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July 30, 2004

Movies, baby...

I just got back from seeing “The Manchurian Candidate,” curious to see whether or not it was close enough to a script I’d been working on to merit a permanent mothballing. Luckily, there’s enough of a difference between “The Manchurian Candidate” and my idea to where I think my script will still be viable—well, as viable as ever it was (which, admittedly, might not be very).

Overall, I dug this remake. Meryl Streep went a little overboard from time to time, but it would have been hard to do the role without veering in that direction at least a bit. Besides, if that’s what she had to do to make the part her own and not invite comparison to Angela Lansbury’s iconic portrayal in the original film, so be it.

The script had to go out on a limb to make the original film title work, seeing as how the Korean war (and thus, Manchuria) had nothing to do with anything in this version, but it wasn’t a stretch to the point of distraction. I will admit missing the Chevy Chase-looking Chinese guy, Frank Sinatra’s kung-fu chop through his coffee table (during a fight scene with aforementioned pseudo-Chevy), and Laurence Harvey’s drunken rambling (“I…I’m not l-lovable!”) from the first film.

I still have to catch “Fahrenheit 9/11,” so I looked up the showtimes this morning. I was shocked to find that it had already been shuffled out of every theater in the area but one (the arthouse place down the street from my apartment) by crap like “Catwoman,” “King Arthur,” “Thunderbirds,” “A Cinderella Story,” and “The Village”. If all it takes to bump it out of rotation is the usual summer pap, the Republicans can stop sweating.

Speaking of “The Village,” I’m skipping it. I already looked up spoilers online, and they all pretty much were in keeping with the sort of predictable, low-rent twist I had anticipated. I’ve had a bad vibe about this one pretty much from the word go—and I’m a guy who really enjoyed Shyamalan’s first three films. So was Ebert, and he saw fit to pan “The Village” but good.

The problem beyond the immediate stinkiness of “The Village,” as so many people have pointed out, is that Shyamalan has painted himself into a thematic corner. We all expect the twist. We go in looking for it. He was three for three before this—now he’s apparently four for four. He’s in an unenviable position with whatever he tackles next. After all the griping this time, he’d be foolish to include a major plot twist. At the same time, though, people will be expecting him not to have a twist—and the lack of twist, in effect, will become the twist itself. He should direct a screwball comedy, go for broke, eschew the twists, and hope for the best. If nothing else, the critics will at least cut him some slack for trying to branch out into unfamiliar waters.

That’s it for now. I might go to a screening of “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle” tonight, if I feel like braving A) the Friday night crowds and B) the film’s target demographic. I don’t know if I want to spend an hour and a half surrounded by pot-addled teenagers, chuckling a la Butthead and compulsively kicking the back of my seat.

I’ve never been to a White Castle before—and don’t want to try it for the next three months, lest I get caught in a throng of like-minded people. There’s a burger place not too far from my ex-girlfriend’s apartment in Venice that used to be a White Castle; you can tell by the shape of the sign and the castellated frau-frau attached to the roof. And the name of the new establishment, you ask? El Castillo. Truly, the apex of multicultural creativity.

Posted by patrick at 02:48 PM | Comments (3)

July 28, 2004

Zipping around North Hollywood...

I took the time to look through the circulars in the mailbox when I got home from L.A. tonight, which I almost never bother to do. I'm glad I did, though, as I caught wind of a really good sale down at Ralph's. The promotion included a ten-for-$10 deal on Celeste pizzas and a ten-for-$6 deal on some brand of yogurt with the separate container of granola on top.

I rushed down to Ralph's (which is only about a half-mile away, if that), filled up my basket with pizza and yogurt, tossed in a pizza cutter (might as well, hey?) and a loaf of French bread for good measure, and waiting until I made it to the front of the line.

I always let the checker ring everything up before I type in my Ralph's Club Card number, so I can watch the original total melt away. Tonight, though, nothing happened when I pressed enter. That $35 stayed a $35.

I asked the checker about it, and he explained that the I was thinking of doesn't start until 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. He asked if I still wanted to buy the food, at which point I apologized, said no, and returned it all to its proper place on the shelves. I couldn't even eat ten pizzas and ten cups of yogurt between 6 a.m. and now, so why pay twice as much just to have it all six hours earlier?

