Weak week

[rowyn]

I can't decide if it's been a long week or a short one. I'm glad the work week's almost over. I need to do some more writing tonight, and this weekend.

I haven't done all that much creative this week, except sketch Sythyry. I posted one new piece from Silver Scales, and I've written a few nibble-sized bits of Prophecy. Apart from that, nothing since Sunday.

I guess I should get moving, but after the end-of-month crunch at home, and now the beginning-of-the-month crunch at work, I haven't had much energy to spare for other things. Not even for updating my journal.

I haven't decided if I like the new look for LJ or not. It certainlt doesn't seem to have improved my connectivity any; I keep getting errors and having to retry. Sigh.

I'm trying to remember just what it is that I did all week, now. Labor Day -- wait, I already wrote about Labor Day, so I could just check my notes for that. Tuesday Lut and I watched the anime version of "Metropolis", which I didn't like at all, really, but which did give me a bit of inspiration for a story. Don't know if I'll bother writing it out, though. Wednesday I did some more Sythyry sketches, which were featured in this entry from Sythyry's journal. (Yay!) Last night I did an unimpressive sketch of a character concept Brennabat wrote me about. I spent most of the evening trying to stop stressing out over work, and over the things I haven't been doing at home. I didn't actually succeed at that later until I gave Level_Head a call, but that did the trick. (For which I say: Yay! again.)

And now it's halfway through Friday, and work is starting to get to me again. Guess I'd better get to it, first: my lunch break is over. At least I've only a few more hours to go. But look -- I've finally got a paragraph that doesn't start with "I". Of course, it starts with a conjuntion instead, which is not technically correct. Oh well. If it had to be well-written, it wouldn't be a journal.

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Now that you've actually seen Metropolis, and thus I wouldn't be giving you any spoilers, I suppose I could go verbose on my own opinions.

Incidentally, I saw the manga that the movie was based on. It's very old. It's bizarre. It's circa 1930s or 1940s - I'm not sure which - and it suffers from the same bizarre juxtaposition of "silly cartoon" characters combined with high levels of violence. I was about to bust a gut when, in the manga, there was a large and vicious rat, and it looked disturbingly similar to what - at the time - was the contemporary version of Mickey Mouse. It was surreal, to say the least, because all indications were that this wasn't an attempt at satire, but an amazing lack of originality on the part of the artist. (This is how the Americans draw a cartoon mouse - so this must be how I should draw one!)

Anyway, when I first caught wind of the name "Metropolis", I had supposed (wrongly) that this would be an animated adaptation of Fritz Lang's black and white film, Metropolis.

Er ... and I'm about to get even more verbose. Perhaps I should just write an entry of my own. ;)

[rowyn]

Er ... and I'm about to get even more verbose. Perhaps I should just write an entry of my own.

I shan't complain if you do. :) Besides, there's a chance of people who don't want spoilers straying onto your comment.

I was wondering if there was a connection with Fritz Lang's Metropolis, too. I'm rather glad to hear there isn't or at least isn't much of one. I've been curious about Lang's movie for a long time, but have never gotten around to seeing it.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, here it is.

As for Metropolis, how I saw it was that, several years ago, I was at my grandparents' house, and they (for a while) had the Sci-Fi Channel. They were having a black and white sci-fi extravaganza, and on that particular day they had a few old silent movies. I guess they broadened the definition of "science fiction," because in addition to showing Metropolis, I got to see the old Nosferatu, and they were showing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (I think I got the name right) as well. Possibly Svengali, too, but I forget. Quite the line-up, if so!

I'm not sure that I'd pay to rent these. It just felt like something to watch, for a bit of context. Incidentally, I couldn't help but think that the scene in Nosferatu of the vampire rising from his coffin was particularly freaky - the sort of thing I'm sure would have given me nightmares as a kid.

On a tangent, on the DVD for the old black and white "Frankenstein" - which Gwendel and I watched shortly before watching the extras on the "Nightmare Before Christmas" DVD and "Young Frankenstein", thus cluing us in on a lot of the gags and references - there's an extra that apparently showed in theaters way back when, having a lot of clips from Nosferatu, but with a narrator employing burlesque humor in what I might describe as a prototype of MST3K treatment. (I wanted to slap the guy around. He wasn't all that funny, really, and it felt disrespectful of the original film, even if it's obviously sappy by modern standards.)

You might actually be able to find Metropolis in libraries. The local library actually has a few old silent films in DVD format. (One of these days, I'll get around to checking them out. It's just that, what with all my hobbies, I very rarely have nights where I'm just sitting around wondering what to do, wanting to watch something.) Who knows? Being in a big metropolitan area, you might have a well-stocked library video collection. =)

[rowyn]

You've got the name right on "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" -- or at least, it matches my memory. :) Funny thing: I've seen "Caligari" and "Nosferatu", myself, but I really don't remember what happened in either of them. I saw them both for a film class I took in, oh, '92 or '91. :)