Larvae's Super Zeroplate Good Life Express

Closing Up Shop

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:46:27 GMT

I think this is going to be my last LJ post as I try to streamline how many blogs and community sites and update portals I keep up with. I've enjoyed following everyone's updates and hope that the same has been true for people with mine, but I've got to try and focus writing and updates so that I can get the done. Having SO many outlets tends to lead to decision paralysis.

So for those who are interested, the following are still good ways to keep up with Larvae and by proxy, me:
Zeroplate.com - the Larvae website that has lots of updates now
Zeroplate on Flickr - my Flickr page with pictures from Larvae travels
Ticketblog - the Ticketblog that I've linked to before
Myspace - the Larvae Myspace Page
LarvaeTV - the Larvae YouTube channel (with performance videos and soon more of our music videos!)

That's still too many, isn't it? Thanks for reading!

Moving - Free Stuff to a Good Home

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 19:28:32 GMT

I am moving across town and I need to divest myself of some things. I have a lot of fairly useful stuff that is free to a good home if you are willing to come and pick it up.

Emu Emax I Keyboard

Boss 16 channel line mixer

2 Drawer, low-profile Black filing cabinet

Large solid wood media shelf for CDs and DVDs

Large Hellboy Movie Vinyl Banner

2 brand new soccer balls

16 mm Projector and a handful of institutional film reels

Print Gocco printing system

If you are interested, shoot an email to mjeanes via gmail and let me know what you want and when you could pick it up. I have to have all of it out by the end of the month.

New Music

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:35:50 GMT

The new Portishead record kicks ass so far. I haven't heard a new record that I found really inspiring in a long time, but this one is it. It was time for them to change things up and they did, but man, it's pretty awesome.

In the spirit of new (and hopefully awesome) music...

Recording is just about finished on a pair of new Larvae works. The first is a set of slow, dubby tracks that work as a sequel to Monster Music. These are further inspired by Toho Monster Movies so expect more Godzilla videos and massive stomping bass. I used a lot of Godzilla source material this time, so these are really fun.

The second is a follow up to Dead Weight that continues along the path of mixing layers of guitar with the more typical Larvae production. Most of the melodies are coming from guitars and organs with this record which is weird because the melodies in Larvae songs have almost always been manipulated samples. What can I say, I'm trying something new?

I'm hoping that these tracks will all see the light of day through our friends at Ad Noiseam sometime sooner or later--well, at least sometime after I finish them up! We'll definitely have a batch of fun, heavy songs for playing live and a batch of melancholy (but still sufficiently heavy) songs for maybe just listening to.

Larvae Live at Nophest

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 04:49:13 GMT

I'm finally playing a show in Atlanta. It'll probably be a solo affair since Chris and I haven't had any time to get together and practice and whatnot (yes, we practice... sometimes.) I'll be playing as part of the Nophest which is a three day festival with lots of rock bands, electronic acts, djs, and other shenanigans. Details:

Larvae at Nophest
Saturday, April 19th
Doors at 12:30 PM Saturday, Larvae plays at 10 PM Saturday
$10 (includes beer)

We will be playing at the 166 Stovall location. There's a lot of details, so why not read them here: http://www.nophest.com/

I'll be playing at least one new song with a new video--something from the forthcoming Monster Music 2!!!

Why do we fail at Soccer?

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:21:11 GMT

A gang of us traveled up from Atlanta to Nashville yesterday to watch the US Men's Under-23 team lose a meaningless game to Honduras. The game was meaningless in the sense that both teams had already qualified for the Olympics and their positions in the Olympic bracket will be determined not by the outcome of this tournament, but by the nations' previous Olympic finishing. After eight hours on the road and six hours in the Tennessee Titans stadium, it's pretty clear to me why people don't give a shit about soccer in this country.

We don't take it seriously! Okay, so this tournament ended on the ridiculous anti-climax of a meaningless double-header. Why even set the tournament up that way? Surely this was something that was decided between CONCACAF and the USSF. How do you structure a tournament that is essentially over on a Thursday and then try to make an event the following Sunday exciting in any way? Not only did we give players like Adu and Spector back to their European club teams (why should they stay for a meaningless game?), we didn't even start the strongest 11 players who were still available. There weren't that many people at the game, but those of us who WERE there were certainly looking for the USA to step out with the best team and to try to put Honduras down. We continue to fail at balancing the priorities of our players who have obligations to their club teams--both MLS and abroad.

For one thing, the MLS season takes place DURING THE FUCKING WORLD CUP and during just about every other major worldwide event and qualifying season. Other countries just shut down and watch the world play out the most important event in soccer, but we continue to book the local league with teams who have their stars yanked away to compete in something that is inarguably more important.

For another, we field teams for competitive tournaments based on who is available, and as a result we don't go into places like the Copa America with any chance of holding our own. If the national team is a priority and if we take performing at a high level seriously, we have to keep the best players with the best chance to win together for these major international competitions.

We can't beat your mom! How is it that we still have trouble with teams like Honduras? Not to take anything away from them, but just in the grand scheme of things, how can a nation as big and resource-laden as ours have trouble fielding a roster of 20 guys to beat 20 guys from places like Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, and El Salvador? Sure, anyone who knows anything about soccer will tell you that the size or GDP of a country doesn't determine its success at soccer, but to the average American sports fan who might have an interest in soccer but isn't quite sure, the headline reads "USA loses to a country you can't even find on a map!" and that just doesn't help us to gain support.

We need to beat these teams, and especially with teams like Jamaica or Guatemala, we should be racking up some impressive, dominating wins. I watched all of the US U23 team's Olympic qualifying games and while we dominated possession in most games, we never really took control of games to put them out of reach early. It doesn't bode well for our chances against powers like Argentina when the only team we consistently even seem to try to beat in CONCACAF is Mexico.

We can't finish! Face it, the typical American sports fan doesn't want to see a defensive struggle in any sport. Most people would prefer to see a 108 - 97 NBA game than a 79 - 83 result. Soccer is a low-scoring game to begin with, but we seem to be particularly inept at developing strikers. Until we can consistently put the ball in the net (not from the PK spot,) we just won't rope in new talent and new fans because the perception is that the game is boring. In Sunday's match, I watched a Honduras team that had what seemed like a total of two shots on goal and about three actual moments of offense in 120 minutes of play. The reverse side of that was our complete domination of the game and our ability to keep the ball on their half of the field for almost every second of the playing time. All that, and we still couldn't muster one goal? We didn't impress anyone with any of these Olympic qualifying matches on the offensive side, and if we can't produce the occasional 5-1 result in a tournament like this, we're always bound to be playing in the shadow of teams that can.

We can't outdraw fans from Honduras at a home game! With Mexico, I understand it. There are tons of Mexicans or folks with Mexican heritage living in the US who flock to these games and are bound to outnumber us everywhere except maybe Alaska or Minnesota. But really, when we can't fill a stadium with more fans in Red White and Blue than fans of Honduras, we've done something wrong, and I think you can look at points 1-3 to see what that might be.

All in all, I had a fun time and the trip was great and I was glad to get to see the game, but I just felt a little cheated by the whole thing. When are we going to stop pissing on our fans by leaving the stars on the bench or at home? When are we going to go into these tournaments and show these other countries that we mean to beat them down (on the pitch!)? When are we going to develop some legitimate scoring threats and stop relying on Donovan or Altidore going down in the box? When are we going to stop broadcasting games where the entire crowd is seated on the half of the stadium that is directly underneath the cameras, thus giving the impression that the teams are playing in an empty building? Someone needs to wake up and start figuring some of this shit out.

2007 Films In Review

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 05:22:06 GMT

It's end of the year list time, hooray!