I'm going back tomorrow morning and doing it my way, just like Frank Sinatra. But with no Mafia connections. And no Rat Pack members accompanying me. And less crooning, probably.

* * * * *

Today was a busy day all around. I knew I'd be driving into L.A. to spend a few hours with my ex on account of her birthday, so I figured I'd swing into North Hollywood a bit early and check out Jason Miller's (lead vocalist of Godhead and fellow VO actor) new recording studio. Damn, it's nice! I want to sneak in one night, set up camp in a closet, and establish squatter's rights to the place. Style-wise, I'm sure it trumps any place I'll be calling home for the next ten years, at least.

After that, I zipped over to the Iliad Bookstore--the best used bookstore in SoCal, for my money. I traded in about a dozen books, my first time doing so there, and was pleased to find they have a very reasonable trade-in policy. A lot of places only let you use part of your store credit on any particular book, so no matter what you do, you're still coughing up at least part of the price of the book you want to buy "on credit". Not so at the Iliad. I bought another copy of Shogun (one with a cover, since my original is falling to pieces), a copy of Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo on my friend Jon's recommendation, and left the store with credit to spare and exactly as much money on me as when I'd gone in. Amazed at my restraint? I know I was...

Posted by patrick at 12:20 AM | Comments (1)

July 27, 2004

I saw “The Bourne

I saw “The Bourne Supremacy” tonight, and while it certainly deserved to trump “Catwoman,” I was definitely let down. I really enjoyed “The Bourne Identity,” so when I was getting pretty consistent reports from various corners that this was even better than the first movie, I expected to go in this evening and have a grand time.

There was something missing, or muted, or soulless about this installment. Apparently, it bears almost no resemblance to the novel itself, which might be part of the problem. I think I prefer the fiction market method of “write something good, then get paid for it” to the Hollywood method of “make a mediocre film because you have a lot of money to spend and nobody can stop you.” They’ve gone so far off-track from the novels that it doesn’t sound like there’s much hope of them hopping back into Ludlum’s original ideas. Luckily, if they keep it up with the Delirium Tremens School of Camerawork, we’ll never see enough of the subsequent installments to notice where they’ve strayed from the source material.

Everybody’s been complaining about the cinematography, and as much as I hate to have to join the teeming horde on this one, I just couldn’t handle it. In comparison, “The Blair Witch Project” was a Steady-Cam dream filmed by a cameraman who skated along on a thin lair of drawn butter and synovial fluid. It wasn’t just that the camera jittered around during the action sequences (which it did to no end), but that it would persist in doing so during scenes where Matt Damon was just standing still, or talking on the phone. I might as well have been watching a film on an airplane during severe turbulence. The fight scenes were indecipherable, and the much-vaunted car chase was literally painful to watch—and could have taken place on a merry-go-round, for all I could tell.

Franka Potente was a nice breath of Teutonic goodness, though. I’d never seen her with her hair long and blonde before. She should leave it alone. It looked fine enough in “Run Lola Run” and “The Bourne Identity,” but it’s better au naturale.

Posted by patrick at 01:58 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2004

Commercials as nano-sitcoms...

I was at the gym this morning, watching the TV while I was on the treadmill because it was better than watching how slowly the seconds passed on the control panel, when I happened to see two or three particularly funny advertisements in a row. It hit me. While people would roll their eyes if I were to try and posit “sitcom as extended commercial” as a new idea, I suddenly realized that it works both ways. Just as a sitcom is a 30-minute commercial, many commercials are 15- or 30-second sitcoms.

Most commercials are funny these days, as humor is an efficient means of hooking the audience quickly—no small priority when you only get them for a fraction of a minute. They entertain us with the Del Taco guy or the Geico gecko or the AFLAC goose, or the guy getting nailed in the crotch with the golf ball (and thank you, chipshot.com, for that last one—the best commercial ever). Then, while there’s still some time left, they give us the straight-up, the actual pitch: “Company X is doing such-and-such for X amount of money.” Sometimes just the company name suffices. They’ve entertained us and we know who to thank. In the backs of our heads, we’ll think kindly on that business when we hear their name, subconsciously fueled by a foggy, aggregate memory of all the good times (in 15- or 30-second increments) we’ve had with them.

