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Uneasy Listening
General | Posted 5 years agoTSUJII AT WHITE NIGHTS: Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto no.1; Shostakovich: Symphony no. 14
Nobuyuki Tsujii, piano; Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Valery Gergiev, conductor
https://www.amazon.com/Tsujii-at-White-Nights-Rachmaninov/dp/B00AA9QKZU/ref=sr_1_27?keywords=shostakovich+symphony&qid=1591136073&s=movies-tv&sr=1-27
I bought this disc for what's likely to be the only video recording of Shostakovich's underplayed Fourteenth Symphony -- a relentlessly bleak song cycle about the finality of death for soprano, bass, and a chamber orchestra of strings and percussion. As other reviewers have pointed out, EuroArts's failure to provide texts, translations, or subtitles for a series of Spanish, French, and German poems translated into Russian is ludicrous; I've lived with this uncomforting music for years, but viewers encountering the symphony for the first time via this disc are SOL.
It's an excellent performance, though. Valery Gergiev, conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra not with a baton but a toothpick (hey, whatever works), tackles a score that hears the world in terms of frenzy and inertia; his tempi are very deliberate, concerned with gradations of darkness, like a viewer examining a black-on-black painting under museum lighting. Soprano Olga Sergeyeva and bass Yuri Vorobiev sing these songs of mourning, madness, suicide, and impending doom with all the drama the settings demand. It's a very fatalistic form of Slavic melodrama, if you're willing to wallow in hopelessness for a little while (and every now and then, many of us are).
Sorry Nobuyuki Tsujii, but I'm just not in the mood for the Tchaikovsky piano concerto right now.
Nobuyuki Tsujii, piano; Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Valery Gergiev, conductor
https://www.amazon.com/Tsujii-at-White-Nights-Rachmaninov/dp/B00AA9QKZU/ref=sr_1_27?keywords=shostakovich+symphony&qid=1591136073&s=movies-tv&sr=1-27
I bought this disc for what's likely to be the only video recording of Shostakovich's underplayed Fourteenth Symphony -- a relentlessly bleak song cycle about the finality of death for soprano, bass, and a chamber orchestra of strings and percussion. As other reviewers have pointed out, EuroArts's failure to provide texts, translations, or subtitles for a series of Spanish, French, and German poems translated into Russian is ludicrous; I've lived with this uncomforting music for years, but viewers encountering the symphony for the first time via this disc are SOL.
It's an excellent performance, though. Valery Gergiev, conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra not with a baton but a toothpick (hey, whatever works), tackles a score that hears the world in terms of frenzy and inertia; his tempi are very deliberate, concerned with gradations of darkness, like a viewer examining a black-on-black painting under museum lighting. Soprano Olga Sergeyeva and bass Yuri Vorobiev sing these songs of mourning, madness, suicide, and impending doom with all the drama the settings demand. It's a very fatalistic form of Slavic melodrama, if you're willing to wallow in hopelessness for a little while (and every now and then, many of us are).
Sorry Nobuyuki Tsujii, but I'm just not in the mood for the Tchaikovsky piano concerto right now.
Are you your characters?
General | Posted 5 years agoEven the quietest artists tend to turn into windbags when you ask them to talk about the characters they create, so I'll keep this short. My characters are partially based on me, or some aspect of me.
Genevieve? She's the creative artist. Jimmy's the twink. (I'm a retired twink.) Sheila's the class act. Sandi's the brainiac. Ellie is the Mary Ann to Sheila's Ginger. Miles is the philosophile. Marco's the pipsqueak with a short fuse.
And the Buzzard? That's my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Genevieve? She's the creative artist. Jimmy's the twink. (I'm a retired twink.) Sheila's the class act. Sandi's the brainiac. Ellie is the Mary Ann to Sheila's Ginger. Miles is the philosophile. Marco's the pipsqueak with a short fuse.
And the Buzzard? That's my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
"You supercilious, self-serving satchel of sleaze!"
General | Posted 5 years agoI've been back at this art stuff for a month, and I've already got myself a full workload. Not bad for a cartoonist most people on FA have never heard of.
Now, as much as I love drawing the gay stuff, it's time to find out if I still remember how to draw women. Frisky gals are still popular, I reckon.
Now, as much as I love drawing the gay stuff, it's time to find out if I still remember how to draw women. Frisky gals are still popular, I reckon.
Fast Fashion
General | Posted 5 years ago"My mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." Yeah, I'll go with that, but 'til it's safe to touch books outside your personal collection again, I'm gonna talk about my wardrobe upgrade.
I spent last year ordering black t-shirts for every mood, printed with everything from Caravaggio to bootleg images of Gadget Hackwrench and Lola Bunny, from jokey portraits of Freud and John Locke to the wisdom of Rick Astley, from Whitman, Austen, and Byron to, inevitably, Shakespeare (my VILLAIN, I HAVE DONE THY MOTHER t-shirt went over big at the last Washington Historical Society book promotion). Point is, pop fashion is fun, but who cares what you wear now, besides a mask and gloves? It's hard to read the text on a t-shirt from six feet away.
See, there's nothing to dress for. Even if you're out of lockdown, no one wants to be near you, and if you're stuck at home, why bother even wearing pants? (Facetime is up, but NO ONE looks good on a webcam.) So my wardrobe upgrade enters a new phase, one of finding more gloves and of finding some face masks that don't fog up my glasses quite as much.
Sorry we didn't have much of a chance to step out together, beloved t-shirts, but maybe there'll be a place for you in the calmer, quieter dystopia to come. That is, I HOPE we're not gonna devolve into roving bands of cannibalistic brigands. A world that's forgotten Rick Astley would be a world too gruesome to live in.
I spent last year ordering black t-shirts for every mood, printed with everything from Caravaggio to bootleg images of Gadget Hackwrench and Lola Bunny, from jokey portraits of Freud and John Locke to the wisdom of Rick Astley, from Whitman, Austen, and Byron to, inevitably, Shakespeare (my VILLAIN, I HAVE DONE THY MOTHER t-shirt went over big at the last Washington Historical Society book promotion). Point is, pop fashion is fun, but who cares what you wear now, besides a mask and gloves? It's hard to read the text on a t-shirt from six feet away.
See, there's nothing to dress for. Even if you're out of lockdown, no one wants to be near you, and if you're stuck at home, why bother even wearing pants? (Facetime is up, but NO ONE looks good on a webcam.) So my wardrobe upgrade enters a new phase, one of finding more gloves and of finding some face masks that don't fog up my glasses quite as much.
Sorry we didn't have much of a chance to step out together, beloved t-shirts, but maybe there'll be a place for you in the calmer, quieter dystopia to come. That is, I HOPE we're not gonna devolve into roving bands of cannibalistic brigands. A world that's forgotten Rick Astley would be a world too gruesome to live in.
Emergency Chill!
General | Posted 5 years agoYou will need:
2 oz. 100 proof rye or bourbon
1 sugar cube or 1 tsp sugar or 1 tsp simple syrup (sugar water)
1 bottle Angostura bitters (or other aromatic bitters)
1 2- or 3-inch slice of lemon or orange peel
ice cubes
Put a sugar cube in a rocks glass with a teaspoon or so of water and muddle (crush) 'til the sugar is dissolved. Add 2 dashes of bitters and stir.
Pour in the whiskey and stir with two small ice cubes for chilling and dilution. Fold the fruit peel (lemon for rye, orange for bourbon) skin side down over the drink, to get the aromatic oils.
Add one large ice cube and drop in the lemon or orange peel.