This has been a good movie year. People often like to hold each new year up against some banner year in film (especially geek film) like 1999 (Fight Club, The Matrix, etc) or 1982 (Blade Runner, E.T., etc..) 2006 gave those years a good run with films like Children of Men, The Fountain, and Pan's Labyrinth, but 2007 has been no slouch. It has been a great year for funny movies, in fact, and I think that's almost always harder to find than a great year for serious films.

My top list isn't an award prognostication or my attempt to list the best of anything; it's just a list of my personal faves. If you see one or two things on this list that you like, chances are good that you should give the rest a try.

1. Juno - This may be sitting on top only because it is so recent in my mind, but it's the one movie I've seen this year that I wanted to see again imediately. Ellen Page is so good in this, and her character is so likeable that I wish that we'd get a series of sequels to this instead of an endless stream of Saw or Spider-Man flicks. The movie is cute and warm without ever falling into sentimental schlock. The teen dialogue is a little stylized so it sometimes sounds like the film is taking place in a hightened alternate universe, but just slightly. I can't recommend this one enough.

2. The King of Kong - I love it when a documentary can end up on my favorites list. I try to see a couple documentaries in the theater each year and this year brought the best one I've seen in a long time. This is the perfectly constructed sports underdog film but it happens to be about guys playing competitive Donkey Kong, and it happens to be real. I took a group of friends to this one and It was one of the best times I had at the movies all year.

3. The Boss of it All - I didn't catch this during its seven day theatrucal run in Atlanta, but I rented it just as soon as I could and it was great. I never know what to expect from Lars von Trier, and even then, an office comedy was completely out of left field. This film was so dryly funny that I was always surprised at how much genuine laughter it was eliciting. The experimental camera techniques lend the film a strange "wrongness" that takes pretty ordinary conversations and renders them hilarious. I loved this one and I hope von Trier has more of this kind of stuff in him.

4. There Will Be Blood - seeing the premier of this one with PT Anderson in attendance probably hightened the experience, but I still expect this to hold up over time. It's such a simple story with a small cast, but it's incredibly well shot, acted, directed, and scored. People who want a not-so-pleasant but riveting and sophisticated film to watch this winter probably won't find a better film than this one.

5. No Country For Old Men - The Coens are back and this film was so solid that I'm willing to forget that the last two they directed even happened. I love the silence in this, and the way that the film plays with the same kind of dread-building that drives THERE WILL BE BLOOD. The two films are really different but they both share some tonal qualities and they both feature some ruthless human monsters that are just plain fun to watch if you are a fan of movies.

6. The Cold Hour - It's probably not going to show up at your local theater (ever) but this was a smart, well-designed, wonderful sci-fi flick that kept me completely engaged through a string of pretty familiar concepts. There's maybe nothing completely new about this film other than the refreshing care with which it was made and the point of view of its protagonist, but it's wonderful to be able to see a fully realized and well-executed sci-fi film in these days of easy CGI shitfests. I saw a handful of Spanish films this year and this one edged out the rest. Movies from Spain are suddenly on my radar in a big way.

7. Grindhouse - I liked Planet Terror and loved Death Proof, and with the trailers and everything thrown in, this managed to be greater than the sum of its parts. I'm not a blind Tarantino or Rodriguez follower, but they both scored big points with this one. The double feature format was fantastic and I wish it had done well enough to warrant a series of similar events. Maybe one day we'll get a double bill of Machete and Don't... a guy can dream.

8. Son of Rambow - I imagine that this film will come out sometime around the release of the new RAMBO flick, unless Stallone's people see that as something that will confuse ticket buyers. I wouldn't put anything past your average Rambo fan, honestly. This was a great film though, full of fun and heart and playful energy. I've compared it before to Danny Boyle's Millions and I think that's still probably the best reference point. I am anxious to see how this does when it is finally released because I think it's the kind of film that can connect with a lot of people, but it's a Brit-made comedy and sometimes the accent alone is a death sentence in the USA.

9. Hot Fuzz - I'm officially on the Edgar Wright bandwagon, and I'm okay with that. Despite the fact that this film was mis-sold to the US audience, it did pretty well here and it warranted a quick DVD release and a surprisingly quick double dip with a 3 DVD set a few months later. I think you have to chock this up to the legacy of Shaun of the Dead which seems to have very quickly reached a certain level of cult status. I'm glad this is all working out, because it means Wright and his merry band of players will get to keep brining us movies at a pretty regular interval. I don't know if Wright is always going to be the guy making the comedic riff/homage to a particular style of film, I hope he tries something else (Antman would be cool!) but if I can offer this suggestion: take to the stars. We need an Edgar Wright sci-fi film, there's no question about it.

10. The Host - I had a hard time picking between this film and a few others that I really liked this year. This spot could have easily included the very simple and touching Once or the thoughtful and funny documentary What Would Jesus Buy? or a double feature of Knocked Up and Superbad which were both funny and will warrant repeat viewings. But I had to stick up for the Korean monster movie that had more clever moments and more attention to character detail than probably any other giant monster movie in decades. The creature design is fantastic, the gags alternate between funny and scary, and the story focuses as it should on the people, not the cars, buildings, or streets that the monster tears up. This will probably get sequelized over and over in Korea as it seems a lot of Asian cinema works that way. I guess they learned it from us: take a great idea that makes a few bucks and retread it over and over until it starts losing, then try something else. Maybe a sequel to The Host will be just as great, I hope so, but even if it isn't, I loved this movie and would be proud to own it.

Media Medusa

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:18:07 GMT

Is it bad form to follow up on a woman's teary-eyed explanation that she was inspired to sing by the passing of her daughter with the praise "you all killed it!" One more reason not to watch television: Clash of the Choirs. I just sat through a segment where Patti Lebelle and a group of tone deaf mutants murdered "We Are the Champions." It was a painful reminder that TV needs writers, because even canned laughter is better than this shit.

Instead, anyone with the option should check out Juno this weekend. I'm still compiling my year end favorites list, but I really doubt that another movie is going to knock Juno out of my top 5.

On the subject of music, it was refreshing to read my main man Simon's feelings about the pitfalls of wanting to be a career musician. Simon and I seem separated at birth sometimes, though I must admit he wound up with the dashing good looks and I was left with the ability to cultivate facial hair like a yak. I long ago decided that making music ought to be fun, and that anything that took away from that ought to be left behind. Most of the time, that means money.

I was reading an article in this week's Creative Loafing and I was reminded of how the game of peddling music runs hand in hand with actually making it for a lot of folks. It's especially rampant in the hip hop world, where success stories often start with a guy pushing mixtapes or homemade CDs out of a backpack or car trunk. I absolutely respect the world ethic, but I despise the pusher mentality.

It dawned on me at some point that I am not good at peddling. I have been there--I used to sell CDs out of a bag on campus to anyone who would pay me any mind. It wasn't fun, and I wasn't great at it, but I managed to unload enough of them (with everyone else in the band) to make back the production costs. Once that debt was paid though, I never tried to force that disc on anyone again. Not that I didn't believe in the music; I certainly did at the time. I just realized that I'm not a salesman.

My approach to selling music is probably one of the major reasons that my label wasn't really successful. I am good at writing band bios, press releases, one sheets, and the like, and I'm good at being organized, keeping a list of places to send promos, following up on that, clipping reviews, updating the website and so on. What I really always sucked at was getting on the phone with a distributor or radio station and trying to convince them to give a record a chance. It always came off as so desperate to me. My philosophy was always: "Here's a record. I love it and believe in it. I hope you like it. If you do, I have more of them, if not, please give it to someone you think might enjoy it." In fact, that was more or less my exact sales pitch. I could never muster the kind of "this is a ground breaking work of next level shit that you MUST hear because it's HOTTTTT!" kind of hyperbole that I see all the time.

