Here's a trailer for Ang Lee's latest, Lust Caution. Tony Leung Chiu Wai brings the sexy back to 1939 or something. Again. My favorite Ang Lee story was told to me by some ILM people who worked on Hulk. During the making of that film Ang did something unprecedented for a director at the VFX stage: he was at ILM every day working with the effects team directing the animation of the green monster and even more strangely, he himself acted out a lot of the motion capture. So when you see Hulk crush those tanks you're watching Ang Lee's body language. He said, as strange as this might seem, that Hulk was an incredibly personal film. I'm not saying that Ang Lee is a radioactive mutant...

An odd request: I am in urgent need to cast an Asian couple in a PSA I'm shooting next week, most likely Tuesday. It features a cross section of New Yorkers. My original choices aren't available or most people are at their day jobs. If you're in New York and this sounds like something interesting to you, I'd need you for two hours in Central Park. Shooting is psuedo documentary so no real acting skills needed but a plus if you have them. It'd be a good piece for your reel. But due to how I cast I'd prefer it to be an actual couple. I'm looking for representations of daily, real NY so I'm not looking to cast models. Send me an email and picture to

info(at)otaku-house.com

(swap the (at) to the @)

If you're interested or can help out. It's a PSA so no money is involved, but you can put it on your reel.

Check out these ludicrous Chinese bootleg Harry Potter book sequels, such as "Harry Potter and the Filler of Big", and featuring Harry's new sidekicks, awkwardly placed Triceratops and the ant from A Bug's Life.




Check them out here along with more pictures.

Courtesy of Mutantfrog. Who also tips off to the insanely detailed differences in the Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese versions.

Trailer for Wes Anderson's new film The Darjeeling Limited. As ever for his films, flawless trailer. The line by Schwartzman (an actor I've come to like more and more with every part) about family members being friends is terrific, too.

Check it out in beautiful Quicktime here.



I remember coming out of The Life Aquatic with friends worried that Anderson has become too aesthetically devoted and mannerist, and returning to the same idea over and over... The lovable cad who brings everyone together, adults acting like kids, and then all the production design and borrowed visual details from classic art movies to go with. Remember this Amex ad he did from last year?



But hey, Wes Anderson gotta eat, right..?

It's hard to tell from a trailer but this one looks warm and human. And last year I worked on a job with the incredible Pawel Wdowczak, the amazing sound mixer and recordist who plays the sound recordist in The Life Aquatic. Two things he told me were that Life Aquatic was hampered by some incredibly difficult shooting conditions, and the new movie was sounding terrific. Well it's one hell of a trailer... It looks absolutely exquisite. And it reminds me of what a damned interesting filmmaker he is... It's like I've missed him.

(p.s. Martin, I read the Harry Potter book in a day and a half so I could use the Internet without fear of having ten years of Dickensian plotting ruined for me)

A second post for today... I find it no small coincidence that so many writers in New York, come to this neighborhood to live. Sometimes things are decidely off or even slightly dreamy out here. This seems like just the sort of thing that would happen in one of Paul Auster's books, and this is where he lives and often writes about.





The Gowanus Lounge writes and presents photos from a nine year old of the mysterious Sleeping Bride of Park Slope. A woman dressed in full wedding attire somehow mysteriously sleeps in the space above a brownstone doorway.

Updated: There's a story here at the Brooklyn Paper which was penned by someone named Beethoven Bong. Curioser and curioser.

Thanks to the wonderful Bana Abouricheh, artist, robot builder, fellow employee of misterboom and another resident of the nabe, for this.

Snape is Hans Gruber. Nerd alert part two as yes, I went to get that certain book at midnight. I'm shooting something next week so again I probably won't be posting much this week but wanted to share my thoughts on this.

Friday night I decided to take my friend out to get the 7th Harry Potter book at midnight in my neighborhood. She's been with the books from the start, after all, and although I haven't I can understand at least her passion for the thing, given my own devotion to so many of my own little strange ephemeral loves, it makes sense to me. And she's also converted me to the series in a way I hadn't been before.