Now sip your Old-Fashioned 'til you start to feel sane again. Repeat as necessary.
2 oz. 100 proof rye or bourbon
1 sugar cube or 1 tsp sugar or 1 tsp simple syrup (sugar water)
1 bottle Angostura bitters (or other aromatic bitters)
1 2- or 3-inch slice of lemon or orange peel
ice cubes
Put a sugar cube in a rocks glass with a teaspoon or so of water and muddle (crush) 'til the sugar is dissolved. Add 2 dashes of bitters and stir.
Pour in the whiskey and stir with two small ice cubes for chilling and dilution. Fold the fruit peel (lemon for rye, orange for bourbon) skin side down over the drink, to get the aromatic oils.
Add one large ice cube and drop in the lemon or orange peel.
Now sip your Old-Fashioned 'til you start to feel sane again. Repeat as necessary.
Nostalgia
General | Posted 5 years agoSex?!? Hell, anybody remember handshakes??
Roochak's Two-Movie Meme
General | Posted 5 years agoBored with looking at YCH reminders, I had the terrible idea to start a meme. List any two movies (or TV series) you've watched since you've been locked down at home. The catch is, you have to explain WHY you found those films interesting (and a movie doesn't have to be good to be interesting). I'll kick things off with:
TABOO II (1982, Kirdy Stevens)
Second installment of the 1980s incest franchise, starring Dorothy LeMay as the high school sweetheart lusted after by her thirtysomething teenage brother (Kevin James). Balanced on the knife edge of boredom and hilarity, like all feature-length porn films, the movie shows us that incest makes us better, more empathetic people, even if sexually frustrated Mom (Honey Wilder), catching Sherry and Junior in the act, immediately reaches for the vodka. (For the flavor of this movie, just try uttering the line, "I fucked my son" with a straight face.) And yes, that's a younger, slightly less revolting Ron Jeremy in the orgy scene.
5 CENTIMETERS PER SECOND (2007, Makoto Shinkai)
The last thing capital-A Art needs is a sense of humor, right? Conceived as a poetic, ambiguous memory film (meaning: slow and disjointed) on the fleeting beauty of love, happiness, and the natural world, but executed as two short stories with a throwaway coda, Shinkai's film slowly deflates after the suspenseful first movement (the winter train journey). Over the years, three girls fall for blank slate Takaki, who, even as an adult, can't stop mooning over the first of them, the girl he fell in love with at the age of 13. Since Takaki is more of a symbol than a character, the star of Shinkai's film is its series of lovingly rendered, insanely detailed backgrounds and lighting effects, so gorgeous to look at that they easily supplant the characters, who, by the film's glad-to-be-unhappy ending, barely seem to have existed at all.
TABOO II (1982, Kirdy Stevens)
Second installment of the 1980s incest franchise, starring Dorothy LeMay as the high school sweetheart lusted after by her thirtysomething teenage brother (Kevin James). Balanced on the knife edge of boredom and hilarity, like all feature-length porn films, the movie shows us that incest makes us better, more empathetic people, even if sexually frustrated Mom (Honey Wilder), catching Sherry and Junior in the act, immediately reaches for the vodka. (For the flavor of this movie, just try uttering the line, "I fucked my son" with a straight face.) And yes, that's a younger, slightly less revolting Ron Jeremy in the orgy scene.
5 CENTIMETERS PER SECOND (2007, Makoto Shinkai)
The last thing capital-A Art needs is a sense of humor, right? Conceived as a poetic, ambiguous memory film (meaning: slow and disjointed) on the fleeting beauty of love, happiness, and the natural world, but executed as two short stories with a throwaway coda, Shinkai's film slowly deflates after the suspenseful first movement (the winter train journey). Over the years, three girls fall for blank slate Takaki, who, even as an adult, can't stop mooning over the first of them, the girl he fell in love with at the age of 13. Since Takaki is more of a symbol than a character, the star of Shinkai's film is its series of lovingly rendered, insanely detailed backgrounds and lighting effects, so gorgeous to look at that they easily supplant the characters, who, by the film's glad-to-be-unhappy ending, barely seem to have existed at all.
Culinary Kung Fu
General | Posted 5 years agoFOOD WARS! (SHOKUGEKI NO SOMA) -- THE THIRD PLATE (Sentai Filmworks, Blu-ray/DVD)
https://www.amazon.com/Food-Wars-Third-Plate-Blu-ray/dp/B081KQY4PW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=HZJO0DA65VRT&dchild=1&keywords=food+wars+third+plate&qid=1585881520&s=movies-tv&sprefix=food+wa%2Caps%2C206&sr=1-1
reviewed by Roochak
Why didn't I see it earlier? The blood sport cooking tournaments, the obsessive kitchen training sequences, the goal of mastery in the vital but esoteric science of taste -- FOOD WARS! is a kung fu series with the Totsuki Fine Dining Academy standing in for the Shaolin Temple, that legendary training ground of future martial arts masters. Over the course of three seasons, I've learned more about the science and aesthetics of haute cuisine than I ever thought I'd need to know, but it wouldn't mean much if the story arcs weren't so gripping, the humor so sharp, the characters so likeable, and our star Soma Yukihira such an appealing folk-hero-in-training, a young Wong Fei-Hung in a chef's apron.
The cooking battles in season three have even higher stakes now that a tyrannical new Director has made it a priority to expel Soma and his friends by any means necessary. The season breaks off in mid-storyline, leaving us hungry for season four -- very appropriate, don'cha think?
https://www.amazon.com/Food-Wars-Third-Plate-Blu-ray/dp/B081KQY4PW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=HZJO0DA65VRT&dchild=1&keywords=food+wars+third+plate&qid=1585881520&s=movies-tv&sprefix=food+wa%2Caps%2C206&sr=1-1
reviewed by Roochak
Why didn't I see it earlier? The blood sport cooking tournaments, the obsessive kitchen training sequences, the goal of mastery in the vital but esoteric science of taste -- FOOD WARS! is a kung fu series with the Totsuki Fine Dining Academy standing in for the Shaolin Temple, that legendary training ground of future martial arts masters. Over the course of three seasons, I've learned more about the science and aesthetics of haute cuisine than I ever thought I'd need to know, but it wouldn't mean much if the story arcs weren't so gripping, the humor so sharp, the characters so likeable, and our star Soma Yukihira such an appealing folk-hero-in-training, a young Wong Fei-Hung in a chef's apron.
The cooking battles in season three have even higher stakes now that a tyrannical new Director has made it a priority to expel Soma and his friends by any means necessary. The season breaks off in mid-storyline, leaving us hungry for season four -- very appropriate, don'cha think?
It's the end of the world as we know it...
General | Posted 5 years ago...and I feel hungover.
Hi there, folks! It's good to be back.
Hi there, folks! It's good to be back.
The Good Spaceman Schweik
General | Posted 6 years agoROYAL SPACE FORCE (aka WINGS OF HONNEAMISE) (Section 23 blu-ray, 2019)
https://www.amazon.com/Royal-Space-Force-Blu-ray-Morimoto/dp/631779992X/ref=tmm_blu_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
reviewed by Roochak
Lhadatt, a befuddled slacker who becomes the driving force and public face of a military/scientific enterprise he can barely understand, is the hero of a science fiction satire that seems to be the lovechild of Robert Heinlein and Jim Jarmusch. If the movie's theme -- hard to pin down on the first viewing -- is that people can do the right things for the wrong reasons, then its deadpan blend of dark comedy, big social/philosophical questions, and a technological sense of wonder start to make much more sense. That's not to downplay the suspense as the launch date approaches, and the sheer physical realness of the busy, rundown, very lived-in world that the characters inhabit.
