…Something Beautiful…

It’s not often that something in this world happens that is truly beautiful. There is a time and a place for everything. There is a story that many people out there know about, more out there should know about, and the few that know about it, to whom does not give enough credit, that more credit should be given to. If that was not a mouth full, then it should be simply stated as this… If it weren’t for that music… If it weren’t for that story… If it weren’t for that spikey haired person that we all are… then it would be us… the story is Final Fantasy VII and its all about us and how we really are just an illusion hiding from the truth, our own selves, its just the privileged few that really learn who we are… and that, that is something that is truly beautiful.

One Time at Writer’s Camp…

It feels like there is a lost oasis of High School drama that nearly every Hollywood writer feels the need to tap into, at some point or another of there career. Unfortunately this feeling is so strong it winds up controlling all of their writing, takes a contemporary classic story and turns it into “Not Another Teen Movie…” Normally there would be no need to make a big deal, movies like “American Beauty,” had a message, had a story, told it till the last drop, and then moved on. That would normally be the idea for most “teen” movies, but when you add in a legitimately good “legend” and give it this “teen” twist it winds up giving completely unneeded or unwarranted discrepancies. Inevitably the focus of the problem arises to the newly unearthed rumored X-Men movie that has been circulating across the internet. The only question that can be asked is… WHY? What is the need to turn all of these characters into teenagers? Looking at this cries “X-Men: Evolution,” but knowing the recently contemporary surge of combining “darker” themes and “shock” themes to all of the aspiring Hollywood, “Greats’,” own work, it is fearfully apparent that this new movie could be, “X-Men: Beautiful American Evolution”

Technology 1,000,001, Humans 3.

Let me first start off with a little history; I was at a friend’s home recently… We have some how discerned this odd ritual where upon seconds before our departure of our meetings, we find ourselves returning things that we have unearthed, items that were borrowed from each other, and inadvertently time has truly forgotten. Unbelievably enough, some of these items are so rare that, when he returns an old shirt that has a certain big blue super hero that yells “Spoon!” brandishing the front, or a great novel retelling the life of a certain ruler of a land known as Barovia, I am not always as surprised, as instead finding myself falling into a nostalgic past time fissure, with scrawny little skinny arms outreaching for that artifact of childhood fantasy. And so it was, I found my self once again shaking the hands of an old friend, with opposing hand clutching a once forgotten, magical “ring of truth.” As I departed from his home and entering my car, I gasped in disbelief and gazed down as if cobwebs and dust entombed an arcane tome of a felled civilization. That tome was a computer program… entitled… “The Secret of Monkey Island” from a group of people, once called Lucasfilm Games. I knew what I had to do… “Return to Monkey Island”… But… as technology has it… as the Windows XP system whirled to life and the start-up screen was ignored the familiar MS-DOS prompt shortcut from the now lost WIN 95 system is no where to be found… I find myself once again in the possession of one of the greatest works of human minds… lost to the compiling language and consuming “machine” of technology. Or, to put it more bluntly… I now have another of the world’s coolest paper rocks time has ever seen. I tried to write a letter to “whom it may concern…” but I fearfully doubt that my solid basis of consumer ownership has any value in the eyes of the great “haves” that would other wise see me as another dollar bill to be given to an already bulging wallet. Describing a lost battle and seeking a new means to win the war has proven that Technology has once again beaten the Human. Its times like this that I find the Wachowski brothers in light of what may yet come to be…

Cartoons? What the heck, get over it!