For one thing, without a reference point, there's no reason anyone in the world should listen to a record they get in the mail unless it's out of sheer curiosity. I used to run a label, I KNOW this to be true. I listened to scores of demos for years until I finally just started to throw them in the trash unless they had some amazing cover letter, artwork, or song titles. Usually, the records that passed that test were still disappointing as all hell. So without someone knowing my taste, there's no reason at all that they should believe me when I say "listen to this, I sent it to YOU specifically because I know what you sort of like and this should fit right in there." Maybe it was never obvious that I was selective about the people I sent discs to, but I was, because I hated being on the receiving end of a disc that had absolutely no relevance for my label.

And of course, radio stations and distributors and magazines are getting records by the van-load. See the jaded way that Pitchfork writes about things that they LIKE and you'll see how easy it is to get cynical about that perceived desperation on the other end of every package that comes with a note that says "please love me." Being a small label or an unsigned artist often feels a bit like being that pimply, fat dude with mismatching clothes who asks the class president and cheer team captain to the prom. You know you have almost no shot, but you go for it anyway because fuck, you believe in yourself and you see that she has a Ramones sticker on her 3 Ring Binder and that has to count for something, right?

Evidence

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:08:58 GMT

For those who asked, videos from my Atlanta preliminary battle and my appearance in the finals this year are now available from the Dr. Rheinhardt page here: Zeroplate.com/rheinhardt.html

As soon as the Atlanta Finals matches are encoded those will be added, along with links to a couple of Flickr pages with photos.

Thanks to everyone who has been supportive in this endeavor. Dr. Rheinhardt may be done battling, but he's just getting started with all of this crazy shit.

The Battle in Seattle part 3

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 03:04:44 GMT

Battle day was eventful in that it was spent mostly trying to navigate through Seattle in an uncharacteristic blizzard. The snow hit hard right around lunchtime and it didn't really let up all day. This was fun for those of us from the ATL on a conceptual level, but it really just meant that everything moved much more slowly and when that happens, I tend to get flustered.

After an aborted attempt to get into the Science Fiction Museum, we wound up looking for a place to eat. The not-stellar but not-bad Greek pizza we found on Queen Anne would have to suffice. Matt and I were not suprisingly the first to arrive at the venue which was a little room with an ajoining bar that was all underneath a bigger art and music space. It seemed considerably smaller than Chop Suey, the home of last year's battle, but it turned out to be just about the right size.

Kris, the organizer, runs his event with a pretty solid schedule and lots of intentional breaks in the action. This is done in part to facilitate smoke breaks, but it also lets him schedule "showcase" performances by laptop battlers from the past who get more than just three minute blocks to show people what they can do. I like the idea a lot, but it might not ever work in Atlanta unless we could get people to take the set up thing seriously and unless we could get a stage wide enough to set up 8 computers at once. Since all of the battlers were set up at once, they could throw in short (or not-so-short) sets by Vytear, Kris, and Vincent Parker, along with the MC who's name I never really caught.

I drew a 2 for the first round meaning that I was going to play second. I asked "does this mean I'm playing second in the first battle of the first round?" and Kris answered that I was just playing second in the round total. Going in, I had imagined that the format was going to include a round-robin style first two rounds where the six contestants would be split into two groups of three, play each other, and the top guy from each group would be in the final. This was NOT in fact, how the battle was set up.

The first two rounds had no real competitive, head-to-head element to them. Each person picked a number to determine order and then we just played one after another until a break. It kept things moving really quickly, but it was a little confusing after coming from the more head-to-head elimination style tournament that we do in Atlanta (and that they did in Finals past.) This whole format thing would play a big factor later on, but more on that in a bit.

I opened up the battle with my epic metal track (which has no name, by the way.) It was the same opening track I played in Atlanta and it got just about the same response. I mean, the first guy (Cygnus, who competed in last year's final too,) was kind of doing spazzy IDM or something and people were sort of trying to get into it, but you could tell that it wasn't connecting 100%. Then I stepped up in the wizard robe, cranked the new intro to my set with samples from my Black Hole storybook record, and blasted into two and a half minutes of carnage. There was a thunderous kind of uproar and applause and I walked off the stage (and accidentally left Live playing on and on and on.) I knew that track would kill, and it did. I had litterally a dozen or so people stop me after that round and tell me that they loved it. That's always a good sign.

We all waited through the rest of round one and through the break and then subsequent showcase set and I tryed to figure out where the competition was at. At that point, I'd seen everyone play once, but I had really no idea who the frontrunners were. I mean, I should have known that I was ahead by a mile (because I was) but I tend to downplay my own effectiveness as a performer while I'm in the thick of it. I pulled the fourth spot in round two so I figured I had lots of time to get set up.

Since there were no scores released at the end of the first round, no one knew who was officially ahead in the judges tally. This was the first really fatal flaw to this format that I didn't recognize until the whole thing was over. The scoring piece was cool because people didn't have to simply win or lose, and you could get credit for being good even if someone else was just better. I'm not sure specifically how the judging worked--what kind of numeric scale was used or what the categories were or anything like that--from talking with Matt, it sounds like it was kind of nebulous. So going into the second round, I felt like I was in pretty good shape, but there was still NO ONE that had truly been eliminated. As I learned, this was a problem.

I absolutely wanted to rock the Oompa Loompa track when it was most needed, because I think it's honestly an unbeatable thing (unless someone out there is doing something zanier and in over half a dozen battles including two nationals, I haven't seen it) but I also owed it to people to get it on video. My girlfriend hasn't seen it. People at my office were curious. I really wanted to capture it and I knew that the second round was my only GUARANTEED performance left, so I went for it.

There was a slight panic as I took the stage and noticed that the USB adapter on the end of the DDR pad cable was missing, but I ran outside (in my robe and oompa gear) then grabbed my suitcase, tossed through all of it onstage and found the adapter. That turned out to work in my favor because once people saw the DDR pad, they absolutely wanted to see it work. I plugged it all up, fired up GlovePie and went to town. Performing that track is incredibly physically draining but it gets a massive response. Like the first track, when I was done the place erupted. It always makes me smile when I can connect with an audience like that. I know the song is silly and costume is sillier and that it's a big gimmick and it's not a serious song at all but it totally fucking works at entertaining people. Once again, I think I had clearly raised the bar to a point where no one (including me) could jump over it again for the evening. I waited through the rest of the battles and the next showcase and I felt like I was a lock for the final, since almost everyone else was petering out.

Kris tapped me on the shoulder and said "congrats, it's you and Dave Pezzner in the final" and it was as people had told me it would be. In talking with my friends, they all thought Pezzner would be in the final with me because he got the best reaction from the crowd. He definitely had some of the best quality sound of any of the other competitors and he wore a silly outfit and junped around and acted the fool (like me!) so I figured that was fine.

So with my highest energy track gone and my best gimmick gone, I had the blindfold trick left which is not only a tough thing to pull off but also a nod to the world of competitive DJ battles where guys do stuff like that as a big middle finger to their competition. I lost the coin toss so I had to go first, and that was fine. I asked the audience for a scarf and someone threw me a Seattle Supersonics scarf so I tied it around my head and I heard some "oh no he didn't" kind of mumbling. I felt pretty good about that. I then launched into my ode to 8-bit fantasy games (something I call "Dungeon") and it went pretty well. I fat fingered a couple notes and didn't have as much energy as I would have had if I'd been able to see, but I always figured that the blindfold would really sell it. When I was done, again, it was pretty raucous and I walked off stage as Pezzner asked the audience for underwear (since I'd asked for a scarf.) It was a funny way to try and upstage me, but then when NO ONE threw him underwear, it was like DUD. I wanted to oblige so I dug a pair of my dirty drawers out of my suitcase and thre them on top of his soundcard as he was starting be he didn't see that.