The other funny thing is what an age of immediacy we live in. I knew that if I didn't catch up and read this book now that it'd be completely ruined for me within a matter of days. And that's a bitch of a thing. There are a lot of videos on youtube of male teenagers driving aimlessly ruining the book for people in line all over the country. In our own line a couple of Gamestop employees had literally taped to the inside of their door the same - defining for me the shitty service and attitude of videogame store clerks. Given the number of nine year olds in our line of 400 plus people who had to pass by that I just sort of shudder with anger. I'm sure that some Potter fans are annoying. But that's so pathetic and shows such a lack of civility and it was done by people who were the same age as their ancestors who got carted off to wars and so forth. It's this very fear that makes our climate so hard to guage: everyone knows they must read the book quickly, some out of sheer excitment to know, others to protect ourselves from our memetic culture and how it's bred a certain dickheadedness. What a climate to receive a book in.

Here in Park Slope, Brooklyn there's a Barnes and Noble but I insisted on joining the line at Community Bookstore. There's a certain bit of unusual logic that dictates some of what I love most about New York... For years my father (who grew up in the isolated rural community of Cody, Wyoming) has lamented the loss of small town American life and the suburb I mostly grew up in Washington state has seen it's own character vanish into a thicket of chain stores. I never realized that moving to New York I'd find exactly what he means... This despite the best efforts of chain retailers to take over the area. Most everywhere in my neighborhood I go to family run businesses. And I insist on parting with book money as much as I can at Community Bookstore. It just has a life and a history and employees I know and like, the kind of odd ducks I worked in a library with as a teen, and a dog that likes to spread it's front paws open to be petted on the belly.

So they decided to have a Harry Potter party and they went all out handing out fireworks and so on and here's some photos, and it was a really lovely night and yes, seeing that many people line up to buy a book is a wonderful thing.











Here's some wonderful pictures of the Manhattan party at themodernage blog. Be warned, someone has posted massive spoilers for the book in the comments section there. My favorite has to be this Alan Rickman shoutout:



I'll write later this week my thoughts on the book, which is rather wonderfully brilliant and beyond a pop culture pheneomon something rather classic. It makes me miss living in England. It makes me think about the whole span of life and what we leave behind as we grow up. It makes me realize how important friends are. It makes me understand that the lives of those who came before us, despite all the mistakes made and flaws inherent in people, offer us a chance to realize that we are defined by choice. All that from a kid's book, but a really great one.

This is a video of 1500 Filipino prisoners reenacting the Thriller video, dance move for dance move. I want to watch it again and again and again. I think this is the best music video in a long time, and it was probably made by a corrections officer. I wonder if they take requests.

All credit goes to Dan-ah for showing this to me.

Quick update and a new Neon Genesis Evangelion movie: I've been absent lately because I've started to prep a shoot for the end of July. It's not a music video so I won't be covering the extensive making of here. Between that and my newfound Harry Potter obsession (I may be late to the party but I don't have to wait years for the next book har har) just haven't had much time for idle thought or trolling the Internet for amusement. I went to see Order of the Phoenix again, this time in IMAX 3d. I have a few issues with IMAX presentations of films sourced in 35mm; but the final twenty minutes in 3d is awesome for this one... Worth the price of admission to see the look on my companion's face when we slipped those glasses on. I'd also like to discuss the look on her face at the Decemberists concert, but that'll have to wait.

Here's a trailer for the new Neon Genesis Evangelion theatrical movie coming out in Japan soon:



I still regard the series as the single most important anime of the past twenty five years; I hope time hasn't dulled its overtly metaphysical and psychic ambitions given the host of awful imitators it spawned. I've been meaning to write about my own interpretation of Evangelion for awhile but keep getting sidetracked.

After much deliberation and research I've settled on the Panasonic HVX-200 as the primary camera I'm going to start using for low budget projects. The Feist 1,2,3,4 video was shot on the same and I did most of the shooting on the Gondry movie with it as well, which is where I familiarized myself with it. I'm just convinced pound for pound that if you wanna go low budget or profile HD this is the camera to do it with. If you've shot with a DVX-100 or its variants in the past few years you got it, just weighs a lot more (which I prefer anyway). But the card system despite its insane price is terrific if you ask me, and you don't need an expensive deck. It looks like I'll be shooting this piece with it, so I'll let you know how it goes.

I am sadly skipping Comic Con this year, for the first time in three years. I'm tired of explaining to people that it's not sitting around discussing Wonder Woman's outfits - it's also movies and all the graphic novelists I love from Drawn and Quarterly and Fantagraphics and Top Shelf and the smaller presses, too, and people you'll discover for the first time and artists and Giant Robot, all in one place for one time of the year. I think it's better though that I save my money for more trips abroad. My wanderlust has returned full blown. But I am sad to be absent this year. I hope Eric and Martin have fun at the yearly beach party, and besides I'm too fat now to wear my Bruce Lee outfit anyway.