In a strong cast of individuals, Lhadatt's girlfriend Riquinni -- a dowdy single mom whose religious devotion borders on fanaticism -- stands out as his unlikely muse and guiding light. This 1987 movie is not your typical anime: it has more to say about life, and our choices about what gives it meaning, than you may be used to.
https://www.amazon.com/Royal-Space-Force-Blu-ray-Morimoto/dp/631779992X/ref=tmm_blu_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
reviewed by Roochak
Lhadatt, a befuddled slacker who becomes the driving force and public face of a military/scientific enterprise he can barely understand, is the hero of a science fiction satire that seems to be the lovechild of Robert Heinlein and Jim Jarmusch. If the movie's theme -- hard to pin down on the first viewing -- is that people can do the right things for the wrong reasons, then its deadpan blend of dark comedy, big social/philosophical questions, and a technological sense of wonder start to make much more sense. That's not to downplay the suspense as the launch date approaches, and the sheer physical realness of the busy, rundown, very lived-in world that the characters inhabit.
In a strong cast of individuals, Lhadatt's girlfriend Riquinni -- a dowdy single mom whose religious devotion borders on fanaticism -- stands out as his unlikely muse and guiding light. This 1987 movie is not your typical anime: it has more to say about life, and our choices about what gives it meaning, than you may be used to.
Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi
General | Posted 6 years agoThis year's Otakon was over shortly after 3 p.m. on Sunday. "Thank you," said the Washington Convention Center. "Glad you enjoyed the con, come back next year, now GTFO!!"
"Is it over?" asked a gray-haired traffic safety officer to the glowing crowd spilling onto the streets. "Yeah," somebody said.
"Oh thank you, Jesus!"
"Is it over?" asked a gray-haired traffic safety officer to the glowing crowd spilling onto the streets. "Yeah," somebody said.
"Oh thank you, Jesus!"
Turn the Page
General | Posted 6 years agoJust had to get that previous, depressing journal entry off my front page. Today was Otakon, day one, and as always the fans were terrific, the cosplay was eyecatching, the shopping was rewarding, DC dining is delightful...but I still have to mix my own cocktails.
Yep, watching the first episode of MADE IN ABYSS with a cold Daiquiri in hand was the perfect end to a perfectly lovely day.
Yep, watching the first episode of MADE IN ABYSS with a cold Daiquiri in hand was the perfect end to a perfectly lovely day.
Kyoto Animation fire
General | Posted 6 years agoAs of 11 a.m. Eastern time, 33 people have been confirmed dead in an arson attack on the Kyoto Animation (KyoAni) studio, which released the feature film A Silent Voice, as well as such series as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Free! Iwatobi High School Swim Club. Feel free to post relevant updates in this thread.
Friday morning update:
The 41-year-old suspect, Shinji Aoba, has confessed to setting the gasoline fire that killed 33 people and injured another 35 at the KyoAni studio. Aoba, who was himself badly burned in the attack, claims that the studio stole his ideas.
Aoba could face the death penalty for the arson attack.
Houston-based licensing company Sentai Filmworks has set up a crowdsourced fundraiser for the KyoAni victims, which has received over $1m in donations.
Saturday morning update:
As if this story wasn't depressing enough, I've learned that KyoAni was proactive about hiring female animators, meaning that the majority of the now 34 people killed in the attack were women. Most died of carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to escape to the roof -- the main entrance was blocked by flames.
Friday morning update:
The 41-year-old suspect, Shinji Aoba, has confessed to setting the gasoline fire that killed 33 people and injured another 35 at the KyoAni studio. Aoba, who was himself badly burned in the attack, claims that the studio stole his ideas.
Aoba could face the death penalty for the arson attack.
Houston-based licensing company Sentai Filmworks has set up a crowdsourced fundraiser for the KyoAni victims, which has received over $1m in donations.
Saturday morning update:
As if this story wasn't depressing enough, I've learned that KyoAni was proactive about hiring female animators, meaning that the majority of the now 34 people killed in the attack were women. Most died of carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to escape to the roof -- the main entrance was blocked by flames.
The 36th Chamber of Film Studies
General | Posted 6 years agoKUNG FU CULT MASTERS by Leon Hunt (Wallflower Press, paperback, 978-1903364635)
reviewed by Roochak, who isn't shopping on Amazon Prime Day
https://www.amazon.com/Kung-Cult-Masters-Leon-Hunt/dp/1903364639/ref=sr_1_1?crid=BT0ME0K016HO&keywords=kung+fu+cult+masters&qid=1563207872&s=books&sprefix=kung+fu+cult+%2Caps%2C152&sr=1-1
This is an academic study focused on questions of authenticity (or multiple authenticities), mythmaking, satire, gender roles, transnationalism and postcolonialism in kung fu movies, and while the text is accessible to fanboys who are willing to read footnotes, it's not just another breathless love letter to the genre's best fight scenes.
Just navigating the history of the kung fu genre is a tricky affair, tied up in Mandarin-dialect fight films set in "historical" China and Cantonese-dialect fight films set in more-or-less contemporary Hong Kong, with plenty of overlap. Author Leon Hunt makes several fascinating arguments along the way: that Bruce Lee is the center of the kung fu universe, but a cinematic dead end; that filmmaker Zhang Che's (Chang Cheh's) homoerotic gaze foregrounded and queered (my word, not Hunt's) Chinese masculinity onscreen; that Brigitte Lin's genderbending roles in the 1990s were a correction to the film industry sexism that had dogged Angela Mao Ying and Kara Hui Ying-hung; that Jet Li is effectively the last martial arts superstar, and that the genre has reached a seeming dead end.
There's a final chapter on martial arts videogames, which I don't play now and which I didn't play when this book was published (2003). Is their immersive experience where the kung fu genre now resides? Is kung fu cinema now an exercise in remakes and pure nostalgia?
reviewed by Roochak, who isn't shopping on Amazon Prime Day
https://www.amazon.com/Kung-Cult-Masters-Leon-Hunt/dp/1903364639/ref=sr_1_1?crid=BT0ME0K016HO&keywords=kung+fu+cult+masters&qid=1563207872&s=books&sprefix=kung+fu+cult+%2Caps%2C152&sr=1-1
This is an academic study focused on questions of authenticity (or multiple authenticities), mythmaking, satire, gender roles, transnationalism and postcolonialism in kung fu movies, and while the text is accessible to fanboys who are willing to read footnotes, it's not just another breathless love letter to the genre's best fight scenes.
Just navigating the history of the kung fu genre is a tricky affair, tied up in Mandarin-dialect fight films set in "historical" China and Cantonese-dialect fight films set in more-or-less contemporary Hong Kong, with plenty of overlap. Author Leon Hunt makes several fascinating arguments along the way: that Bruce Lee is the center of the kung fu universe, but a cinematic dead end; that filmmaker Zhang Che's (Chang Cheh's) homoerotic gaze foregrounded and queered (my word, not Hunt's) Chinese masculinity onscreen; that Brigitte Lin's genderbending roles in the 1990s were a correction to the film industry sexism that had dogged Angela Mao Ying and Kara Hui Ying-hung; that Jet Li is effectively the last martial arts superstar, and that the genre has reached a seeming dead end.
