Things have been pretty quiet around here, mostly because I went on a month-long vacation, came back for about two weeks, and will be off traveling again tomorrow for a week Can’t complain, for sure, but all this fun has killed off most of my motivation to wall. Anyways! Pixel Ellipsis will be down for a brief period of time after July 10th. Hopefully it won’t be longer than a day at most, but I’m not exactly sure how long it will be. The reason for this downtime is really silly – my hosting provider assigns “free domain credits” on a yearly basis, and for some reason they can’t give me the new credit for the next year until the day AFTER the domain expiration date… I don’t know why they can’t just give me credit for the whole 3 years if I’ve signed up for a 3 year hosting package, but anyways, that’s that. I’ll be back from my trip on July 10th so I do plan to monitor the situation closely.
Since upgrading to Windows 7, I’ve taken full advantage of the awesome new background slide show functionality. I usually use a mix of anime wallpapers that I’ve made with some original wallpapers tossed in, but I tend to cycle through and retire the wallpapers on display fairly quickly depending on my mood. But, recently I managed to come across a “golden combination” of my old wallpapers which somehow just hits the spot and has been on my desktop for the last few weeks. If I had to consciously put together a collection of wallpapers I doubt I would’ve picked these ones, but somehow all the different styles and subject matter work together really well.
2. Promote! Facebook! Twitter! Email! PM! Spread the word out about this project in any and all ways you can think of
3. Wall! We’d like to expand the collection of wallpapers that we’re offering to donors. Make a wall for the collection, or make a promotional wallpaper for the project and kill two birds with one stone!
We only just started officially promoting the project yesterday, but the show of generosity from walling community members has been astounding. Help us keep the momentum going – together we can make this fundraiser a success!
…the Madoka OP is probably the best OP ever for depicting things that “never happened.”
I hadn’t planned to watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica – it didn’t even make my winter 2010 wishlist because it looked so generic. But then everyone started making a fuss about it and I read this interview with Madoka’s director Gen Urobuchi (there are minor plot spoilers in the interview, so avoid as needed):
As a game scenario writer, Urobuchi is noted for heavy, often gruesome, storylines and a devoted following. I have been unable to tear myself away from this story of young girls facing hardship. Urobuchi said he was tasked with creating a serious anime that contained an element of surprise. He decided to apply his usual style to the often cliche magic girl genre.
So I checked out the series and was hooked, especially from episode 5 on. Madoka is certainly no generic magical girl show, and even though I spoiled parts of the plot for myself by reading the Gen Urobuchi interview before I started watching the show, each episode still managed to surprise me in some way. Underneath the pink frilly mahou shoujo cover is a really dark and devastating core, and the turn on conventional anime cliches is really refreshing to see.
Le Projet Tsunami or The Tsunami Project is an ongoing creative movement started by the French creative community CFSL.net, which aims to raise awareness and funds for victims of the March 11th earthquake in Japan. Of the submissions featured on the blog, 50 original pieces will be auctioned off on April 30, 2011 at Arludik Gallery in Paris. Selected project submissions will also be featured in exhibitions (planned) and an artbook scheduled for publication on September 8, 2011. All proceeds from the auction and the artbook will be donated to Give2Asia’s Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Fund. Le Projet Tsunami will be accepting submissions up to April 10th, so if you’re interested definitely take a look. Many of the illustrations featured on the blog are simply stunning.
I stumbled across HearJapan a little while back because I heard that they were donating 50% of all sales to Japanese earthquake/tsunami relief efforts. It’s a terrific site which features great (less mainstream) Japanese music – I just shelled out for a bunch of Dirty Old Men songs myself – and I highly recommend checking it out, especially while the relief donation promo is going on. It’s also a great way to legally support your favorite Japanese artists!