Will write more after the weekend once I finish book 7... For all you elitist naysaying snobs out there, just think... Millions of Americans are going to buy a hardcover book tonight.

Silly animals and summer movies. Why have I been so excited by a handful of movies, lately? Because Summer defines itself as the stupid season for movies. All the serious movies get pulled back, arthouse releases for the most part consist of a few counterprogrammed things, and week after week it's just one movie that's been engineered to be a blockbuster after another. Think back to last summer and try to remember what you saw or was meant to be exciting, despite the ludicrous sums spent on those movies. Read this hilariously off key New Yorker review of Transformers to see how cineastes try and wrap their mind around what surfaces during the summer.

I'm happy this summer because I've seen some damn good stuff. Add to the list now a movie that deserves much more credit: Ratatouille. Any summer which brings me this and the aforementioned wonder that is the new Harry Potter movie is a miracle. Because they're both astoundingly exceptional. Ratatouille is not getting the audience you ask me it deserves - I think it may easily be one of Pixar's best if not one of the best animated films in years and years. It is simply just flawless and charming. Watch this 9 minute preview and I promise you this is just a small taste of how good the movie is. I think they did a pretty poor job selling the thing - the trailer left me unenthused. But I swear this thing is simply a classic. And how far has computer animation come? Enough that its depictions of seared scallops can actually induce one to go find some.



Animals and food reminds of something that few have believed me about. My family cat had a thing for eating corn on the cob. He'd put his paws on either end of the cob and munch away. Thank you youtube.



The fireflies in New York are everywhere now, as it gets to be this summer. There's something about odd wildlife in such urban environments, reminders that we can only attempt to impose upon life, as it will adapt to us, too. New York has hawk which prowls uptown living amongst the skyscrapers. I remember once catching a fleeting glimpse of a pack of Coyotes in Old Town San Diego at 2am in the fog. Surrealy beautiful. My frequent colalborator Tarin often sees the wolves as she leaves movie shoots at odd hours in L.A. and the way she puts it, it's a moment that'll stop you. Saturday walking through Washington Square Park the bushes were alive with the green traces of fireflies and I'm always surprised by how friendly those bugs are. What I hadn't seen before is that they'll glow in your hand if you give them a chance.

Going to The Decmberists in Central Park tonight... Bringing someone who's never been to a rock show before, very excited to make this their first, especially given what a live show this band puts on. In recent years Colin has induced his audience to pretend they are getting swallowed by a whale, split the audience down the middle and asked them to go to war with one another, called for dance offs, reenacted the Charge of the Light Brigade in the middle of the audience, and in my favorite bit of Rasputin like hypnotism, had the entire crowd sit down and then surge back up as a song kicks back in again.

Nerd alert: I have a favorite movie of this summer now, at last, and it is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In urging those who wouldn't necessarily want to see a Harry Potter movie, I'd start by saying that I have never read any of the books, and the first film I thought was perfectly serviceable but nothing extraordinarily special to me other than it's sense of accomplishment and casting. It just seemed a little too light and insubstantial. How wrong I was.

I returned to Harry Potter this year finally catching Cuaron's sublime Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film. That one showed me that Rowling's fictional creation had a perfect balance of darkness and light and atmosphere and actual magic and menace; furthermore there was subtext and the beginnings of some quite weighty stuff. I read that film as a boy entering puberty and accessing his anima and animus. So then I was obliged to watch the fourth film, and although I preferred Cuaron's tone and texture I was starting to see there's a lot more to Harry Potter than I assumed.

What I can only derive in translation from seeing the movies is that Rowling had done something quite extraordinary - lulled us into a charming story of a boy and magic that as he ages, and its audience does, so too does his world become more complicated and interesting. It's already cemented as a classic coming of age story, but I had no idea exactly how lucidly that would get captured in its narrrative. The Potter story starts as a fairly basic bit of outsider wish fulfillment in metaphor - that strange sense of seclusion you've had your whole life is the fact that you're actually capable of magic, and there are a few like you. That's part and parcel of otherworldly fantasy. What this film dares to suggest quite politically is the cost of such when put in the hands of adults and how children must come to terms with it as they become the same. The success of the books most importantly has shepherded the films away from moronic changes and the kind of Hollywood tampering you'd expect. These are odd films with plots and elements that had existed only as a screenplay would've been chewed up and spat upon by the people who made Transformers, I'm guessing.