There's a final chapter on martial arts videogames, which I don't play now and which I didn't play when this book was published (2003). Is their immersive experience where the kung fu genre now resides? Is kung fu cinema now an exercise in remakes and pure nostalgia?
The Other 1%
General | Posted 6 years agoThree new characters are taking shape in my sketchbooks, and while that's happening, I'm reading stuff like this:
PLAYING CHANGES: JAZZ FOR THE NEW CENTURY by Nate Chinen (Vintage paperback, 2019, 978-110-1873496)
https://www.amazon.com/Playing-Changes-Jazz-New-Century/dp/1101873493/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1562908729&sr=1-1
reviewed by Roochak
Read between the lines of this celebratory book about 21st century jazz, and you'll realize that for all the record deals, MacArthur Fellowships, and Kennedy Center artistic directorships being handed out to jazzmen, for most women who play jazz, it might as well still be 1949. Nate Chinen opens his twelfth and final chapter with a telling anecdote about guitarist Mary Halvorson's Village Vanguard debut, in which she was literally invisible to the audience; a reader might get the idea that this scenario is a metaphor for the jazz establishment, including fans, critics, educators, the male musicians who serve as de facto gatekeepers to the world's bandstands, and, of course, the readers of books like this one.
Don't get me wrong: PLAYING CHANGES is an interesting and informative book. You want an easy-to-follow history of the music from the "Jazz Wars" of the '80s/'90s to today's syncretic music which takes in bebop, postbop, hip hop, neo-soul, R&B, electronics, metal, classical, and/or global folk traditions, then Chinen has written the ideal critical guide. (Okay, far from ideal if you want to know why women seem to account for about 1% of the music that Chinen considers genuinely innovative and important.)
Give the man credit for what he does cover, though. He'll explain why Brad Mehldau has influenced an entire generation of pianists, why Steve Coleman is a hero to a generation of composers, what Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer, and the Soulquarians brought to the table. But it isn't until chapter ten that a woman -- Esperanza Spalding -- gets her own chapter; in the preceding 182 pages, only two women, Cassandra Wilson and Snarky Puppy's Lalah Hathaway, get more than a passing mention.
Troubling? Yeah, but what's the answer to that trouble? This isn't a book about straight ahead, mainstream jazz, but about what's perceived as today's creative music -- eclectic, often confrontational, impatient with the old rules and definitions of "jazz." But the new rules? Still made by men.
PLAYING CHANGES: JAZZ FOR THE NEW CENTURY by Nate Chinen (Vintage paperback, 2019, 978-110-1873496)
https://www.amazon.com/Playing-Changes-Jazz-New-Century/dp/1101873493/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1562908729&sr=1-1
reviewed by Roochak
Read between the lines of this celebratory book about 21st century jazz, and you'll realize that for all the record deals, MacArthur Fellowships, and Kennedy Center artistic directorships being handed out to jazzmen, for most women who play jazz, it might as well still be 1949. Nate Chinen opens his twelfth and final chapter with a telling anecdote about guitarist Mary Halvorson's Village Vanguard debut, in which she was literally invisible to the audience; a reader might get the idea that this scenario is a metaphor for the jazz establishment, including fans, critics, educators, the male musicians who serve as de facto gatekeepers to the world's bandstands, and, of course, the readers of books like this one.
Don't get me wrong: PLAYING CHANGES is an interesting and informative book. You want an easy-to-follow history of the music from the "Jazz Wars" of the '80s/'90s to today's syncretic music which takes in bebop, postbop, hip hop, neo-soul, R&B, electronics, metal, classical, and/or global folk traditions, then Chinen has written the ideal critical guide. (Okay, far from ideal if you want to know why women seem to account for about 1% of the music that Chinen considers genuinely innovative and important.)
Give the man credit for what he does cover, though. He'll explain why Brad Mehldau has influenced an entire generation of pianists, why Steve Coleman is a hero to a generation of composers, what Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer, and the Soulquarians brought to the table. But it isn't until chapter ten that a woman -- Esperanza Spalding -- gets her own chapter; in the preceding 182 pages, only two women, Cassandra Wilson and Snarky Puppy's Lalah Hathaway, get more than a passing mention.
Troubling? Yeah, but what's the answer to that trouble? This isn't a book about straight ahead, mainstream jazz, but about what's perceived as today's creative music -- eclectic, often confrontational, impatient with the old rules and definitions of "jazz." But the new rules? Still made by men.
A Hanna-Barbera Neo-Noir Comedy
General | Posted 6 years agoTHE RUFF AND REDDY SHOW by Howard Chaykin and Mac Rey (DC Comics, 2018)
https://www.amazon.com/Ruff-Reddy-S....._at_pdctrvw_dp
reviewed by Roochak
If you've never seen the old RUFF AND REDDY TV show, don't sweat it; hardly anyone else has, either. It's just the raw material that writer Howard Chaykin and artist Mac Rey needed to craft a bleak, bitter satire of a television industry that's sold us our own neuroses and obsessions for seventy years, here packaged as the story of two minor Hollywood talents who can't live with or without each other.
Chaykin drew a fine, eight page "origin story" of how Ruff (the foulmouthed cat) and Reddy (the recovering addict dog) became partners, but it's Mac Rey's widescreen, sunset-and-shdadows art show from then on, and it's gorgeous to look at. Chaykin's reinvention of the duo from kidvid adventurers to a pair of aging Jewish comics who experience failure, success, and a state of betrayal so total that success and failure are indistinguishable is what puts this series over the top, though.
Ruff and Reddy are a footnote in animation history, but they're stars in this cynical, cartoon history of television devoid of heroes, nostalgia, kindness, beauty, or hope. They live long enough to appear on (and lampoon) every TV show from Jack Paar and Steve Allen to TRANSPARENT and GAME OF THRONES, but the neo-noir LA of this story is populated entirely by vipers and fools; it's where nobody's luck lasts forever, and the duo's comeuppance, when they finally walk into the trap they've set for themselves, is so painfully funny you'll almost wish they could've dodged it. Almost.
https://www.amazon.com/Ruff-Reddy-S....._at_pdctrvw_dp
reviewed by Roochak
If you've never seen the old RUFF AND REDDY TV show, don't sweat it; hardly anyone else has, either. It's just the raw material that writer Howard Chaykin and artist Mac Rey needed to craft a bleak, bitter satire of a television industry that's sold us our own neuroses and obsessions for seventy years, here packaged as the story of two minor Hollywood talents who can't live with or without each other.
Chaykin drew a fine, eight page "origin story" of how Ruff (the foulmouthed cat) and Reddy (the recovering addict dog) became partners, but it's Mac Rey's widescreen, sunset-and-shdadows art show from then on, and it's gorgeous to look at. Chaykin's reinvention of the duo from kidvid adventurers to a pair of aging Jewish comics who experience failure, success, and a state of betrayal so total that success and failure are indistinguishable is what puts this series over the top, though.
Ruff and Reddy are a footnote in animation history, but they're stars in this cynical, cartoon history of television devoid of heroes, nostalgia, kindness, beauty, or hope. They live long enough to appear on (and lampoon) every TV show from Jack Paar and Steve Allen to TRANSPARENT and GAME OF THRONES, but the neo-noir LA of this story is populated entirely by vipers and fools; it's where nobody's luck lasts forever, and the duo's comeuppance, when they finally walk into the trap they've set for themselves, is so painfully funny you'll almost wish they could've dodged it. Almost.
