Category: Other Peoples’ Work!

Let me start with the sentence that has been hanging in my head for the last four hours.

I cannot imagine having this kind of commitment to anything besides a piece of writing.

And I’m not, for once, talking about my own!

I’m talking about having just finished the next fan-translated volume of my ultimate favorite manga of all time, “Immortal Rain” by Kaori Ozaki.

I must have started reading the series — I don’t know, five or six or seven years ago. I think there were two or three volumes out at the time. I quickly got into the series. I waited with bated breath for the next volumes to come out. And waited. And waited. And waited. That was when I hunted down the tiny, tiny following that it has online only to learn that Tokyopop had discontinued publishing this brilliant breathtaking series. After that, I discovered that it was also discontinued in print in Japanese and would be published in a webzine. I was pretty devastated.
Thankfully there are fans who took to the series as well as I do, who have also learned Japanese. Since then I’ve now read two volumes in this manner as well as a small prequel called “Shinigami of the East.” The volumes are translated by a team who puts them up for download here, which as far a I know is really the only active IR fanbase in English.

Tonight while I was supposed to be watching “The Fellowship of the Ring” (also good) I tore through volume 10, which I just found was already released by this team in English, in definitely no more than 45 minutes. I realized in that time that one admirable thing about Ozaki-sama is how good she is at weaving “layers” of “goodness.” There are the “good” guys, but then there are a number of “gray” guys and more still that begin on one side and develop into another.

It’s been a year since I read the last volume.

And that made me realize that I could never dream of following something this closely for this long with this much enthusiasm unless it was a work of writing. I thought about bands I’ve liked over the years and knew that I’d lose interest in a band after this long. Even some friendships don’t last this long.
But writing is so much more reliable! Ozaki-sama has definitely not slipped up in her delivery even if she was assaulted by tough times and a downturn in her work. And the same can be said for a lot of authors I’ve followed over the years – I know that if I were to go back to their work, I’d probably like it just as much if not more than I liked it before.

I guess this must be a big reason why I love written work so much. It’s different than so much of the rest of this temporal world. It lasts.

When I went to my first-ever (mandatory) Art Club meeting after classes on Monday, we were invited to offer ideas to the chairs of the club about what our expectations for Art Club were. Pretty much unanimously they included the formation of an artistic community, in which ideas and feedback are freely exchanged and visiting other sites throughout the Twin Cities to expand our artistic experiences. The second was definitely what I was hoping for, but I wasn’t really expecting. And the first one led to the decision that our next bi-weekly meeting would include the sort of feedback panel and we were all encouraged to bring some art to talk about.

AND HOLY CRAP TALK ABOUT AWESOME PRESSURE. o_o; I mean clearly my art is typically self-serving, and inconsequential at best (excluding some of the pieces I did when I was younger that were ideological…but I guess those were still self-serving), and I haven’t known where to go with my art for a long time. I was first planning on just bringing random sketches I work on and being like “my subject matter is so limited…how do I expand?” but naturally as soon as I posed that question to myself, I started to answer it. I was watching “Treasure Planet” today closely enough to really pay attention to the scenery and character design. Then, after spending like an hour trying to find a decent screenshot big enough for a background and running into a million badly done pieces of fanart in the process, I wondered if it might be worth trying to do my own fanart. I’ve done sketches of Jim before because the dynamism of his character is combined with fiercely expressive looks, and he also reminds me of Myoku. But I mean I wanted to do something worthwhile if I was going to do fanart, not some crappy shoddy piece of work. Then I realized that, if I’m going to venture into the realm of developing a piece of fanart, I probably shouldn’t make it be “Treasure Planet” – it’d have to be “Spirited Away”. That movie, and Miyazaki’s work (especially the way he’s streamlined Japanese animation and added a lot more dignity to the otherwise embarrassing array of anime series), have had far too big an impact on me to be won over by a movie that I forget about for long stretches of time.

It wasn’t hard to pick a scene with good enough imagery for me to work on. I also didn’t want to just do an ink/colored pencil drawing…I didn’t think that’d do Miyazaki justice. So I ventured into the realm of watercolor, because “Spirited Away” sort of has that quality to it anyway. But let me preclude this by saying that I have absolutely no skill or experience with watercolor. Oddly enough I didn’t let that stop me from really trying on this (usually it would have). I don’t know how this would contribute to the overall direction of my art, but it’s certainly reminded me that I can, to some rudimentary degree, accomplish what I set my mind to.

