horror movies because I have the tendency to terrify myself more than any story can. That’s lessened as I’ve gotten older because I can control myself a little better. Anyway, that’s going too far back. Point is that I’m in the middle of watching “Insidious” by myself (it came up on Netflix one day, which is the only reason I had any interest in it…random Netflix movies like “Sleeping Beauty” (dir. Julia Leigh; it’s got nothing to do with the Disney story) tend to catch my attention). I figured I may as well make something productive out of this.

First of all, one of my new ways to cope with stress is by relating it to Doctor Who. Previous example:

I was standing on the corner of Chicago Ave., heart pounding, drained from all the people I was around inside the art gallery opening, waiting for a ride I wasn’t sure would find me, with a dead cell phone in my hand. I held down the power button repeatedly, hoping the phone would spontaneously turn on. I thought, If the Doctor were here, he’d make it work.

Now I’m doing that again with this movie — Hey, that guy in the baby’s room looked vaguely like Christopher Eccleston. It’s just the Doctor trying to help them with their haunted son!

Anyway, I’m about halfway through the movie and these two guys that look like they work for the Geek Squad come to the house of the people with the haunted son and suddenly even though my palms are sweaty, their irreverent bickering is making me laugh. Then, the main spiritual-insight-providing woman is introduced and I like her instantly. She’s a sprightly little old lady in a mint green suit coat and she changed the whole tone of the movie. She dictates her vision of the spirit that’s possessing the boy to one of the Geek Squad guys and he draws it for her. Her manner of explaining her interpretation of what’s going on to the parents is so crisp and straightforward. This kind of excellent script-writing is what separates humdrum “supernatural thrillers” from movies with some intrinsic value.

I’m actually all right with the main demon, who was differentiated from the others “hovering around” Dalton’s “vessel” because of its intent to cause pain to others. Its depiction is very mythical: red face, hooves for feet. Made me think of a Minotaur. I’ve also messed with that sort of character in Redefining Evil in that Sotoka-Khepri may have been screwed up, but it was the demons with the intent to harm and thwart good that really made him vicious.

There was a lot of foreshadowing that led up to the connection between Dalton’s problems and his father’s. And I love that his issues were related to “night terrors” because it’s a term not often used but personally I’m familiar with. Josh (Dalton’s dad) was somewhat absent for the first part of the movie because it was Renai (Dalton’s mom) that started seeing all the spirits. I was worried his character was going to fall out of the storyline altogether and create this concept of women being the unstable ones. I was happy when all the responsibility for bringing Dalton back was placed on him because he had the same ability Dalton had to “travel” outside his body.

The portrayal of the spirit world that was layered on top of the real house was wonderfully surreal — boys from the 1920s laughing, running, and disappearing; a whistling man in a living room where a man and woman sit on a couch while one reads the paper; Josh wandering through the dark with a lantern — all doused in a milky green hue. I definitely thought of Spirited Away and how Chihiro is balanced between the human and spirit realm on the train when she sees spirits and humans in the same plane. Watching Josh demand that the spirits tell him where his son is while knowing Elise told him not to let them know he was there created the tension that led up to his discovery.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY liked that they gave this main villain a lair. So many horror movies I’ve heard of ride on the principle that something can only be scary if you can’t see it — e.g., Paranormal Activity. But this movie garnered itself a nearly-epic status when Dalton looked in horror up towards the ceiling of the red-tinted, Gothic hall to where his captor played music from a Gramophone while sharpening his metal hands (RIGHT?!)

This whole storyline is startlingly compelling. It’s incredibly focused and there are very few hokey moments that draw from its purpose.

…Ugh! And then the ending ruins it (Josh’s old haunt, the old lady, managed to steal his body and so kills Elise and Renai). Granted, it’s in line with the logic of the story. It also successfully ties together Dalton and Josh’s stories because they were struggling with the same thing and, where you would expect Dalton to lose since he powered 3/4 of the movie, he comes out unscathed, beating his Darth Mal-esque demon back to his own body. Meanwhile, Josh’s seemingly successful confrontation with his old lady haunt delayed his return to his body long enough for her to beat him to it. The only annoying thing (which is annoying to me in any story that does it) is that the ending left it wide open to a sequel, because Josh’s spirit is still alive in the spirit realm and we don’t actually know if the old lady managed to kill Renai too. Also, we didn’t technically see Dalton’s haunt get defeated; it just lost access to his body. So…so that would be interesting, and no, I would probably never watch the sequel.

Now, off to find humorous things to watch for the rest of the night! (Or do I have to watch Spirited Away now…)

This also makes me wonder if the only difference between a movie like Insidious and a normal movie that I would like that has spiritual elements is that horror movies insist upon making the ending either ambiguous or favoring the forces of evil. Most fantasy movies allow the idea that good always prevails. Many of the horror movies I think of defy this. Maybe that’s why they’re horror movies. I wish a story could have horror elements but a positive ending. Sigh.