Please visit my film site www.herlionsjump.com and my new blog www.herlionsjump.wordpress.com.

Thanks.

Ré

Time waits for no one, and yet she can change time. Toki wo kakeru shoujo is a film one must see in the theater. I saw it yesterday, and I know it'll be with me for a long time. It is one of the most touching and true films I've seen in years. So, look for it, see where it is playing, contact distributors, and please let's see this film on the big screen. Ah... I'm still emotional about it... so beautiful and gorgeous. Cried? Of course I cried! Who wouldn't?! Director Mamoru Hosoda has said something very profound about time and what to do with it in our lives.

More on it soon...

Ré

I thought that I didn't have any preconceptions about Japan, especially after studying Japanese for my undergrad and learning so much of the richness of the language and the history of its culture. Yet, thanks to Google Video, a whole new side of Japanese culture has fascinated me: Razor Ramon HG aka Hard Gay. I'm straight, but not homophobic, yet, RazorRamonHG surpasses the trivialities of which team you play for; it's just hard funny and disturbing at the same time. Well, it's kinda hard to describe what Razor RamonHG is, so better to just direct you to these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaki_Sumitani http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=bakuten (videos here, sorry, Japanese only) Yet, Hard Gay has taught me that anything can happen in Japan. Especially the fact that a tall buff Japanese guy dressed in SM costume dry humping people on the street while doing good deeds and going "Fuu~" has become a national hero. Re

JÄJ! JÄJ is the new term my girlfriend and I have created regarding our dear friend Josh. If you have any problems with computers, people, or if you wanna vent off to someone but don't know who to talk to, Just Ask Josh! JÄJ sounded funny too because he used to speak German, or maybe he still does... well, maybe he can JÄJ himself... or with himself. So feed that to your RSS, buddy! ;) Ré (wow, that was completely pointless - seems there's a pattern building here: totally pointless post, substantial post, reallly stupid post, fairly intelligent post...)

Should style and mood take over story? It seems to me that animation festivals nowadays (or probably, that's the way they have always been) are more about whether a film has a certain "knack" to it. I get so sick of the independent film "look-what-I-can-do-(with-or-without-a-computer) that-no-one-has-done-before-and-it's-so-cool-because-of-the-way-I-did-it" rhetoric. Whatever happened to character and story? And composition? Except for a very few animated shorts I have seen this year, most leave me with this question: So what? Not to sound like many animation critics out there who hail the Golden Age cartoons as the epitome of animation that no one will ever reach again (which I think is total bullshit,) but there was such attention to story and character in the old Disney, WB, and MGM shorts, that I just don't see that often today. The industry (whether it is in the independent film circuit, Hollywood feature, or TV) is often satured with the same problem that animation has to equal a visual spectacle, and not an emotional experience. Many of the personalities in animation that inspire me, do so much more because of content rather than form. (Which, in turn affects the form much stronger than others who go the other way around.) I wish the new generation of animators today can look up to those who value story and character and see how much deeper that can affect an audience. This is not to say that every one should do stick figures and forget the visuals altogether (and to the Hertzfeldt fans there, I like his stuff, so no offense,) but that animation allows the film maker to give a different sense of life to film. I can understand the stigma that Disney Animation has left on classical character animation to the eyes of the indie crowd. But, that should not mean that classical animation altogether should just be dismissed! Also, I don't mean to imply that we should all go back to talking animals and the old cartoon conventions, but that new ones should be explored within the realm of classical principles. (Look at Princess Mononoke, Dead Leaves, the very experimental MindGame, and The Incredibles.) Next time I attend an animation festival (or feature film for that matter,) I would like to leave with a feeling. I hope that film makers today think about the psychology of film watching and film making and realize that it is all about feeling. Betrayal is one of those emotions that no one wants to experience, and in movies, I simply hate it when a film does not make me feel anything but completely betrayed as its audience.

Fuck the bureacracy. Fuck the system. Fuck the man... wait, that last one sounded kinda werid... I'm still angry anyway. Grrrr!!

Hey, I can blog now... hm... more on that later. Later, Reggae