WEBLOG:
People I know have been making a fuss about Twitter and I finally decided to give it a try and see what the fuss is all about. It’s a pretty interesting concept and I like it so far. The main reason I joined was because this other nifty site that allows you to create custom search words and stream tweets from twitter accounts all around the world (even in various languages) that are relevant to your searches. I would enter terms that only musicians, filmmakers, artists, photographers, or filmmakers would use, and it’s actually quite amazing how many hits I get. Give it a try yourself and see (the custom search is on the left hand side, and you can enter as many as you want):
http://twitterfall.com/
Here’s my Twitter profile:
http://twitter.com/LunatiqueRob
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Recently, I’ve been thinking about how our genre preferences will impact our response to an idea. I think genre preferences often dictate how we respond to the exact same idea but told by different premises. For example, let’s say we have a story about loyalty and brotherhood, and we have five different films of different genres (this same concept applies to any form of narrative like literature and songs)–one is a sports film, one is sci-fi, one is a western, one is epic historical, and one is a crime drama. We could make the plot practically identical, even with almost the same dialogs and the same kind of creative sensibility, but because of our genre preferences, we will like some of these films more than the others. For example, I watch all different genres, but I don’t particularly like musicals and subconsciously avoid them unless one gets rave reviews–then I would give it a shot, though kind of grudgingly. I’m also not much of a fan of popular team sports, but I will watch movies about those sports and enjoy them for the storytelling, as human dramas are universal; however, I don’t think a sports movie will ever make my list of all time favorite films (but never say never, since I really enjoyed the TV Show Friday Night Lights, and it’s about a high school football team). I think truly intelligent people are capable of seeing through the genre conventions and premises and understand the themes and the universal truths portrayed, but taste is a strange thing–it often pushes us to be biased whether we like it or not.
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My friend Chris (http://www.ugoaudio.com/) and I have been discussing in detail how to collaborate on a music project together over the internet, and we’ve got most of the kinks figured out, but now I’m going to be away from the studio for six months. I had the dilemma of not having enough room in my luggage to bring everything I want to bring when we fly back to the States, and I have to choose between my MIDI controller (Novation ReMote 25 SL) and my Xbox 360–an extremely hard choice, since on one hand I really want to compose while in the States, but at the same time I had just bought the Xbox 360 and want to get some quality gaming time in as well. His brilliant suggestion was to look into the Korg Nano Controllers, and I have, and I’m quite pleased with the reviews and youtube videos I’ve seen thus far. I think I’ll bring the Xbox 360 and then get the NanoKey and NanoPad once I’m back in the States. They are so tiny that they won’t take up much room at all when we fly back to China. This is what they look like:
Pretty darn cute, eh? I kinda prefer the black ones, although the reversed colors on the keys are a bit disconcerting:
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Now that I’m done with Dead Space, it’s time to finish Mass Effect. I liked Mass Effect so far, but it’s no Knights of the Old Republic, although I shouldn’t expect it to be, even if it’s made by the same company and have similar gameplay mechanics and design philosophy. I’m bringing a bunch of Xbox 360 games with me on this trip, so that when I’m not teaching the workshop, collaborating with Chris on our music project, or working on my personal projects, I’ll be able to get some quality gaming time in. I’d like to see more of my family and friends as well, since I may not get to see them for a long time after this trip.
Elena and I will need to rent a car right after we get off the plane, then get a motel, then start looking for a temporary housing in the Bay Area and find a used car to buy. My brother Dennis suggested Zipcar, but I’m not sure if that kind of car sharing service is better for us in the long run. My greatest fear in buying a cheap used car is if something goes wrong and ends up costing a lot more money, but it’s the most practical option for us when we are only staying for six months.
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Quickie movie reviews:
Let the Right One In – One of the best films I’ve seen in a long time, and I don’t simply mean it’s a good film as in the kind you see several times a year–I mean this is the kind of beautiful film that you see only a few of in a decade. I’m going to let it sink in for a while longer before I decide to put it on my all time favorite films list–that’s how much I loved it. It’s original, beautiful, haunting, bittersweet, and one of those rare films that transcends whatever genre conventions associated with its premise and grabs you by the heart. Some people may never give this film a chance because they think it’s a vampire horror film, but it really isn’t–the premise is merely a metaphor, and what’s deep inside the film is a moving human drama that anyone can relate to.
Taken – A very entertaining film and one of quality, but I wish it could’ve been more realistic like the Jason Bourne series. What I love about the Bourne series is that as badass as Jason is, he’s never depicted as far superior to everyone else like some kind of superman–the other assassins are just as good as he is and often Jason would have to fight tooth and nail only to win by a hair, and we sweat for him because we knew he’s in very real and urgent danger. In Taken, Liam Neeson is portrayed as this untouchable badass that wipes the floor even with other highly trained agents and bodyguards, and that just seems a bit excessive to me. The only time he was kind of matched by another trained security expert was in the very end for the action climax–a little too convenient. It’s still a very enjoyable film though.
The Day the Earth Stood Still – Don’t you love how some films just squander a very interesting premise by making it so simple-minded, illogical, trite and disingenuous? It’s so easy to point the finger at the screenwriter, but as we all know, often it’s the clueless studio executives that forces stunning stupid changes to a great script and turn it into trash. I have no idea which is the case for this film, but the result is disappointing either way.
Twilight – A fairly enjoyable teenage girl romantic fantasy about a vampire boyfriend, but it’s just a bit too safe and caters to the teenage girl crowd a bit too much to resonate with other groups. The color grading of the film in some scenes got on my nerves too–too green and too cold, trying so hard to make everyone look as pale as corpses. I think Interview With the Vampire did a better job in terms of convincing pale skin makeup, and that film is about fifteen years old.
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Every once a while I wonder to myself what will be the next film that rises above all the films I’ve been watching and push its way onto my list of all time favorite films, and when it does happen, it’s almost always a film that would have a significant amount of impact on me and makes me think about it for a long time afterward–days, or even longer. The last time it happened was about five years ago, and I was beginning to wonder if it’ll ever happen again (fearing that getting older means I’m getting jaded as well). Now it finally happened again with Let the Right One In, and this time I think it’ll motivate me to finish my ongoing personal project, the short film Promise–one that I’ve been working on for many years (created the premise in 1998, wrote it into a short story in 2001, and then began to work on the actual pre-production in 2002, intending to turn it into an animated short film, but when the company that was to fund the project lost the funding, I put the project on the shelf, since it’s not the kind of project one person can do alone due to some very large scale scenes that would require a team to tackle. Let the Right One In reminded me of Promise because Promise at its core is also about a boy and girl, sacrifice and love, and the desire to protect someone helpless, though the tone is quite different–it’s more ethereal and melancholic than dark and morbid. I’m now seriously contemplating turning Promise into a graphic novel and just get it done myself and put it out there and share it with the world. It’s no use waiting for funding to make the film because I may never find the funding, but I can definitely do the graphic novel alone. It may not be as immediate and visceral as a film, but at least it can approximate the vision I have for it. It’s better than keeping it on the shelf and perhaps going into the grave with me when my time is up.
