House

I need something to cheer me up while I wait for August.

Eye Candy

This is Yoshitaka Amano's work. His style tends to be more widespread than I am making it out to be here, but I just happen to like those with flowy lines best.



It reminds me a little of Aya Kato's stuff, or this short anime OAV called Kigeki. If some of Yoshitaka Amano's work seems a little familiar, it'll likely be because you'll might have spotted some of his artwork in the Final Fantasy series, or alternatively, if you're not the gaming sort, the illustrated horror series Vampire Hunter D. (also adapted as an anime).

The above two images are from Hiten, his first exhibition, which exhibits a very wide array of what Amano is capable of. His latest works in progress in fact indicate him going back to his animation roots (Speedracer ugh). As it is, I seem to have a penchant for the German Expressionist-ish style... But then again, some of the best illustrators do seem to come from Germany too...

Another familair big-wig name attached to Amano would be Neil Gaiman, whose Sandman series got a freelanced watercolour treatment from the artist. See below: Lord Morpheus, as envisioned by Amano

Image sources

(Hiten): http://gallery.aethereality.net/

(Morpheus; Lord of Dreams): http://www.elevenland.com/amano/amano.php3

Stumbled on a memory

And so, it’s not quite the height of summer boredom, nor was it set in a deserted house, but the contrary, a well lit restaurant, and rather than sitting amidst rank weeds under a full moon, I was surrounded by the low buzz of inane chatter and happy diners. Still, ghost stories don’t wait for the so-called appropriate moment but for the importunate moment (I was eating, mind you) and the setting in any case, recedes into being immaterial once one is hooked.

So, after a couple of creepy stories, my friend told me the one her brother told her – one of those army ones that always seem to have an inexplicable ring of truth to them. Actually, this one sounded totally far-fetched, but as they say, human beings have the most amazing capacity for making connections where there are none. Hence, what you will get here are some of those random connections that came to my rambling mind:

As the story goes, an army colonel is making his way down the stairs one day (or night). Being a careful man not in a hurry to make his way to his destination, he held on to the staircase railing. Unfortunately, while the colonel was making his sedate way down the stairs; (he wasn’t as young as he once was you know), he, in spite of the precautions, in spite of holding the railing – fell anyway. The lackeys who were before him rushed up the stairs while those behind rushed down to his aid. Here is the interesting part. Out of the many recruits bustling about, one who stood at the top of the stairs remained where he was. His expression was grim, and several of the recruits could only wonder why he did not make a move to help the higher-ranked officer who was, incidentally, below him that day.

The recruits talked about it later that day, and someone finally dared to ask the lone soldier about his odd behaviour. The answer came calmly enough. Coming down the stairs, the soldier explained that he’d seen the colonel fall over an old man who had been sitting on the staircase, and even as his room mates hurtled to the colonel’s rescue, the old ghost, unnoticed, had been rubbing his injured arm in an irritated way. It seemed, the colonel had had the misfortune of tripping over a ghost…

So, the story is not the usual creepy kind, but it does lead in several interesting directions. This is the part where you, the reader, will have to suspend belief and assume that this is a real situation. Or maybe not.

The reasonable mind would have pointed out that it seems pretty far-fetched that with so many people coming and going on the stairs, each and everyone of them would have tripped over the ghost, and not just the colonel. A mistake by the reporter? A loophole in the account? In any case, ghosts shouldn’t be able to feel pain – they’re dead after all. In fact, they shouldn’t even be able to trip anyone since they aren’t even a physical obstruction.
Or maybe not.

The reasonable mind can also point out that of course, if the ghost can materialize a solid arm to trip colonels over, they arguably would also feel the sharp pinch of pain due to the contact. No? Yes? In any case, what in the world are ghosts? A slip of memory; a shadow of the past that lurks behind? I remember my physics teacher in secondary school and his wild conspiracy theories. Apart from being convinced that China had managed to conceal a high-tech military facility under the Forbidden City, he spoke about the “4th dimension”. This, he claimed, is the other-worldly world where fragments of time and space wander freely, and when the time-space orbit of our world bumps into this other-place, the outcome is essentially a ghost sighting. Memories of past, present and future? Had this fictitious colonel bumped into an illusory sliver of time realized?
Or maybe not.