If I had a functioning TV, and if I really cared, I suppose my next step would be to time the humor in commercials versus the pitch and see if the ratios at all resemble those of commercials-to-programming, thus finding out whether my theory holds water.

Interestingly enough, a few minutes after this morning workout epiphany, the news show I was watching mentioned the unveiling of a network in Britain dedicated solely to TV commercials.

Posted by patrick at 09:53 AM | Comments (3)

July 20, 2004

My sedate summer...

I'm tossing in this journal entry more as proof of life than as a reaction to anything particularly newsworthy having happened to me recently. I'm living that double-edged sword known as summer vacation, during which "Ahhh! Nothing to do!" can be said with a variety of inflections, depending on the day, the temperature, and my boredom level.

I'll be headed to Las Vegas this Friday to take part in a weekend trip in honor of my ex's birthday next week. People have questioned the intelligence (both rational and emotional) of my taking part in such a trip, and while I hope their dire predictions don't come to fruition, I do appreciate the spirit of concern in which they were voiced.

In any event, I haven't been to Vegas in five years, so this'll be an adventure one way or the other. I wonder if I'll recognize the Strip anymore. Admittedly, most of the newer casinos were up when I was last there in 1999, but my memory of Vegas is still based on trips I took with my mom and grandmother when I was just a kid--back when the midway floor of Circus Circus was the apex of my young existence, the modest arcade in the Stardust was enough to keep me occupied for hours, and Caesar's Palace was at the top of the "themed casino" heap (largely for lack of competition).

Posted by patrick at 03:25 AM | Comments (4)

July 05, 2004

ANIME EXPO 2004

I attended Anime Expo in Anaheim yesterday and Saturday, and I had a really good time. I’m a little exhausted from all the running around and the sheer number of people, but my first anime-con experience was a very positive one, and I’m looking forward to my next excuse to go and have that sort of fun.

My first inkling that I was thankful for my industry pass was when I went into the registration room, a enormous hall the size of which I’d be hard-pressed to give even a ballpark estimate. The industry registration line didn’t seem to be moving at first, but once it got going, the wait wasn’t too bad. From what I’ve heard, folks in the regular registration line had a much worse time of it, with waits of two or three hours being not at all uncommon.

I hadn’t been wandering around the dealers’ hall for too long when I got a call on my cell-phone from Taliesin, who had just arrived with his roommate, Caddy (whom I’d seen perform with the Poxy Boggards at Big Bear Ren Faire in 2003, but didn’t recognize as such on Saturday until Taliesin and he started singing a Boggards tune), and Nomi, a friend of theirs. They were in the dealers’ hall as well, and we used the row numbers to meet up. I forget the specific order in which people ran into us, but soon we had a nice little posse, drifting and shopping as we saw fit.

I’d meant to make it to the Japanese dancing demonstration and the mecha construction panel, but the folks I’d just met were a really entertaining bunch. I don’t know if the panels and screenings I’d originally intended on attending could have held a candle to the unscripted fun I was having.

As 2:30 p.m. approached, we headed to the location of our VO actor panel. I encountered a small cluster of Notre Dame students on the way and tried, in passing, to guilt them into attending. To their credit, they made an appearance.

The panel was quite an experience. Considering that it included the likes of Crispin Freeman, Wendee Lee, and Hiromi Hirata (who was sitting to my immediate left), I kept half expecting somebody to quietly and gently take me by the elbow and escort me off the stage. I piped in to answer the occasional question, but for the most part, I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut and enjoy the ride. The questions from the audience were mostly along the lines of “who’s been your favorite character to portray?” or “how’d you get into the VO business?” I had worried about being blindsided with some totally obscure anime question, but my fears were groundless, as usual.

After the panel, I had the good fortune to meet Troy Williams, the guy in charge of AX VIP relations. When I shyly asked if I could score a pass for Sunday in reply to his wanting to know if I needed anything, he explained that my industry pass was good for the entire weekend, and that as an industry guest, I’d have no trouble getting into the ticketed events (like AX Idol that evening, and Sunday night’s Cosplay Masquerade).

