Where the wind took Akira

(Taken from the Manga 'Akira' and uploaded for the viewing pleasure of the reader)


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So firstly Thank You to the lovely folks at fourdocs who have kindly bought some wheels for our van. Wheels, see, are really quite useful. They allow for far more of a flow on the road than the basic grinding along on spindles. So, really, cheers dudes.

On a totally different note, I (along with various family members) scattered my Grandfather’s ashes this weekend. This experience was in itself pretty interesting. It always struck me that as a guy he was not too great a man to his immediate family and later attempted to change upon realising this (if a bit late). Whilst he was being scattered the Bob Marley line

‘None but ourselves can free our minds’ - Redemption Song

hit me. Can you redeem a lifetime of terrorising people in chilling out prior to death? Perhaps.

So I went home and watched Akira. Obviously.
This film, best known to fans of Manga Entertainment for the sound byte
“What’s Happening?” (used in all Manga trailers after the films release for over a decade), was directed by Katsuhiro Ôtomo (who had been writing it as a comic strip since 1982); Akira was released in 1988 and blew away most of everyone who watched it with its depiction of a Neo-Tokyo.

Many, many people have watched Akira. This is a fact. It is possibly the most one-time viewed Anime around the world. That said, when you talk to people about it, it is often apparent that a lot of them did not quite get the point of the film.

Regardless of a whole hoard of convoluted characters, all very closely linked, Akira has only one protagonist within its plot and that is Akira. The entity of a small boy trapped in suspension of time and space, confused yet all knowing, lost and hurt but loving, without knowing how to love or what it means. Non-human to the point of being utterly alive. When I was younger my Grandfather said something to me that always stuck with me…

- “The future is not a straight line. There are many different pathways. We must try to decide that future for ourselves”.

Really very strangely, this line can also be found in Akira. The likelihood of him ever having watched Akira is beyond fuck all, so that always confused the hell out of me. I had seen Akira before he said this to me, but still, it confuses me to the same degree now as it did then. I was about nine at the time.

Odd.

Moreover, if you type ‘Akira’ into the Internet Movie Data Base, the second plot keyword to come up, after ‘1980s’, is ‘Nihilism’.

I often wonder if people are inherently assholes to people solely due to nihilism, only stopping this Way of being once they realise that life may in fact be worth living.

The film makes a lot of incredible points… and the soundtrack helps.
You can not change the past, you can only redirect it. The future is unknown, so hang onto the ones you love and if you do go the wrong way, you might end up as a cybernetic mutated military experiment made of a hybrid of anti-matter and violent mech-goo. So avoid doing so.

I believe my Grandfather to have found his way just prior to his death. The last thing he said to me was “Go a long way, don’t look back and stay in love”.

I think he might have been a deeply confused romantic at heart.
Hopefully the wind will take him somewhere worth going.

taking in the sun in a exaltation to you

Tuesday morning is looking to be well lit.
The sun is up earlier than usual. There is frost on my roof and the house is so damn cold it is just not true.

No words are coming in the order that I would like them to do so.

Is it fair to say that distance and time and space and age and culture are the things that keep people apart? Sometimes I wonder if holding the stance of ‘hopeless romantic’ is just asking for it. Should any of the above govern what is to come?

Do we see these things in everyday life, or only in one’s own life everyday?

I’m not sure where this is going, but I know that if you listen to The Cure, Interpol, Broken Social Scene, Sonic Youth, Arcade Fire, Deftones, Eric Clapton, Led Zepplin, Kings of Leon, Bush, The Sisters of Mercy, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Natalie Merchant and the Levellers on repeat for five hours and talk to a drunken friend about your most serious relationships that were not to be and the reasons why, followed by a fleeting synopsis of your own personal desires for the future of your heart… not only are you most probably a complete idiot, but you should most likely stop thinking so much about the hypothetical and just go with it, like any decent protagonist in a particularly smooth film.

The direction in which to go?

Onwards and without the faded desires and bitterness, but instead like the kamikaze; deeply confused and headlong and strong, minus the aeroplanes and knowing what awaits. Take it as it comes, dig the playlist and appreciate that it is (still) unlikely that anything will make any more sense the following day.

Any point here? Nope.

Except perhaps that nihilism might not actually exist within that which is commonly referred to as ‘love’.

If anyone happens to have made a film that sums this up, I would kill to see it… please submit it to CANNES in a VAN.

Thanks.

Ever see the film Pretty in Pink? You know who Ducky is?
Released in 1986, the film was written by a man and some people acted in it. This is not a film-trivia orientated paragraph, aside from saying that Molly Ringwald played the lead, well. This evening a friend of mine broke up with his lady. He knew it was going to happen. It had to happen. Afterwards he found that he was very sad. He is a good man, and essentially it strikes me that he was saddened to have had to turn his back on a person that he cared about so much. The girl was crying as he walked out. Now he is sat in my living room playing video games. It seems to be an age old plot. The billion dollar question. Comedy or Tragedy?

