Home > Messages from the Ether > Search results

Where was I?

Codermonkey's wedding two Saturdays ago (June 30th). They shuttled off to Gay Paree soon after, then to London, and they're probably back home (although his blog is still curiously quiet).

The fourth was spent at Stacy and Alby's joint where I was slightly more anti-social than usual when I saw that someone had brought a deluxe DVD of The Kids are Alright (purchased soon after). Then drinks on Ecco's back patio w/ Shelby and Kabao and a very slow-to-recover day at work the next day.

Friday was my brother's b-day dinner at Rathbun's Steakhouse. Mixed reviews from friends but we had a great meal (despite the two bottles of port that were accidentally added to the bill). Drinks afterwards at Ecco (see a pattern?) and then I--and I am not fucking you about this--logged in to work to help with a midnight upgrade. In bed by 5.

Saturday afternoon was all piano. I went through Bach's French Suite #4, the Stravinsky I've been working on (the last two pages are the killer), and variation #29 from the Goldberg Variations. 29 has like the most oblique rhythms of all of those. I had avoided it because of that but I'm now completely warmed up to it. Saturday evening was Allison's b-day and drinks afterwards at the Old Towne Bistro and The Catch, OTP.

Sunday was that crazy Russian movie Daywatch at The Plaza on Ponce with Scott and LC. The four of us had watched Nightwatch a year or so ago, so this was the long-delayed part two. Very visually creative. The plot is a mishmash but worth the ride. I recommend hunting it down. Dinner at Manuel's.

Ghost in the Shell (4/5)

I have a lot of notes that I don't think I can/want-to structure. Here they are:

• References the cult sci-fi movie Dark Star where the agent is in a claustrophobic, shotgun control center. This looks exactly IIRC like the control center on the space ship in Dark Star. References Bergman's Persona when the puppet master and the female lead (names?) were on the floor talking near the end. The final scene where TFL wakes up references 2001's bedroom scene in The Infinite and Beyond. I may be stretching a bit on that one.
• Interesting comment with the human as eternal rookie to the cyborg cop. It keeps the cliched cop movie trope, but re-purposes it in an AI world.
• Obvious symbolism: birth when TFL was diving (although emotional and effective), the evolutionary tree being shot up (we're on the threshold of a new etc.). Rich overall in its symbolism though. High signal to noise.
• Voice work was monochromatic, may be translation issues. They, all, talked, like, they, had, commas, in, between, their, thoughts.
• Directing was in the same class as the best directors in cinema history. Just because it was animated doesn't change that.
• The freeze frame (only the character's mouth moves) during heavy dialog does not help you focus on the importance of the dialog. In theory it should, but in practice it only illuminates lazy animation.
• Oh MAN, in many of the city shots without narration or dialog this was so very Tarkovsky. Beautiful stuff.
• The emphasis on water and glass reflections was subtle symbolism to mind/body/consciousness issues even though it sounds trite in the telling.
• Much more heart than the cheap wire-fu-retread of The Matrix.
• Even though it's an animated future, their clothes look too Miami Vice. Sorry, they just do.
• The layered plot within a genre narrative was much like good film noir: it rises above its basic genre vocabulary. Great noir breaks the bounds of its language while still using its language. That's what GitS did.
• More symbolism: the puppet master and TFL looking up at the shattered skylight when they were crippled (and child-like?) saw a birth canal in the elongated lozenge of light.

I do recommend this to non-anime people (which I am). I saw the second film with Kabao when it came out in the theaters and loved its heady dialog and exhaustive animation. I was just as happy with the origin story.

posted by sstrader at 8:44 PM in Cinema | permalink | comments (0)

Where was I?

Focused on programming at home all last week, then: late Friday night at the Vortex waiting for Lisa to get back from some Haunted House in Newnan (man, I hope that I closed out my tab), and Saturday at Vinyl for the Kabao show. Great show and there were even three other bands to add to the mayhem. Some crazy kids from LA who apparently just learned to swear and be angry at the world, and some hardcore techno guys with some scary/fun hardcore fans who started a five-person mosh pit. See, angry can be fun too.

Not looking forward to this week, but what are you gonna do.

Dames. Aflame.

We saw some signs for Dames Aflame a week or so ago in the window of the old Peachtree Playhouse (aka, All Peachtree Battle, All the Time) on the first floor of our building. Ooh, says I, let's go see topless women! Lisa was less enthusiastic, and my impeccable logic (they're topless!!!) didn't sway her. We had actually seen them months prior (actually in April of last year) at the famous Kabao show in the Dojo Yakko gallery. It was an experience.

Well, apparently, they've set up house next to the Vortex and have called it The Laughing Skull Lounge (found via Toniet ... warning! thong-prominent lithograph). I can't believe how out-of-touch I am with my neighborhood. Next show there is the 19th. We'll be at the MC Frontalot show at the Drunken Unicorn, but we all need to plan a burlesque evening eventually.

Where was I?

So busy bitching that I lost track of where I've been.

Wednesday, we had intended to so see March of the Penguins (my nieces give it four thumbs up) and ended up re-routing to 97 Astoria to celebrate Alicia and Dan's house closing. And because I'm such a shut-in, I goofed off here and missed all of the fun, so after all of that I guess I did nothing. No wait! Lisa picked me up and we went on a successful search for the new-and-cool Slice down in Castleberry Hill. We felt a little out of place at first (ifyouknowwhatImean), but it's nice and laid back and had a good DJ--not too loud. Lisa says best pizza ever.

