Interval at Addictive TV/Optronica‘s night out at Waterman’s. Some fine fine short things — respect to Tom Wall and Somniscope [above], and of course Addictive themselves for a reprise of The Italian Boj, which was quite a thing last year at the South Bank…
We were at the ‘World Sneak Preview’ of Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed at the ICA tonight. Complimentary sake and sushi, a lovingly-prepared but very silly flipchart presentation from the producer about the politics of the world in which it is set, then the film. The technique is impressive — the city of Olympus is beautifully rendered, the battle set-pieces are fluidly choreographed and edited, the whole nicely balancing genre conventions and virtuoso hyper-realism. Although the first few minutes owe too much to The Matrix-meets-Avalon, and in parts (to my eye) the human characters suffer somewhat from traditional anime styling, Appleseed is …
I first saw Rybczynski’s Tango, I Can’t Stop and some of Orchestra on the ABC’s Sunday Spectrum strand on TV back in the 80s in Tasmania (the original Sunday Spectrum doesn’t even rate a mention on the ABC website, but it was really important at the time. I seem to remember the work of Rybczynski, Michael Snow and Ed Emshwiller all being shown within the same month. Revelations.) I’ve been hunting The Fourth Dimension since Tokyo. Tim saw it at (I may be wrong) Image Forum, and made it sound a thing worth tracking down. That was probably 13 years …
A selection of Zbig Rybczynski’s early films and his HDTV work from the 80s is now available on DVD. Shame it isn’t HD-DVD. And shame I don’t have an HD-DVD player. Oh well. Really wish I could find this stuff on Japanese HD laserdisc (and that I had one of those ancient MUSE HI-Vision decks to play them on…)Oh and Happy New Year. I’ve been very busy with work and thinking, and this is the first thing I’ve seen this year that I’ve wanted to post. More to come soon…