Lacrimae rerum

Aeneas, while crying, says, "the world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart," as he gazes at one of the murals found in a Carthaginian temple, which depicts battles of the Trojan War and deaths of his friends and countrymen. As he stands there, Aeneas is overcome by the futility of warfare and waste of human life. The burden man has to bear, ever present frailty and suffering, is what would define the essence of human experience.


[new research coming soon]

Roger Ebert, clearly does not understand East-Asian film, clearly a moron

here's a segment of what this idiot had to say about "All About Lily Chou-Chou:"

"Either you make an experimental film that cuts loose from narrative, characters and comprehensible cinematography, or you do not. Iwai seems to want to tell the story of his characters, and it could be a compelling one (some of the scenes are poignant or wounding), but he cannot allow himself to make the film in a way that can communicate. That would be, I guess, a compromise. He has made a film that few reasonable ticket-buyers will have the patience to endure. It will be appreciated by a handful of highly evolved film watchers who can generate a simultaneous analysis in their minds, but what is the point, really, in making a film that closes out most moviegoers?"

Ticket-buyers?! Moviegoers?! Highly evolved film watchers?! Why the hell is this man such a famous film critic if he can't understand the value of a film on a human level? All that matters is ticket sales? What the fuck! It's not about ticket sales dumbass, it's not about appealing to the masses, it's not about being avante-garde, IT'S ABOUT LIFE! It's about being human! It's about how painful it is to be alive sometimes, and about the beauty of everything, it's about having faith even if it's in some goofy (possibly made-up) pop star, as long as we have something then that's something we can find meaning in in a world that makes no fucking sense most of the time. Roger Ebert, pull your head out of your ass, Martin Scorsese's ass, and the "ticket-buyers" (aka, your-book-buyers) and come back down to Earth. I'm never reading an Ebert review again, what a waste, and I know it's not just contemprary Japanese film that eludes him, he trashed Blue Velvet too! I mean, I'm not a huge fan of that movie but at least I can see the value in it. I'm gonna kick your ass someday Roger Ebert you fat idiot.

this kind of life keeps breaking your heart.

UPDATE! FIRST IN A LONG TIME!

Well what's new. First, I've made an album on Facebook of some production stills of anyones interested, just a few up now, but i'll keep adding.
Second, been using last.fm to discover all sorts of new music, well actually one main sort really, it's found me a bunch of Japanese post-rock/ambient/experimental/instrumental/electronic stuff that I've then been proceeding to download. I'm happy about it, I always love finding new music. Suggestions for you:
- Haruka Nakamura
- I Am Robot And Proud
- Akira Kosemura
- Te
- Motoro Faam
- Takahiro Kido

Yeah, and also Hammock, I sent you all links to a couple of their videos, stuff is so good. the title of this blog entry is the title of one of their songs I'm really loving.

Otherwise things have just been crazy. Chugging along with shooting, really nothing to report, same old tune: working at it, slow going having to work around my schedule and everyone else's but that's just the way it's gotta be. uhhhh, MOVIES!

Lately I've seen a couple movies worth noting, ok first I'll talk hollywood movies. "2012," uhhh, I don't know, you know why I had to see it, end of the world thing, but yeah. It was pretty bad of course, but special effects were good and Woody Harrelson was a nice surprise. Also saw "Law Abiding Citizen," again, just because, just for entertainment, which it was entertaining so that's all I really have to say about that. Then I also finally saw "Where the Wild Things Are," and I don't quite know how to feel about that one... I think I need to see it again. It was kind of overly depressing and dramatic throughout the whole film with these little breaks now and then with a fun little montage of them romping about having fun. It's just such a downer the whole time, but it wasn't emotional at all really except for a few parts, it was like trying so hard to be sad that I just felt completely uneffected by most of it. But of course the cinematography was great, the locations and costumes were all really great. Music got a little old by the end. I'll have to see it again probably, but at the same time, I don't really want to sit through it again and just feel the same again afterwards sooo...
Asian films worth noting: "Hana & Alice" by Shunji Iwai, and also "All About Lily Chou-Chou" by the same director. I've heard of the latter film many times but hadn't ever taken the time to watch it. They are both very great films about youth(high school) in modern Japan. Not so much of the bright natural light that draws me to other similar films, still natural light but it's the darker side more, more gloomy. Japan obviously has just as many gloomy days as it does bright so it makes sense to mix it up or show one or the other primarily. One interesting notable shot from "Lily Chou-Chou" is from the back of what's probably a truck while 3 boys ride bikes following, it's shot in the green night-vision with a large spotlight on the boys, pretty interesting. Otherwise many similar motifs: trains, family life, odd camera angles, desaturation, odd characters. I like 'em, another director to add to the list!