I watched Pezzner from the side of the stage he was on and standing four feet from him, I felt like I surely had this competition in the bag. He was playing a track that consisted of four completely mixed wave files and his performance was limited to turning them on or off, adding or removing an effect, and doing jumping jacks and dancing while the computer did it's thing. This was a little insulting to me because it's the worst kind of laptop performance--one where the spectacle is completely independent of the music. You know, people like to see guys with guitars do chicken dances and crazy theatrical stuff, but those guys are always STILL PLAYING THEIR INSTRUMENTS while they are doing that shit. This guy was hitting play, stepping back, and jumping around. Fine.

As can probably be deduced from the tone of this entry, when they called us up to award the trophy, it went to the local hero, Pezzner. Was his set entertaining? Absolutely. While I've never thought that was ALL that mattered in one of these contests, I do appreciate that it's a large part of the equation. Was his music interesting? Sure, it was a good mashup of mindless dance music, done well, and with a lot of crowd-pleasing energy. Was there anything about it that I liked? No, not at all. And that's fine; that's the beauty of a battle with different styles and voices. Still, I was a little dumbfounded that I lost to a guy who was barely interacting with his instrument, and was playing the role of party dj/jester to the local audience more than anything else. Props to him though--he definitely knows how to keep people moving and that counts for something.

So back to that format business--the thing I would point to as my excuse if I wanted to whine about losing. See, without knowing who stood where going into the second battle, everyone had to treat the second round as if they had one loss in a double elimination battle. In a double elimination format, if you're in a position with a win in your pocket, you can take a chance with a lesser track in the second round knowing that you can make up that one loss later if you need to. This encourages risk taking and gives the battle added dynamics. It also means that people can work their way up to their best tracks rather than blow them out at the front end.

I treated the second round as a knock out round because I didn't know any better. Now it could be argued that I should have known that I was a mile ahead after my first track, but again, unless you have that sixth seed in the round, you have no idea what kind of madness someone else is going to unleash. As it turned out, Pezzner and I were probably the front runners all night, with me in the lead until that final battle. Oh well.

What the loss really boils down to is the fact that I didn't employ the right strategy. It's not the format that is the problem--it's the way I approached the format. In a way, I felt like the format let the whole competition down a little bit because I think if you asked anyone in that building, almost every one of them would have told you that one of my tracks was the highlight of the night. And I don't say that to beat my own drum--I literally lost count of how many people told me EXACTLY that. I had lots of Seattle folks tell me 'we're locals but we thought you won.' As I was on the phone with my girlfriend after the battle, sitting on the slushy steps of a closed restaurant watching the snow turn to rain, I was interrupted so many times by people leaving the battle saying "hey man, you were robbed" or something to that effect that I eventually just had to tell Amber I'd call her back.

I had three of the six judges tell me the picked me in the final too, which was weird and kinda got me wondering how the scoring worked. Then, one of the judges who certainly didn't pick me in the final felt the need to explain his decision to me. He talked to me without me asking for him to, about how the order I played my tracks in is what lost it and how if I'd played the Oompa Loompa song in the final, I would have killed him. You know, this is basically the same as asking to see the chef at a restaurant only to tell him how he can improve his recipie. Did I fucking ask for feedback? No. Do I care at all about the reason why some dude thinks I shouldn't have won? No. It's a game, there are parameters and one of those is judges and whatever baggage they bring to the event. I'm happy to go down within the parameters of the event, but I'm gonna go down swinging.

I wasn't too broken up about losing--the prizes would have been nice but superfluous. The trophy was cheesy but fun. The title would have been the best part of it, but you know, I know that I was the best performer there that night and that I just made a miscalculation about the game. This happens in sports, and I'm cool with that. I think people who aren't into sports have a harder time understanding that cause they want to supremacy of art and content to win out over things like arbitrary rules, formats, and judging criteria. I think those are the folks who resisted the laptop battle concept from the beginning in Atlanta, and that's okay. The epilogue to this story is that I still have a successful career with Larvae. I still have tracks that I didn't even play at this battle that kill. I still have chances to work with amazing artists like Shadow Huntaz and to tour and to do all the things I did BEFORE any of this battle business. Would I liked to have won? Sure. Did I need to? You tell me. ;)

The Battle in Seattle part 2

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 18:19:32 GMT

When we got to Seattle proper, we met up with Colleen and her Seattle-based friends for a wonderful dinner at a Thai place. We watched cats act a fool and then called Kris, the battle organizer to get directions to his place. Since Kris had to work at 9:30 and we were still conversing at that point, we wound up heading over to the bar that Kris spins at.

I immediately recognized Cygnus in the bar so we pulled up seats and had a few drinks with Mr. Andersonic, Dev79, and Cygnus until everyone decided to take it to the dancefloor. It goes without saying that I don't spend a lot of time in bars, clubs, and pick up joints. In the past, I've had my share of nights out at clubs but those nights never involved drinking (for me) and they never involved people taking cell phone pictures of themselves while trying to grind to Fergie tracks. It's funny to watch the convergence of narcissism and the human mating ritual in a space like this. People were clearly trying to impress the opposite sex, but they were almost more worried about capturing the experience with 240x320 pixel pictures and texting the results to people who couldn't make it.

Kris Moon is an awesome club DJ, and I can say that even knowing that I hated 99% of the music he had to play. And I LIKE pop music! We were at the club until last call which is a benevolent 1:30 in Seattle. The night wound down at Kris' house where we were met by Jason Carr, DXM, and Vytear, a case of PBR, and the obligatory herb. That's usually not my scene, so I just tryed to hang for a few minutes before retiring to bed upstairs. I got to sleep on a huge air mattress and even though I could feel myself slowly sinking into it like a sausage in a warm bun, I didn't mind because it was 5 AM Atlanta time and I was ready for the sandman.

The Battle in Seattle part 1

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 18:49:28 GMT

It's a good thing that i don't pay much mind to omens and portents because the way our journey started out would have been enough to set a sensitive person off. Matt was an hour and fifteen minutes late getting to my place which put me in a foul mood. I had been up until 4 packing, looking for bag of PSP games, trying to get the internet to work at my apartment, and trying to convert avi files of Flight of the Conchords to MP4 files. only one of those four activities was successful, so with 4 hours of sleep, i was grumpy, hungry, and we were runing late.

We managed to make the flight just fine but it was one of those raes where i was looking at the clock every three minutes to figure out how close we were going to cut it. The first flight to Houston was fine, although it felt very strange to be flying into Houston and to know that i was NOT getting out to see Amber.
The flight to Seattle though was another story. After we were all on board, the flight attendant called for a passenger to gather his belongings and basically get the fuck out of dodge. I wondered why. Then, despite the in-flight magazine's promise that we'd be treated to "Stardust" (a film i really want to see,) we had to sit through the recent version of "Hairspray." If i am going to watch "Hairspray" please let it be with Ricki Lake and John Waters. Finally, someone else asked the question that i guess you never want to hear on a plane "is there a doctor on board?" The trip just wasn't going well at this point.

TBC

Wish List

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:52:38 GMT

I know that some of these may be long shots, but here's what I really want for Christmas this year.

Retire the word "douche" as a pejorative.
It was funny for a while, I'll admit. There were a few good derivatives and variations, but when Saturday Night Live has made a skit out of the use of the word "douchebag" as an insult, you know that the terms has lost its value. This always happens; it's not an internet-related phenomenon although the internet probably helps us to burn out words more quickly now. There are so many creative ways to refer to someone as a tool to clean a dirty vag that I'd just like people to give that a shot. A few of my favorites that I utter often when driving (to my knowledge, these are MJeanes originals but you are free to use them:)
- Fuck Nut
- Dumptruck (a cleaner version of Dumb Fuck that is equally fun to say)
- Shit-Corn (words should paint a picture!)