It's a Blue World
General | Posted 6 years agoPERFECT BLUE (Shout! Factory/GKIDS Blu-ray, 2019)
https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Blue-Bluray-Combo-Blu-ray/dp/B07L5DTDLG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2G43968XWHK7L&keywords=perfect+blue+blu+ray&qid=1560210652&s=movies-tv&sprefix=perfec%2Caps%2C129&sr=1-1
reviewed by Roochak
PERFECT BLUE predicted our everyday lives over twenty years ago -- it takes place in a world where privacy is unknown, social media exists to manipulate its users, fantasy and reality are intertwined to the point that one is as terrifying as the other, and where people exhibiting signs of PTSD are just part of the background. The late Satoshi Kon's 1997 animated thriller makes its viewers as uncertain of what's real and what isn't as its victimized heroine, ending the story with a wink that dares us to believe there's any such thing as a "normal" to get back to.
This is more like a Brian De Palma movie than your typical anime, and the irony of its re-release by GKIDS (a distributor better known for the Studio Ghibli Collection) is as freaky as PERFECT BLUE itself: what with the nudity, film-within-a-film rape scenes, and death by icepick, this ain't no kids' movie.
Now that we've gotten used to super-slick computer animation, this hand-drawn film looks its age, but the story will drag you in -- and drag you under -- so quickly you'll barely notice.
https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Blue-Bluray-Combo-Blu-ray/dp/B07L5DTDLG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2G43968XWHK7L&keywords=perfect+blue+blu+ray&qid=1560210652&s=movies-tv&sprefix=perfec%2Caps%2C129&sr=1-1
reviewed by Roochak
PERFECT BLUE predicted our everyday lives over twenty years ago -- it takes place in a world where privacy is unknown, social media exists to manipulate its users, fantasy and reality are intertwined to the point that one is as terrifying as the other, and where people exhibiting signs of PTSD are just part of the background. The late Satoshi Kon's 1997 animated thriller makes its viewers as uncertain of what's real and what isn't as its victimized heroine, ending the story with a wink that dares us to believe there's any such thing as a "normal" to get back to.
This is more like a Brian De Palma movie than your typical anime, and the irony of its re-release by GKIDS (a distributor better known for the Studio Ghibli Collection) is as freaky as PERFECT BLUE itself: what with the nudity, film-within-a-film rape scenes, and death by icepick, this ain't no kids' movie.
Now that we've gotten used to super-slick computer animation, this hand-drawn film looks its age, but the story will drag you in -- and drag you under -- so quickly you'll barely notice.
The Good, the Bad, and the Sexy
General | Posted 9 years agoTOBY ROSS VINTAGE COLLECTION: TEN FILMS (DVD)
https://www.amazon.com/Toby-Ross-Theatrical-Features-Golden/dp/B015WQICN8/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1486174458&sr=1-1&keywords=toby+ross
1970s hardcore gay porn, shot in 8 and 16mm with a lot of cute San Francisco blonds, gingers, and especially brunettes -- what more could you want? Well, we'll get to that...
All the films are in Academy ratio (1:33:1), and these are the same discs available separately through BijouWorld and Bigdikfactory, but they're packaged here in a big black clamshell: ten discs with no special features except for some trailers, and the Toby Ross interviews on the more professionally produced BDF discs (THE DIARY and THE LAST SURFER). The discs for REFLECTIONS OF YOUTH (1975) and BOYS OF THE SLUMS (1976) were mislabeled, which wasn't a promising start, but the films themselves are hot as hell; typical of the times, there isn't a condom in sight. They're both plotless recyclings of Ross's silent 8mm porn loops (blown up to 16mm), strung together with new footage, including amateurish dialogue plus a musical soundtrack. The (white) boys of the slums are squatting together in a shack somewhere in the sticks, dreaming of someday making it to the big city; REFLECTIONS is about two horny high school boys getting it on, then reminiscing about other horny high school boys.
CRUISIN' 57 (1975), with a soundtrack full of unlicensed doo-wop and period DJ radio patter, is a gay porn AMERICAN GRAFFITI, with a cast of appealingly gawky boy-next-door types, completely believable as horny, awkward high school kids desperate to look and sound cool at all costs. Performer Michael Muni dominates the second half of the film, appearing in a solo j/o scene and bottoming twice, the second time in a garage scene (with Kevin Gladstone) that ends in a spectacularly messy cumshot. SCHOOLMATES (1976) suffers from atrocious audio (the soundtrack's deafening hiss never lets up), and from an odd decision to slow the movie down with two consecutive solo j/o scenes. Other'n that, it's another collection of silent porn loops with a weirdly flat narration by two foxy college freshmen. Beware the film's final sex scene, which takes forever to get started and is prefaced with several minutes' worth of mind-numbingly stupid dialogue.
DO ME EVIL (1975) begins with a nude pianist playing Beethoven's "Für Elise," and a slow pan that reveals a woman and two children sitting in the same room, listening. This is the aggressively outré opening of Ross's first art-porn feature, and Mike Daniels, the best actor Ross had hired up to that time, carries the film as a male prostitute in an abusive, incestuous relationship with his younger brother (Glenn Parmelay). The downward spiral of Daniels's character veers from depressing psychodrama to strokeworthy sex scenes and back again, without ever finding a comfortable middle ground. On-camera incest, gay or straight, is the holy grail of hardcore porn, and in the you've-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it TWINS (1981) Ross finds not just one but three sets of identical twin brothers willing to have sex with each other on film.
You'll recognize a couple of very well-known rock bands whose ripped-off music is all over the soundtrack of WHITE TRASH (1977), a particularly murky 8mm loopfest. My favorite segment features two burglars who drop everything in the middle of a break-in to page through an issue of HUSTLER and then start in on each other, but the following vignette suffers from incoherent editing, and the concluding scene isn't much better. GOLDEN YEARS (1982) sets up a postapocalyptic sci-fi framing device for -- what else? -- another collection of '70s porn loops. Ross himself is on camera, watching his own work, but the print is damaged and the ending makes no sense whatsoever.
THE DIARY (1982), made with a bigger budget, a tighter script, and a New York producer, is Ross's "end of an era" film: goodbye joyous 'seventies, hello scary-new-world 'eighties. THE LAST SURFER (1983), one of the last porn features shot on film instead of video, is a 1966 period piece set in the West Coast surfing world and stars strapping gay porn star Michael Christopher (a William Higgins regular). It isn't a feel-good movie: it's a bittersweet celebration of life's last golden summer, in which the big sex scene between Christopher and narrator Jake Folgers is abruptly curtailed by a litany of deaths, disappointments, and compromises awaiting the characters in the near future. WTF?
https://www.amazon.com/Toby-Ross-Theatrical-Features-Golden/dp/B015WQICN8/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1486174458&sr=1-1&keywords=toby+ross
1970s hardcore gay porn, shot in 8 and 16mm with a lot of cute San Francisco blonds, gingers, and especially brunettes -- what more could you want? Well, we'll get to that...
All the films are in Academy ratio (1:33:1), and these are the same discs available separately through BijouWorld and Bigdikfactory, but they're packaged here in a big black clamshell: ten discs with no special features except for some trailers, and the Toby Ross interviews on the more professionally produced BDF discs (THE DIARY and THE LAST SURFER). The discs for REFLECTIONS OF YOUTH (1975) and BOYS OF THE SLUMS (1976) were mislabeled, which wasn't a promising start, but the films themselves are hot as hell; typical of the times, there isn't a condom in sight. They're both plotless recyclings of Ross's silent 8mm porn loops (blown up to 16mm), strung together with new footage, including amateurish dialogue plus a musical soundtrack. The (white) boys of the slums are squatting together in a shack somewhere in the sticks, dreaming of someday making it to the big city; REFLECTIONS is about two horny high school boys getting it on, then reminiscing about other horny high school boys.