By that point, a group of us had decided it was time to get food. We took a taxi over to Downtown Disney to hunt up some grub. I’d never been in Downtown Disney. There’s something insidious about it, something desperate and no-nonsense. Whereas Disneyland proper eases the cash out of my wallet through a comparatively soft-sell (and those damned irresistible churros), Downtown Disney grabs your lapels like an acid-addled Hunter S. Thompson and blurts out, “Forget the Magic Kingdom crap—just give me your money! Now!” We met up with another group, and the dozen of us ate at an Italian restaurant, the name of which escapes me—but the memory of whose $7 tiramisu will leave me grumbling about overpriced desserts until the last trump sounds. The consensus seemed to be that the food, while good, didn’t merit the price. Next time, I’ll dip a Disneyland churro in marinara sauce and just pretend it’s lasagna.

We worked our way back to the Convention Center for AX Idol, which was quite an experience. The idea was that twelve pre-selected, pre-auditioned finalists would come up one-by-one and either sing a song or deliver a monologue, and then get comments from the appropriate VO or J-pop industry professionals among the five or six judges. Thanks to Crispin (who was the Master of Ceremonies) and Taliesin, we ended up with front row seats.

It started out promisingly enough, with a really good singer and a really good actress (both of whom were the ultimate winners, Caddy later told me). Zarah and I sneaked out halfway through to make the “Ikki Tousen” dub screening over at the Marriott, so I can’t comment on all of the performances. I found it interesting that all of the singers were female and all of the actors but the first one were male—at least for the portion I saw.

When one girl came out on stage to sing, I leaned over to Caddy and whispered, “I think we’ve got a crier and runner.” She was nervous, obviously, carrying a lot of tension in her arms and shoulders, but when the music started up and she began singing, she had a very nice voice. She was nearing the end of her song, when she suddenly forgot her lyrics and ran off stage, crying.

“I didn’t want to be right,” I sighed to Caddy.

Crispin brought her back out, and the crowd cheered and applauded. It wasn’t that sort of “wow, that was horrible, but the truth hurts and she’s suffered enough, so throw her a bone” type of applause, either. She was a good singer. She just forgot the words to her song. She was embarrassed, as anybody would be, but I hope she didn’t beat herself up too much for it after the fact. It’s all I can do to remember the words to songs written in English sometimes, so I have nothing but respect for the fact that she was doing so well with a Japanese song.

Overall, the singers were the stronger group. I think that singing is a much more objective pursuit. Either you can do it, or you can’t. There are levels of skill and areas of expertise, certainly, but the question of whether or not you have the basic skills is very binary. Yes or no. The acting is more subjective, and more self-directed. Unless you’re trying to emulate somebody else’s performance (which is a bad idea), you’re really sort of on your own. This can lead to the sort of measured cadences and self-important posturing to which a few of the acting contestants succumbed.

Also, a few of them tried to refute Crispin’s suggestions/observations, which got old really quick—like the guy who did a Gollum impersonation that wavered between Andy Serkis and Macho Man Randy Savage. When Crispin warned that a Gollum imitation had to sound exactly like Gollum to be effective, the guy responded that he’d wanted to give the crowd something different.

“Why did you pick Gollum, then?” Crispin asked.

This was a gratifying moment for the hundreds of people in the crowd who’d been wondering the same thing.

Meanwhile, Zarah and I had quite a time at the “Ikki Tousen” screening. We both had an idea of how racy the show was from what we’d ascertained during our respective times in the booth, but still…wow. It makes “Amazing Nurse Nanako” look like a genteel parlor-room comedy-of-manners. Chock full of sex and violence, I’m sure it’ll sell like hotcakes. I’m lucky, though. We didn’t get to “our” episodes, nor have we finished laying down the VO tracks for all of them, but I’m pretty sure Taishiji won’t be flouncing around with his chones on display. Zarah’s character might not have dodged that particular bullet.

After the screening, it was time to rendezvous with the folks who had stayed at AX Idol. There was a unanimous vote for alcohol, so we descended upon the bar inside the Hilton’s lobby. I had a rum-and-Coke that was lacking enough of the latter to appease my inner sorority girl’s delicate palate. One of my strongest memories of our time in the bar was reaching over and laying my hand on the metal giraffe statue next to our booth. It was so nice and cool, and I’d been enveloped in (and contributing to) the 20,000 otaku-strong mugginess all day long. I wanted to bury my face in metallic giraffe, but thought it might appear gauche—or that I might appear drunk.

