Lupin III

While I'm on the topic of animation, might as well mention one of my all time favorite animes. Now, I know there aren't a gigantic amount of anime fans in class. Fine. However, the second introduction sequence to the second season of Lupin III is truly a work of art in my opinion. Keep in mind, this anime was around through most of the 70s and a bit into the 80s. I believe this intro is from around 79, so this shows how creative the sequence is. This stuff is all hand drawn. Zero computers. Just one more reason why I enjoy less technology in my art.

Innovative Music Videos

I know this is pretty popular topic for a post. Sure, there's plenty of awesome music videos that I have seen on this page, and I'm sure there will be plenty more to come. However, the other day, I couldn't help but notice the creative animation in the music videos of A-Ha. For those of you who aren't musically trapped in the 80s like I am, A-Ha was an 80s pop band that was most famous for their song and music video of "Take on Me." Hopefully that rang some bells with a few of you. Anyway, I do enjoy the animation to the video I just mentioned, and the music video to the song "Manhattan Skyline." I don't care if you guys hate the music (I'm used to hearing that from people), just figured I'd share some cool animation find. Sure, the CG film we watched in class today was powerful both in sight and mind, but honestly, I've never been big on CG. If you ask me, it's good to incorporate technology into movies, but not so much to the point where it loses it's magic.

Vintage Electronics

NOTE: I originally bought this on October 27.

Finally. I finally have something to blog about that I really want to actually blog about. So after leaving psychology today, (I'm totally failing that class), I decided to hop in my Saturn and head to GoodWill. Just a typical monotonous day, I thought, probably wasn't going to find anything good. And I was right.

There really wasn't anything there that I hadn't already seen. Except for one thing. About a week ago, I saw a Major Eight Track Stereo Multiplex just sitting on the shelf. The price tag was for twenty bucks. At the time that I discovered it, I didn't have the funds to buy it. Besides, it didn't even come with speakers.

Well today, I finally gave in to it's thirty five year old pleas for help, shoved out 20 big ones, and bought it. I also bought a Cheap Trick eight track for only twenty five cents. I was filled with great euphoria after knowing that I can add this to my multitude of vintage electronics. Everyone has quirks or weird hobbies. Mine happens to be vintage electronics. From Pong machines, to the Atari 2600, to Commodore Computers, I enjoy trying to find them all. Anyhow, onward with the telling of the eight track. After many a strange glance and annoying amused smirks from my fellow colleagues, I made it back to my room to gawk over my find. Seriously, screw my generation with it's twitbook and facetube in all it's social mobility.Eight tracks are where it's at. I would have done better growing up in a different era.

Now, I don't know if you experienced the eight track players much Leeper, because I don't really know if your generation used cassettes or eight tracks more. I'm probably gonna assume cassettes here, because eight tracks weren't exactly dependable. I do know that my parents' generation, the people who were teens in the 70s, did have these. As a matter of fact, my dad had one in his Chevy Nova back in the mid 70s. If it wasn't for the fact that someone stole it out of his car, I would probably be the proud heir of it today.

As you can see, this multiplex has both an AM/FM radio and a slot for eight track cassettes. It was manufactured by Major. I did some searching, and by searching, I mean googling the name of my eight track player to see what came up, and couldn't find a date for it. Judging by the wood grain and knobs, I want to say around the late seventies. I know it probably isn't a rare model. Then again, this is the first Major product I've ever owned. Most of my turn tables or boomboxes are produced by the major companies such as Sony, Panasonic, or Emerson.

The piece de resistance of this ancient beast has to be the way the face glows. While the glow looks blue in this picture, it is actually an awesome green color, similar to the color of Christine's radio. Below is how the selector for the eight track cassette looks in the dark. So yeah, I'm completely stoked that I finally have one of these babies. Now to find some decent speakers so I can annoy my floor with my music (I'm sure I do that already).

