From Up on Poppy Hill

Last night I watched From Up on Poppy Hill, directed by Goro Miyazaki. It's an animated Japanese film, based on a 1980s manga, set in Yokohama in 1963 about a teenager who helps run the boarding house where she lives, who gets involved in a campaign to save the school's ramshackle clubhouse and falls for an aspiring journalist. It's a really sweet, nostalgic film. I reviewed it here: http://permanentlyweird.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/from-up-on-poppy-hill.html 

The Blu-ray of When Marnie Was There arrived in the mail. it's the latest and possibly last ever Studio Ghibli film. I saw an episode of Supernatural, a 1970s British show about a weird club where prospective members have to tell a true story of supernatural horror which, if it fails to scare all of the club's members, means death for the would-be member. 

I went to the movies and saw Hell or High Water, directed by David Mackenzie. It's a kind of neo-western crime thriller about two brothers who commit a string of bank robberies through Texas, while being pursued by a pair of laconic Texas Rangers. it's exciting, dark and genuinely funny, with Jeff Bridges at his best. I reviewed it here: http://permanentlyweird.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/hell-or-high-water.html

I went to Nandos this evening with my parents. I had olives and garlic bread to start, then butterfly pir-piri chicken with piri-piri fries and coleslaw and a slice of chocolate cake.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Last night I watched a four part Doctor Who story from 1983 called "Mawdryn Undead". It stars Peter Davidson as the Fifth Doctor, with an English schoolboy, Turlough (Mark Strickson), who is in fact an alien controlled by the evil Black Guardian (Valentine Dyall, radio horror host "The Man in Black"), and a luxury spacecraft full of immortal but deteriorating aliens desperate to die. It was quite good.

I went out to the stationary store and got a sketchpad, drawing pens, and three notebooks. Then I went along to the Filmhouse cinema and saw The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, directed by Isao Takahata. Based on a Japanese folk tale, it's an animated film about a bamboo cutter who discovers a miniature girl in a glowing bamboo shoot. The bamboo cutter and his wife raise the girl as their own, however the girl grows and learns at an astonishing rate. It's a beautiful film, and one of my favorites. The climax is hugely emotional. I reviewed it here: http://permanentlyweird.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-tale-of-princess-kaguya.html

Only Yesterday

I went out today to The Stand Comedy Club and saw Josie Long perform stand-up comedy. It was a very funny show.

Later on I went to the movies and saw Only Yesterday, a 1991 animated film directed by Isao Takahata. It tells the story of a bored, 27 year old Tokyo office worker who goes on a working holiday to her brother-in-law's family's farm to help out with the harvest. Along the way she becomes increasingly absorbed with memories of when she was ten years old in 1966. It's a beautiful, powerful, slice of life drama.

Kate Tempest

Last night I saw the documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, which chronicles a year of Studio Ghibli while Hayao Miyazaki worked on The Wind Rises and his "friendly rival" Isao Takahata worked on The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. It's sometimes funny, sometimes funny and a fascinating take on animation and the creative process, as well as an account of the making of two masterpieces.

I went out today and bought a book called Funny Stories for Five Year Olds for my nephew's birthday present and a card.

Later on I went to the Edinburgh Book Festival to see poet, playwright, rapper and novelist Kate Tempest talk about her new novel The Bricks That Built the Houses. It was really a great show, completely sold out. She read poetry and spoke about the healing power of art. She would get extremely animated while speaking and reading, and visibly tired herself out at times. 

After the show I bought her book and got it signed:

I'm Back!

Remember me?  I can't believe that it has been so long since I wrote in here, but I have decided to come back

Last night I was watching the 1997 movie Perfect Blue, an animated Japanese psychological thriller horror movie. It's about Mima, the squeaky-clean lead singer of an all-girl pop group. Mima decides to leave the group to become a serious actress. Her controversial first role is in a gritty, explicit crime drama. Mima soon finds herself plagued by threatening phone calls and postcards, and even finds a website containing a blog, purportedly written by her, that is disturbingly accurate about her day to day movements. She begins having hallucinations about her pop idol persona, and finds the plot of the drama bleeding into her real day to day life. Then people connected with her new career begin to turn up brutally murdered. It's a very good, and pretty disturbing anime.

It was a pretty long day at work. I listened to Chilling Tales: The Podcast which was having an episode called "The Summer of Love-Craft", broadcasting the first part of a reading of The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft. It was pretty good. 

