Book/Movie memes

[shadowkat]

Okay, first the meme thing - here's my responses to the polls in aliera and oyceter's journals. Sorry don't do links (b/c I have no idea how), so you'll have to find their journals for yourselves.

3 books you use most often for reference
Dictionary
A Pocket Style Manual
Writers Market

3 books you read on "high rotation"
(what re-read?? Don’t know what this means)
Can’t think of any

3 books you read for comfort
Harry Potter series
PG Wodehouse
Mysteries/Fantasy

3 books you really ought to read
Crime and Punishment by Dostevosky
Gullivar's Travels by Jonathan Swift
War and Peace by Tolstoy

3 books you will never read
War and Peace (too bloody long)
David Cooperfield (also too bloody long and I hate Dickens)
Anything by Marcel Proust or Pilgrim’s Progress

3 movies that are "the best ever made"

The Godfather
Lawrence of Arabia
Casablanca/Spirited Away

3 movies you watch on "high rotation"???

3 movies that are "guilty pleasures"

Grosse Point Blanc
Nightmare Before Christmas
LadyHawk

3 movies that are "buried treasures"

Zero Effect (great private dick movie with Bill Pullman)
Unbreakable (with Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis, by M.Night Shalaman)
The Haunting (Robert Wise’s film with Julie Harris and Clair Bloom, scared me as a kid)

3 movies you watch for comfort

Gross Point Blanc or Noises Off
Nightmare Before Christmas
Princess Bride

3 movies you really "ought" to watch

Alien (never made it through it, too gory)
Bergman’s Frannie and Alexander
Truffaut’s The 100 Blows or Bicycle Thief

3 movies you will never watch

Anger Management
Cabin Fever (gory horror movie not my cup of tea)
The Thing

Faves:
Action: Face/Off, Die Hard, DareDevil, X-Men2, Raider’s of The Lost Arc, The Killer (John Woo), Resevoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction
Drama: Days of Wine and Roses, The Apartment, The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia,
Comedy: Gross Point Blanc, Noises Off, Monty Python and The Holy Grail, Something About Mary, Tootsie, Princess Bride
Romance: Romancing the Stone, The Philadelphia Story, Gigi,
SF/Fantasy: Lord of The Rings (best fantasy films ever), Star Wars & Empire Strikes Back (only those two), Blade Runner
Animation: Spirited Away, Castle Calistrika (sp? – Lupin III one), Ghost in The Shell,
Nightmare Before Christmas

Hmmm...was going to write my impressions of the Who
promo party I worked last night. But I'm too tired to figure out how to word it, so maybe will wait a few days.

Comments

[oyceter]

Woo! Someone besides me watches Nightmare Before Christmas!! I used to watch it at least once a year back in Taiwan, before the VCR broke, and now have a shiny DVD of my own. I think it did something to warp my worldview though ;).

Loving Nightmare

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yep, I loved Nightmare Before Christmas so much that I finally bought the VHS tape of it, b/c I kept running into problems renting it at the video store. That was approximately 5-10 years ago.

I fell in love with Jack Skeleton or Pumpkin Jack, the Pumpkin King. Considering the resemblance to Spike... this is not surprising. I like snarky heros with a wicked sense of humor, a devil may care air, and a witty turn of phrase. Course I'm a tad snarky myself so that may have something to do with it. I'm also a huge anime fan - reason #1020 for getting a DVD player, I know.
I like the darker more sophisticated animation - Disney is a little too sappy for me, although I do check it out from time to time.

Re: Loving Nightmare

[oyceter]

I think I "fell" for Sally, or ended up heavily sympathizing with her. I'm a sucker for the unrequited thing and with the snarky fool type character. Complete goner when my first Spike exposure was FFL, because it just hit all the buttons at one. With a sledgehammer. Guh.

Ooo... what are your favorite bits of animation? I've kind of made it a hobby of sorts to dig all types out, and yeah, big anime fan.

Favorite bits of animation & nightmare

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Had the same reaction you did to both Nightmare and Spike, complete sucker for unrequited love/crush and the snarky fool.

I think part of the reason I liked Nightmare was the claymation aspects - which reminded me of the Xmas specials of the 1940s and 50s - Rudolph The Red Nosed Raindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, The Year Without a Santa Claus and The Easter Bunny is Coming to Town being the highlights of that particular form.
(Bit of insider information on Nightmare - my brother was friends with some of the people who worked on that project at the time - he tells me that not only did they construct the figures - they constructed multiple copies and multiple expressions. Each expression a character had was a different copy of that character. If Jack smiled, they'd pick up smiling Jack - take a picture. Then when he stops. Pick up non-smiling, take a picture.
This particular form of animation is probably the most pain-stakingly tedius one but unlike the others - almost completely done by hand.)