Halloween

It's finally that time of year again. Even though this holiday isn't celebrated by everyone, and it's meant for kids, I still enjoy the spirit of it. While I no longer bother trick or treating or even dressing up, I do still have one tradition. That tradition is to watch John Carpenter's Halloween. Not Rob Zombie's. John Carpetner's.

What can I say about this movie? This was easily the first slasher film that I ever watched as a child. Every year since I could remember, my family would gather around the old Zenith with either a rented VHS of this, or it would be airing as a special for tv. This movie manages to be creepy as hell every year for me without having incessant amounts of gore and violence. So following up my tradition, I waited until this evening to watch it, went out and bought some candy, and my 19th year of seeing this film began. And I couldn't have asked for a better time to begin watching it:

This was taken at about 5:30 this evening. Now it's 8:03, and the atmosphere is perfect outside. There's a brilliant half moon going. I would try and take a picture, but I don't know how well the camera on my iPod would pick it up. Use your imagination. Anyway, halfway through the page and I haven't even begun to talk about the movie itself.

Halloween was directed by John Carpenter in 1978, and you can tell. Like a lot of 70s films involving teenagers, there's always at least one scene where two of them are smoking a joint in someone's car, and then of course there's the trippy sex scene involved. The basis here is that a mentally deranged, borderline possessed killer known as Michael Myers has escaped his fifteen year imprisonment at a mental institution, and is loose in Haddonfield, Illinois. Sounds like a mindless plot, I know. But trust me, there's a lot more to it than that.

I really would prefer you guys to watch it yourself. If I try and explain it, it would sound dull and stereotypical of a 70s film. I don't know about you all, but I enjoy getting creeped out by old slasher films. The way I see it, if it left you creeped out, no matter how cheesy it was, it did it's job correctly. Unfortunately it's hard to get creeped out here because there's always people around in my dorm. While not a whole lot goes on (compared to a modern horror film), Carpenter's ever talented soundtrack sends chills down your spine, and you pretty much end up waiting in suspense for Myers to find his victims. If you haven't watched it, look into it. I know I've been enjoying it since I could hold a remote. A Happy Halloween to those of you who bother reading my B.S., and please actually try and do something fun other than wasting your time at a boring Halloween party or doing what I'm doing, which is sitting in a dark room, stuffing my face full of candy, and watching horror films from the late 70s and mid 80s.

'Shaky Camera' Movies

Today I had to do an interview project for a DMA class. Honestly, I didn't feel like doing it. I'm gonna be outta here in about 2 months, and I'm switching majors. So my mind set was "Argh, this is gonna be a pain today. Let's just get this over with." However, opting out a few problems, the process was smooth enough. While I was walking out in my group, a friend of mine was giving me some good recommendations to watch, we kind of got into discussion about the movies that are from the first person point of view of a guy holding a camera. We've all seen them. The best examples that I can think of today are Battlefield: Los Angeles and Cloverfield. There are both positives and negatives to shooting a movie in this fashion. The positives are that you don't have to worry about setting up as much equipment, and it can make some viewers feel like they're actually there. I honestly think there's a lot more downfalls to making movies this way. For one, it really seems unoriginal anymore to try and make it look realistic when it clearly is not. I don't see how having some guy run around shaking a camera improve the reality of it. Here's the real kicker: it makes people sick to their stomach. While I did sit through Cloverfield just fine, and don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing the plots of some of these movies, just the style, some people couldn't even focus on the plot or storyline because of the headache inducing visuals. Some people I talked to walked out of the theater half way through. But bottomline: I find that style to get on my nerves after a while, and if you want people to actually watch the movie, and if you must film it that way, take it easy on the shaking.

Fritz the Cat

So, I was sitting here kind of bored tonight, so bored that I began to wish I wasn't on a dry campus, when I discovered a movie called Fritz the Cat. Let's see here: it's animated (awesome), it came out in the 70s (once again, awesome), and it has a cult following (even more awesome). Of course, I was totally there. Fritz the Cat was one of the earliest, if not the earliest x rated animated films to come out. I personally love adult cartoons. I watch plenty of the mainstream ones such as South Park and Family Guy, but also love finding old ones like this. Wait, correction here.

