Apparently Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel has a radio show on WFMU out of New York City. They have archives of the broadcasts available to stream here. Bizarre stuff – the one I’m listening two opened with what sounded like four minutes of ocean noises and now there’s church bells sounding off the hour while crows cackle in the background.
Madness.
Bit of a slow day, blog-wise. Not a helluva lot going on – work, work, work.
You can vote for your choice of new World Trade Centre designs here.
The Two Towers is opening today, and I’m not going till Friday. I’m curiously okay with that, but don’t look forward to tomorrow as Mark and Scott are going to see it tonight and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts they don’t shut up about it for weeks.
np – Quasi / The Sword Of God
Saw Spirited Away tonight, and I loved it. Unequivocally. I haven’t seen much of Miyazaki’s stuff before, just Princess Mononoke, and the English dubbed version at that. I’m not ashamed to admit that I lost track of the plot in Mononoke fairly early on and by the end was just appreciating it for the animation, and I sort of expected the same result with Spirited Away.
Happily, I enjoyed Spirited Away completely, no disclaimers. Miyazaki creates a wonderfully imagined and realized fantasy world that’s just amazing to visit. It’s the story of Chichiro, a young girl who becomes trapped in a fantasy world at a spa for the supernatural and must rescue her parents and escape. Every scene is an absolute joy to behold, from the animated balls of ash working the boiler room to the flight of paper dolls doing battle with Haku the wolf-dragon, there’s a vibrancy and – for wont of a better word – spirit that permeates every cell of this film. And while there is a fair bit of CGI in the film for special effect sequences, it is still very much a hand-drawn traditionally-animated film, and I think it’s telling that it was more breathtaking to me than any computer-generated animation I’ve seen yet. All the computer processing in the world still can’t measure up to someone with pencil, paper and vision.
Ironically, Ian and Vic walked out of there claiming to have found it incomprehensible. This astonishes me – this had the most coherent, albeit simple, plot of any anime I’ve ever seen. Savages.
So yeah, if you’re partial at all to anime, fairy tales or just great fantasy films, go find a theatre screening this film and watch it. It’s just terrific.
np – Stereolab / Emperor Tomato Ketchup
A discussion about the power of the Corey’s in the 80s with Kyle yields this little nugget. Wow. Don’t be a Corey.
Going to catch Spirited Away tonight. It’s hauling in some serious cinema awards hardware. I still bet you $5 that by 2/3 of the way through, I have no idea what’s going on.
“I screwed her
And she screwed me
But we never once had sex”
— Doug Martsch, “Joyride”
np – Built To Spill / The Normal Years
Pitchfork turns their critical sights on the domestic issuance of the Ride best-of today. They basically dismiss Smile, exult Nowhere and Going Blank Again and savage Carnival Of Light and Tarantula. While it pains me to read a harsh word about my four fey boys from Oxford, it’s difficult to defend those last couple albums. They were pretty dreck, Tarantula more than COL. But I will fight anyone who dares say an unkind word about GBA.
There is a new Jonathan Carroll novel out, title White Apples. I don’t remember what the last novel of his I read was… but surfing his bibliography it seems I’ve missed more than a few. I’ve always liked his stuff, the way he dresses up horror and fantasy as straight contemporary fiction. Sleeping In Flame was one of my favorites. I will have to hit the library.
Definitely downshifting into pre-holiday mode. Yesterday really wiped me out. One week to go…
np – Sparklehorse / It’s A Wonderful Life
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