petronia

Three - or two, depending on how you count - Japanese movies that hinge on the same period in pop music, 1968-1970.

20th Century Boys (Parts I + II): it turns out they shot it as a trilogy, and the third part won't be out in Japan til August. I left off reading shortly after where the second movie stopped (around volume 20... I think?), so I actually have no idea what will happen. XD;; Will the third movie cover the sequel? Is that anywhere near done? There is so much to unpack in this story, and to the best of my memory I've never tried, because having watched Monster to the end I'm wary of deconstructing any Urasawa series ahead of time. Urasawa might wing it like CLAMP in the medium run but in the long run he's a moralist (also like CLAMP), meaning some conclusion or other is foregone, just that you the reader aren't in the loop. Five minutes before Tenma's final decision I had no idea how shit was gonna go down, but when it did it was clearly the only ending possible - for Tenma, anyway. Salvation lies in strange places.

( Though: there's only one part of 20th Century Boys I find specifically weird, and it's Urasawa's viewpoint on the music. Cut for RIDICULOUSLY LONG. )

...Actual movie-wise, it's kind of a qualified success. This is LotR epic shit obv and one can only be grateful that it wasn't rewritten more. As it is, the bildungsroman feel was almost entirely lost with the character backstories, reveals get telescoped, and some scenes plain lose effect as a result (*cough*Fukube*cough*). It also doesn't ratchet up the tension as well, which was where the Monster anime excelled. The casting was some form of genius, though! Barring Urasawa basing all his characters on real actors and them deciding to take up the respective roles, I'm not sure how they did it. And Ced and I both stayed absorbed for the 2h30min of the first part (he hasn't read the manga), so the storytelling does its work. I felt the second part lagged more, but I feel that about the manga anyway.

GS Wonderland: whereas this is a fluffy, nominally feel-good comedy that says nothing is authentic, at least not where the Japanese music industry is concerned. Not the performers, not the audiences, not domestic folk nor foreign rock nor manufactured pop. One would say, certainly not the management, except that the elbow grease put in by the management (and various label peons) is presented as possibly the most authentic cog in the machine. XD; And the friendships made through music, of course. Otherwise, Miku's persona as a female singer is no more true to her actual self than her persona as a male keyboardist in a Monkees-style group, the dudes who just wanna rock, maaan get all their moves from their "How To Play Like Hendrix" book, and the hysterical girls are just biding time until they find boyfriends who are not fake bishounen in a band. The wheel turns and all the players drop off at each round, but the Samsara ride itself never stops. It's only depressing if you feel about it the way Urasawa does, I suppose.

Note on the music for those who were at the showing: they got the songwriting duo who churned out these "group sounds" hits at the time to... write a bunch more in the same style. XD; Dudes must be like 70... I really like the main song, actually, with the organ vamp and the bass bit you can't really hear in the preview. There's stuff to unpack here, too, because this is the story of Japan's home-grown response to the Beatles (...appropriation, natch), and what's manufactured here reinvents itself as indie a quarter-century later, as Shibuya-kei. Or maybe that's too much of a leap; I'd like a go at proving it, though. XD

Did a semi-poll on DW and everyone voted either fashion post or STxi fic recs. So this is the former, which I'm doing in 15 minutes before leaving the house, because I'll have another batch of Fantasia flicks to write up by tonight and will never get around to it otherwise. XD;

( Photos x 3 + blurbs )

Last year this time I got a haircut that ended up looking like Alison Mosshart out of the Kills, this year I got approximately the same haircut but it keeps flipping outward like it's trying to pay tribute to Farrah Fawcett. IDEK.

JEEBUS DOES ZACH CONDON HAVE A LOT OF FANGIRLS OR WHAT

Metropolis was packed out like I'd never seen, even the balcony was standing room only. Cut Copy was a bona fide rave-up, but one can dance to Cut Copy whereas Beirut's riddim inspires gentle hip-swinging at best. XD; Yet the atmosphere was comparable i.e. apeshit bananas. Or maybe I just got stuck with the girls shrieking "WE LOVE YOU ZACH ♥♥♥" after every song. I had had six glasses of wine at H's party beforehand, though (enough that I dozed off and didn't really catch the tail end of The Dodos' opening set), and there are worse ways to attend gigs than happy-drunk with a crowd that is super digging it.

