What's this all about?

I'm a guy with way too many interests and way too much time on my hands. A while back I realized that I spend a lot of my time just telling people I know about the various media I consume, so I just figured what the hell, let's just lay it all out. On here, you'll see my reviews of video games, films, books, tv shows, and more, but I've also decided to upload my hobbies here as well because why not?

Anima: Love on a Real Train

-

Anima is a musical short directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Radiohead's Thom Yorke that details one subway rider's surreal quest to find the woman who he fell in love with on the subway after she leaves her purse (I think). It's short (only 15 minutes), but besides the music and dancing there's also a few notable things that the crew and cast were able to do that intrigued me even if I didn't particularly enjoy this short.

The story is told in 3 acts, or songs. The first establishes our late-night subway goers and his mission to return the purse/catch up with the woman, but obstacles prevent him from doing so and separate him despite his efforts. This leads into song two, which is a departure from the first, detailing the man's efforts to not give into conformity. This left me stumped honestly, and though I am pretty experienced in technical theatre, the exact meaning of interpretive dances have consistently eluded me. Song three acts as our resolution, with the man and woman sharing a couple's dance and embrace as they are blown by the wind into a tram car where the sun rises and closes our story.

Probably one of the cooler spots in the film, great use of contrast. Hey Kilroy!

While Interpretive dance hasn't been and I expect never will be my cup of tea, I'd be remiss if I didn't note the other, more tangible things that I noticed. The fluid and well-choreographed movements of the dancers create a surreal and mesmerizing display to the eye, even when we enter to comparatively grounded third act. The lighting and camerawork are both incredible, and while the second act was my least favorite to watch, it did the most interesting work with those elements. The use of perspective is excellent here, and a few shots were picture-perfect. I realized in the third act that this was filmed in Prague of the Czech Republic, which was a pleasant surprise as I was studying there at the time of this review. Music-wise, I didn't really latch onto this. Ethereal soft-speaking isn't really something I particularly like in the slightest, it puts me on edge, but if you're a fan of Radiohead (can't say I know them, but I think I've heard the name thrown around somewhere) then this will likely be at least of passing interest for you.

In all honesty I believe this to be a visually interesting film, and for that I sort of liked it, though that by no means means that I'll watch this anytime soon. Visuals are a vital part of an effective performance, but that can't carry my enjoyment of the entire production. Eh, it was alright, just not to my liking, but this is coming from the guy that likes to quote The Room to my roommates without any reason, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[Demo] Spark in the Dark

-
  Spark in the Dark is a dungeon-crawling action RPG made by the first-time game dev team of Stellar Fish, and recently as part of the Steam Next Fest a demo was made available. What had been showcased prior had caught my attention because of its visual similarities to Exanima , a favorite of mine, but the games are really not at all similar. The demo was quite promising, though there is still a great deal of room for improvement. The demo covers the first level of the rogue-like adventure, where after choosing a class (essentially a playstyle), the game plops you in the entry room of the dungeon. The four classes (Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, and Blacksmith) offer dramatically different playstyles that go beyond simple weapon/armor choices. The map is the same on each run, with the same item and enemy placement. From this, the presence of containers and their status is randomized, as are traps. In some runs there are hardly any, and others a secret passage is littered with the things, whi
Read more

The Evil Eye

-
Image
The Evil Eye is an adventure in the Ravenloft setting for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition (which came out at least five years before I was born, good lord), and while I currently have no plans to run it in either 2e or 5e, I can definitely see a lot of potential for this adventure. Due to 5e producing campaigns labelled as adventures and 2e producing campaign guides and standalone adventures separately, it's important to describe what to expect with this book. After reading through it all the way once and returning to earlier sections, I'd say that this adventure is best run as a standalone short campaign. It was originally designed for levels 4-6 in 2e, but I'd say that with some tweaks for difficulty it could be made to work for a 1-5 campaign for 5e without much trouble. Now it's time to break down this campaign and talk about its components, for some reason described internally as six different scenarios, even though they are far better as a whole. Tangen
Read more

Blackstone Fortress: Ascension

-
    I had gotten this book on a whim when I was in Books a Million while I was in Indiana for a wedding in mid-November, largely because I had earlier bought the boardgame Blackstone Fortress . I could go on about the story of why I bought the Blackstone Fortress boardgame, but it would take far too long and would not add anything besides making me seem very silly, so I will not. While I was flying up to Canada I finished the book, and while on the whole I enjoyed it, the book's conclusion left something to be desired.      To give some broad background, Blackstone Fortress: Ascension is the concluding chapter in a duology (I had no idea that this was the case when I bought it, silly me) that along with a collection of short stories forms a sort of novelization trilogy of the boardgame of the same name. In the boardgame, you and a number of other players play as intrepid explorers/treasure hunters/fanatics in the 41st millennium trying to get to the innermost depths of a space st
Read more