The movie that I watched that lead me to Fritz the Cat was the sequel I watched a little bit of called The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat. Here's pretty much what happens: Fritz is a citizen of New York in the 70s and is a complete failure at everything. While his wife is yelling at him he lights up a blunt and 'explores his eight other lives.' Yeah, he pretty much trips out. I know that this is an iffy movie to watch or maybe even blog about in a Christian community, but it I just couldn't help but notice the absolutely great backgrounds, and the top notch animation. Once again, very controversial for the 70s, and a lot of you may not like it, I don't know. I found this to be pretty awesome because it gave you a look at mainstream 70s culture at the time. Not to mention the awesome funky soundtrack.

Christine

Second one in a row tonight. I'm really not just making blog posts to try and keep my grade up. Seriously. Because no one's ever done that. Anyway, something else I watched over fall break was John Carpenter's "Christine." Horror movies are yet another thing very few DMA students here seem to like.

I would start off by saying we all have that one cheesy horror film we love to watch around Halloween, but I'm not sure if a whole lot of you do. Even so, this movie (like a lot of movies adapted from Stephen King books) is pretty cheesy. My opinion here may be biast because I read the book, or maybe it's just that I grew up watching this film and your opinions change as you get older.

Either way, I'll never be able to look at a Plymouth Fury the same way again. Christine is pretty much a car that drives its owner. It was the only car of its kind to be manufactured in red, and it's the only one to be manufactured with a personality. The previous owner of the car was possessed by it. Rather, I should be referring to this car as 'she'.

20 years later in 1978, someone else by the name of Arnold Cunningham comes across Christine in her very rusted and ancient condition. Despite his uptight parent's persisting, he fixes up the Plymouth, and very soon becomes consumed by the car. Nothing stops Christine. Even when a gang completely demolishes the car, Christine restores herself and hunts them all down. The acting in this film is very sub-par and when (if) you watch it, you can tell the actors are trying hard not to laugh. Hell, if I was told that in this scene I was to be as serious as possible while talking about a car that is alive, I would want to laugh too. All in all, it's a fun ride. And really, not all the acting is bad. As always, Carpenter delivers a bone chilling soundtrack. For those of you that watched it, you would know that he did the soundtrack to Halloween (no, not the 2006 shitfest that Rob Zombie created.) This scene always creeped me out:

And then of course to follow up that scene (keep in mind this car operates itself):

Funny thing about this scene. I actually had a nightmare when where I was the one that was being chased. Weird, because this movie never creeped me out THAT bad. But still, it was one scary nightmare.

Now and Then, Here and There

So.. anime. I know not a whole of you DMA students watch it. And from what I have gathered, none of you watch anything good. Not to be a condescending douche, but Bleach is far overrated and needs to be put at an end, and Avatar: The Last Airbender wasn't even created in Japan. Anyway, here's a good anime a lot of you should really consider checking out. I was recommended this by a friend who's recommended most of the good anime I've watched to me.

I uh, pirat- it isn't important how I got it over fall break, but nonetheless, I found this and I watched the first episode tonight. It starts off with your run-of-the-mill anime character. Young, irresponsible, absent minded, and no good at his craft. The main character, who is known as Shu, is a typical young boy living in Japan, and honestly, he's extremely obnoxious to everyone and about everything. The plot does take a turn for the better though, when he meets a strange girl.

This girl pretty much leads him into another dimension (I don't want to give too much away). Despite that this anime was created in 1999, it has a very campy look to it, similar to Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (just look it up, I would be here all night if I went into detail about THAT anime). The sound quality is excellent, and for an anime series, it really felt like I was watching a movie due to the orchestral soundtrack, not to mention the all around extreme amount of effort that was sunk in to the visuals. The standard anime has about 26 episodes, while some (Dragonball Z, Bleach, DeathNote) Have hundreds of episodes and multitudes of movies. Unfortunately, this masterpiece only has 13 episodes. Still, check it out:

The Man Who Planted Trees

Well, what can I say. It honestly didn't 'touch' me in any profound manner. It just seemed like the other movie that we watched. I pretty much just saw it as yet another creative animation depicting the creation story, with an extra twist added on by the author. Funny enough though, at the beginning of the film, I thought that it possibly took place in a post apocalyptic time period, until the narrator began talking about the various world wars. But yeah, the the man planting trees represented Christ, the acorns represented something spiritual or some profound thing that I didn't understand but half the class got, case closed.

