Category: Uncategorized

So in a few hours I’ll be 26 years old and it struck me that this is the usual number of episodes of most anime shows so I thought I’d see if I could break down my life like one of those series.

episode/year

1 This is the beginning it’s kind of abstract and scattered focusing mostly on images. The main character has few lines and prefers to “play dumb”. He is not fully mobile nor are his skills or the power that he has within him full realized.

2 More of the same, except the main character begins to move about more and befriends a dog. His brother who would for a time become his greatest foe only to later become a great ally is born.

3-5 Prior to starting school our main character makes a few friends with other “children” at pre-school, he and a few of these friends break a tire swing and it is his first traumatic event, though there is no trauma, this will be a running theme through most of the “drama” of his life.

5-10 The formative years. These episodes have some good stuff as our main character begins to develop a cynical sense of humor to replace his original fresh faced innocence. Also at this time his imagination begins to flourish as he spends most of his time playing in the redwood Forrest backyard where he lives.

11-13 Cable TV comes to the area and he is introduced to culture in the form of MTV, grunge music and Batman TAS. Also he starts to develop feelings for a girl, this would not be the first time for this but his skill set is quite lacking and so nothing comes of this, another running theme.

14-18 High School years see him honing his anti-social arrogance as a tool for dealing with the vast number of rednecks and generally annoying types that saturate the school. He forms a few solid friendships with others of the “geek” crowd and begins a sincere pursuit of medicine as a career, focusing on his studies while ignoring any remaining adolescent rights of passage.

19-22 College. It is an unfamiliar environment. The culture shock is dulled by once again meeting people of like-minded apathy and interests. For our main character this is the period of the greatest ambivalence, it is good and very bad. Then our main character discovers drugs and satellite TV and it’s mostly good, in a foggy sort of way.

23-26 Losing his passion or whatever it was for medicine our main character recoils back to the redwood Forrest where he studies film in a vague attempt to sort out his own confusion about life, etc.

It should be noted that the final ep 26 has just began and might provide a serious change in the direction of the show possibly offering a cliffhanger to a sequel if audience interest demands it.

My favorite episodes so far 4,5, 7-10, 13-17 (puberty they were good eps), 20-22 (having has his own kingdom), 25.

So last night I caught the end of a Legends of Jazz episode on The ‘S (Public Broadcasting Station). Anywho these guys are just speaking gibberish into mic accompanied by a band playing Dave Brubeck’s Take 5. They were skating and it was on Legends of Jazz which makes it legit, that is to say this was the episode that features two of the world renound skat men. That skating is legit, seems ridiculous but also kind of pisses me off since this is clearly my calling. Hell I love to speak gibberish when a tune strikes me right and yes I know these guys are doing more than that but it certainly seems like fun though it is totally ridiculous. Anyway I feel sad since clearly this was what I was mean’t to be and now it’s a bit late for me (1 week away from “26 years on my way to hell”) to begin learning how to become an expert skatman. Though my fortune cookie tonight said this: “You are talented in many ways.” If only I knew which ways damn it because I’m pretty sure that skating could be one of them.

When analyzing some piece of art for merit such as a story or a movie the first inclination is to find order, to dispel entropy and in so doing to organize the data of the piece into a category. People laugh at a stage show and see how the antics of the characters are ridiculous and exaggerated, they call this a comedy. However in the growing complexity of modern days when these categories have been delineated by critics for many decades and in some cases centuries. There appear these subdivisions of categories and inevitably the line begins to blur between genres.
Take the comedy example so if these antics are slapstick that is harmless enough but what if the jokes are organized around a political event? The Three Stooges never meet Hitler but that might have been funny. Can this simply be called comedy? It now has social commentary about relevant historical material that is not funny. OR take the example of Itchy & Scratchy on the Simpsons where the humor comes from violence, a confrontation with mortality. Of course if you can’t laugh at death what’s the point? This is something that society is getting better at. This is the very root of what makes something a dark comedy; that is the subject matter deals with serious issues of life and death.
Taking the dark comedy as a spring board is it not much of a leap to then arrive at drama through the connection between comedy and tragedy? Some say comedy is tragedy plus time but in this ever accelerating world the two quite often appear as one and the same. So if we can create something that is both comedy and tragedy the fundamental elements of catharsis, the two poles on the spectrum of artistic expression then it seems reasonable to assert that genre is a moot term.
What does this do for the artist? Well, with no easy categories with which to place a product, that product can be immediately validated as “art” or it can be dismissed as “crap” and forsaken into the void of entropy. Here is where the socio-political hand waving is most critical. In the former case of justification of a product as “art” there must not only be discourse but agreement there must be a rhetoric about the piece. This might be a “pitch” to use Hollywood terms. Now this effort of justification will thrive in the hands of a critical community with accredited critics (for whatever that means) but like in modern media, which stories get told is a political and practical decision since every story simply cannot be given such consideration.
Now it is the task of the artist not only to create from the ether, to arrive at some kind of product from the chaos, but also to justify this creation to explain something in terms of overlapping categories without betraying the creation through overly convoluted exegesis. If the product is worth much this convolution will follow and become something other people will do that will make it more than it was through critical and fan (the reason to do it) discourse. This I think is what makes something art and this I think is what makes good stuff dynamic beyond its inception and creation, giving it a longevity of entertainment beyond that of the creator. Hence the immortality thing.

