Wednesday, April 23, 2008

applereligon

You can never recapture a moment but you can create other similar moments. Or thats what I'm hoping. I have been wanting to get back into making movies since, well, since the day I stopped. I used equipment in college to make some independent filmy things, and I found it fit me perfectly. I must be visual because it litterally feels good making a script or concept and seeing that become something. In anycase, we used Apple Macs at school and in my attempt to recapture that which is not recapturable, I splurged on a nice iMac from America. It should be here in about a week (as a side note: the apple store in Japan, Ginza, was really not helpful. I wouldnt recommend going in to talk face to face with those silly weirdos.) What I find funny is how culty the Apple brand is. Those of my friends with macs are "welcoming" me as if I was born again or as if I found the path to nirvana. Most of my friends with out macs are shocked at my purchase as if I had commited some deep sin against
society. Its really quite silly. A computer is simply a tool to express our hearts. But I guess humans too often get their identities mixed up with their tools.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

money


I dont like to feel like a capitalist pig, so I try not to want money too much. When the company I was working for went under last winter I lost over 3 months of pay. I tried not to worry about it too much, even when I was down to about one rice triangle a day. It's not like that anymore. I'm back to eating four times a day. And yesterday I was stressing a bit about expensive bills, when suddenly I noticed that the Japanese government had given me 80% of my lost wages. Its as if I was forced to save money. I plan to get back into making movies again, as a hobby of sorts so I guess its good timing.

Winter is starting to melt away. I wonder how fast we'll jump into summer this year? At work, I got transfered to a branch in the state of Ibaraki, not even in Tokyo state. One way, its over an hour from my house plus waiting time between trains. That aint cool. Want to transfer back to Tokyo but I guess that aint gonna happen anytime soon.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

six am rain

So many of my blogs I am sitting here infront of a computer at a ghastly hour at night/in the early morning. And thats where I find myself again. Unable to sleep yet again, I'm sitting here trying to wind down into dream-land. I had a great day. Started the day off with getting a cool postcard from my American friend Candace, then I recorded video for a video blog project I'm trying to put together with another American friend, Nicky. (More details on that soon!) Then I was in happy Wikipedia edit mode for a few hours, had okonomiyaki (Japanese egg pizza is the common explanation for that food) with super cool Japanese buddy Kayo, and although I was too sleepy to be a good conversationalist, it was fun. She is becoming a teacher, so she is looking so professional these days. After that I came home and was going to surf youtube (I have a very geeky life, OK!?) for a bit, but I ended up chatting on the computer with a few American friends I hadn't chatted with on the computer for years and years. Life is good, I guess. The sky is bright outside now and the rain is still pelting the windows. My head is spinning, I'm too tired. It's time to really fade away for tonight.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

late night rumbles

So it is about 3:30 in the morning and they are still doing violent loud construction on the road outside. Seems to have settled down in the last few minutes, at least for now. Hope I can get some sleep, but before that I thought I would put a few thoughts up.

Over here in Asia (at least, maybe the same in other parts of the world) it's really common to walk into a video store and see "sequels" to movies that haven't come out yet, or "versions" of movies that don't have any of the same actors. They look like American movies, but they aren't quite right. I have always wondered about them, but never sat down and watched any. Well, until yesterday when I saw "War of the Worlds 2"... yeah. The first one was an odd Tom Cruise movie that tried too hard to be what it was, for a budget of over 130 million dollars. yeah 130. But "War of the worlds 2" is actually a sequel to a different low budget movie, with a similar title. And they are classic B movie crapola. Mockbusters are what they seem to be called. Designed to lure audiences into renting or buying them when the big name blockbuster isnt currently available. But I couldn't help myself, I enjoyed it. Now I guess it's good to remind anyone reading this that I am a big fan of B movies. That maybe influenced me. But the never ending cliches, the special effects that would have looked bad on a late 1990s TV show, the acting that was for the most part stage-actor sounding, the alien spaceship sets that looked like painted sheets; it all added together to make a fun movie. They are almost a satire of the idea of movies, or atleast the idea of Hollywood movies. It was painful at times, but painful in the way eating cheap candy is. You like the sugarhigh, but you know you are mainly eating artificial flavoring. I would be proud if I could have a movie production studio that could make half of what these guys are doing. Of course, I would make weird artsy strange movies though, that wouldn't rake in the money like their mockbusters are doing. These movies are mainly made by the production company The Asylum, if you are interested.

I also watched the original Logan's Run tonight. That is a good chunk of scifi movie, although I found it quite ironic that the special effects in this movie (which I guess was a fairly big budget at the time) were quite cheesy. The long-distance shots were clearly a plastic display model, and the outfits of the people were clearly 70s sexy sci-fi movie clothes, instead of any logical social construction. And the plot holes, the massive plot holes, rained down on this movie like a storm. (How 1000s of people who have never seen an animal and believe they aren't eating flash suddenly be expected to become violent omnivores? and is there anything to eat since the oldman said the fish died? well, the old man did have a lot of cats. and there are green bushes, I guess they could eat the cats or the plants, but how will they know which plants can be eaten or how to cook a cat? Why didnt the runners just try to brake the walls of the dome if they knew they were escaping? And did I really just see someone in the crowd give the spock sign for the camera? OK. If you havent seen the movie this rant just made no sense.) Don't get me wrong though, it's for sure a classic movie. I think I'm also pointing out a movie doesnt have to have 130 million dollars of modern special effects to be watchable.

In a technical note, I have found some more posts from years ago. I have filled them into this diary, so those who like to backsurf into the past can now read some of what I was thinking (in Korea) in 2005. If I ever find the other missing posts (or if you have any saved?!) I'll be sure to add them in there. The diary only goes back so far, my old online diary from 2002-2003 has over a 100 posts so importing that into here would be a lot of work... something for a different day.

Well, the construction has fallen quiet. Creepy quiet. I guess that means its time for dreams.
 
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