*CLICK ON IT*

I find – does it matter, if I can’t clear my mind? There’s a right and a wrong time.

ANDREW BELLE SOOTHES MY SOUUUULLLL.

I wanted to write to say that thus far I love the artistic presence at Augsburg. I will admit that it doesn’t necessarily permeate the campus as much (or as nicely) as at Bethany, but one of my favorite pieces is by my department chair, robert k. tom (lowercase intentional…he spells it that way…UNIQUE HUH? Can’t wait to meet him at my scholarship meet&greet tomorrow!). And there are so many unique ideas in all the art I’ve seen there, like the senior art gallery (she does this weird stuff with putting bird beaks on dolls…).

And also, I wrote about the train scene from Spirited Away for this Art-in-Real-Life journal for my Art History class (YEAH THAT’S RIGHT) and now I really want to watch that. I’m not yet because I keep thinking “Oh, no, I need to do homework…” BUT OBVIOUSLY I’M NOT DOING HOMEWORK. So maybe I will. Then I was also thinking of saving it for Friday if I have to be there till four. BUT I DON’T WANT TO SAVE IT.

I am not anywhere near the homework mentality yet. I’ve gotten everything done (and then some…except for Physics) for class when I have stuff due, but…I DON’T WANNA.

I am working on a portrait sort of right now (I’d say it’s too small to really be a portrait…but I DON’T CARE). If I finish it and like it I might put it up here.

ARE YOU PICKING UP ON MY I DON’T GIVE A F*** ATTITUDE. BECAUSE I AM.

And this is why my favorite author is Jonathan Stroud:

“The Ring of Solomon has arrived! The hardback UK version arrived on my doorstep this morning, prompting me to dance a hornpipe of joy in my pyjamas. The postman will probably never be quite the same again.”

That was on his journal, and The Ring of Solomon is the newest Bartimaeus novel due out in the states in November. I’m excited – sort of…I definitely trust J. Stroud’s judgment based on the fact that he’s done a number of standalone novels and that this fourth Bart book wasn’t released immediately after he finished the trilogy (and it’s actual a prequel, as far as I know). I am worried, though, that I’ll find that what I found so endearing about Bartimaeus is the way that he and Nathaniel grew to work together so wonderfully. And Nathaniel will clearly not be in this book, given that it takes place some 4,000 years before Natty came around. So, we’ll see! I should probably start a savings fund so I can buy the book when it comes out. XDDD Oh, poverty-that’s-a-result-of-not-prioritizing-money-over-education!

NEVER MIND THAT! o_o; I tried switching to “Visual” view on the post editor, which is the view that does the HTML for you…and it added a whole bunch of useless cluttered codes to my entry! O___o;;; I’ll change the font face MAHSELF.

Because of my interest in things of the mind, I like dreams. When I began to see commercials for the upcoming Christopher Nolan film, Inception, I was intrigued by its mixture of action and concept. Apparently, Nolan is a pretty renown director (via The Dark Knight). Also, I liked how Ellen Page(the famous Juno)’s character seemed. And dreams.

Dreams, and here comes a film where the hero (Leo DiCaprio) intentionally invades the dreams of others to “extract” information from them. I found it to be a supernatural, more intense and conceptual movie similar to the Ocean movies with George Clooney. Only more mind-blowing and visually oriented, with a more tender motive behind DiCaprio (Dom Cobb)’s somewhat frantic actions.