“No, no” I could imagine myself mumbling as they took away my remaining rum-and-Coke, “the giraffe…he’s cool…”

“Yes, he’s cool, Patrick,” they’d say, trying to placate me. “He’s a cool giraffe. Now sit down like a good boy.”

I got on the road for Riverside around a quarter to three in the morning, the bar having long since closed, and the group having disbanded and headed off to their respective hotels or cars.

I returned for some of the AX excitement yesterday (Sunday), but I never quite woke all the way up. I hooked up with Taliesin, Nomi and Caddy again, but we lost Taliesin pretty early on to his commitment to judge the Cosplay Masquerade. As near as I could tell looking at the schedule events, he was busy with that from 3 p.m. right through when the Masquerade itself ended around midnight. Godspeed, Mr. Jaffe.

Caddy, Nomi and I caught the first half of a two-episode dub screening for “R.O.D. TV,” and that was a hoot. Not only is it a really good show with a lot of really good performances in it, but on a purely narcissistic level, it was a kick to hear my voice coming out of Lee’s face—and on a screen that puts my old computer monitor and secondhand TV to the shame they arguable deserve. We slipped out after the first episode to rush over to Crispin’s mythology panel.

It started with a video he’d cobbled together out of Joseph Campbell’s interviews with Bill Moyer and sundry anime clips that illustrated the points Campbell was making. I love me the Joseph Campbell, so I felt better about missing the second episode of “R.O.D. TV”. I was especially tickled by a specific few seconds of the Campbell interview. I forget the exact context for it, but it probably had something to do the hero’s moment of evolution and decision, and Cambell said, “Is the system going to eat you up?”—only, he said it in such a way that a closer transcription would be, “Is the system gonna eatcha up?” For some reason, I just burst out laughing. I wish I could find it as a WAV file and just mix the hell out of it.

The subsequent Q&A/discussion session suffered from mic-bogarting one-upmanship on the part of some of the audience members, but Crispin’s explanations and comments kept me in my seat. Right up until the guy with the appearance, voice and persona of the Comic Book Guy from “The Simpsons” delivered what sounded like pre-rehearsed hash on Finemann and how science has done more for humanity than all this touchy-feely mythological/Jungian crap, that is. Then I bolted.

We headed out for food after Crispin extricated himself from well-wishers—to Outback, this time, for much tasty meat. I never did hook up with the group again after that; Jonathan gave me a ride back to the Convention Center, and I’m not sure where the folks who took the taxi ended up. They probably slipped into the Cosplay Masquerade for the last few hours, but I was running out of fuel by that point. I headed back to Riverside around 10 or 10:30 p.m. I would have preferred to say bye to Nomi and Caddy in person, but I e-mailed them this morning to explain my sudden disappearance.

* * * * *

Apropos of nothing:

Anime Expo 2004 was my first in-the-flesh exposure to cosplayers. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I think I was afraid that they’d all be a bunch of latent schizophrenics, looking for an excuse to shuck their real-life personas. Instead, I saw a lot of people—firmly grounded in reality—who put a lot of time and effort into their outfits, usually to great success. These were real labors of love. As somebody who can’t make things, and has no firsthand flair for tangible artisanship, I was quite impressed.

Should I have taken photos of male cosplayers, too? Undoubtedly. But I was surrounded by cute cosplay girls, and I only had half a disposable camera’s worth of exposures for the entirety of my AX experience. I got my comeuppance when I had my film developed at Rite-Aid this afternoon. A significant number of the prints came out so dark and grainy as to be of no practical use. It probably didn’t help that it was an old disposable camera, the first half of which I’d used months ago. It probably just went through too many variations in heat…knocked around a little too much…

I was surprised at how many people I ran into whom I knew: close to ten former students of mine and friends of theirs from Notre Dame; a girl who teched my last undergrad show at UCR back in October of 1999 and into whom I recently ran at somebody’s graduation party; a guy from Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga who took an SAT test-prep course with me a few months back; and a girl from the UCR Chamber Singers, with whom I shared one of those “what the hell are you doing here?” looks as we encountered one another at the entrance to the Cosplay Masquerade.