Teach people not to text during a movie.
The pre-show warnings focus on keeping the audience quiet. I think those are mostly working and I hear far fewer cell phones in theaters now. The new evil is people flipping open their phone to check for text messages, emails, and who knows what else. Maybe these folks really don't know how distracting this is. Maybe they really don't know how homicidal this makes me. I think they just need to learn how even a small source of light affects an otherwise dark room. If you can't go 2 hours without checking your goddamn phone, then do us all a favor and download the fucking movie from a torrent and watch it at home. I fully support piracy if it will keep you people out of the theater.

End Black Friday.
Honestly, every year the retailers back their shit up a few more hours. What used to be a fun fluff piece on the Friday night news has now become the leading story for every news broadcast and every newspaper in America the day after Thanksgiving. I realize that shopping, bargain hunting, and getting into long lines is actually some folks' idea of entertainment. For those people, I recommend that Wal-Mart just set up some shoppertainment attractions in mid-size markets that turn all of the features of insane consumerism into games and rides. Make it like the Disneyland of shopping: it can open at 3 AM; have random and freqently changing specials; websites can dish out the details of their sales in some faux under-the-radar way; give people tickets to get into lines to get tickets to get vouchers to get in lines to purchase things--it would be great! Let the rest of us get on with our lives. I think that the huge (and growing thanks to the overblown media attention) focus on one day and one weekend of shopping is actually making retail a lot shitter for the other 364 days of the year when retailers figure they will just make up for the effects of bad prices and poor customer service by suckering people in to stores with bait and switch sales at 4 AM.

Stop reading and discussing Box Office take.
I love movies, I really do. I want to see good movies and every time I walk into a theater I expect to enjoy myself. Some critics that I read give off this kind of vibe that they go to movies so that they'll have something to rip on the next day. Ever read any of the reviews published by BoxOfficeMojo? They are truly perplexing--it sounds like the guy just doesn't even enjoy the art of film. But I think that good critics and most audience members go into every film hoping that it will be good--that it wil be worth the climbing price and declining experience of going to a theater. But this obsession with Box Office is really killing movies.

Movies are a business; I get it. Every film that comes out can't be made for 2 million dollars and feature stop motion animated dream sequences, mysterious interwoven plots, and long stretches of silence; I get that too. But in the same way that the media focus on Black Friday winds up feeding the machine and the madness even more, the same thing happens with box office reporting. The average American probably doesn't realize that on any given weekend there are more than 10 movies available in theaters. Not making the top 10 list (or top 5 in most cases) means that a movie might as well not exist. The validation of box office success winds up being so intimately tied to people's impression of a film that films that are never meant to make 30-70 million in their opening weekend are openly called failures before almost anyone gets a chance to see them. Sometimes the good guys win this game and a deserving film benefits from the herd mentality that is the only thing that sells tickets anymore, but more often than not we are all shuffled into megaplexes to see 8 versions of the same thing week after week, and when we don't go, they raise the prices to make up for the fact that we aren't going. It's absolutely counterintuitive but who am I to argue with economic forces? Can't we all just put the box office watch in the back drawer somewhere and talk more about the quality and meaning of films than the money their marketing campaigns has raked in?

Stop talking about the election until it happens.
There's a trend here in the things I want for Christmas this year, and its succinctly described as a divorce between the media and any sort of quantification or speculation about value. Sure, free speach, freedom of the press, whatever. Talking about candidates' chances in a primary so far in advance that the primaries actually start moving up on the calendar is absolute horseshit. We don't get coverage of issues or where people stand on them, we get coverage of their campaigns. It's the box office affect all over again: we want to neatly tie up everything into a list (irony!) or something that looks like a market. Mass media is so inept at getting to the heart of an issue that they default to meta-coverage like box office reports and candidate campaign statistics. It doesn't help anyone make an informed decision about anything other than what direction the herd is headed. The election itself is not a story until it happens--until then, the story is the issues and how candidates approach them. I used to think that if we made the election more like a sporting event, more people would get involved. What I think happens instead is that more people get involved in such a superficial way that we wind up in a dire place when the smoke clears. We can then watch Larry King and Nancy Grace break down every aspect of the mess for four years until it happens agin.

A new Meat Beat Manifesto record with Jack on vocals.
Yeah, I said it.

Dr. Rheinhardt Lives!

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:16:34 GMT

First of all, I didn't design this flier, so don't bug me about being so narcissistic as to put my mug this big on a flier:

Secondly, I'm going to be dropping a set of Rheinhardt tunes for the masses. It's a final prep for the National Laptop Battle and probably the last time for anyone local to check out the good Doctor until 2008. The set will be short-ish since Dr. Rheinhardt has thusfar only taken over my brain in 3 minute bursts, but I've got some new tracks including some new guest spots from Shadowhuntaz that should be fun. I also have hats.

More infos on this monthly event thrown by Nophi: SPARK!

Big Ups to Nophi for the invite.

Commerce

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:01:36 GMT

I have updated the Zeroplate Store with our newest product offering: an embroidered Maximilian Rheinhardt woolie hat! You can see a picture of it below. I changed our store interface over from CCNow to Paypal and so you can order easily with a PayPal account or create one in minutes. Shipping is included in all of the prices. I'm running VERY low on most of the Larvae releases so if there's anything you want, ask and I'll see if I've got any left. The hats are in stock though, and they are fun!

I've also added a Snocap download store where you can download good quality MP3s of some of our out-of-print or unreleased tracks. This stuff is all mastered and finished--no leftovers--just tracks that came out on an old vinyl release or that never found a home but should have.

Come on, it's getting cold--you know you want one!

On a serious note, with all of the recent discussion about the availability of music for free from torrents or Russians or torrents from Russia, this is basically my throwing my hat (ha ha!) into the ring of the new world of indie music commerce. I'm thinking that Dr. Rheinhardt tracks will eventually be available for download but that I'll try to sell neat-o merchandise to pay for things like midi controllers. Eh, it's worth a shot.

Victory!!

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:50:01 GMT

Whoo Hoo--I'm going to Seattle! To my West Coast peeps, if you can make it up the coast for the Laptop Battle Finals, it would be great to see you.

Massive thanks to the following:

Tiffany for making the modifications to my robe!
Bryan for the camera gear.
Alisa for the skirt!
Dream for laying down the dis tracks (and Citizen Green for being a good sport about it!)
All of the battlers for their effort and words of support.
The judges for sticking it out over a long night--thank you!
Matt for picking up the Laptop Battle torch in ATL--I couldn't do it anymore but I'm glad you are on it!
All of the people who shook my hand or said something nice--it's a blur to meet that many people at once but thanks to every single one who offered encouraging words!
Chris for representing!
Karen and Chris for coming out to something they knew nothing about!
Michael and John from my office for coming way out of their element to support!
Missy for the good vibes.
Amber for the Rhapsody track!
Cped for the Powermad track!

I'm excited to be repping Atlanta this year. I won't disappoint. Look for some Dr. Maximilian Rheinhardt produced tracks to be available outside of the battle sometime in the near future.

D-Day

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:18:19 GMT

Get ready. Those not already planning to go to Lenny's tonight, here is your last chance to make the right decision.

Laptop Battle Finals
Lenny's Bar
9 PM
TONIGHT!

T Minus One

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:03:18 GMT

Dr. Rheinhardt tomorrow @ Lenny's.

Just look at that crazy bastard!

Jesu

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 04:58:33 GMT

Holy shit--go see Jesu if they are coming to your town.