Pretty in Pink has a character in it by the name of Duckie. Duckie is in love with Andy (Molly Ringwald), who is in love with a preppy fraternity boy called Blane, who dates an idiot. The one angle in the film that does not change at any point is Duckie being in love with Andy, despite knowing that she would never want to be with him. He would fight for her, defend her name and put his shoe down in artic water so as she could cross the ground on his foot. Obviously this is not attractive to the confused girl. She would rather go with the unattainable and set her sights on some predictable asshole. Pretty in Pink had two endings. When the film was shot the first time, Duckie got the girl. The test audience did not like it and so the cast and crew were called back to shoot a different version, in which Andy got Blane. This says a lot about people.

Maybe you have to see the film to get my point.
Though it is highly possible that I don’t have one.

I think my point is that my friend walked away because he was a Blane.
I think he is a fool. Then again I always liked Ducky.

Last night I sat in a flat in Finsbury Park and wondered things about short films.
The experience was in the name of CANNES in a VAN. I was with Andy of CiaV and two of his friends. We watched a lot of films. A few of them really made me think about things, the character of Ducky included.

There were some seriously great creations in the mix, by directors who will obviously go a very long way and in some sense it is an honour to represent these shorts at Cannes. Which is in about four weeks. So we are counting down. More so than usual.

A few of them should be compulsory viewing. So if you are at Cannes and you see a transit van (this one: www.cannesinavan.com) then come and look. Really, it will be worth it, and last night for the first time that REALLY hit me. It was a pleasing moment.

When sat in the flat the two friends of my friends were a couple, a seemingly tight one. I got the impression the guy had a lot of time for this woman. The dynamic reminded me of Pretty in Pink, if maybe Duckie had won. Also very pleasing.

My friend is still in the sitting room. I am still at my computer writing this crap.
He just came to ask why I was I was doing this when I could be pretending to fight Korea in the winter. Duckie. Always good.

If Darwin and God had a fight who would win?
This is a question my friend just posed to me.

And I have no answer. Mostly because the question is ridiculous.

However, if one were writing an essay on Charles V.S. The Great One and their argument was swayed towards Darwin and the writer was struck by lightening whilst writing, would this put the fear of God into them?

I also have no idea as to this answer. If anyone knows someone who has been struck by lightening whilst debating whether we all came from the pointy fingers of God I would kill to meet them. Then point and laugh.

Personally, I side with Darwin. How else do you account for the blindingly obvious?

CANNES in a VAN is approaching still, as it always is, what with time being quite a forward moving thing and whoever Gail is, yeah you, who posted a comment…

If you can get us equipment from your friends then that would be supremely cool. Please email me at Jamie_courtenay_grimwood@hotmail.com about this. We would happily take them up on this and in exchange play their music at Cannes from said equipment. If they are good, getting them gigs is also quite easy…

If anyone else wants to email me any crap then please do not, otherwise I will be forced to find you through the medium of your IP address and eat you alive. Unless it is good stuff about your films or gigs, in which case go for it.

Also, this said person also claims to perhaps have a film. This is the general idea of said CANNES in a VAN project, if you anyone out there has a brilliant genius amazing film of glorious joy, send it our way. It makes me happy that people are catching onto the general idea; Cannes is impending… so bring it to us!

Last night I went to see ‘300’; as a huge Frank Miller (comic-book overlord) fan, I was happily surprised to find that the cinematic rendition of his work made me want a spear as much as the graphic novel did. If I had a spear, I am sure some things would be easier. Settling arguments for instance.

‘300’ (seemingly loosely) loosely based on the Battle of Thermopylae, is possibly one of the best or worst films I have ever seen. I have no idea which.

It should probably be called ‘7301’, because the Spartans fought with 7000 other dudes, plus their king, Leonidas.

That said, the Spartans seemed to be a pretty tight crew.
They had a lot of respect for one another. It made me smile.
The totally unexpected ten second bouts of power metal throughout the film also helped.

I still want a spear.
I want one with CANNES in a VAN written on it.

Dancing light

I am laughing hard.
Who knows why, it doesn’t happen too often but I just cracked up.
Been dancing around a flat listening to ‘These Are Days’ by 10,000 Maniacs.
I am sat on my own and from where I am I can see Centre Point in the distance.
It’s an ugly bastard but it has its place.

Laughing at the candles, at the air, it is all making me smile.
A friend of mine left a few hours ago.

There is nothing like the company of a good woman to chill out the mind. And with no disrespect to any girl out there, the world is hardly swarming with them. Then again, the world is not exactly swarming with good men either. All in all people often suck pretty badly.