Shoes

Because I am insanely proud of these ugly shoes.

The Film that Might Have Been

And so, in an alternate dimension, an altenate me might have been watching the Mamoru Hosoda version of Howl's Moving Castle had he stayed on with Ghibli for the length of the project. It looks to me like it would have been a more faithful adaptation of the book and looking at the storyboards, I can't help but wish that he had completed the project.

The picture above is actually a scene that existed in the book, though of course there are slight differences. The one below that shows the Witch of the Waste is also closer to the way her physical appearance appeared in the book. The man (I suspect he's Gaston) obviously can't be Howl. If you've watched the Miyazaki version or read the book you'll know what I mean.

What do you all think?

credits for images: http://www.pelleas.net/aniBBS/viewtopic.php?t=400&sid=0b4150aa477a9687252ab4d3e0f2369f

Your 'if' is the only peacemaker, much virtue in 'if'. - As You Like It

Now that my arduous three weeks of revision and exams are over, I am so looking to using my brain for happier things. Cheers for the holidays!

Countdown

3 down, 1 2 go!

Poster Talk: Sky Crawlers Update

image source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-04-28/oshii-sky-crawlers-trailer-officially-posted-online

I take back what I said about how this was going to be old school animation with less CGI. The new poster, with the added figures (presumably main characters) says its going to be CGI-heavy. Sigh...

Travel Bitten

The Great Escape
Have you ever heard of a place where you can go to and forget all your worries and chores? Such a place has been identified before, and rumour knows it by many names: Arcadia, Halcyon, the Hesperides, Haven, Paradise, Eden, El Dorado, East, and also West of the sun and the moons. The truth is, such a place has no name at all, and the splendour of it as it is described accordingly is but a pale shadow of what it is to really experience the place yourself. It is after all, a place where your desires are true and anything can happen, as long as you will it to be so.
However, to describe this place is to impose limits on your store of possibilities, and render it finite. Yet, a complete refusal would mean to deny oneself of a dream of blissful happiness, even if that dream is but a painted picture, a handful of coloured glass, mere effluence of a wholly inadequate nature.

And we realize this only at a point

Where they lapse like a wave breaking on a rock, giving up

Its shape in a gesture which expresses that shape.

-- John Ashberry.

I could sit here all day and look at pretty pictures, rendered all the prettier by some photo editing programme, and yearn to jump into that world in front of me, or I could get myself a plane ticket and see the wonder as it is in reality. A reality that I suspect will be at once grander in scale and yet only half as exciting as the colours on my computer screen

Poster Talk: Ponyo on a Cliff

image source: http://www.ghibliworld.com/news.html

More anime posters! This one is from Studio Ghibli's latest fare, Ponyo on a Cliff, directed by the venerable Miyazaki Hayao of Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi) and Howl's Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro) fame. Word has it that he is going back to his roots too, and CGI will take a back seat... wait. this sounds familiar... Anyway, it is true that unlike his last 3 works, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl's, Ponyo will feature more hand-drawn water coloured art.
Anyway, what you see up there is most likely the official movie poster for the film as so far, what's released on the net appear to be colour sketches for the film and unlikely as poster material. The guy in the middle is Suzuki Toshio, the publicity guy and producer for many many Miyazaki films, since Miyazaki has a habit of not talking to the press. Nevertheless, back to the topic.

The Ponyo poster is cute. Er. Actually, when I saw this, I got into a sulky mood since this really doesn't say anything more about the film than what fans I suspect, already know (namely, that it is about a 5 year-old boy who rescues a goldfish princess). Well, actually it does. The target audience seems to be about five years old. Darn. The sulky mood as some might have guessed is that the film really seems too kiddy for me to enjoy, which is sad. The theme song is also highly simplistic, almost like a nursery rhyme. Ungh. I'm almost worrying that this will end up something like Panda! Go Panda! which is beyond kiddy. Even young-at-heart adults would have found that painful to watch.