CRUISIN' 57 (1975), with a soundtrack full of unlicensed doo-wop and period DJ radio patter, is a gay porn AMERICAN GRAFFITI, with a cast of appealingly gawky boy-next-door types, completely believable as horny, awkward high school kids desperate to look and sound cool at all costs. Performer Michael Muni dominates the second half of the film, appearing in a solo j/o scene and bottoming twice, the second time in a garage scene (with Kevin Gladstone) that ends in a spectacularly messy cumshot. SCHOOLMATES (1976) suffers from atrocious audio (the soundtrack's deafening hiss never lets up), and from an odd decision to slow the movie down with two consecutive solo j/o scenes. Other'n that, it's another collection of silent porn loops with a weirdly flat narration by two foxy college freshmen. Beware the film's final sex scene, which takes forever to get started and is prefaced with several minutes' worth of mind-numbingly stupid dialogue.
DO ME EVIL (1975) begins with a nude pianist playing Beethoven's "Für Elise," and a slow pan that reveals a woman and two children sitting in the same room, listening. This is the aggressively outré opening of Ross's first art-porn feature, and Mike Daniels, the best actor Ross had hired up to that time, carries the film as a male prostitute in an abusive, incestuous relationship with his younger brother (Glenn Parmelay). The downward spiral of Daniels's character veers from depressing psychodrama to strokeworthy sex scenes and back again, without ever finding a comfortable middle ground. On-camera incest, gay or straight, is the holy grail of hardcore porn, and in the you've-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it TWINS (1981) Ross finds not just one but three sets of identical twin brothers willing to have sex with each other on film.
You'll recognize a couple of very well-known rock bands whose ripped-off music is all over the soundtrack of WHITE TRASH (1977), a particularly murky 8mm loopfest. My favorite segment features two burglars who drop everything in the middle of a break-in to page through an issue of HUSTLER and then start in on each other, but the following vignette suffers from incoherent editing, and the concluding scene isn't much better. GOLDEN YEARS (1982) sets up a postapocalyptic sci-fi framing device for -- what else? -- another collection of '70s porn loops. Ross himself is on camera, watching his own work, but the print is damaged and the ending makes no sense whatsoever.
THE DIARY (1982), made with a bigger budget, a tighter script, and a New York producer, is Ross's "end of an era" film: goodbye joyous 'seventies, hello scary-new-world 'eighties. THE LAST SURFER (1983), one of the last porn features shot on film instead of video, is a 1966 period piece set in the West Coast surfing world and stars strapping gay porn star Michael Christopher (a William Higgins regular). It isn't a feel-good movie: it's a bittersweet celebration of life's last golden summer, in which the big sex scene between Christopher and narrator Jake Folgers is abruptly curtailed by a litany of deaths, disappointments, and compromises awaiting the characters in the near future. WTF?
Trash Cinema's Four Ingredients
General | Posted 9 years agoTHE FRIGHTFEST GUIDE TO EXPLOITATION MOVIES by Alan Jones (FAB Press, paperback, 2016)
https://www.amazon.com/Frightfest-Guide-Exploitation-Movies-Cinema/dp/1903254876/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485570446&sr=1-1&keywords=frightfest+guide+to+exploitation+movies+by+alan+jones
FrightFest co-founder Alan Jones shows us that trash cinema's four ingredients -- crime, sex, action, and/or horror -- can be combined in unlimited ways, and that the results will almost always grab an audience's attention. Hucksters, their ad campaigns, and the subject matter may excite or disgust potential viewers (they often do both), but raising strong feelings about these films is the whole point. A bored or indifferent customer is no customer at all.
After a quick A-Z of exploitation genres, figureheads, and clichés (cannibalism, mad doctors, women in prisons, souped-up cars, etc.), Jones gets down to business with a chronological list of 200 trash cinema milestones, lavishly illustrated with movie posters and film stills. Already familiar with RE-ANIMATOR (1985), MICROWAVE MASSACRE (1983), and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978)? How about THE ZEBRA KILLER (1974), in which a white racist goes on a murder spree after disguising himself with shoe polish and an Afro wig? CRIES OF ECSTASY, BLOWS OF DEATH (1973) is postapocalyptic martial arts sexploitation, deploying hypersexual karate chicks against bikers in gas masks. Speaking of bikers, THE PINK ANGELS (1971) is pure camp about "beefy transvestites on a road trip to a drag queen ball."
But why stop there? BLACK SHAMPOO (1976) features a studly black hairdresser who sexually satisfies his female customers AND takes down the Mob. ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN WE GO (1969) concerns a decadent, Jim Morrison-type singer (with Lou Rawls and Roddy McDowell in his band) who sexually corrupts men and women in his race to the bottom. 'GATOR BAIT (1972) is DELIVERANCE with Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings dishing out lethal Cajun-style justice; BRIDES OF BLOOD (1968) -- riffed by Cinematic Titanic as DANGER ON TIKI ISLAND -- has young Filipino women being sacrificed to a remarkably unconvincing jungle monster, and A COLT IS MY PASSPORT (1967) finds chubby-cheeked hitman Joe Shishido betrayed by his bosses and targeted for death by two formerly rival crime gangs.
True, I wish Jones had spotlighted more kung fu movies than just AMERICAN NINJA (1985) and SHANGHAI LIL & THE SUN LUCK KID (1973), but one can't have everything. No one watching these trashy movies, or reading this entertaining book about them, will be bored.
https://www.amazon.com/Frightfest-Guide-Exploitation-Movies-Cinema/dp/1903254876/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485570446&sr=1-1&keywords=frightfest+guide+to+exploitation+movies+by+alan+jones
FrightFest co-founder Alan Jones shows us that trash cinema's four ingredients -- crime, sex, action, and/or horror -- can be combined in unlimited ways, and that the results will almost always grab an audience's attention. Hucksters, their ad campaigns, and the subject matter may excite or disgust potential viewers (they often do both), but raising strong feelings about these films is the whole point. A bored or indifferent customer is no customer at all.
After a quick A-Z of exploitation genres, figureheads, and clichés (cannibalism, mad doctors, women in prisons, souped-up cars, etc.), Jones gets down to business with a chronological list of 200 trash cinema milestones, lavishly illustrated with movie posters and film stills. Already familiar with RE-ANIMATOR (1985), MICROWAVE MASSACRE (1983), and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978)? How about THE ZEBRA KILLER (1974), in which a white racist goes on a murder spree after disguising himself with shoe polish and an Afro wig? CRIES OF ECSTASY, BLOWS OF DEATH (1973) is postapocalyptic martial arts sexploitation, deploying hypersexual karate chicks against bikers in gas masks. Speaking of bikers, THE PINK ANGELS (1971) is pure camp about "beefy transvestites on a road trip to a drag queen ball."
But why stop there? BLACK SHAMPOO (1976) features a studly black hairdresser who sexually satisfies his female customers AND takes down the Mob. ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN WE GO (1969) concerns a decadent, Jim Morrison-type singer (with Lou Rawls and Roddy McDowell in his band) who sexually corrupts men and women in his race to the bottom. 'GATOR BAIT (1972) is DELIVERANCE with Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings dishing out lethal Cajun-style justice; BRIDES OF BLOOD (1968) -- riffed by Cinematic Titanic as DANGER ON TIKI ISLAND -- has young Filipino women being sacrificed to a remarkably unconvincing jungle monster, and A COLT IS MY PASSPORT (1967) finds chubby-cheeked hitman Joe Shishido betrayed by his bosses and targeted for death by two formerly rival crime gangs.