The new film is about the birth of a revolutionary, a secret education in rejecting facism. I think it's no coincidence at all that the film's villain (and what a marvelously horrible work she is, Imedla Staunton essaying facism with a smile all done up in a wardrobe the Queen and Thatcher would approve of) emphasizes a repressive social order and rote memorization and theory; and her pivotal scene takes place in the primeval, Celtic forest that surrounds the school. We can now see the Potter series as something so much more ambitious. This is a very dark film, still with moments of wonder (and actual wonder - the CGI work in this film is transparent and not there for spectacle) and laughter... But very, very dark. It's about teenage angst and realizing what the actual stakes in revolution are - there will be punishment meted, friendships frayed, and in a stroke of complete and utter genius... For a moment Potter gets a glimpse of his father at his own age and it's an unbelievably honest moment of paternal deconstruction. Even Potter's enshrinement of his parents is subverted here as he gains adult consciousness.

Likewise there's something to be said for a series of five films in which the actors have aged so much - the emotional heft of that alone is incredible, especially in the moments we flashback for mere seconds and see just how much has changed. The series has earned its darkness as opposed to making it eyeliner (which Spider-Man 3 got so horribly wrong). Emo antecdents in popular culture tend to get rejected wholesale by anyone other than overtly hormonal teenagers because we see it as a fashion pose. Here things are so dynamically spot on between the characters that Potter is told that he is somewhat self obsessed with is own misery, as is his idol.

Director Yates has come out of nowhere though and done a few things useful for these films - first of all its the most actual British of them all, in that modern day London actually looks and feels like modern day London. All the British vets obviously have a field day with this stuff, but the kids are exceptional in this one, too. And he so clearly gets the sense of menace well and truly right, showing us that it doesn't just come from monsters without but within, too, in our social order and institutions. My favorite scene is a simple conversation between Radcliffe and Gary Oldman. Mere words.

Oh yes, some people are all a twitter over the fact that Potter kisses an asian girl. Who they drop too easily from the narrative, but another wonderful thing from Rowling is how - especially for a fantasy - multicultural the whole thing is. But I'm still the crazy guy who thinks the Lord of the Rings series is slightly racist. Her own plot hinges on a villain who is obsessed with class and racial purity.

A lot of Potter obsessives of the books, I've been reading, have exceptions with what's been discarded. To me not knowing the books it all makes sense and is paced perfectly, and ultimately I like how self contained this is and clearly about one focused thing - Potter's emotional journey. If anything it's like some odd hybrid between Lindsay Anderson's angry young man films from the 60s in Britain and a Miyazaki film. I could go on and on about this film, so I'll stop and just say: if you want an entertaining spectacle this summer, one that doesn't insult your intelligence and actually provides you with sensations and thoughts to ponder afterwards and go over again, one that challenges the confines of easy mythology, one whose characters earn your devotion, here is your movie.

Here's a silly NYTimes article in which a handful of writers (including Damon Lindelof, master plotter of Lost) come up with their own Harry Potter epilogues, including this bit of art...

Check out this Haruki Murakami essay at the New York Times. He waxes on the value of music to his writing. I don't trust anyone who doesn't like music (yes, I can actually recall knowing someone who actively said they didn't), and I'd say that the secret history of all novels, movies, plays, love affairs, letters, epic emails, paintings, drawings, wonderful meals has at some point involved someone alone listening to some music. Read it here.

Summer movie madness; ODing on Korean movies, action movies, and a begruding defense of Michael Bay. So many people have been passing through New York lately that combined with work I haven't had much time hence the drop off in blog posts. Apologies to friends I haven't emailed in awhile; things are well, probably too well. Nick has been staying with me and after he leaves I hope to go back to hermitville for awhile to get some projects going and I might be directing some more stuff soon.

I didn't get to see anywhere near the amount of movies I wanted to at the NYAFF but as it's over I do want to add to the word that it is one of the best film festivals in NY. For asian movie fans it's one of the best ever, I'm convinced. It's fun and lively as opposed to stuffy and self important, which festivals can come off as and the Subwaycinema group are so damned passionate about the whole thing. That's what it feels like more than anything: a group of individuals who want to share as much as they can. Keep it on your radar for next year and sign up for the mailing list. Two of the coolest people I met were Goran and Grady Hendrix, who writes a blog I've found indispensible: Variety mag's Kaiju Shakedown. It was awesome to meet the guys in person. And I also got to meet Nikki Lee who you may remember from the pages of GR. She's working on making some films these days so look out. As a hapa her art blew my mind with all its paradoxical notions of identity.