I think the creator of Kimba - the White Lion (I own a VHS of that, since it was my favorite cartoon as a small child - I adored it) started the process of anime, soon to become computerized animation that the creator of Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, Castle Calistroka, and Princess Monoka (sp?) excells at. This anime tends to be more interested in fantasy. I find it a little richer and complex storywise than Disney.
(It's the combo of handpainted cell and computer)

My least favorite is the computerized - where the computer creates versions of humans and objects in a sort of 3-D or super 2-D landscape - seen in Final Fantasy and some of the shorts in Animatrix. This form of animation I just find hard to watch, my eyes have to refocus - I had the same problem with the animation in the Harry Potter movies.

LoTR - the live action - has a digitized anime that is the best I've seen - with Golum. No one has come close to the quality that Peter Jackson did on these films.
Golum makes George Lucas' animated creations look fake and cheap in comparison. (This may be the reason Lucas is reportedly scaling back - he can't compete with LoRT's quality). The creation of the animated Golum - which used a human and placed the computer image on top of the human actor - so it was a human not just a computer image doing the actual acting - elevated the quality of digitized animation. It also proved something most of us already know - the computer can't replicate the human creativity and emotional quotient. The best animation is the type that uses computer to enhance the work of humans. The worst is the type that attempts to take short cuts and just do it by computer. The longer, more tedious, more involved the human creator is - the better the product seems to be.

Pixar's computer animation took it in yet another direction - showing how you can create a 3-D like digitized environment. (This animation is very different than the stilted animation of Final Fantasy).

Sci-Fi/Horror anime from Japan - including Ghost in The Shell, Vampire Hunter D, Battle Warrior, etc based on the magna comics. Love this stuff. Hard to find on VHS now though.

Spacing others..

Re: Favorite bits of animation & nightmare

[oyceter]

Yeah, I watched the making of special on my DVD, and it was absolutely amazing how they did it. Something about the roughness of the animation appeals to me -- you can see the clay isn't smooth, etc. But then, I think Chicken Run is awesome too, and they had some special plasticine stuff they put over the chickens to prevent fingerprints or something. Plus, Chicken Run is absolutely hilarious without being dumbed down.

Kind of disagree about the computerized animation of Studio Ghibli. I think it was a point of pride with Miyazaki for a while that they did everything by hand, no computers at all, until Mononoke or Spirited Away (forgot which, heard varying reports). I really should watch more Tezuka! The only thing I've seen that's kind of his is Metropolis, and that was just based on his manga.

I never went to see Final Fantasy.. I felt as though I should because usually I see anything that comes out here that's animated, but I heard so much bad stuff about it... I think in general I'm ok with computer animation. My problem is that all the naysayers keep prophesying that traditional, handdrawn animation is dead, and all I want to do is yell at them that the success of Pixar doesn't mean no one likes hand drawn stuff anymore, it just means most of the hand drawn stuff now (Disney and Disney clones) is just absolutely awful and formulaic when compared to Pixar. Grrrrr. Wish Disney would make more stuff like Lilo and Stitch.

Hrm, I'm not that much for the sci-fi/horror anime... not good with bloodshed. Plus, I think I'm too sensitive to the whole "anime is just violence and porn!" schtick that people used to throw at me when they found out I ran the anime club. Never quite got Akira, although my advisor thought it was sheer genius. But then, there's stuff like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop, which arne't exactly for the kiddies either...

Re: Favorite bits of animation & nightmare

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I actually agree with everything you posted above.

I'd forgotten that early Mizukai was hand drawn cell animation. It didn't become computerized until much later - and only for certain segments.
That's what Disney finally learned from the Japan anime - you don't do it all one or another - you use the computers to enhance it, not replace it.

Pixar's fine - but not better than some of the hand-drawn stuff. People who think that haven't really seen good anime. You're right there's so much snobby prejudice regarding it. Become sort of used to it - since I love a lot of things, culture snobs turn up their noses at:

Angel the Series
Buffy
Anime
Comic books
Fantasy and Sci-Fi
Gothic horror

I had to go online to find others who appreciated these art forms and loved them as I did. They tend to be my guilty secrets off-line since my offline friends who tend to be more main-stream don't get my interests.

The Japanese Anime falls into so many categories, just like the magna comics. There's horror, sci-fi, soft-porn, action, romance, children's, adults. While US animation with a few exceptions and not until more recently - was mostly for kids.

Felix the Cat - released in the 1970s, based on an adult underground comic, was very adult. (I remember b/c I wanted to see it at the time and my parents wouldn't let me).

American Splendor is a combo - live action and animation - based on a real life comic.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit - was also a combination anime. A form started by Disney with Mary Poppins, Bednobs and Broomsticks, Fantasia,
amongst others.

Disney has done some good animation - some of Disney's early stuff is actually quite beautiful.
Dreamworks also isn't bad. And they are both doing a good job of doing computer (Pixar style) and non-computer (handpainted style). In marketing terms we'd call this segmentation - basically they've learned the consumers want more than one thing so they are expanding and creating different products for them.