The poster's candy colours are appealing though. After the muted palettes in Spirited Away and Mononoke-hime, there seems to be a move towards pastels and bright pinks and yellows and blues - Howl's coat was...colourful to say the least, though echoes of the intricately decadent design from Spirited Away lingers in some of the scenes. Here, in Ponyo, I think there will be less of that decadence and rich art and that it'll look looser in design. I think the deep red from Mononoke and Spirited Away will also be taking a step back, if not from most of the film, it will be in the advertising. Besides, red is really too strong a colour when advertising for children.

Am I being subjective?
Yes.

At any rate, I am wondering if I will be giving this film a miss. Haha. Who am I kidding?

Wired on Wireless

Ohhohohoho. I am connected. My laptop is connected. Yay! I spent last night growling furiously about how I had limited connectivity on my laptop... and this morning I went online and had 2 read a bunch of messy forums and finally discovered the network key given by stupid singnet was a wrong one... sheesh.

Happy-esque

If happiness is a measure of wealth, then I am pretty poor.

Poster Talk: The Sky Crawlers

image: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-06-20/oshii

Right, this is Mamoru Oshii's latest film which I refered to in an earlier post. The poster has been out for some time and I can't gush enough about it. The design is deceptively simple. Some people naturally would complain that like their first teaser advert of blue sky and fluffy clouds, this poster tells us absolutely nothing about the film. I agree. The poster says very little, and I don't know Japanese, so it's worse, since the taglines are beyond my comprehension too. Nevertheless, allow me to endeavour with gushing.

Firstly, before we get anywhere, a caveat. I am one of those people who are overly fond of blue skies dotted with clouds, so I am defintely approaching this from a biased point of view. If we had that Oz poster, I would assure you that blue skies and a rainbow would have found it's way into the poster somehow. In my defense, it would have fit the theme very much.

Right, so, on to the Sky Crawlers poster. It's nice. The simple design is refreshing. If you park it next to posters that try to squash as many famous faces as humanly possible into the frame, it'll be crowded, looks like a star vehicle (which the film likely is), and more importantly, looks as though it is trying too hard. A poster like this stands out from the rest because of it being opposite - sparse composition, and no stars or characters or various other objects to distract from its clean design. And because minimalist is always tasteful of course.

If you ask me, this poster works for me because it tantalizes. Rather than trying to overwhelm with information, instead, it refuses to say anything, which induces curiosity. Far more can be said by remaining politely poker-faced and inviting speculation. Having said that, I would also add that such a poster attests to several things already. One, it is about aviation. Definitely. Two, it is definitely a wistful sort of film, not in the vein of Ghost in the Shell, which is all cyber punk; this one looks nostalgic, old school. CGI will be taking a backseat here. Three, it's attempting to straddle arty and commercial. In other words, it is tailored for the young movie going crowd. The plot, I suspect, won't be hard to follow at all, and there will be humorous bits.

All guesses of course. I have not watched it yet, and there is only a miserable short trailer out. I wonder if they'll be bringing in this to Singapore, this and Miyazaki's new film... At any rate, a pretty poster, and it says a lot. Really.

Burnt

Add to list of things wanted:
Ability to Mentally cause combustion Of little papery bits of unwelcome nEws

The 200th Post: Academe's Supergirl

Academe's Supergirl

***

She scans books with a single glance,

She scales CAP with a single bound,

Wields a pen like a a blazing lance,

And gets A pluses all around.

***

Strange Thoughts

What is the Spring Equinox:

In certain parts of the world, this would mean that the length of day = the length of night, and you either chant a lot or dance a lot or do both. In the grander scheme of things, it means that sometime in late March, the sun is directly between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and the North pole and South pole (same difference) or directly overhead at the Equator. This of course is not an issue to people living at the Equator since the weather is indistinguishable all year round except for certain periods of more rain (therefore wetter) or less rain (hotter). It's even harder to predict now, when it rains one week and then is boiling for the next.