The first time I browsed through HearJapan, I searched for “Studio Ghibli” on a whim – and I was really surprised by the number of cover albums that came up, for just about any instrument and genre you could think of! From jazz to rock, “speed” piano to marimba – there’s even an album titled Ghibli Computer which consists of “a collection of Studio Ghibli covers completely rewritten with old school computer sounds accompanied with a bouncing beat.” Amazing!
I’m kind of a traditionalist myself, so my favorite album from the bunch was Azumi Inoue’s Ghibli Meikyoku Selection~Dear Ghibli. I liked how the arrangements featured a full orchestra and piano ensemble, not to mention the fact that Azumi Inoue was the original singer of Ghibli classics like “Kimi o Nosete“, “Sanpo“, and “Tonari no Totoro“; her voice is wonderfully soothing and also quintessentially Ghibli at the same time. So I was happy to shell out a bit to expand my music collection AND contribute to relief efforts in Japan at the same time! Win-win if there ever was one.
Last Friday I went to Palace Centro to watch Howl’s Moving Castle and Kiki’s Delivery Service on the big screen. It’s been years since I’ve seen either of the movies – Kiki’s I last saw when I was in elementary/middle school, so needless to say I was really looking forward to this screening. The fact that the screenings were subbed and done in celebration of Hayao Miyazaki’s 70th birthday were extra perks.
The theater itself was really nice, with super comfy plushy seats. It was also incredibly packed – in fact, I almost didn’t get a ticket to Howl’s! When I got to the ticket counter, I was told that tickets to Howl’s had all been sold out. Luckily there was a random guy standing next to the counter who offered to sell me his ticket for the same asking price as the theater, so I gratefully took him up on his offer and forked over an addition $6 to Palace Centro for the Kiki ticket.
Now, Howl’s I had watched a little more recently (in college), and while I had enjoyed it, I didn’t think it was Miyazaki’s best. The friends who I watched it with also remarked that the movie wasn’t particularly true to the intricacies of the book. But I had forgotten how magic and imagination shines through in any/all of Miyazaki’s films. I also realized very quickly that the intricate details of Miyazaki’s animation can really only be fully appreciated on the big screen. The “Stroll through the Sky” scene near the beginning of Howl’s was particularly stunning to watch in the theater – the sense of uplifting flight was just incredible.
It also helped that the packed audience was VERY appreciative of the films – the chuckling and laughter helped punctuate all the comedic scenes, and I had a big silly grin plastered across my face throughout the film. I’d forgotten how much of a drama queen Howl was! How charming Sophie was in her old age. And I hadn’t realized that Takuya Kimura did the voice for Howl!
My original reservations against Howl’s Moving Castle remained – namely, that the war that had raged on throughout the movie was somehow wrapped up lickety-split in the final few minutes of the movie, so the happy ending, while inevitable, felt a bit forced. Nonetheless, it’s safe to say that Howl’s Moving Castle was a lot better than I remembered, and it was quite a visual treat on the big screen.
Kiki’s Delivery Service, on the hand, amazed me in how current it felt, despite the fact that it was released in 1989. Miyazaki is beloved around the world for the universal themes in his work, but watching Kiki’s this time around felt extra personal to me. Because I’ve been moving around so much in this past year, watching Kiki struggle to settle in after moving to a new town, trying to find new friends in a sea of impersonal strangers, re-discovering her confidence and figuring out what’s important to her really struck a chord with me, at this particular point in my life.
Needless to say, I really enjoyed myself last Friday and it was easily the best $12 I’ve ever spent for an anime viewing experience. I only wished I had found out about the Palace Centro screenings sooner; I would’ve liked to see My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and any number of the other Studio Ghibli films that I had last watched as a child. It’s really hard to convey just how wonderful Miyazaki’s works are on the big screen; if you ever get the chance to watch Ghibli films in a cinema, just GO – you definitely won’t regret it, and it will give you a whole new appreciation for Miyazaki as well
Apologies if you’ve hit the ugly “under construction” or 404 pages on Pixel Ellipsis in the last day or so. With a little encouragement from the C3 community, I finally decided to take the plunge and request that my web hosting provider upgrade me from PHP 4 to PHP 5. This upgrade required a complete site migration to a new server, so that’s what’s been keeping me fretting with anxiety for the last two days! Slow internet here made backing everything up a drawn-out nightmare, and the re-uploading was just as bad. But just when it looked like everything ported over ok, WordPress threw me a white screen of death! Luckily with a bit of tinkering and a whole lot of googling, I found the naughty plugin that caused the error, so I’ve deleted the culprit plugin and we are now back online!