Thursday was a few after-dinner drinks at Midcity Cafe to toast Robert's b-day then a few more at DaVinci's.

Last night was The Brothers Grimm and The Skeleton Key at the Starlite Drive-in to celebrate another Robert's b-day. There was a slight emergency room related incident--everyone's OK--which kinda dowsed the rest of the evening.

And I have an interview next Tuesday! Look at me, Mr. Going To An Interview, Mr. Trying To Get a Job. Woop-de-doo!

It's my keyboard, baby

To celebrate my pending (abbreviated?) unemployment, I just bought a keyboard:

And a case:

All from Musician's Friend (with a little help from Kabao, thanks!) and for a pretty nice price. Aaaand, the P90 came with a with a free keyboard stand!

Wide eyed

William Gibson has an essay in Wired titled "God's Little Toys" as part of a larger feature called "Remix Planet". In it, the writers extoll the importance, and sheer cultural primacy, of collage and repurposing. Gibson:

Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.

I'm extremely suspicious of most assertions that attempt to say that our current society is unique in this way or that from earlier eras. The assertion that we're a "remix culture" is no different. Here are some of the points provided as proof of our uniqueness (from Gibson's article and others):

Kabao show tomorrow nite

Gotta support the team.

- David Puddy

Many of us will be meeting up at Northside Tavern at 8 tomorrow before the Kabao show (Music at an art gallery? We must balance it with drinks at a hole-in-the-wall!). I just found out from Ms. Kabao that [i]n the Vibes section of Creative Loafing there is an article about the show tomorrow night. Everyone was metioned EXCEPT KABAO. Curse those free newspapers! Is there no quality control?!? I suspect that word-of-mouth will have more of an effect on attendance anyway.

And tonight we venture to Spice for their every-Thursday $10 bottomless glass of wine (!) and then to Einstein's. Am I the only one who hated the old Einstein's and loves the new Einstein's?

Upcoming Kabao show

Friend and electronic musician Robert Bao will be performing at the Dojo Yakko Gallery on Friday May 13th along with Dames A'Flame (burlesque, no less), Elevado, Soulhound, and DJ Eric Yerlow. Should be a cool show in a cool space. I'm hoping to meet the chick on the 3-speed to trade baseball cards.

Currently Listening To

I discovered Amy Beach's [Wikipedia] music at the public library back when I was in high school. New World Records published her Violin Sonata under the name Mrs. H. H. A. Beach--in the halcyon days of pre-feminism and pre-suffrage, women went by their husbands' names with the quaint 'Mrs' attached. Anyway, post-feminists re-branded her works and she's now herself again. She was part of the New England School of composers. I'm generally not a fan of early American music or art, but at around this period our composers start getting interesting. And I'm a sucker for this Romanticism.

The Kabao CD was handed out during his recent show at Django. A cool time was had by all, and now you can relive a few songs of that cool time.

Red is classic King Crimson from 1974 (30 years ago?!?). I can do without the free improv on "Providence," but the rest of the songs are models of creative rock composition. The mix of alto sax (?)--carried over from their earlier days too influenced by soft jazz--and noisynoisy guitar and drums is perfect. Some notable musical features: check out the diminished scale [Wikipedia] used in "Red" and the single-note solo played over a 13/8 meter in "Starless." Two sites provide analysis: King Crimson: Red - An Analysis by Andrew Keeling and Chapter Six: King Crimson III and Brian Eno from the online book Robert Fripp by Eric Tamm (who mistakes the opening scale in "Red" for the whole tone scale [Wikipedia], probably because of the tritone in the harmony). Correction: Mr. Tamm has below corrected my sloppy misreading of his analysis. In his book, he points out the whole-tone-scale root relationships. Subtle and different than my misrepresentation. Apologies.

I've been enjoying my recent acquisition of Kleptones music. They combine Queen and The Flaming Lips with various rappers by replacing the former's vocals with the latter's. It's called mash up [Wikipedia] for all you groovies out there. With these recordings, the pallid harmonies and limited song structure of rap is replaced with music that excels at both. The Yoshimi tracks contain the exact songs with the vocals replaced. The Queen tracks are more scattered and fragmented--The Kleptones create a new structure using Queen's harmonies.

Music meeting tonight

Kevin (of OttoTone Records fame) Robert (of Kabao fame) and I (...), are going to a 730 Atlanta meeting over at Smith's Old Bar tonight at 7:30. Kevin says it's a very informal musical meeting-of-minds with musicians and industry people around Atlanta.

Should be fun.

Kabao show

Robert Bao of Kabao fame will be performing at Django on 19 November with DJ Chris Coleman. Here's some of Kabao's music to sample.

Django's a cool, shotgun bar in Midtown. We had gone there only once before to drink with Robert as he was scoping out the joint and to enjoy a 4-piece jazz ensemble (sax, keyboards, bass, and drums). Looks to be a good venue for both music and food--and they had a fortune teller out front!

Kabao

Kabao (the band formerly known as Bao, aka Robert Bao) has a new two song CD out titled Half the way / Devil or another sucker (remixes) available at CDBaby and Tower Records. This was originally available at the infamous 1/23/2004 Vinyl show. Break out the Red Bull & vodka and kick back for two new down-tempo tracks previewed from his upcoming CD. If you can't get enough then check out his first CD Warm As Sweaters also on CDBaby and Tower.