Further out in the twilight of space, where the sun is but one bright spark surrounded by more bright sparks, the Spring Equinox is a phenomenon unheard of... As such aliens to Earth need not bother.

Wanted

WANTED:

$000,000 Cash REWARD

for

House of Many Ways

Vintage buttons

Black Jeans

Plain canvas shoes

Pretty ear studs

Dorian Gray

Sky Crawlers

Ponyo on a cliff

Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox

Empire of Ivory

Black Powder War

Life of Pi (illustrated)

Ballet flats

Tickets to Pillowman

A good Mystery/Detective Novel (any recs?)

Vanity Fair

Kite Runner

Murphy's

Ruined my aunt's comp trying to email MOE. What luck eh. The thing black screened.


Oh, and left-handers rejoice! The (possibly) ONLY left-handed mouse in NUS can be found on the left-hand side of the library, that is, if you enter from the Quiet Study Area side...

The Book Post: House of Many Ways preview

image: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/diana-wynne-jones/house-of-many-ways.htm

Hohoho. The sequel to Howl's Moving Castle.
I'd actually heard about this late last year, but didn't want to be too happy till the news was official. And you can't get any more official when the cover's out.

The book will be released in May/June 2008, which is...really soon! I hadn't expected it to be so fast, since the news was still pretty much the kind of "I heard so and so say so" sort of rumour. At any rate, I just want to blabber on about the cover for a bit.

Firstly, I was hoping for a more exciting cover. Or something with curly font, and this cover, with its straightforward vertical lines and realist style just doesn't do for a author who has had a habit of breaking stuffy societal conventions. Secondly, just because she is British, and her characters speak with (I can imagine) a crisp upper-class-ish accent (Chrestomanci) doesn't mean they would like that apalling Victorian era yellow wallpaper print on the bottom half of the cover. In other words, this cover is boring, even if I have to admit that this gradual melting of wallpaper prints into multiple doors is a rather nice concept.

On the other hand, I see what might be an homage to Miyazaki and the animators at Studio Ghibli. If you squint at the top right corner of the cover, you'll see this castle-shaped blot that looks suspiciously like the ramshackle thing Howl puts together in Hauru no Ugoko Shiro, right down to the turrety things rising out of the mist, and which seems to echo the opening scene of the film.

The great thing is, obviously, there is another DWJ book out to read really soon. I can't really be bothered about the cover (yeah right) so long as there is something inside to read, though a nice cover that does justice to the book contents really helps too. Of course, i can't say what the content of this book would be like, but I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be good...

In other news, fans of Mamoru Oshii, long time rival and some time collaborator with Hayao Miyazaki would be pleased to know if you haven't already known, that his new film, Sky Crawlers is due to be released some time this year.

Satisfaction

Guiltless Sleep. Lots of it. None of those "I can''t go to sleep because my holiday is ending soon, better make the best out of it" things or those "I can't go to sleep because that bloody essay is haunting me" rubbish

Lots of cheap fiction

House

A house

Veoh would buffer faster

Anime.

Fansubbers would sub faster

A pair of white school shoes

Pale green, pink, and bright yellow fabric paint

Vintage buttons

A blank notebook to start anew in

A reboot of this semester

Dissatisifaction

Is a hard thing to cure.
It's not something chocolate, hot tea with lemon, or a hug can fix.
It's not something the doctors can operate on.
It's not something that will go away by itself.

I think I need a sabbatical even if it isn't the seventh semester yet.
I think I need to climb Mt Kinabalu. And then live in a wooden hut for a month with the birds and monkeys and caterpillars and consuming only fruits and vegetables everyday. Up high, there aren't any mosquitos, so I think I would actually get some meditation done, unless there are flies of course.

And maybe I'll come home satisfied.