Here's me with Han Jae-Rim, director of Rules of Dating and The Show Must Go On, and soon I'll write up my official interview with him but even better was getting to hang out with him, despite our limited faculty of language with one another. He even bonded with Nick simply by talking music. That's a good language with no borders. Jae told me he got Yoko Kanno to do the score of his new movie because of his love in high school of Cowboy Bebop, which is so fucking awesome.



Here's a quick rundown of movies watched lately, which I'll expand upon later:

I'm a Cyborg But It's OK the new Chan Wook-Park movie. I want to write an impassioned defence of this movie as its had many detractors and it failed collossally at the box office in Korea. I feel blessed to have caught it cause it looks like it's not going to get a US release. It is not, despite a change in tone, in any way dissimiar to Park's ouvere. In fact the philosophical implications of sympathy and guilt are still very predominant, even some revenge. I loved every odd inch of it.

Memories of Murder Bong Joon-Ho's startlingly realisitic police procedural has been out there for awhile. If anything it's like a Korean version of Zodiac; but for me a lot of the connective tissue in some of the stuff I love in Korean cinema has to be actor Song Kang-Ho who I am just absolutely marvelling at. I love this guy. I'd watch him read a telephone book. This film isn't easy to watch but moments of it aim for a sublime and downbeat poetry that The Host lacked.

Woman is the Future of Man rave reviews and Scorcese's commendation don't do it for me on this one. I think it's very dilligently made with intellligence and discipline but ultimately for all the ground it treads it says little, and what it does say isn't so complex. My viewing companion, a female, said it's bleak portrayal of men as liars and cheats and sleazebags didn't really tell her anything she wasn't already aware of.

Transformers. This is the hard one to write about. Because I fucking hated and loved this movie at the same time. I swear to god there's a really phenomenal filmmaker buried in Michael Bay. The last forty five minutes of this movie are jaw dropping, and constitute the first real "ok I haven't seen that before" wow effect I've seen this summer that really great special effects work can give you. But the tone of the movie, the way it constantly wants to sell itself to you as if it were an ad for itself, all the missteps and groan inducing comedy bits... I have respect for Michael Bay. For shooting a lot of this stuff as practical as possible. For doing 75 setups a day. For coming up with some of these insane shots. I can even understand why he made the robots so organic and busy looking. But someone please sit him down with a copy of Team America so he can make a checklist of things he shouldn't do. This is my pick for stupid movie of the summer, but be warned, it's really really stupid.

Solo Con Tu Parejas Alfonso Cuaron's first movie, and one of the first features from cinematography god Emmanuel Lubezki, in a beautiful Criterion DVD. I liked this movie, and found parts of it to be sublime, but I didn't love it. It's very much a first feature. And there's something wonderful about seeing rougher work from someone who later knocks it out of the park. It is very different from his later work, more controlled and stylized. But still very smart, very human, very unique.

And...

Fireflies in my backyard while I was out there drawing some storyboards.




Moth and wasp fighting in my backyard. I thought the wasp was being completey mean to the moth as I'm sort of fond of the things (but I prefer Gamera to Mothra) then I read that moths are bees mortal enemies and destroy their colonies something fierce.

There's a part of Tokyo called Akihabara that I think all visitors should at least check out. I must admit it's my own nerdiness that compelled me to visit the place - and it's when I tell people that it is the nerd capital of Tokyo it drops off their radar. But it's so otherworldly I think anyone could have a good afternoon out there. And here's most exactly why... Where else would you see this happen?

Very last minute, I know, but tonight Han Jae-Rim's The Show Must Go On is playing again at the NYAFF at 9:15pm. It's an amazing movie, which I'll write more about later. The trailer and more info is below. If you want to see a terrific Korean movie, another genre deconstruction unlike any you've seen before, then go check it out. More on my evening with Han Jae-Rim and my thoughts on I'm A Cyborg But It's OK later...

Most importantly a third screening has been added due to it selling out, and though there's been a lot negative written about the film I loved it and say it's definitely worth checking out. Find out more at this link here.

And seriously give a thought to the remaning screenings. This is truly a great festival - amazing movies, passionately shared, not stuffy or too serious. Even the trailers get a cheer from the audience.