i'm alive, just haven't been doing a lot worth logging here. playing deadlock and darkest dungeon 2 right now. darkest dungeon 2 is really good, i just don't know how to feel about deadlock. i think mobas are just not for me lol. but i've been having fun playing it with friends
i also baked some cookies for the first time yesterday and watched the frankenstein musical with aforementioned friends on call
the pied piper (1986)
type: film
"a stop-motion adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin about a plague of rats that punish townsfolk corrupt with greed"
sick art direction
today i somehow ended up reading about experimental film and watched a few of stan barkhage's short films like mothlight. while going through his wikipedia page i noticed the first track on stereolabs album dots and loops is named after him! i always feel small when i learn that something i've been casually enjoying carries more meaning than i was aware of. what a weird feeling. very humbling
i also rediscovered "kirikou", a film i watched when i was younger that meant a lot to me but i totally forgot about. just wanted to write it down here so i won't forget it again
street of crocodiles (1986)
type: short film
"Inside a box full of curio, a puppet who is recently freed from his strings explores a dusty and forlorn commercial area. The explorer becomes ensnared into miniature tailor shop by baby-faced dolls"
i loved it. will probably rewatch this a lot to just absorb everything. i dream of making something like street of crocodiles.. one day i will get my ass up and make a stop motion film
i'll post those photos from china eventually.. i've just been slacking off a lot since i arrived. playing a lot of nightreign with my friend and watching videos on dnd.
i also started playing planescape torment a week or so ago. i have soo many games i need to finish and then even more that i want to start (especially the dmc series since my friends have been urging me to get into it).
right now i really should be spending my time writing the report for my internship and finshing up my homebrew oneshot (started dm-ing for my coworkers lol). both are due on monday..
on top of that there are a lot of appointments that i need to make. i just can't bring myself to be really productive when i don't have immediate deadlines aghh i really spent these past few weeks doing nothing and now i have so much shit to do
weapons (2025)
type: film
"When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance"
went to watch this in the theatre after work yesterday. slept a night on it and i dont knowww
weapons builds up to a grandiosely absurd third act similar to the substance, only that if the substance's final act was like a car crash you can't take your eyes off of, weapon's final act was like a clown car crash. which is not necessarily something bad, there are aspects of this film that i like, but i didn't fully enjoy it. it kind of lives up to all the talk about it i guess, just not in the way i was hoping it would.
there was this theme of parasitism which showed up a few times that i liked. one could understand gladys as a human parasite, invading a community inconspicuously by posing as something familiar, incapacitating it's members slowly and taking control of them to feed her own needs. but overall any deeper thematic bearings still felt underdeveloped or got a little lost in the making perhaps. at least that's how i feel about it.
maybe to me the film concers itself too much with audience reactions and being palatable, and i would've liked it more if it was just a tad weirder and more vague. but the blend of horror/thriller with comedy had my theatre giggling and i also thought it was a structurally interesting film, even though it almosttt dragged on a little bit. definintely made the right decision by seeing this in a full theatre, because it feels like that's how it was intended to be watched.
to wong foo, thanks for everything! julie newmar (1995)
type: film
"Three drag queens travel cross-country until their car breaks down, leaving them stranded in a small town"
it's peak
the fall (2006)
type: film
"In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastic story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances."
woww wow absolute cinema... the visuals and costuming are just insanely impressive and the idea behind the film resonates so deeply with me.. it's about the immense power stories hold over our reality and how we project and mesh parts of ourselves into our fictions. it's through stories that we digest reality and find meaning in it. so good
im back home! just landed yesterday, and am still a little exhausted from the flight. i'll upload some photos i took and post about my time in china once ive slept off the jetlag. i think i spent so much time around other people i really just need a few days alone for my brain to assimilate everything and my body to properly arrive.
i also really missed the taste of sourdough bread lol the moment i got back i made myself a bread with ham
lola rennt (1998)
type: film
"After a botched money delivery, Lola has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks"
very whacky and uniquely edited, i liked it. watched this on the flight back to germany with my friend (we also rewatched pixels and the desolation of smaug. our flight was almost 14 hours ok we had some time to kill.)
look back (2024)
type: film
"The overly confident Fujino and the shut-in Kyomoto couldn't be more different, but a love of drawing manga brings these two small-town girls together"
you have to keep making art... you have to look back and keep making things forever and ever..
i loved this film but i'm also biased as hell because i like making things too.
all saints street (2020)
type: tv show
"Bowman, a demon who is fascinated by humans, runs away from home to live in the human world. Despite his desire to integrate himself with humans, he ultimately finds himself sharing an apartment with other mythological beings"
we watched all 4 seasons in one sitting (the episodes are really short).
very trope-y but it's not like it's trying not the be subtle about it. this is not something i'd usually watch, but it was fun together with friends. unique art style to see animated
a silent voice (2016)
type: film
"A deaf girl, Shoko, is bullied by the popular Shoya. As Shoya continues to bully Shoko, the class turns its back on him. Shoko transfers and Shoya grows up as an outcast. Alone and depressed, the regretful Shoya finds Shoko to make amends"
watched with friends. idkk did not really resonate with me
landed in shanghai today!
i did a small internship at a ceramics manufactory that lasted a few days (of which i'll be posting some pictures if my things survive the kiln) and on friday i departed for china (it's Saturday, 23:30 right now). me and my friend are visting another friend here and staying at her place for the next few days. we've been planning this for a while, and to be honest i think initially we were just saying we'd visit her as a joke, but now i'm actually halfway across the globe in another continent, in a city too large to properly wrap my head around. i'm endlessly grateful to my friend for her hospitality and for putting up with the two of us..
our flight actually departed from munich (cause the tickets were cheaper lol) so we traveled there for a few hours by the intercity-express, waited a while at the airport, and then flew 11 hours through the night to pvg. the flight was honestly really easy on us as we both just slept through most of it. there was a little boy in front of us who kept peeking behind the seats, which was endearing, and i specifically remember the man next to me having a really kind voice.
I'm lying in a bed that's three times my size right now but i'm still curling up into the very corner to sleep. digesting the aburdity of being alive