The thing with Beirut that is simultaneously endearing and frustrating is that they technically overreach, which becomes glaringly apparent when presented in the context of a two-week international jazz festival that also encompasses Afripop, reggae, blues rock, dub electronica and whatnot. I listen to them in this framework anyway, meaning for instance that I have every track memorized but have no idea nor care what the words are to most of the songs. It works fine on record, but live I find I mentally expect them to go into a five-minute instrumental jam with brass solos after the second chorus, and instead they just stop. D: Like, at the 3:30 mark Zach Condon waves a hand, everyone cuts off dead in the middle of the note. The set was all of 75 minutes including the two encores, but they got through a lot of songs this way. Made me wish I were seeing them in five years' time. XD; They also didn't have any strings with them, which maybe had something to do with it. In any case the most interesting part for me was seeing if they would do the Holland songs live (they did), and if so, how (by playing the synth parts on accordion and keyboard - LOL undramatic I know).

Anyway this is wrongheaded because early Beirut subsists on ~*feeling*~. It's that particular strand of saudade that cuts across genres and for that matter disciplines - Proust is a kissing cousin - but is rare because by the time artists have the sk1ll0rz to get the inchoate melancholia of extreme youth across to an audience, they're too old to feel it (if indeed they ever felt it - I doubt all artists do). So there's a one-, maybe two-album window... Patrick Wolf had it with the first two, lost it with the third. Blur only had it with Modern Life Is Rubbish (not, interestingly, with Leisure). This is why I kind of think it's wrongheaded to make Burial's nostalgia all about the historical context, because it isn't really. If it weren't that he'd be nostalgic about something else, that's the kind of dude he is.

Back to gig - best moment: literal LOL during the first encore when blond dude raised his trumpet and the distinctive fanfare of "Se Telefonando" rang out over the crowd. What are the chances.** Explains why Zach Condon spent the previous five minutes going ":D?" at each of his band in turn (all of whom responded with massive sweatdrop-face but were CLEARLY OVERRULED). In figure skating parlance, one of those jumps you land in practice but not, perhaps, in competition. Also no one else in the crowd knew the song anyway, fff whatevs indie kidz.


** Okay fine, pretty high considering that they'd already covered "La Javanaise" at this point. A+ lulz Condon, take a page from La Wainwright and let's have us some Piaf next round.

Daytime Drinking: structurally a stoner road comedy, but with soju. Quieter and more naturalistic, too; everything takes place in Korean equivalents of the sort of off-season British seaside town Charmian and I debated at one point, if it were English the protagonist's theme music would be "Everyday Is Like Sunday" on FOREVER REPEAT. The ending is quite funny but takes a long time setting up. ***/5, add 1/2 star if you're settled in comfortably and matching the characters shot for shot.

(The SAQ doesn't carry soju, but I found some shiso-flavoured shochu and took it to Ced's party after the movie - and H's b-day party the next evening. That was a smooth mf of a 20% alcohol beverage.)

Thirst: after Pride and Prejudice with zombies we now have Thérèse Raquin with vampires, GOOD JOB KOREA. Actually, only Koreans seem capable of making a fucked-up Catholic movie these days, as opposed to a fucked-up movie about Catholicism (or lapsarianism). It's excellent, too, and this is speaking as someone who could never get through a Zola novel or a Park Chan-Wook movie. XD; But when the dreary gritty dog's death at the heart of so many Korean thrillers meets the original depressing-as-shit naturalism... It's also very funny, which maybe makes the difference (vampiric powers carry so many practicalities). And sexy, if you like the idea of Song Kang-ho doing his best Richard Chamberlain in Thornbirds, and Kim Ok-bin (whom I've not encountered before) being basically on fire. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: make this your one vampire movie of the year if necessary, let's not have a repeat of the situation with Let The Right One In where no one paid attention to my words OK.

P.S. A thematically relevant mixtape by elfiepike.

The usual assortment of geeks, freaks, punks, otaku, goths, lolis, Asian exchange students, and indie film gonzos. Fantasia is resistant to the P4k-indie brand of hipster, I find, which is odd because IME they all read comic books and/or have lived in Asia. The girl tees this year are white with black sleeves, hot pink (summer 09's "in" colour!), and electric blue, all steals at $15 apiece. But the cost of popcorn has gone up.