This of course explains the sheer quantity of Romantic Comedies instead of serious love stories produced as films per year. Imagine if, instead of Rom-Coms, there were troublingly deadly and rather realistic love stories put out en masse. Imagine the taglines on the tube. Opposed to “You’ve never seen love so funny”, or “The most touching film of the year”, your eyes would pass over “He probably had it coming”, “She was screwed from the outset” or
“Why’d they even bother? It was never gonna work”.

Haagen-Dazs would have a sales fallout due to blatant realism, Blockbuster would never again be able to get a weekend ‘friendly-looking-films’ deal going.

It would be fantastic.
So if anyone is wondering what to do this Easter weekend, for those who had all those plans but are now predictably curling up on the sofa to watch a film and think about why they are not outside… hire Dancer in the Dark.

A truly beautiful piece of cinema released in 2000, set Stateside in 1964 and written and directed by Lars Von Trier (though Björk might tell you otherwise). Following the pursuit of a better life and basic human dreams, it follows the fading sanity of a lovely, quite blind Czech girl called Selma Ježková (Björk). Selma moves to Washington State, works herself to exhaustion in hope of saving her also quite blind son’s sight and sings a lot. Whilst the average film about happiness, desire, passion and lust work on the grounds of the blindingly obvious, Dancer in the Dark mixes up some chilling-out on top of trains with an utterly moving prison-set based scene climaxing the films fade-out. Go watch this film. Please.

Watch a plot that relays life, with a character who totally has it coming, does not deserve it and like everyone else you pass in the street on the way to where ever it is that you are going, finds their own happiness (in an otherwise deeply hideous world where everyone is out to get her and nothing makes any sense). A film about just shutting up and embracing those unexpected moments that make you laugh out loud in your own silence, and dance around the room, even though you know you are going to wake up, and it might not be pretty.

My cd player is skipping… it had "Friend of the Devil" (written by Robert Hunter, sung by Jerry Garcia and released by the Grateful Dead in 1970) playing… it is stuck on the line “…might get some sleep”. Might take it up on that.

Also, I'm trying to track down some P.A. systems, six speakers, a Sub and a generator for the Cannes Van, so if anybody want to help out with that, sweet. Drop one of us a line. In exchange we will pimp you and love you forever.

Thursday morning party

g reetings.
It is Thursday morning. And I am having a party at my house in Highgate.
It’s pretty cool. People are falling off of chairs and one of my flatmates is talking about going into Spearmint Rhino to clinch a deal. In the past tense. Which is scary as hell.

We are listening to AFI (A Fire Inside) - Leaving Song Part.2.
It’s a good song.

My friend from Oz who went to my school and I’ve known for some time is on instant messenger with my other flatmate, which is actually great… because we miss him a lot.

Today my Other flat mate, one of four, myself included, handed in her dissertation.
She did well and we are in a celebratory mood. Psychology is, I noticed, a hard subject.

I’ve no idea what is going on here, we started on the Vodka quite a few hours ago and to be honest this day is going the way of messy.

Today there is a piece in The Times newspaper of writing about Andy, Si and myself going to Cannes. This is because the cause is good.

So thank you to The Times for noticing the sweet styli thing.

This is as much as I can write on this right now. I can make no accurate analogy to film. Except perhaps the first Bill and Ted film, because if Rufus was in this room right now, telephone box or not, god it would be the best day ever. The sun helps also.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, by the way, for the record, beyond genius.

Hail the sun!


Jamie x

x V.S. x

CANNES in a VAN is getting close to full swing.
Some lovely people out there are seeing it for what it is, which is a bit excellent because this means that the concept of the independent is not yet the way of the dodo.

So to all of you who are truly digging this, CHEERS ‘cause as far as I can tell it makes the three of us pretty damned happy. Just thought I’d put that out there…

On an entirely different note, last night (or possibly the night before) I was sat in a pub South of Houston way (by this I mean Soho, but I’m still stuck in the New York thing and though London does not have a Houston, really who cares, I’m going with it) with two friends.

The two friends that came up with the whole CANNES in a VAN thing.

One asked me who would win in a fight between Seagal (possibly spelt ‘Segal’, but I really can not be sure) and Jean-Claude Van Damme. In the first instance I was personally inclined to scream “Seagal”, because he is clearly a true warrior. When you see the man speak about the martial Way, frankly, he knows his shit.

Regardless, the question is age old. This guy V.S. this guy, Chuck Norris V.S. Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee V.S. pretty much anyone, et cetera.

It’s the oldest playground conversation between boys aside from
“Would you go behind the bike shed with /-insert name of the not ugly girl in your year-?“. It is an obvious one.

If you raise the question, no one their right mind is going to say “I’m sorry, I don’t feel like this conversation” utterly regardless of how much they may or may not know about the logistics or reality of the situation. Whether it be karate V.S. gung fu (which was where the conversation in the bar the other night predictably led to) or the fact that the girl at school probably hates you anyway.

