Monday, May 22, 2006

Forward, backward, left, up, right slant, sideways, it doesn’t matter–I’ve concluded motion is in itself a greeting, stubborn in its pace, accessible for the very same reason, and by far the best choice out of all the beginnings I formulated. One option was to ply you with links, canvass the Internet for sweet morsels to lay unto your feet, while another route was lined with dire promises and mission statements most inspirational. Too played, too late. I’d like to start in media res, foot on the pavement, right in the thick of it. It’s like we never left.

Anime is lost on me. This is where we adjourned and this is where we’ll start. Oh, I’ve tried being open-minded, pushing past those mental images of smelly conventions and websites set afire over arguments about the cut of Vampire Huntress 78.33 ½’s jib, but my entertainment horizons have not expanded. I’ve tried Ninja Scroll, Appleseed, all the titles deemed palatable by Disney, Akira, which I’ve heard is a seminal work in the genre, and Grave of the Fireflies, probably the only flick that incited a slight up-curling of the lips.

I’m fully aware of the double standard. Why does it take a serious portrayal of war-torn Japan to trip that approval threshold? Do I crave an illustrated rendition of Art Spiegelman’s Maus, for instance, or do I expect Buzz Lightyear to hold forth compellingly on Russo-Mongolian dynamics? No, certainly not. But I know what I don’t crave.

I don’t crave wondering why 30% of the animation wasn’t animated. I don’t crave hero shots dripping with ridiculous gravitas. I don’t crave grotesquely dilated eyes, and I don’t crave characters coiffed as if they were communal smocks in Mrs. Claymutter’s 3rd grade art class. And the brooding! Zip up the emo act and nurse that shit, for the love of Dragonballs, and do it soon because I don’t want to roll my eyes any longer. Am I complaining too much? Perhaps, if only to put tomorrow’s meaningful discourse in sharp relief.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Secondhand Rants will return on Monday, May 22.

Monday, May 8, 2006

We begin anew tonight, or at least as anew as I can muster on a Monday evening, so you’d best attend and attend well. When I go ghost, I’ve decided, I’m going to go in for a penny, in for a pound, such is my mastery of exchange rates. Why disappear for a day when three will do?

Dreary weather is a relief for me, because with the rain comes a temporary reprieve from enjoying the outdoors and collecting pollen with my eyes. You’d think allergies would be a powerful deterrent, but that’s not the case. Nature is compelling, congestion be damned, and in my mind there is an immunity to flowers lying just out of reach. When the skies darken, however, I turn to the bottle all too easily.

My bottle happens to be media. A recent draught was Final Fantasy: Advent Children, a visual spectacle whose prettiness is matched only by its unintelligible flow. Good cloth and hair are hallmarks of masterful CGI, they say, and in these capacities the movie impresses. But coherency? Forget it. I’ve never gone to film school, so my vocabulary is limited to the jump cut, yet I believe Advent Children makes strident use of the “what the fuck” cut.

You’ll be cruising along, flush with the delusion that you understand the basic plot, when suddenly you’re warped forward or backward in time, nobody really knows, new characters sashay onto the screen as if they were old friends, and the situation turns into a genuine mystery. I’m talking Da Vinci Code type mystery, where only the Knights Templar could be responsible. I was bewildered.

Fortunately I’m familiar with the source material, so I was able to cobble together the following spoilers. If you wish to preserve the magic, stop reading right now, but if you’re curious: Brood, brood, brood, swordfight, bike, brood, flashback, brood, swordfight, brood on a bike, swordfight on a bike while brooding, flashback, brood, credits, brood. Possibly not in this order, I can’t really say.