I've met a few animation snobs - who insist that one style is better than another, I agree with you, each has its strengths - and there are bad movies within each category and great ones within each - just like live action. Having seen both the worst and best in these categories...I can attest to that.

Have you seen the animated version of Lord of The Rings? By Ralph Baski(sp?) - he did the Hobbit, The Fellowship, Two Towers and for tv The Return of The King. It combined drawings with color and was a true work of art. Has gaps in places and not the easiest to get a hold of. Now that would be a wonderful DVD set: PEter JAckson's Live LoTR
and Baski's Animated version together complete with commentaries.

Another cool animation style is the Batman/Superman series on Cartoon Network.
That uses 1940s soft color, strong jaw style.
Lots of shadows. Looks like the pages from a film noir magazine.

Then there's the almost surreal style of Samuari Jack - where the characters look more cartoonish.

I'm a bit of a collector myself: Fantasia,
Lupin (two films of that), Kimba, Chicken Run, Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy story. Not many - just a few here and there that were given to me as gifts. I used to rent them like crazy, but now that all the good anime is only available on DVD, I have to go without. (Can't afford a DVD player or the rentals at this point.)

I never really saw Final Fantasy - just parts of it on cable, when I still had HBO (a few years back). Could not make it through it. Yes, it was that bad. Seen better version of that style of anime, The Flight of the Osiris, on The Animatrix (which actually was more interesting than the Matrix, oddly enough). The Animatrix also has an animation that is similar to MTV's Aevon Flux
anime.

What I love about the art form is there are so many variations - not just one. I like variety in things. Low tolerance for routine and very eclectic tastes.

Re: Favorite bits of animation & nightmare

[oyceter]

Yeah... one of the big points in my thesis was that animation and manga/comics were media, and that animation wasn't simply a subset of film. Guh. It was really weird moving to America from Taiwan for college, because in Taiwan, thanks to Japan, the acceptance level for anime and manga is much higher -- manga rental stores, anime on tv. And while I'm sure it's not respected totally, I think the widespread nature of it prevents people from outright dismissing it. One encounter that particularly annoyed me here was one person insisting that why watch animation when one can watch real people? And -- animated serious stuff, that's just stupid, because we all know animation is just for kids. Grrr. It was just so silly, like saying paintings were obsolete because we had the camera.

I think right now Pixar's taken the torch from Disney in terms of popularity and cutting-edge-ness (have you seen the preview for Brother Bear? Withholding judgment so far, but I can't help but think it looks like Pocahontas, remade). But, as you said, it doesn't mean the computer stuff is better... just means the story lines and the characters and the humor is better, more non-cliched perhaps. Dreamworks, imho, is usually very hit (Shrek) or very miss (Spirit).

Very much agree about the looking down on genre in general. I never really used to be that embarrassed about my sf/f thing because most of the avid readers in my school were into that, so we got to form our own little book-borrowing circle. For me, a lot of that has gone to my thing with romance. And just admitting that, I feel like I have to justify by saying there is a lot of dreck, etc., but in the end, who cares? I enjoy it.

I think the snobs are always there.. in the anime club it wasn't computer vs. hand, but rather Japan vs. America, so I was frequently putting my hat on and saying that America does produce good animation -- Iron Giant, Nightmare, Chicken Run, Chuck Jones, etc. And yeah, the Batman series! I'm so sad I never got to see it! Is it still airing? I remember it first came out back when I was still in Taiwan, so me and my sister got the pilot on VHS, but that was it =(. I loved that style...

Haven't seen Samurai Jack, sadly...

I'm still slowly growing my collection... I've got all of Gundam Wing, all that's out of Utena, thanks to the thesis, Chicken Run, Nightmare (essentials), picked up Creature Comforts for five bucks at Walmart, found Iron Giant for about that much, and slowly but surely getting all of the Ghibli stuff. Mostly I buy those in Taiwan because I'm still mad Fox never released Totoro with subtitles.

Toy Story, Lilo and Stitch, Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, all still in the want list...

I think one of the shorts in the Animatrix (the weird one with the glowing purple people? Matriculated, had to go look that up) was done by the guy behind Aeon Flux. I remember that because it felt distincly non-anime... I think my favorites in Animatrix were the ones on the rise of the machines and the final one about the kid being targeted and the one where a group of street kids find a glitch. Gorgeous animation.. especially loved the sketchy, hand drawn style of the last one.

I agree with the variety in animation, at least the potential thereof. Same with comics/manga. I'm glad Gaiman and Sandman made people realize there was a market for non-superhero stuff and that indie comics writers/artists are still out there. And still gunning for Miyazaki to gain more of a fan base here so we can see non-kid-oriented animation made here sometime...