The Duel

Last week we watched The Duel. As I watched the numerous amounts of information get cut up by a bunch of scissors and crammed into that boy's head, I couldn't help but relate. I've felt that way most of my life with public schooling. I also completely agreed with their statement on conformism. Not to mention the animation was quite creative. I also spent a lot of my life dueling the curriculum of my middle/high school and thinking about how much bullshit they were trying to feed me. It was always annoying in a history class how (at least for me) we were just taught to memorize a series of dates that would leave my head the instant I finish taking the test I was given.

Charcoal Animation

After watching that video on Charcoal animation, I'm quite tempted to try out the similar style with chalk. I don't have half of the talent that the animator on the video had, but I just want to maybe draw some squares on a chalk board slowly expanding, leaving their outlines behind. There may be a video of me posting myself doing that in the near future. Also, what with all the political talk, I was reminded of Pink Floyd's The Wall and this animation sequence:

I doubt it has the same political meaning as the things we were talking about today, it's just that I couldn't help but think of this. Probably should have mentioned this earlier, but while I am a film major, I love animation and playing around with all variations of it.

Influential Music

As someone on here stated before I believe, DMA isn't just film. Music is a huge portion of it too, and music has always been a huge portion of my life. I listen to it when I wake up, on the way to class, and when I study. Classical music has influenced me greatly as both a musician and film maker. I've been listening to this piece for quite a while and I have been going through ideas to put in a movie I would make.

My favorite film duo

As of recent I've been posting a lot about cult/violent science fiction films. However, I must ask, am I the only student here who remembers and misses John Huges and John Candy? I found Hughes's sense of directing to be phenomenal. He always knew how to manipulate our emotions to enjoy his movies. Not to mention John Candy's genius impromptu acting. The other night I found this song that was on the movie Plans, Trans, and Automobiles, and it reminded me just how much John Hughes was an inspiration for me.

The way in which I view movies

Well, it has taken me a few weeks to try and figure out how to say this. For one, this class is nothing what I expected it to be. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting an extremely stereotypical class about films and the techniques to them. It's just that I, well I don't get. I just don't get.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. For one, I am not the 'artistic' type. Sure, I love to look at the deeper meaning in movies, but when that's all I focus on, it gets slightly agitating. You see, whenever I watch a movie, I take the plot and storyline into effect, but I look at the movie from a critical standpoint.For example, in fridge, I was not looking for a meaning to the story right away.

I was analyzing what kind of camera was being used, how well the dialogue was executed, and what the basic plot was. Then I would look for some serious meaning behind it all. But I wouldn't do it the way it was done it class. Maybe I'm just not thinking deep enough, if that's even the problem. This is why whenever I post something on a movie, it almost sounds like a review. I prefer to review the movies in my head, the stuff we do in class I sort of get, but I don't get.Also, I don't necessarily like to mix religion with my film making. I agreed with a lot of the people about the movie Fridge in the way that the language was just there to help establish the characters. I don't know, maybe I'm just extremely jaded and desensitized to all the bad stuff in movies and in life itself.

Before entering this class, I honestly did not consider the film maker and artist to be the same. I knew that there was an art to filming, but not like this. Maybe I'm just not meant for this major, maybe I still am. It may just be typical of a freshman to think this. Perhaps I'm just not that smart and just want to watch movies to make money and use them for escapists purposes, I'm slightly confused by a lot of stuff, and even now there's still more things I can't really put into words.