Moon: not actually a Fantasia movie, but could so well be I'm reviewing it in this section anyway. XD Smart, classy, affecting old-school SF, like a good episode of The Outer Limits; a Sam Rockwell one-man play of sorts. Written and directed by one Duncan Jones, son of Dave, who no doubt at one point envisaged the Major Tom jokes coming his way and decided it was worth doing anyhow. Takes place on the moon but disregards most of what gravitation has to say about it, with no effect on plot.

Yatterman: my guess is that Miike Takashi uncomplicatedly enjoys being at the career juncture where people give him large sums of money to remake the cheesy tokusatsu serials he used to watch as a kid, because who wouldn't? He doesn't play this particular one straight, but the subversion is dialed down to kid-friendly levels. A bit of fourth-wall breaking here, a few rocket-launcher boobies and robot makeouts there... In any case Miike's thing is to take every shot to its logical conclusion of unblinking childlike wonder even if a sane adult would get embarrassed halfway and cop out, and that never stops being entertaining. Sakurai Sho stars and (one suspects) was directed not to try to act. You'd probably like it if you liked Anno Hideaki's take on Cutie Honey.

The producer attended in costume and showed a hilariously bullshit introductory video in which Miike told us we, the Fantasia attendees, were the only audience that understood him, and also that all Japanese filmmakers lived together in an idyllic village of straw huts. Actually, watching the room react one could hardly imagine any audience being more on board, although the Japanese would probably have gone into hysterics at the original seiyuu cameo. I don't believe the straw huts story, though.

***

I also went to see the Star Trek movie again! As per astrael_nyx it's worth watching once for the story/characters and once for the lens flare cinematography, so I'll take her advice and not go for a third. XD Will add some of the getting-from-A-to-B plot points, since my brain tends to filter out obvious babble, and the great winterwear in the Delta Vega scene. XD; Maybe it was the effect of watching Moon just beforehand, but I kept thinking "so here are two entirely unrelated groups of marooners in a hurry who didn't just bundle their maroonee in the nearest thermal spacesuit-like thing but found them a GQ overcoat for classy surface living, huh." Though I'm sure it's made out of that Japanese space putty that turns rock solid when you hit it with a shovel or whatever.

Ensuant on Part I.

( Linda Thompson )

( Little Boots )

( The Good, The Bad & The Queen )

Fantasia starts tomorrow! Reviews and stuff to come.

The Rules:

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter. (If you want a letter, just say so.)
2. List (and upload/link) 5 (or more if you want) songs that begin with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

keelieinblack gave me an N, two weeks ago.

( Ciara )

( DJ Rolando and The Aztec Mystic )

( Laura Marling )

( Martha Wainwright )

Too tired, next batch tomorrow. XD;

It's been one month exactly!

( Blur )

( AyuMix )

( Crystal Kay )

For the first time ever, since I don't have the kind of memory that allows me to do this sort of thing usefully. But for 2009 I have been logging with SOFTWARE.

( Albums released in 2009 that I like, in order of logging )

( Albums released before 2009 that I hadn't heard in their entirety until this year, but that I like now, in order of logging )

( Top artists for the past 7 days )

Don't ask for singles, I just... it's way too much information to track. XD; I probably listened to 3x this number of albums, these aren't really the ones I liked so much as the ones I developed a personal relationship with.

Alex James' side of the story is that he wrote some songs with Barney "two years ago" and should probably get in touch with him to find out what's going on, given subsequent reception of panicked phone call from label to the effect of WTF WHY ARE YOU IN NEW ORDER.

(Alternate post title: "Somewhat less surprising than Gackt as a Koakuma Ageha girl")

I think the reason this has been so incoherent is because anti-warnings people don't actually know why warnings rub them the wrong way, to the extent that they're willing to be assholes about it. The whole idea certain rubs me the wrong way - violently - and I have been an ass about it in the past, and I still don't know why this is. But at least I'm honest with myself (and you XD;) regarding that.

It is not consistent either. Like, in practice I'm pretty sure that when I've written shota/dubcon in the past I've warned for it, if not formally then words to that effect. (Maybe I just don't like the idea of formally labelling everything? A story is not a list of ingredients. For fun Charmian made up a warning tag list for The Alexandria Quartet last night, and it was like, what sort of book would you imagine if you saw this?) I'll see myself banned from fandom before I slap a deathfic warning on "A Proof By Contradiction", though. Of course third-party reccers can do as they like.