Even if you don't like Metal; even if you never liked Godflesh; even if you don't like music; even if you don't have ears--go see Jesu! Best show all year--and granted I haven't been to many shows this year, but I don't see how anyone would top this. Go see Jesu.

Unless they are playing on 10/18 and you are within driving distance of the Laptop Battle--in which case you are morally obligated to come support Dr. Rheinhardt. But otherwise, motherfuck, go see Jesu.

Little known fact: the name Larvae came to me as a spin on the Godflesh song "Mothra"--it's true!

Dr. Rheinhardt

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:15:20 GMT

10.18.2007

Dr. Rheinhardt Strikes Back

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:05:34 GMT

Please mark your calendars.

Thursday, October 18th
Atlanta Laptop Battle Finals
9 PM @ LENNY'S

My alter-ego, Dr. Maximillian Rheinhardt, will be in full effect--if you missed the first battle and only caught the mayhem on YouTube, now's your chance to see the carnage in action. 8 contestants, 3 minutes each, and only 1 Dr. Rheinhardt! The winner moves on to Seattle to represent the ATL.

BE THERE!

Fantastic Fest Day Eight

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:42:42 GMT

We had an initial plan to catch the Justin Lin comedy Finishing the Game at the early screening on Thursday and then to hit the road back to Houston in lieu of watching anything else. I figured that our chances of making into the closing night film would be slim without a multi-hour wait in line and at this point, I was ready to say fuck it to waiting. Also, there had been some advance buzz that Emile Hirsch was going to be at the theater, leading people to believe that the closing night film was going to be Into the Wild. I'll admit that I bit on this enough to think that the closing night might not be worth staying, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the whole thing didn't add up. I'm sure Into the Wild is a good movie, but it's not Closing Night of Fantastic Fest good. After all, last year the closing night film was the US premiere of The Fountain!

So we got to the theater around noon and there was already a line forming for the closing night film (showtime: 6:30). This seemed crazy to me as the longest we had waited in line so far was about 3 and a half hours. After the Sunday night wait where we spent a good chunk of the evening sitting on pavement only to be told that we weren't getting in to the midnight movie, I wasn't sure that a 6 hour wait for a closing night film that I had no idea about was a hot idea.

Well, I did have SOME ideas. Going into the festival, the #1 thing I was hoping to see was the Final Cut of Blade Runner. I didn't figure this would be closing night material, but I was hoping that the new digitally remasterd and fixed up film would make an appearance. No luck. Amber was anxious to see The Golden Compas but I kinda figured that wouldn't be at this festival even though it clearly fits the theme. The rest of the buzz was around three titles: The Mist, which I would have been happy if somewhat underwhelmed to see, Sweeny Tood, which I have almost no interest in but would have probably been fun, and Beowulf, which I am anxious to see in 3D but which I think probably requires a special projector which I'm not sure the Alamo has? They probably do--they have everything! So going into Thursday, those were the best guesses about what would make the 6 hour line worth the wait. Then there was an outside wildcard that made the idea of sitting on line for half th day seem sorta worthwhile. So after a 6 hour wait I give you...

There Will Be Blood
If you had told me going into this festival that I would have gotten to see the world premiere of the new PT Anderson movie, I would have gotten into one of those "NO WAY"/"WAY!" type Wayne's World arguments with you. This was one of my most anticipated films for the rest of the year simply because I love PT Anderson and the idea of him doing a period piece about an independent oil prospector in Texas seemed fascinating. And it was.

The film is a slow burn meditation on greed. It followed Daniel Plainview's oil man (played by Daniel Day Lewis in a role that's sure to be an early Oscar favorite) as he got into the oil business, built himself up, and eventually got rich off of the development of a particularly lucrative site in Little Boston, Texas.

I've tried to think of ways to talk about this film without getting into spoliers and I came up with the conclusion that I don't think that the story itself is really all that important to appreciating the movie. The plot details are actually pretty scant. The movie pits the oil man against a showy small town preacher and it works them both until they've utterly succumb to their own quest for wealth. It's a pretty fascinating and gripping piece of filmmaking, but it's not going to be for everyone.

The film is deadly slow at times--something I like as long as it's building and this one is certainly always building. There are a couple of rich relationships in Plainviews' life and they all get some screen time. He seems wholly devoted to his son and protective of him to the point of violence. He gains a half-brother about halfway through the film and he clings to the extension of family as something precious that he's been missing. He's also got a number of scenes going toe to toe with the young preacher and you can tell that all of these relationships are going somewhere bad by Johnny Greenwood's tense and omnipresent score.

True to the pace of the movie, when things do unravel, they do so not with a bombastic, frenetic climax, but with a slow stream of inevitable horror. I think that people are giong to have a hard time with this one but it's absolutely a movie that serious film people should see. It subverts a lot of what we might expect from a tense, dark and psychological contemporary drama but it ultimately works because the performances are so strong, the music is so unsettling, the cinematography is great, and because the whole thing feels not only entirely plausible but unforunately real.

We watched on as PT Anderson answered a few questions nervously and then we stayed for the awards ceremony in which much beer was chugged. There was an after party that promised even more beer, but we had already diverted from our origial plan to be back in Houston by nightfall, so it was time for us to hit the road. I knew after about 3 days of this festival that I wanted to come back next year and once the VIP badges went on sale, they started flying. I managed to snag one on the day they sold out by connecting to the Alamo's WiFi signal with my PSP and using their order form! So I'll be back next year--in the short lines where I don't have to skip movies to catch movies--and for anyone who's read these last eight posts has thought "man this sounds like it's up my alle," I'd recommend that you come and join me next September!</li-cut>

Fantastic Fest Day Seven

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 04:16:36 GMT

This was sex day. Or maybe better represented as SEKUSHI DEI!!! in my phonetic version of Japanese. We could have actually watched four movies in a row with sex as a central theme, but instead we opted only for two. We went out for lunch to a taco truck just down the road. It came recommended in the local paper and it was indeed really good, but I couldn't help but notice that it was clearly a gringo truck--a safe and presentable alternative to the really authentic and often sort of scary taco trucks we've seen everywhere. In fact, this truck might as well have been a restaurant in a building--it just seemed like the truck was the gimmick. Oh well, the food was still great and it reminded me that a 2-3 dollar taco in Atlanta is really a piece of shit compared to the same thing in Texas.

Sex & Death 101
This is the new film from the writer/director of Heathers which is a film I've always loved but which isn't nearly as subversive now as it was when it was released. It's funny how that happens. The same guy is responsible for the scripts for a number of really bad movies too, so it's not like I could count on this being a classic. Still, it had a huge amount of buzz before the festival because Patton Oswalt was here at the first screening and because, I guess, it has Winona Ryder.

I'll say this for Winona Ryder in this movie--she is clearly the best thing in the film! She's unbelievably hot in her wigs and gothy get up, and she plays a smart and confident character. I can almost imagine her character being the girl from Heathers all grown up. However, the rest of the film and the people in it didn't have nearly the same appeal.

The lead in the movie gets a list emailed to him of every woman he's ever slept with and every woman he will ever sleep with, in order. He thinks it's a gag at first but it turns out to be very real and very troubling. It breaks up his engagement. It sends him off on a massive poon hunt, and eventually, it forces him to cross paths with the possible serial killer known as Death Nell, Ryder's character.

The movie has some funny moments and most of them come from Patton Oswalt. The main character is a smarmy dick the whole movie and I think some of that owes just to the way the guy looks. There are people in this world that don't get a fair shake from me simply because I size them up as looking like smarmy assholes and this guy was one of them. I could be missing out on the best friends in the world but oh well. And anyway, I doubt it.

I would have probably loved this movie if it had been from the Death Nell character's point of view. Her story was interesting and the camera obviously loves her, but she disappeared for a big chunk of the film where we were waiting for our hero to sort his shit out. All in all I enjoyed the flick, but it's not something I'll probably see again.