This weekend was an expensive one, between parking, food, and merchandise—but at least I didn’t have to pay to get in, and I figure that saved me about $45. And really, I didn’t go on a spending spree: I bought the box set for “Niea_7” and the first DVD for “R.O.D. TV,” but I worked on those, so I feel justified. Heck, I took my sweet time to finally fold and buy “Niea_7”; it’s been out for a few years now. I picked up the first two issues of the “Hellsing” manga, the purchase of which I can try to justify through similar (though weaker) reasoning: I worked on the anime, thus I deserve the manga. And the plush hamster from “Spirited Away” was for my ex-girlfriend, so that doesn’t count. Really, the only guilty pleasures were the two Nintendo-themed t-shirts I picked up and the “Zatoichi” DVD. To watch some of the con-goers shop, I was the comparative model of restraint. I also ended up with a variety of free swag from the exhibitors, mostly of the pens-and-keychains ilk, but the most notable of which was a “Millennium Actress” poster. I’m going to hang it up in the empty spot I never filled between my posters for “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “The Gift”.

Posted by patrick at 07:48 PM | Comments (4)

July 03, 2004

Anime Expo's coming up!

I'll be getting on the road to head down to Anaheim for my first anime convention in about seven hours, and I'm pretty excited. I was up until the wee hours of the night last night familiarizing myself with the list of events, workshops, screenings--and then waded through a few Anime Expo message boards to get the general pulse of the participants.

I've figured out a bare-bones itinerary for myself: From 1 to 3 p.m., I'll attend a discussion held by a company in the process of building an anime-style mecha. I'll have to slip out early because from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., I'll be participating in a voiceover actor panel, moderated by Taliesin Jaffe! After that I have nothing planned until 7 p.m., when I want to attend a discussion on Japanese-to-English adaptation, followed immediately by a screening of the documentary "No Need For Cosplay". Then I have about an hour and a half to myself before a screening of the first few dubbed episodes of "Ikki Tousen". I'll be leaving around midnight, unless I get a second wind and decide to get comfortable and sit through the late-night open-mic karaoke.

For people who are coming from a distance, this weekend is a major undertaking--and one they've prepared for exhaustively and lovingly. I'm lucky in that I'm close enough to Anaheim to just zip over for a day. My one regret is that Crispin Freeman's workshop on mythology is on Sunday, but maybe I'll go back for it--especially if I can shanghai one more industry day-pass.

I'll do some shopping (and perhaps some industry mingling) during my chunk o' free time after the VO panel, but for the most part, I'm just looking forward to taking in the atmosphere. My anime VO work has been in a vacuum, in a certain sense. I don't run in circles where I get a chance to bask in the enthuasium of the genre's fans. I'm one of those people who definitely reacts to a crowd's energy (whether good or bad), and there promises to be a bunch of good vibes coming from the Anaheim Convention Center tomorrow.

Posted by patrick at 03:20 AM | Comments (0)

Recent movie watching...

I bought and watched the second DVD of "Texhnolyze" yesterday (a mere $19.99 at Suncoast, and it came with a neat 3-D insert of the cover art). I had the basic idea of the plot when I was recording my Onishi lines, but being able to sit back and get the whole story is a real treat. I'm not suggesting that everything is magically obvious now that I'm hearing it in English--far from it. But it sure helps. And it's very gratifying to hear my scenes as conversations now. For Onishi, I've usually been the first person in the conversation to record my lines, so I'm not getting to play off of another actor/character. I always marvel that the directors are able to piece together realistic sounding dialogue from lines recorded at totally different times. No minor skill, that.

I know what's going to happen in "Texhnolyze," and I'm still impatient for the next DVD to come out. I figure that's a pretty good testimony to its story.

I also bought Bruce Campbell's "Bubba Ho-Tep" for a mere $4 (used and half-off) at Hollywood Video a few days ago, and finally watched it this afternoon. It's a fun little film--and it stays true to one of the basic tenets of comedy: Trying to be funny usually isn't funny. By treating a funny situation seriously, you'll get the humor from the resulting dichotomy. "Bubba Ho-Tep" won't win any awards, and it could stand to be shorter than its 90-minute run-time, but it's worth renting just for Campbell's crotchety rants as an aging, forgotten Elvis, moldering away in a Texas convalescent home.

Posted by patrick at 02:47 AM | Comments (3)