Last Winter I worked on a project that was a quirky puppet film called: The Adventures of Left Shoe The Bunny Slipper. The writer/director Montel VanderHorck did sound recording for my own thesis film and so it was fun to work on his project where I was even doing a bit of acting as an orderly at an insane asylum. His movie has just won two awards at the CSU Media Arts Festival which is pretty cool. You can check out the categories here: http://www.mediaartsfestival.org/

A v. P’ed- this is when a “trailer rape” (I should own that too but I doubt it) occurs, that is to say we as an audience are given shots in the trailer that misrepresent the content of a film. A classic example of this might be the tire flying at the screen that appeared in the trailer for Twister and was never even in the movie. Now I call it A v. P’ed primarily because it rolls off the tounge but also because it is extremly apt. I can remember seeing the trailer for this long anticipated festival of ultra violence and what I saw was a bunch of Aliens and a bunch of Predators fighting it out I thought great this is what the audience for this movie wants to see. Anywho in the actual movie, in all it’s PG-13 greatness, that scene is just a quick flashback cut into the film. The true story of the film is a much lamer and more toned down narrative where there are only a few Predators and only a few Aliens. There are many other examples of this false advertising in a variety of genres and styles such as films that portray themselves as comedies but turn out to be poorly realized, trite meandering dramas. I realize that selling bullshit is a big part of the biz, but don’t cut my bullshit with sugar (this is another term I claim ownership for in all it’s vulgar glory). Sometimes I want sweetness, sometimes I want sourness, or even bitterness I just like to know what t oexpect from the crap I’m going to see so I can mentally prepare my eyes.

Yeah so now there is this . . . looks like I beat out any other namesakes so I get to be middle inital free once I make it big.

granate Seed Productions

Definitions of Film Theory and Criticism

From Biology by Campbell the 5th Ed. page 426 “The colloquial use of “theory” comes close to what scientists mean by a “hypothesis.” Campbell defines a hypothesis on page 14 as being “…a tennative answer to some question – an explanation or trial.” So a film theory could be understood as a potential explanation for what a film does. Unlike scientific theories they are grounded more in dogma and tradition but like scientific theories they must be justified by a rigid methodology of observation and analysis of facts.

Criticism is finding the proper context to judge a work of art and then applying the expectations
that come with that context to arrive at a judgement about how well the artist has fulfilled these
expectations.

” . . . or we could take my car. Gosh!”

A few months ago (back in April when it was apt) I posted about a whimsical cartoon I saw as a child and had recently found. The Cartoon is called To Spring and the guys over at RE-Frederator have just now posted it so if you want to see a pretty cool old timey toon check it out. It isn’t important that Summer is coming to an end and the Fall is beginning, the cartoon is about the cycle of Nature with Elves. Anyway it eases the pain.

While reading through the film junk blog I encountered a link to this article by Chuck Klosterman for Esquire Titled: The “Snakes on a Plane” Problem. The Article makes some good points about participatory filmmaking, the internet, and all that. I’m not sure what to make of the snakes movie. Certainly it could be a sign of the times now that Sci-Fi Channel is finally spending money to make cool stuff like Amazing Screw-On Head, Eureka, and Battlestar Galactica (Edward James Olmos EJO is awesome!) the era of Sci-Fi Channel Original movie badness might be overtaken by extra bad Hollywood crap. I think in terms of the irony factor Klosterman hit the nail on the head. If you make a movie to be bad and it is badly made then it won’t be funny at all. This is why some satire works and some doesn’t. Also if you make a movie to be sincerely scary or whatever (serious) and it is a failure at that then it can be funny (good). An example of this situation can be found in analyzing the Leprechaun franchise. The first one tried to be scary and even though it was idiotic, it was funny as all hell. By the second one the makers seemed to be in on the joke and it wasn’t as good. Then by the third one he’s in Vegas and there is some medallion thing and he seems to have forgotten all about his precious gold. In IV he’s in space! Great so he’s immortal and in his long life he’s managed to get out there into the mix of alien politics and space marines. Then for V he’s “in the hood” and for V2 he’s “back in the hood” presumably these are meant to be prequels to IV or perhaps fall outside of the regular cannon material and do not take place in the Leprachuniverse. I haven’t seen the last two Lep flicks maybe they’ve figured out how to do satire right but I’d imagine they are just something awful in that non-ironic sort of way.