ALSO: this probably won't reach anyone in time, but a reminder I'm organizing the screening of "Bright Future" tomorrow (today technically, 1:07am) at Irving amphitheater @ 7:00PM! I think Claire's the only person who's seen it, so hopefully I'll see some-most of you there so you can see a full-length example of where I'm coming from. If not, I'm going over the idea with Cyan about turning this into a regular thing every week or every other week or something, screening East-Asian films or just foreign maybe, of course I'd prefer only Asian but we'll see how it goes.

i use science and technology to formulate my theory that your DNA is the DNA of something strange and amazing

still trying to make all the finishing adjustments on this script. i keep having all these little things that need to get done right away, and having no time to work on this damn thing. it's very frustrating. yes, studio comes first, but what am i supposed to do, fail my other classes?

anyway, watched a really good movie called "Cafe Lumiere" which starred one of my favorite actors Tadanobu Asano. It was a really good lesson in slow pacing, letting the audience get really comfortable in a space. One scene in particular: Asano and Yoko are in his bookstore and as they sit there and have a slight conversation while flipping through books and cd's the camera remains still in front of a window, outside the window is the street where sunlight reflecting off the passing cars dances around room. it's great.

the 20 Movie Pack: Apocalypse movies Claire lent me is pretty awesome, some goodies in there. working on trying to narrow that stuff down and selecting what i'm going to want to use.

new album from Converge, "Axe to Fall" is amazing.

I'm beginning to find film review writing not so fun anymore. you have to be so serious and i write much better when i can just be opinionated and casual. whatever.

it's like... like nothin matters! i bet it does.

yeah, i don't know, i'm beginning to lose faith in this whole blog thing. i know no one from class reads this. am i just doing this for me? i know cyan wants us to keep this updated but other than that there's really no point. anyway, it doesn't matter...

i just wanted to say i spent the last hour or so reading through the short journal i kept through most of my freshman year here. it was pretty crazy. crazy how much it helped me learn about myself. i mean at the time i was just writing whatever but now reading it it's like, hey, i knew what i was talking about. so it was interesting. really depressing too. nostalgia. ugh, all that kind of stuff. that was just a very very hard year. an especially hard spring emotionally, mentally. Never had i wanted to leave more than March of 2007. but it's interesting, the thing that kept me sane, got me trough it was just my dream of not giving up til I had at least been to Japan, all i wanted was to just get to Japan. Of course, for anyone who know's the story, the net year, January 2008 was just as hard if not worse, I really just don't really like talking about it. such a weird time. very painful to think about.
but now that i've been to Japan, i just feel even more motivated to just get BACK to Japan. i just don't really know how to explain it. Wim Wenders explained it pretty well in "Tokyo-ga," the magic of Japan, what exactly it is about that place that makes it so wonderful to certain people. just watch that film and you'll know what i mean. but then again, the few of you that MAY read this probably won't see it, so nevermind. sorry-

DESPERATE LIVING!

HORSE the band has done it again!!!

i've been listening to their new album "Desperate Living" since monday and i can't get enough of it, it's amazing. they've never let me down before, this is a band that can simply do no wrong, people.

i would say you need to listen to it (them), but i know it probably won't be exactly everyone's style, especially those of our class (assuming that no one else aside from classmates might ever read this). but here's a link to something you might find somewhat interesting, give it a chance...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBvWgbcE8J4

"wasting my life" -Keiichi

so just a little note.
I just got done watching a film called "Tokyo-ga" by Wim Wenders.
It was so great. It's basically half documentary on modern Tokyo (modern to 1985 when the film was made) and half documentary about Yasujiro Ozu, legendary director of 50 some films in his 60 years of life. Wenders just has a lot of really good points and inspirational things to say. It's interesting that what he loves so much about the films of Ozu are the same ideas I love so much about contemporary Japanese film (made since '85). Ideas like film capturing real life, telling a very simple stripped down story, use of nostalgia, and making films that are very Japanese, yet completely universal.
In the part of the film where he visits Ozu's grave he points out that there is no name on the tomb, only the Chinese character for "mu" meaning emptiness/nothingness. He then goes on a long though about this which I found incredibly fascinating: nothingness is an idea that fills us with fear;
"each person sees for himself...life. and each person knows for himself the extreme gap that often exists between personal experience and the depiction of that experience up there on the screen. we have learned to consider the vast distance separating cinema from life as so perfectly natural that we gasp and give a start when we suddenly discover something true or real in a movie. be it nothing more than the gesture of a child in the background, or a bird flying across the frame, or a cloud casting it's shadow over the scene for but an instant. it is a rarity in today's cinema to find such moments of truth... for people or object to show themselves as they really are. that's what was so unique in Ozu's films. ...films which actually and continuously delt with life itself and in which the people, the objects, the cities, and the countrysides revealed themselves. such a depiction of reality, such an art is no longer to be found in the cinema... it was once... mu, nothingness, what remains today."
So I have just been looking into this "mu" a bit more and find it extremely interesting.

http://www.soundofmu.no/2006/about-mu.html

Also, Werner Herzog had a cameo random appearance coincidentally in Tokyo at the same time as Wenders.

On a side note: I've begun my application to the JET Program. My application portion is done, now I have to write my statement of purpose and wait for my letters of recommendation to come back to me. I'm very affraid.