True, I wish Jones had spotlighted more kung fu movies than just AMERICAN NINJA (1985) and SHANGHAI LIL & THE SUN LUCK KID (1973), but one can't have everything. No one watching these trashy movies, or reading this entertaining book about them, will be bored.
The Boys of Summer
General | Posted 9 years agoFREE! ETERNAL SUMMER (Iwatobi Swim Club Season 2) (DVD/Blu-ray, Japanese w/English subtitles & English dub)
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Eternal.....cm_rdp_product
The valedictory season of FREE! finds our high school athletes facing their greatest challenge yet: life after graduation. Their final months as a team, advancing to the nationals, are fraught with the usual drama, but there are new characters, several awkward situations, and all the lithe swimmers' bodies you can stand to admire. Perfect.
If the Husker Du lyric, "I summer where I winter at, and no one is allowed there" seems tailor made for Haruka, it's perversely satisfying to see this fish out of water in some episodes, especially in the laugh out loud OVA, "Forbidden All Hard!" I miss this series already.
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Eternal.....cm_rdp_product
The valedictory season of FREE! finds our high school athletes facing their greatest challenge yet: life after graduation. Their final months as a team, advancing to the nationals, are fraught with the usual drama, but there are new characters, several awkward situations, and all the lithe swimmers' bodies you can stand to admire. Perfect.
If the Husker Du lyric, "I summer where I winter at, and no one is allowed there" seems tailor made for Haruka, it's perversely satisfying to see this fish out of water in some episodes, especially in the laugh out loud OVA, "Forbidden All Hard!" I miss this series already.
"I'm gonna fire up that cold heart of yours"
General | Posted 9 years agoFREE! IWATOBI SWIM CLUB Season One (DVD, Japanese with English subtitles)
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Iwatobi.....f=cm_cr-mr-img
Participating in a competitive team sport is not only about achieving your personal best, but about learning to work as a seamless unit with your teammates: as intimate a relationship as that with family, or with lovers. No wonder this series is as gay as you want it to be. Not that the boys of the Iwatobi High School Swim Club are ever shown to have a life outside of training, swimming competitions, and bonding with their teammates -- that IS their love life -- but that's all we need for a teen drama that takes male friendship and camaraderie very seriously, and rewards the viewer with endless shots of young, ripped male bodies in swimsuits. Subtle, no. Fun, yes.
Season one sets the game in motion: melancholy Haru and flame-haired shark boy Rin, formerly the best of friends, now can't bear to be near each other. Can easygoing Mako, optimistic Naga, and science-minded Rei straighten things out in time for the big regional competition? What do you think?
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Iwatobi.....f=cm_cr-mr-img
Participating in a competitive team sport is not only about achieving your personal best, but about learning to work as a seamless unit with your teammates: as intimate a relationship as that with family, or with lovers. No wonder this series is as gay as you want it to be. Not that the boys of the Iwatobi High School Swim Club are ever shown to have a life outside of training, swimming competitions, and bonding with their teammates -- that IS their love life -- but that's all we need for a teen drama that takes male friendship and camaraderie very seriously, and rewards the viewer with endless shots of young, ripped male bodies in swimsuits. Subtle, no. Fun, yes.
Season one sets the game in motion: melancholy Haru and flame-haired shark boy Rin, formerly the best of friends, now can't bear to be near each other. Can easygoing Mako, optimistic Naga, and science-minded Rei straighten things out in time for the big regional competition? What do you think?
Saving the World While Looking FABULOUS!
General | Posted 9 years agoKARNEVAL (DVD/Blu-ray)
https://www.amazon.com/Karneval-Com.....dp_product_img
What it comes down to is family, albeit a family of freaks. The story isn't so much about metahuman security force Circus and their near-lethal run-ins with the criminal organization Kafka -- that part is never explained enough to make much sense -- but KARNEVAL is a beautiful mash-up of the dark, the scary, the super-cute, and the X-MEN, and its gothic fairytale backgrounds and monsters highlight a thoroughly kawaii cast, including many of the villains. Everyone looks fabulous, and it's hard not to think of young thief Garecki, our POV character, as a rough trade interloper who's fallen down the (bioengineered) rabbit hole into a wonderland of queens.
Okay, so this is a two-season show with only one season's worth of episodes, but if you can live with KARNEVAL's open-ended conclusion, it's really the story of how the cynical teen Garecki, the naïve youngster Nai, and the flamboyant, blond man-child Yogi evolve from strangers into brothers. Admittedly, they're brothers who wind up literally in bed together in one episode, and not only does Garecki rock a steampunk-inspired coat and goggles ensemble, but later doffs it to reveal he's wearing a single-strap boy toy tank top to die for. So what's wrong with a little female fan service?
Take KARNEVAL as the 13-episode torso that it is, and it's not bad at all. By the way, I found the Japanese soundtrack preferable to the English language dub; Nai's English voice sounds too mature for the character, and Garecki's is just...off, for some reason.
https://www.amazon.com/Karneval-Com.....dp_product_img
What it comes down to is family, albeit a family of freaks. The story isn't so much about metahuman security force Circus and their near-lethal run-ins with the criminal organization Kafka -- that part is never explained enough to make much sense -- but KARNEVAL is a beautiful mash-up of the dark, the scary, the super-cute, and the X-MEN, and its gothic fairytale backgrounds and monsters highlight a thoroughly kawaii cast, including many of the villains. Everyone looks fabulous, and it's hard not to think of young thief Garecki, our POV character, as a rough trade interloper who's fallen down the (bioengineered) rabbit hole into a wonderland of queens.
Okay, so this is a two-season show with only one season's worth of episodes, but if you can live with KARNEVAL's open-ended conclusion, it's really the story of how the cynical teen Garecki, the naïve youngster Nai, and the flamboyant, blond man-child Yogi evolve from strangers into brothers. Admittedly, they're brothers who wind up literally in bed together in one episode, and not only does Garecki rock a steampunk-inspired coat and goggles ensemble, but later doffs it to reveal he's wearing a single-strap boy toy tank top to die for. So what's wrong with a little female fan service?
Take KARNEVAL as the 13-episode torso that it is, and it's not bad at all. By the way, I found the Japanese soundtrack preferable to the English language dub; Nai's English voice sounds too mature for the character, and Garecki's is just...off, for some reason.
To Be or Not to BL Uke?
General | Posted 9 years agoLOVE STAGE!! (DVD/Blu-ray, 2016)
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Stage-Artist-Not-Provided/dp/B01C6S1Z2K/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1481247728&sr=1-1&keywords=love+stage+anime
Poor Izumi Sena -- cursed with good looks that both men and women find irresistibly kawaii, all this young otaku wants to do is become a professional manga artist. Sadly, he has no artistic talent whatsoever. How Izumi becomes the erotic obsession of actor Ryouma Ichijo (TV's "Detective Suzuki"), and their mutually maddening dance of attraction and repulsion is the subject of a romantic comedy that's smart, sexy, fast-paced, and very, very funny, especially when it pokes fun at the difference between BL manga and the awkwardness of real life sex.
There's some teasing, partial nudity and, in the final episodes, some fairly frank discussion (but no depiction) of backdoor sex. The series, like Izumi, is cute as hell and awfully hard to resist.