I stopped off at the Mash Tun bar on my way home and had a quick drink. I also ordered the book Turning Point: 1997-2008 by Hayao Miyazaki, a collection of essays, articles and interviews by and with Miyazaki about his life and career, this covers his work from Princess Mononoke to Ponyo.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

Last night I was watching TV and caught a bit of the end of Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino's debut film from 1992 about the violent aftermath of a botched jewellery store heist. When it was released in the US it was pretty successful for a moderately low budget gangster movie, but in Europe and the UK it was a massive hit. In Britain especially it was hugely controversial and there was a lot of attention given to the level of violence in the film, although it was released during one of the periodic media panics in Britain about violence in movies. It played constantly in some cinemas for about two years, because it was unavailable on video until 1995. I only saw about quarter of an hour of it last night, but I have seen it before countless times and it really brought me back in my mind to 1995 when Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were the ultimate in cool, must-see movies, and I was 16 and was just finishing my hated high-school time. That was also the year that I was really getting into movies and I saw a lot of different types of films in that year because 1995 was the year they marked the "Century of Cinema". I've often thought if I could go back to any period in my life it would probably be 1999 when I was in 20 years old, in college, I'd really started writing poetry for the first time and I felt genuinely optimistic about the future for probably the first time in my life. It didn't last.

Later on I was watching a Japanese animated movie from 2004 called Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, written and directed by Mamoru Oshii, and based on the "manga" (comic-book) by Shirow Masamune. The film is set in the year 2032 where the few remaining humans co-exist uneasily with robots, androids and cyborgs. When a series of "gynoids" (female androids), who are being used for sex, kill eight people and then destroy themselves, a cyborg detective and his human partner are assigned to investigate. Visually the movie is spectacular, mixing 2D and 3D computer animation. It's a pretty good movie, blending action, spectacle and philosophy pretty well.

It was my last day on the training course today, but I managed to leave early and got a kebab on my way home.

Darkness - Light - Darkness

Last night I was watching more of the Jan Svankmajer short films. They included Down in the Cellar (in which a young girl goes down into the cellar of her block of flats to get some potatoes and enters a surreal nightmare world where shoes fight and try to eat each other, the creepy neighbours sleep in coal and bake cakes out of dirt, and the potatoes keep trying to escape from her basket), Virile Games (in which a beer swilling sports fan watches a match that turns increasingly violent as the players wreck ever more bizarre havoc on each other), Darkness - Light - Darkness (in which a human figure is formed in a room piece by piece by visiting body parts) and Food (in which people are turned into coin operated food dispensers, two people are so desperate to eat in a restaurant they start to eat everything in sight including the furniture and their clothes, and wealthy diners start to eat pieces of themselves).

I was also watching the latest episode of Peep Show, which was very funny. The last in the series is next week.

Today has been very quiet. I went out to get my groceries for the week and aside from that I've just been at home.

Dimensions of a Dialogue

Last night I was listening to an episode of The Twilight Zone radio series called "Long Live Walter Jamieson", in which a history professor turns out to have lived since Ancient Greece due to a spell that has stopped the ageing process. It wasn't bad but not really one of the best. I also watched a few of the Jan Svankmajer short films that I got on Wednesday. One of them, Don Juan was an adaptation of an old Czech puppet play and featured the story of Don Juan, who murdered his father, his girlfriend's father and his brother before taking to the woods to live as a robber, being performed by giant puppets in and around a crumbling old house. Another one, Dimensions of a Dialogue, which was named by Terry Gilliam as the best animated film ever made, and featured two heads made of fruit and ordinary household and office items eating each other several times, before male and female clay figures kiss and merge into a clay mass, and finally two clay heads have various household objects such as a shoe, shoelaces, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a pencil and a pencil sharpener coming out of their mouths. It was really weird!

Today was yet another dull day at work. I was very happy to get home.

Surreal Animation

Last night I listened to an episode of The Twilight Zone on the radio, in which a British pilot from the First World War finds himself landing at an American Air Force base in the 1950s. It was a pretty good one. I've also been watching a few of the Jan Svankmajer short films that I got yesterday. Most of them are deeply surreal animated films. They don't really have storylines for the most part, frequently they involve ordinarly objects moving around with weird puppets and strange sound effects. Because most of them are so short they don't really outstay they're welcome. Apparently they were a big influence on the animations of Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. I've often thought it would be fun to try animation but I have no talent whatsoever.

Later on I watched the latest episodes of True Blood and Generation Kill. I've really been getting into True Blood.

I think it's a hugely entertaining show.I was back at work today, and it was pretty much the usual stuff.

Nearly Saturday Night

Last night was pretty quiet. I was watching TV most of the time. I put on the DVD of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence but it didn't really hold my interest, to be honest. It's a Japanese animated film and the animation, which blends traditional animation with computer animation is absolutely spectacular, but the film which is about a couple of cops tracking down malfunctionaing robots was very slow moving for the most part. I think it was just the fact that I put it on at two in the morning. Probably if I'd put it on earlier I would have enjoyed it more.

I woke up later than I had planned and went out at around lunchtime to Princes Street. I bought the DVD of Saw 3 for Jackie's birthday present and an HMV voucher for my brother's birthday present. I also got two brithday cards and some wrapping paper for the DVD. On my way home I went to the supermarket to get some groceries.

It's Jackie's 21st birthday party tonight, and we're meeting up at nine o'clock this evening in a bar, so I'll probably be back home very late.

Of course, I'll be watching Doctor Who tonight, which features the annual return of the Daleks. Apparently the Daleks have been voted the 'Scariest Doctor Who Villains'.