Uncle's Paradise
This entry came from Japan's Pink Cinema industry. More on what Pink Films are can be found here: Pink Film. I've seen some Chinese films that are like this too--the basic premise is that the movie is sold as softcore pornography but within the context of including some sex scenes, the directors can do whatever they want. What sometimes results are films by talented or even visionary directors who couldn't finance their work any other way. As Lars the host of this screening pointed out, this is similar to the exploitation and b-movie world in the US in the 70s. Look up a list of people who directed films for Roger Corman and you'll be SHOCKED at who got their start in trashy movies.

So Uncle's Paradise is an excuse for a lot of onscreen sex, but the film is shot in such a way that the sex is almost never titilating. I can't imagine being the salaryman who rents this in Kyoto only to find that there's nothing jerk-worthy in the whole thing. Instead, the movie uses a lot of symbols and quiet character moments to comment on sex and relationships.

The central character is the Uncle, who is afraid to go to sleep because he has sex dreams about a dead woman that cause him to masturbate to the point of pain. At least that's the story he uses to bed a girl from the local pizza parlor. Uncle lives with his nephew who is involed with a local girl who has another boyfriend, so their paths cross often. For some reason, the uncle doesn't meet a woman in the whole film that he doesn't score with, but if you see the uncle not as an older pervy guy but as a standin for anyone who works like that, the story makes a lot more sense. Part of his routine when getting it on involves writing his name in red permanent marker on the woman he's with. This wound up being a really powerful and thought-provoking image that repeated and had some interesting repercussions.

Somewhere along the way we run into a giant squid, death from a giant spider, a trip to the underworld, and some melancholy reflection on the kind of malaise that seems to be driving everyone to fuck everyone else. I'm sure that most Pink movies aren't quite this artful or thoughtful, but this one was great. I'm now interested in checking out some more entries from this subset of Japanese cinema to see what other strange things people are doing.

This movie was preceded by a short about a woman who has a robotic food-processor-like device implanted through her abdomen and connected to her vagina. This short looked amazing and was creepy but not over-the-top with gore and shock tactics. I am saying that a film where a girl has a garbage disposal implanted in her reproductive tract for the purpose of eviscerating anything that goes in there (and yes, IT happens) wasn't too over-the-top. I know that this festival has severely melted my brain at this point.

The Sex Movie bonanza wasn't over. The Alamo does a thing not related to the Fest called Weird Wednesdays where they show weird old films that usually no one has seen or maybe even heard of. Tonight's film was a 1977 sex comedy (though it was mostly unintentionally funny) called The Carhops. Things like this make we want to live in Austin. While I wouldn't see myself in my normal routine making it out for a weird old 30 year old movie every time one showed at midnight, I can definitely say that stuff like this is exciting for me. I've been to a couple of the Silver Scream Spookshow events in Atlanta and they are cool too--definitely a good selection of films and a lot of effort put into the pre-movie entertainment. Still, that's only once a month and it's never going to be as out there as some of the things they do here.

The Carhops wasn't much to write home about, but there were probably a dozen great laughs that came from politically incorrect dialogue, antequated gender roles, and just bad production values. I enjoyed it thoroughly and I'll probably never see it or even hear about it ever again, unless it suddenly becomes vogue in Hollywood to start remaking these kinds of movies instead of horror and sci-fi fare. What a weird thought.

Fantastic Fest Day Six

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:42:27 GMT

Fatigue... setting... in. Must... watch... more... movies. Honestly, the days are getting long and despite our best intentions we are sleeping in until almost lunchtime because sheer overload of movies is taking a toll. It's not a bad toll, actually. Some people like to go to the beach and stare at the ocean for a week--I like to go to Austin and stare at movies. Still, like with any vacation, I'm getting ready to return to the normal world but there are still a few movies left to go. On day Six, we did this:

Moebius Redux
I was more familiar with the subject of this documentary than that of the last I went to, but I still don't know an awful lot about French comic artist Moebius. This film was heavily hyped with great reviews from the FF crowd who saw the first screening and from the fact that it won the best picture award at San Diego's ComiCon this year. Now I don't know what other kinds of films even played, so that award may not be saying much, but kudos anyway. I was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, this film was the victim of my festival fatigue. I wasn't ready for 90 minutes of subtitles and interviews of an aging comic artist, no matter how interesting it was. I kept trying to doze off but never managed any successful rest. I caught most of the film, though I spent most of the running time hoping it would end soon.

The movie isn't bad at all--though I wasn't as impressed with the ex-Kraftwerk guy's score as some. I also didn't really know why the movie was so well put-together and had so many great visual touches but the titles were all pixelated. Maybe the projector was downsampling an HD signal or something? I don't know--don't let that deter you. It's an interesting movie about an enigmatic guy, I just wasn't in the mood for it.

Timecrimes
We skipped the first showing of this one because I thought it had a stupid title and a worse tagline ("A trip from the present back into crime"?!?) but I'm glad we made the encore showing. This was easily the most-recommended movie out of the first batch of screenings and I can see why. Time travel movies are notoriously plagued with plots that just don't add up. It's hard to work through the causality chain to figure out movies with these kinds of plots, but when they work, they are really pretty exciting. Timecrimes absolutely works.

In fact, the only reason I didn't give this one a higher rating was that it worked TOO neatly. I felt like the movie was similar in a lot of ways to Primer, but where Primer required really careful analysis and even multiple viewings to dig out the sequence of events, this movie gives it to the audience in a very neat way. That's probably a good thing, because most people left Primer absolutely unclear about what happened in that film.

The story follows a guy named Hector who sees a woman stripping in the woods and runs off for a closer look. Saying much more would give away the beautiful thing about experiencing the movie, but it's safe to say that there's a time machine involved, and a recursive plot built around the time traveler trying to fix the future.

The Q&A after the film was great. The director, Nacho Vigalondo was a blast--cracking jokes and doing a funny dance and telling stories about the production that were really insightful and entertaining. I loved the film and I hope it gets some decent distribution in the states because it's something I can imagine a lot of people getting into. I mean fuck, if people have Donnie Darko viewing parties, there should certainly be an audience for Timecrimes which is a tighter, more interesting movie in a lot of ways. I'm looking forward to whatever Vigalondo has up his sleeve next. This one is definitely in my top 4 for the festival along with The Cold Hour, Son of Rambow, and Mirageman.

Fantastic Fest Day Five

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:02:35 GMT

I went to the first half of day five by myself, leaving Amber back to work on some school work. There wasn't a lot that I was super exicted to see during the day but I had nothing better to do, so I tried to check a few things out. I also got to drive around Austin a bit where I found a great store with vintage toys (Hog Wild) and a BBQ place that was recommended by my boss (Green Mesquite--it was okay). One of the coolest things about the festival has been the little sheet of tips for places to eat and things to see that was put together by Tim from the Alamo. I know almost nothing about Austin as I've only been here once before, so it's been great to follow the advice of a local who has great taste.

Blood, Boobs, and Beast
Here's an intersting experiment: Find any collection of photos on Flickr or some similar website that includes people in costumes. Pictures from Dragon-Con are good, but pictures from people's halloween parties or other similar events will work too. Without clicking on any of the photos, just look at the thumbnails and try to figure out which photos will have the most views. Without fail, the photos with women (no matter how attractive) in states of undress will ALWAYS be the photos with the highest counter numbers. Show a little leg, a little ass cheek, a little cleavage, and you can guarantee that the time you spent uploading the photo to Flickr will be rewarded.