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Stage-Artist-Not-Provided/dp/B01C6S1Z2K/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1481247728&sr=1-1&keywords=love+stage+anime
Poor Izumi Sena -- cursed with good looks that both men and women find irresistibly kawaii, all this young otaku wants to do is become a professional manga artist. Sadly, he has no artistic talent whatsoever. How Izumi becomes the erotic obsession of actor Ryouma Ichijo (TV's "Detective Suzuki"), and their mutually maddening dance of attraction and repulsion is the subject of a romantic comedy that's smart, sexy, fast-paced, and very, very funny, especially when it pokes fun at the difference between BL manga and the awkwardness of real life sex.
There's some teasing, partial nudity and, in the final episodes, some fairly frank discussion (but no depiction) of backdoor sex. The series, like Izumi, is cute as hell and awfully hard to resist.
TV Worth Reading
General | Posted 9 years agoTV (THE BOOK) by Alan Sepinwall & Matt Zoller Seitz (Grand Central Publishing, 2016)
https://www.amazon.com/TV-Book-Experts-Greatest-American/dp/1455588199/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475386916&sr=1-1&keywords=tv+the+book
reviewed by Roochak
"If you tell someone who's never watched it that a show called BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is among the best TV dramas of all time, they will roll their eyes at you and change the subject to something less divisive, like immigration policy."
Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz get it. Television criticism isn't about nostalgia, or the numerical rankings of Great Shows, or any supposed "Golden Age of Television" -- though all of those things are present and accounted for in this entertaining book -- it's about persuasion. One thing good critics want (but not the only thing) is to persuade you that something you've dismissed, or perhaps never even heard of, is really worth your time, and Matt and Alan make some very persuasive arguments here; some 400 pages' worth, in fact.
I was hooked from the introduction, an online conversation in which the co-authors debated how to rank the top five (American) shows of all time. I couldn't care less about that ranking; it was the Talmudic rigor of their arguments, not to mention the civility of their tone, that had me practically swooning. Now THAT'S arts criticism. The entries on individual shows are both fun and intellectually rigorous, fascinating to read whether I enjoyed the show or not.
My only real disagreement with the authors is that I don't believe that there has been, or ever will be, any "golden age of television" -- there are only good shows, bad shows, and mediocre shows (mostly mediocre shows), then and now. British and other foreign TV shows aren't considered in this book, because what do Americans know about foreign TV, except for shows lucky enough to have made business deals with PBS?
https://www.amazon.com/TV-Book-Experts-Greatest-American/dp/1455588199/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475386916&sr=1-1&keywords=tv+the+book
reviewed by Roochak
"If you tell someone who's never watched it that a show called BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is among the best TV dramas of all time, they will roll their eyes at you and change the subject to something less divisive, like immigration policy."
Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz get it. Television criticism isn't about nostalgia, or the numerical rankings of Great Shows, or any supposed "Golden Age of Television" -- though all of those things are present and accounted for in this entertaining book -- it's about persuasion. One thing good critics want (but not the only thing) is to persuade you that something you've dismissed, or perhaps never even heard of, is really worth your time, and Matt and Alan make some very persuasive arguments here; some 400 pages' worth, in fact.
I was hooked from the introduction, an online conversation in which the co-authors debated how to rank the top five (American) shows of all time. I couldn't care less about that ranking; it was the Talmudic rigor of their arguments, not to mention the civility of their tone, that had me practically swooning. Now THAT'S arts criticism. The entries on individual shows are both fun and intellectually rigorous, fascinating to read whether I enjoyed the show or not.
My only real disagreement with the authors is that I don't believe that there has been, or ever will be, any "golden age of television" -- there are only good shows, bad shows, and mediocre shows (mostly mediocre shows), then and now. British and other foreign TV shows aren't considered in this book, because what do Americans know about foreign TV, except for shows lucky enough to have made business deals with PBS?
You Got Your Hung Gar in My Drunken Tai Chi!
General | Posted 9 years agoIT'S ALL ABOUT THE STYLE: A SURVEY OF MARTIAL ARTS STYLES DEPICTED IN CHINESE CINEMA by Blake Matthews
https://www.amazon.com/Its-All-About-Style-Depicted/dp/1515037991?ie=UTF8&ref_=cm_rdp_product_img
This book analyzes the most exciting fight scenes from roughly 87 Asian action movies, focusing on traditional kung fu styles, not "gun fu" or stunt-based action films like, say, RUMBLE IN THE BRONX (1995). While "authenticity" is a loaded term in the kung fu movie genre -- the point is to film an entertaining fight scene, not to make a documentary -- it's not unreasonable to expect that a character who's supposed to be a wing chun expert will perform some actual wing chun on camera, and not try to pass off tae kwon do as wing chun (I mean you, WARRIORS TWO).
That's where this book shines -- the author's enthusiasm for a well-choreographed fight scene (some of them as short as 70 seconds) comes across on the page as he explains just how much of the fight is based on real martial arts styles, bearing in mind that we're watching actors putting on a show, not people really trying to beat each other to death. The emphasis is on the golden age of the chopsocky kung fu movie (1972 - 1982), with little or no wirework, and when such Hong Kong masters as Lau Kar-Leung, Sammo Hung, and the Yuen clan were at the peak of their creativity.
The author writes knowledgeably, not only about southern and northern Chinese martial arts styles, but about Japanese, Korean, and Thai fighting styles as well, not to mention an extensive section on traditional Chinese and Japanese weapons, from swords, poles, and nunchaku to the kwan do, san jie gun, and chain whip. (Sorry folks, the flying guillotine is a fantasy weapon.) While the book suffers from the usual faults of self-published titles -- the copy editing is nonexistent, with typos and grammatically bizarre sentences on almost every page -- it's still an essential text for kung fu fans who want to know more about the history and practice of the fighting styles depicted onscreen.
https://www.amazon.com/Its-All-About-Style-Depicted/dp/1515037991?ie=UTF8&ref_=cm_rdp_product_img
This book analyzes the most exciting fight scenes from roughly 87 Asian action movies, focusing on traditional kung fu styles, not "gun fu" or stunt-based action films like, say, RUMBLE IN THE BRONX (1995). While "authenticity" is a loaded term in the kung fu movie genre -- the point is to film an entertaining fight scene, not to make a documentary -- it's not unreasonable to expect that a character who's supposed to be a wing chun expert will perform some actual wing chun on camera, and not try to pass off tae kwon do as wing chun (I mean you, WARRIORS TWO).
That's where this book shines -- the author's enthusiasm for a well-choreographed fight scene (some of them as short as 70 seconds) comes across on the page as he explains just how much of the fight is based on real martial arts styles, bearing in mind that we're watching actors putting on a show, not people really trying to beat each other to death. The emphasis is on the golden age of the chopsocky kung fu movie (1972 - 1982), with little or no wirework, and when such Hong Kong masters as Lau Kar-Leung, Sammo Hung, and the Yuen clan were at the peak of their creativity.
The author writes knowledgeably, not only about southern and northern Chinese martial arts styles, but about Japanese, Korean, and Thai fighting styles as well, not to mention an extensive section on traditional Chinese and Japanese weapons, from swords, poles, and nunchaku to the kwan do, san jie gun, and chain whip. (Sorry folks, the flying guillotine is a fantasy weapon.) While the book suffers from the usual faults of self-published titles -- the copy editing is nonexistent, with typos and grammatically bizarre sentences on almost every page -- it's still an essential text for kung fu fans who want to know more about the history and practice of the fighting styles depicted onscreen.