I ended up liking every single character in the film. This is such a rare find these days. Cobb was tragic but brilliant. And Arthur. OM NOM NOM. 🙂

Behind Cobb is Arthur, who seemed to be his sort of righthand man. He’s played by the same guy who did the voice of Jim Hawkins in Treasure Planet, which is one of my favorite movies. 😀 Who knew he’d be so FREAKING HOT, too! He did a lot of the best action sequences, too. And there was also this perfectly adorable/funny moment with him and Ellen Page’s character (some weird English girl’s name I can’t spell, but will now IMDB…Ariadne. Yeah. Okay then.), where they’re sitting together and he’s trying to come up with a plan and it goes:
Arthur: Quick, kiss me.
Ariadne: (obeys and kisses him)
(pause)
Ariadne: …They’re still looking at us…
Arthur: …Yeah it was worth a shot.
Ahaha. So, what else can I say about it. Well, I loved the constant involvement of psychological motives in the film. The adorable crazy Australian guy, Eames, kept asking “How’s his relationship with his father?” about the main plot point (won’t spoil anything), and that ended up being, after all, a very important aspect of their plan.
The acting was phenomenal. I believed everything that Cobb was going through. Ariadne was endearing, clever, and curious, and reminded me of Ingrid and thus is someone that I aspire to be like. There were dynamic changes in some of the main characters, namely the awesome Japanese businessman, Saito.

As for the ending, which I won’t say a thing about in detail…I’m not sure I was satisfied. It literally had me holding my breath for the last thirty seconds of the film. Because I was hoping for one particular thing to happen. But the scene stopped before that did. And we’re left never knowing. I’m…sort of okay with that. I think it helped to sustain the dreamlike quality of the film. As for creating closure, well, because of the important part that that last action had played throughout the earlier parts of the film…yeah, not so much.

Lastly, I’ll comment on what inspired the tagline for this. The foundation of the film was the power of an idea. The influence that nursing a concept can have in someone’s life – how an idea can shape you. I loved that. It’s so powerful, and the more I think about it, the more it can even be true on a vast, sort of cosmic scale. The ideas that we believe and the things we know determine our perception of life. This changes everything. It’s what, in the film, leads to the ruination of one of the characters — her perception is corrupted. It’s what can spur the most drastic of actions we know of.

It’s so rare that a film promotes a concept that surpasses the material and ends up promoting something as abstract an idea, and I think there’s great value in the fact that this film did.

It’s the best action/suspense/supernatural thriller I’ve probably ever seen, and I would recommend it for anyone who’s willing to think about the things that they see.

(Ahaha. I just turned on the television. Ebert and Roper are reviewing Inception. (You can read that article here – I think it sums it up better than I do.)
Funny they’re complaining about the explanations that went on between DiCaprio and Page – if those hadn’t been there, they’d been complaining it didn’t make sense.
Although I will agree with them here that Nolan didn’t necessarily capture what I thought really resides within the unconscious. In that way it sometimes fell short of being supernatural, to become more of a simple action thriller.)

I wish there were an add-on I could use that would help me log what I’m reading, because that would be fun and it would make me feel like a bum whenever I wasn’t reading something, which would then encourage me to read more.

Anyway, yesterday my parents and I took a trip to Barnes and Noble for the sake of browsing, which is rarer than it should be. After seeing clips for the upcoming movie-based-on-a-novel (my dad’s the one who thought it would have been based on a book…he’s got writer’s intuition or something…), Charlie St. Cloud, I wanted to read it (written by Ben Sherwood). So I found the single copy on the shelf and snatched it up (unfortunately it’s the movie cover already D: But that does mean I get to stare at Zac Efron whenever I pick the book up. Mmmmmm). Then I found a new Diana Wynne Jones novel thanks to skilled browsing on my part. Then I saw The Book Thief, which had been recommended to me by coworkers while I was still at Barnes and Noble, and decided it was time for me to read it.

So I came home with three books, and started reading the DWJ one simultaneously with Charlie St. Cloud. The DWJ is called Enchanted Glass and stars a little boy along with a character in his thirties who taught as a professor and did magic named Andrew…which is…weird, because in The Catcher, Bakura’s name is Andrew, he’s in his thirties, went to school to be a teacher, and does magic. xD I feel like a dirty good-intentions plagiarist.

Anyway, Charlie St. Cloud is very strange, but I’m probably three quarters of the way through it already, because it’s one of those paperbacks that’s written so fluidly that you just sort of tear into it even if you’re not acutely interested in it. The author, Ben Sherwood, went to Harvard College (not the same as the famous Harvard? O.o) but also Oxford University, which to me, is pretty ba. xD

Other than that, I’m tired, don’t want to go to work, and don’t know what project to commit myself to. What else is new? xD