That same impulse to look at anything tit-related apparently applies to the titles of movies in film festival programs, since this film had the highest number of views (by far) on the festival webpage. Not surprisingly, the number of people that followed through to actually see the film was not quite as impressive. This was a documentary about low-budget sci-fi and horror film director Don Doehler. I knew nothing about the guy going in but found his story to be fascinating.

Here was a guy who had a drive to create that wouldn't be stopped by people telling him that he couldn't make money or wouldn't be successful. He started out in the world of indie comics, really playing an important role in that world that I wish had been a bigger part of the film. After comics he decided he was going to make a movie so he did. I love that kind of attitude and I love even more the fact that he retained that outlook throughout his career.

His movies wound up gathering a cult following when they screened late night on local tv channels and while I feel sure that I've seen part of some of his early movies at some point, I can't say that I've ever knowingly seen an entire film. That's going to change now that I've seen this documentary. I imagine that's the best compliment I can give a film like this: it made me want to seek out more about its subject.

The Entrance
The less said about this film, the better. This was the only 2 hours of the festival so far that I wanted back. That's a pretty good feat considering that by Monday afternoon, I was looking at a total film tally in the double digits. This was a low budget, shot-on-video, supernatural triller that irritated me at every turn. It was loud instead of scary and full of thriller cliches that had me looking at the exit sign wondering how many people I would irritate if I crawled out and left. Imagine the Canadian Ethan Hawke squaring off against the Canadian Angelina Jolie in a lot of scenes of people driving from one place to another and you have a basic idea of why this sucked. It won some Canadian film awards--really, what are you guys thinking up there?

Maiko Haaaan!!!
Madcap Japanese comedy was just what I needed after the dour and tedious Canadian thriller. This was the product of the writer of Ping Pong and I had about the same reaction to this as I had to that one. I liked it but I found it hard to find a protagonist to follow along with. The Geisha characters are clearly the most sympathetic, but the movie is built around the insane energy of a hero who is never quite sure where he wants to go even though he's unstoppable at getting there.

Maiko Haaaan!!! was a lot of fun but like so many Japanese movies, it had weird shifts in tone that didn't necessarily come at the right time. It was hard to watch one of the Geishas pour her heart out during a serious scene only to have our hero bitch slap her in what was supposed to be a moment of comedy. It was also hard to watch people make poor decision after poor decision only to be eventually rewarded with happiness. There's a lot of very Japanese humor in this film, and people who aren't used to that might find it a little boring. I think the impression most people have is that Japanese humor is all over the top guys in diapers dipping their heads into pools of electric eels type stuff, and there's clearly some of that in this movie, but there's also some really deadpan humor that may not play as well if audiences are looking for comedy that's always running at 200 mph.

We capped off the night by having dinner with a friend we met at the Deliverance screening back in Clayton, GA and then we headed back to the theater for Fantastic Feud. The late night festivities included horror movie trivia, karaoke, and apparently a lot of drinking. We stayed through the trivia game which was a lot of fun and also a little creepy. Watching guys rattle off the names of films and directors that 99.99% of the population have never even heard of as if they were listed on cue cards was astonishing and weird. Where does all of this information reside in someone's brain? There was one guy who knew every director of every Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Friday the 13th movie without blinking. I often wonder 'who knows that kind of shit?' and now I have my answer.

Fantastic Fest Day Four

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:13:51 GMT

Sunday had an added special secret screening that Tim League from the Alamo had hyped up on the Fantastic Fest blog as a kind of Holy Grail of films to get for this festival. He also said it was a comedy and I heard later from someone that they thought it was asian so I felt pretty confident that it was going to be Dai Nipponjin. The good news is that I was right--that's exactly what the film was. The bad news is that we waited in line for 3 hours to get into that film and we were number 3 and 4 left out on the curb--no screening for us! Oh well, I'll see it eventually, it was just funny that it seemed like a lot of people were disappointed in the secret screening turned out to be and here we were waiting anxiously to see that exact film.

Wolfhound
Our first movie of the day was this Russian fantasy epic based on an old Slavic legend. There aren't enough sword and sorcery movies out there in my opinion. In the wake of the success of the Lord of the Rings, it seemed like every script with a sword in it was getting greenlit. A lot of those films did get made (Patfinder anyone?) but a lot of what made it to the theater was very kid-focused. I was pretty excited to see this film which was described as a Russian type of Conan. We can all use more Conan, right?

Wolfhound was a really solid fantasy epic, and I do use the word epic because it's easily a story that could have been made into two or even three movies. The story is so steeped in archetype and classic mythological story elements that describing the plot is a little unneccessary. Thankfully the performances in the film are all great and the action keeps showing up frequently enough for the film to ever get dull.

It was a little surprising that Wolfhound looked like a 100+ million dollar Hollywood film since I imagine the budget was quite a bit more modest than that. There was a time when the US film market absorbed lots of these kinds of movies, but most of them were terrible. I'd love it if studios could figure out that films like Wolfhoud have an audience as long as they are lovingly made. Right after the credits started to roll, someone shouted "Wolfhound Two!" and I agree.

Son of Rambow
Right after Wolfhoud we jumped in line for this one, which was one of the films I was most looking forward to seeing at this festival. Though it wasn't a secret screening, it was a rarity in that it was only scheduled to play once at the fest, so I was a little worried that we wouldn't make it in. I had been reading about Son of Rambow for a while and the reviews that came out of the Toronto Film Festival made it sound like one that I really didn't want to miss. Thankfully we made it into this just after all of the VIPs and I'm so glad that we did.

While Son of Rambow is probably a stretch when it comes to the festival's stated agenda of genre films, it did sort of feel like a natural tangent with its focus on two kids making their own movie inspired by a bootleg copy of First Blood. I felt like I knew where this film was going the whole time, but it was still a lot of fun to get there. The Hammer and Tongs guys (also responsible for the Hitchhiker's Guide film throw enough obstacles at these kids that the film has some real weight to it.

There's some fantastic kid acting and quite a few great gags in Rambow that made it one of my favorite films of the festival. The end of the film might feel a little manipulative to people who aren't ready to let a film reach in and pull at those heartstrings but if you liked Danny Boyle's Millions I imagine you'd have to like this as well.

Invisible Target
Since we couldn't get into the secret midnight screening, we headed for this Hong Kong action/cop film instead. This was on my list of things that I wanted to see before the festival started so it was a pretty decent consolation prize. As it turned out, this might have even been the better choice for a late night screening since we were both fading by midnight and word from Dai Nipponjin was that it was kind of slow.

I'm not all that up on my Hong Kong crime pictures. I know that there's a steady stream of these films hitting the Videodrome shelves every month but I just have a hard time figuring out which ones will be worth the time and which ones I should avoid. I now have at least one reference point: Benny Chan. If this movie is any indication of Chan's usual direction, then I'm sold. This was a pretty typical buddy cop movie with a lot of twisted details that elevated above anything like this that usually comes out of Hollywood. I can see why movies like Infernal Affaris get remade in the states--it's because US directors see asian cop films and realize that Hollywood is really awful these days at making interesting and action-packed crime movies. Maybe if we could stop ruining every cop film by trying to add a rapper or comedian to it, we might have a chance of coming up with stuff like this again.

The other thing that Hollywood is missing are the kinds of stunt people and fight choreographers that work on films like Invisible Target. Smart US directors are just going to Hong Kong to hire some of this talent, but even then, the results aren't always as organic and frenetic as what a movie like this offers. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and would recommend it to anyone who wants to see some ass kicking action playing out in service of a story that doesn't make you feel dirty for enjoying it.

At the end of our fourth day, I had seen more movies in half a week than I usually see two months. I could feel the fatigue starting to set in (especially when I got impatient with parts of Wolfhound despite the fact that it's nearly an hour shorter than those LOTR flicks,) but high octane kung fu cop action was just the thing I needed to get over the mid-festival hump.