• 02:25 the more cynical part of me thinks China picked now to block Google cos everyone's distracted by Iran #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

• 16:18 RT: @brianstelter: RT @Caro: CNET: With Iran crisis, Twitter's youth is over: bit.ly/H7Jy8 #
• 16:23 o the unintended consequences of this new software: bit.ly/qRRtC
  one for @GreatDismal #
• 16:25 that was demoed to me yesterday from an iPhone app, btw, although it's b2b/b2g/b2e/b2 whoever owns the cctv network #
• 16:55 RT @tomewing: Quick survey for non-Iraniana about social media & the Iran elections bit.ly/UXdv3 - do fill it in, pass it on etc #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

• 03:18 so wait I don't get it, is the Courtney Love album leak I dled legit? XD; Is it this year's "Extraordinary Machine" or something? #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

( So before I forget entirely, obvious spoilers )

Non-spoilers:

5) The fic for the reboot is also a reboot of the fic, so to speak. It was nagging at me, and then I realized: seme/uke. Which is just like class stratification (boy is this entry sociological), in that 1) Americans don't like to cede the concept recognition, 2) but that doesn't mean they don't have it, 3) it's arguably better not to talk about it too much, 4) but to talk about it usefully, you have to run the numbers. Do you know, I've never seen anyone do this kind of simple analysis on slashfic, by pairing or by fandom. XD; I will say that when I hit a KxS story the other day I noticed it, because I'd previously read ~25 that were SxK. Bias is always possible, but I'm going down the undifferentiated public del.icio.us tag stream, so there is some crowdsourced consensus there. This would not be nearly as funny if it were any pairing other than, well, K/S.

6) "Teardrops On My Phaser":

The only people who get this kind of joke made about them in 2009 are Barack Obama and Taylor Swift.

01. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal. (I've seen it a dozen times now.)
02. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper.
03. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this. The point is to see what you had on.

( Cut for image. )

• 05:47 suspect these guys won't be the last: www.telegraph.co.uk/a/5497336 #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

No photos - didn't remember to bring a camera - so I have to make a note of it, or I'll forget when I went. XD;

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks (Fred Falke Remix)
Grizzly Bear - Knife (Girl Talk Remix)

Fred Falke is on some kind of 2005-esque remix roll all of a sudden? I re-discovered the "Knife" remix just now, it is +Clipse and +Ying Yang Twins or rather Girl Talk correctly identified Ed Droste as an appropriate voice for "dude diva hooks" (remember the conversation about Kusano Masamune).

( My thoughts on Grizzly Bear, let me show you them )

Other notes on evening: band reiterated the bit about Le National being one of their favorite venues, as well it ought to be as it's a jewel. It has a springy wooden floor, for instance, tilted so everyone can see the stage no matter where they're standing. Incidental music playlist was GREAT, A+ would hire members of this band to DJ a party again. Audience was young, cute and fluffyheaded Scott Pilgrim &co. types, enthusiastic but too indie to be pushy. The vinyl sold out because everyone at the merch stand (manned by Chris Taylor) asked for vinyl, including me. I know I make fun of other music fans' illogic but shit, I have totally bought into this one. XD; It's not even for the sonic qualities. Emotionally these days music itself = free and CD = a doohickey you can buy at Wal-Mart for 0.25$/unit with the inherent value of disposable chopsticks, so you have to go to vinyl to feel like you've achieved the kind of ownership you have over a book made out of paper and cardboard stock. Plus there is nostalgia value for people my age, like collecting Hasbro toys. I don't know what vinyl feels like for the fluffyheads, though - probably like when I pick up my dad's twin-lens reflex Yashica from the 60's, something out of a steampunk fantasy film set, barely reconcilable with everyday existence.

Toward the end Ed Droste was like, "Are you guys going to hang around outside and start a street party as is the Montreal way? We might join you if you do! :D" which of course resulted in the entire audience hanging around outside the venue afterward, LOL. That part of Saint-Catherine is a pedestrian street in summer. If I were with friends I would have stayed but I didn't want to sit there and wait by myself, so I have no idea if the band actually did show up.