Disbelief in the illusion is only the disbelief in the reality. What is reality, a voice of the past or merely the existence from the whisper of a memory? It pains me so to hear one still refer to something that is animated, as still just a cartoon. Were it not the plays, the art from the likes of Shakespeare, our forefathers reveled in so much whom brought themselves from the wallows to drop their plows and escape, even for just a few measly hours? Was it not the great ballets or the intricate operas that were written in the time of romance? These… were these real? What about a moving piece that Mozart composed, or a piece from Chopin? What have you? Some of these are about mystical almost dogmatic illusions, and yet these are our Literature set in stone. These are what we learn about in our schools, our colleges, our Universities. These are what hold the test of time. Steven Spielberg, what about Hayao Miyazaki? James Cameron, what about Katsuhiro Otomo? These are names… will they be forgotten? I honestly hope so… If I can place a “cartoon” in the eyes of my grandfather, a man who survived the death of his best friend in Iwo Jima, the Great Depression, and everything else life has thrown at him… watch tears bleed from his eyes, from a “cartoon”… then, I hope Shakespeare is lost in time, Homer, Steinbeck, Lee, even Twain. To this day, these “cartoons” are scoffed at, the same images that press ideas, feelings, beliefs that still not one single producer in North America is willing to risk their credibility for. Back in the 80s, I thought culture was turning, by the 90s I thought humanity was burning… Now I think we are searing… I still wait. If you ask thousands out there, what they thought about the Matrix many will laugh at you… when you ask about the first one… then that answer gets a little more serious, when you ask them about the Animatrix movie… then you may get one of three answers: “No, that cartoon thing, yeah, I heard about it, but…” “…Whoa… that was…uh… …” or “Animatrix, I have never heard of it.” That’s the sad part… if you talk to that second person… they know… They know what that story was fully about… It’s funny, there are these stories out there that are told and yet are never heard. I would love to say they fall on deaf ears… but they often don’t fall onto ears at all… Anxiety about the world is what most of human kind fears, would it be personal life, financial life, or even what the future beholds… These “cartoons,” these old novels, these ancient works, even the stories from our mentors… are they not one in the same? A man by the name of Makoto Shinkai directed a film that was a mere 30 minutes long. This film was a “cartoon” only dated a few years back, but it fell into a version of science fiction that is alarmingly close to home… it has nothing to do so much as it has to do with the future, it has nothing to do so much as it has to do with technology… what it has is humanity… I think back to this film and as I do, I get a phone call on my cell phone… I hope it’s that person that I need, a friend, a family member, a lover… I hope someone is there… I hope anyone is out there… someone… anyone…

“I Had A Dream…”

Searing mass produced fantasy that stimulates a dream, but only tickles the desire… The idea of an all controlling Hollywood film industry dominating a “comic book”, “fantasy”, and, “superhero” genera must STOP!!! There is this general idea that if we can sell it or if we can make it than it must be produced. THIS IS BALONY!!! Painfully, as I must put it, each and every story, whether it may be the most benign “X – cross over” or the weakest of “DC Superhero” ideas will sell to us, the viewers, we are stupid… But that is no excuse, for the excuse of quantity that seems to have hit the industry like a fever. I WANT QUAILITY!!! I want to watch Batman and say, damn that really is the “dark knight.” I want to see Punisher in the movies and say, “wow, that is really Frank Castle, those guys are screwed!” To elaborate on the viciousness of the industry and its tragic results, I recently tuned in to a local Boston radio station and the “stars” were commenting on an unconfirmed movie rumor about the next Superman movie. They Flipped Out when the reporter announced DC and Warner’s alleged idea to only release the film under the condition of this new film to be of darker design. Their feelings were that this was trash and should be scraped. While, I will agree with their comments to a degree, I do want to bring a child to see the same Superman that I grew up with, a well mannered man whom placed justice above all, a superman, whom always got to the crime scene in time to stop the violence. But, I will tell you what… the other half of me says, screw it, and let me see a DAMN GOOD Superman movie period! Darker design or not, I want one of the great story tellers to come out of the comic book world and weave us a screen play that gives us a Superman that all of us are craving. It’s NOT that hard! Heck, work jointly with a big shot Hollywood producer, stand your ground on the key points of the movie and move on. Don’t just talk about, DO IT! I don’t care if Superman can never get there in time, and people die, I don’t care if they work on the Else world’s fall of Superman movie, or even if Superman gave up and became a farmer… I don’t care! Tell a tale, really work on it, put your heart into it, and then give the world a GOOD STORY. I once had a dream, it was that imagination and story telling drove me to some of the most wildest and unbelievable events and situations. In this dream the “Superheroes” were cool, the “fantasy” was fantastic, and the “comic book” was the stuff of legends. I had a dream that there was no industry it was an underground scene that only a few could enter, it was that scene that made us all in and the best part of all, everyone else was out. I had a dream, I could love each and every story for what it was and move on to the next with the recollection of the last burned, engraved into my own imagination and would help me dream the next… I had a dream… now, I don’t know if I am “allowed” to…