For now though, I do know this: I want to make movies, and I want to make decent ones. It's hard to explain. I'm not saying that I want my movies to just fulfill the Hollywood standards, and I'm not saying that I want to not put any thought at all into my movies. I guess I'll just see where things go. Am I the only one here that has thought this yet?

Mad Max

I might as well continue my trend of against the machine, cultish films with the famous Australian movie, Mad Max.

Being a huge fan of science fiction and cult films, this movie made a huge impact on me as a film maker. It takes place in a futuristic time that the movie itself labels as "A few years from now." That in itself it the sign of a good futuristic movie when it does not try and make a date. While it is sort of fun to see what old films see as 'futuristic' years, it can prove to be a movie's downfall when that pre determined year actually rolls around. Anyway at the beginning of our film, we are introduced to the fact that the world (or at least Australia) is in a state of criminal anarchy in the future. It starts off with the infamous criminal, Night Rider, speeding down a highway in an extremely badass Australian car:

That's one thing I like about foreign movies. It gives me the chance to look at all the awesome cars that we don't have in America. Night Rider is apparently a notorious criminal and is a part of an extremely tyrannical and well known motorcycle gang. So far this movie opens up with a police chase scene. Not a bad start. Despite the many attempts of the relatively incompetent policemen, Night Rider keeps going. Eventually though, we come to the main event, which is Mad Max.

This guy is the epitome awesome. The kind of cop that eats guys like this criminal for breakfast. We get a classic e rear shot of his car which says, 'Interceptor.' And in this case, he does not intercept the criminal. Death does, which actually you probably may have already seen in the trailer above.

Once again, I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who have not seen this masterpiece. From here all sorts of insanity pursues, and Max here has the same in common with the last pro/antagonist from Falling Down: They both lose everything and retaliate in an extreme way.

Falling Down

Now before I begin this little review/commentary, just wanted to say a bit about a lot opinions on violent and against the machine movies and peoples' reaction to me liking them. Lots of people don't like this film. They find it weird that I did enjoy it. Maybe they weren't thinking while watching it, maybe I just over think far too much. But I truly think that it makes some pretty solid points about society. That's why I like a lot of these films. I don't favorite them for attention, and I don't favorite them to try and be cool. I truly think there's some, well, truth in them.

Rant being over, time to talk about the early 90s film Falling Down.

I'm not really sure I want this to be a review, because if I do, I'll give away a lot of stuff. So here is the plot in a nutshell: A guy who gets laid off snaps out of frustration due to all of the errors he sees in society in a very violent way. Don't pretend you've never felt super mad at the world. We all have. And to be honest, I find it very refreshing to see the main character speak a lot of my opinions. For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwP2vV6Wm1Y&feature=related

The clip above not only shows some very realistic societal problems, it shows how the main character (his nickname being D-Fens) handles them in a blunt but effective manner. Maybe I have anger issues, but I agree with most of the things he says in that scene. It's one of those movies that's good to watch when you're fed up with stuff as well. All in all, it is a very intriguing film with a great nugget of truth hidden inside. It truly shows what man can become when he is pushed too far.

In this last scene I'll show you, he makes some good points and stands up for some of the bullshit we are force fed in society. Granted, I wouldn't retaliate the same way he did, but like I said, this is the last straw for this guy.

Intro

Hello everyone, I'm Spencer Litten. It's great to finally get this blog up and running. It's not everyday that I get a chance to express my many thoughts and feelings about a movie. Speaking of movies, my favorite genre is Cult films. I also enjoy Thrillers, Action, and Science fiction. However, the one group of films that always stood out to me were the Cult Films. That's right, the movies that really didn't sell too well to the general public, but a certain group of people liked them. I hope to one day make a few cult films myself when I go down to L.A. my junior year.

My appreciation for the animated works runs deep as well . Japanese animation to be exact. Well, both American and Japanese work just fine for me. After watching anime such as Space Pirate Captain Harlock, and Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star), I became inspired to try my hand at animation as well. Hopefully this will be a very productive year that will allow me to improve my skills in both film and animation.