Please let me know if you run into any weird bugs on Pixel Ellipsis; I’ll be fine-tuning the backend over the next few days so please bear with me as I whip the site into optimal shape!
Update (3/12/11): Ok, back for real now after updating/re-hacking the Gallery WordPress theme ^^; The tweaking will continue, but the undercon cow *should* be retired for a good long while. Sorry about the extra downtime everyone!
Continuing my Victorian anime kick after finishing Earl and Fairy, I decided to give Gosick a try. My first impressions of Gosick are fairly positive after the first three episodes, or the hunting of the hares mini-arc. I had zero expectations for Gosick as a detective series, which worked in its favor because the deductive trappings are pretty weak. I guessed the murderer in the first episode almost as soon as the crime happened, and in fact the mechanics of the murder were quickly explained a minute later. It becomes quickly apparent that Gosick is not a series that sticks to the conventional mystery framework of devoting whole episodes to discovering alibis, clues, motives, red herrings and so forth. You’d be sorely disappointed in Gosick if you go into it expecting something like Detective Conan. It’s really more appropriate to think of Gosick as a period drama that very loosely follows a mystery framework. The strength of this series lies in the art, which is no surprise from a Studio Bones production, as well as the budding relationship between Victorica and Kazuya. Not the mystery.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Nujabes lately. I’m generally not a hip hop fan, but there’s a real addictive yet soothing quality to Nujabes’ works. I think it’s because his songs invoke a real lightness of being.
Some of my favorite Nujabes tracks include Reflection Eternal, Folklore, and Windspeaks, but my current favorite is Luv (Sic) Part 3. The lyrics are especially inspirational, and fitting as a memorial tribute to Nujabes as well.
Nujabes – Luv (Sic) Part 3 feat. Shing02
It’s funny how the music put times in perspective
Add a soundtrack to your life and perfect it
Whenever you are feeling blue keep walking and we can get far
Wherever you are
Like a movie that you can’t predict
Like a book that you can’t resist
I sing along a song that’s oh so sensual
bring along a sip to make it all so sexual
verbally that is, making love to the music means vibing to the beat at night
with the whole city fast asleep, out cold
true words seem to rise to the lips, take hold
of a poet in me, most powerfully
I feel free when the world doesn’t owe it to me
It’s so hard to find a gig that lives up to the billing,
trying to find a reason to work, god willing
I admit, my thinking is wishful
like a star upon a child gazing up to the ceiling
how far do we have to stretch the truth
to fit the lifestyles borrowed and overdue
we can take it all back to the register
and start all over from the canister
let’s break it all down into pieces of bright
moments that pass by like a meteorite
throw on your favorite reel that’s good to go
on the analog player watch the people glow
sit back to the breeze let the memories flow
comedy tragedy all the highs and lows…
Can’t complain, for sure, but all this fun has killed off most of my motivation to wall. Anyways! Pixel Ellipsis will be down for a brief period of time after July 10th. Hopefully it won’t be longer than a day at most, but I’m not exactly sure how long it will be. The reason for this downtime is really silly – my hosting provider assigns “free domain credits” on a yearly basis, and for some reason they can’t give me the new credit for the next year until the day AFTER the domain expiration date… I don’t know why they can’t just give me credit for the whole 3 years if I’ve signed up for a 3 year hosting package, but anyways, that’s that. I’ll be back from my trip on July 10th so I do plan to monitor the situation closely.