Martial arts films.
Amazing. No doubt.

But discipline V.S. discipline and actor taking on actor? It is an endless cycle.

Personally, I back Seagal over Van Damme, but this is based solely on my own dedication to the Japanese martial arts. Seagal is a master of Aikido (Ai - Harmony or Unification, Ki - Spirit, can be equated to the Force that binds all Jedi, Do - the Way of something) and he is a true Aikidoka. This renders him not only a master of the Way of the Harmonious Spirit, but also the Bokken (oak sword used in Kenjutsu - Ken - Sword, Jutsu - Art) which is featured throughout classical Japanese culture and cinema… in the event you have never seen an old Japanese film, think about the sticks Tom spaceman Cruise gets hit with in the Last Samurai throughout his training towards the beginning of that diabolically offensive excuse for a (massively inaccurate) period based film. Seagal is also familiar with the Jo staff, which is pretty much a quarter staff and a reasonably fundamental part of Aikido.

Van Damme has some karate experience and kick boxing style. He is also most usually greased up in his films and so in a fight that might make him hard to grab hold of. However, Seagal can start with a Jo, loose it, move onto a Bokken, loose it and still have the ability to become one with the oppenent. Van Damme can kick a lot.

This is the answer I gave in the pub the other day. This then led to gung fu V.S. karate.

Once again I sided with Japan and in doing so, karate. I have studied karate in its classical (Okinawan) form from the age of seven or eight ish. I can not quite remember but I know I first started training in the Okinawan weapons system known as Kobudo, Ko - small, or ancient, Bu - the character depicts the suppression of an uprising through the use of a spear, Do - Way (think the weapons used by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, plus a bunch of other bits of spiky things) at around seven years old. Which led to a hard studying of karate.

Which basically keeps me sane because, shock, it is so peaceful.

Ignoring this diatribe into myself, I, very much without thinking, sided with karate over gung fu. This is a STUPID answer.

Note. STUPID.

The correct answer can be found by watching ANY martial arts film ever… (and no, the outcome does not lie in the direction of the plot) the winner will always be the more talented.

No pure, classical and non-perverted martial art is better than another. Of course, in the study of an Art of Way, you will incorporate your body into the system and the system will in turn govern your body. It will, essentially, become yours. This is not perversion. Perversion is the changing of the basics through to the never ending degree of knowledge that can be found.

Nothing within a system is useless.

Back to the answer. Any martial arts film screams this answer at you.

Think back to Jackie Chan’s 1978 ‘Jui kuen’ (Drunken Master) film.

Wong Fei Hung (Chan) goes to train with his pissed-up Gung fu master uncle Su Hua Chi (‘Sam Seed’ in the dubbed thingy) to be taught the way of the Drunken Fist. At some point in the film he gets into a fight with the ubiquitous hired-killer character, in this case going by the name of ‘Thunderleg’, and gets his ass handed back to him. Chan goes back to his uncle to train more, studies diligently in the ‘Old Style’ (read: Classical) , becomes hard as nails and saves the day.

Think back to any Seagal film. Why does is character always win?
He is a better fighter.

Van Damme in Kickboxer? Watches his idiot full-of-it brother get laid out by Muay Thai legend Tong Po, goes away to train with an old sage in the woods who teaches him the ‘Old Style’, goes back to Tong Po and saves the day.

Daniel in the Karate Kid, one, two and three (it took him a bit longer to get the idea)? Same thing.

The list, bar Bruce Lee because all of his films involved (with every right known to man) showing off, is eternal.

So the next time someone asks you “Who’d win in a fight between X V.S. X?”

The answer is “Old Style”. Fact.

What happened to Jimmy?

I have not posted for a little while.
I can not define a little while. Andy has kindly filled in.
Cheers buddy.

The last few weeks have been beyond hectic. Apologies, because hectic is a pretty stupid word.

I went and got lost in New York. It was like Escape from New York, with Kurt ‘Snake Pliskin’ Russel, but I was so lost that I couldn’t escape. Apparently I have no sense of direction. Have you ever been to Harlem? Do so. It is urban decay and pretty-vibe beyond all comprehension. Most of the people you talk to in the street have stories worthy of an odyssey.

The ‘Nam and Desert Storm vets are still sat, legless (like, without legs, opposed to inebriated) in the alcoves of sidewalks muttering about helicopters and friends come and gone.

I spoke to an old vet in Manhattan, as I was coming out of 116th Street station which is somewhere towards East Harlem. He told me that “the job of a hero is to kill foreigners, whilst the job of a soldier is to shoot his own side” and about ‘Jimmy’ who fell to the VC.

Apparently Jimmy loved cinema. The highlight of his rec time were the screenings in the makeshift barracks. This guy talking to me was sad that Jimmy would never see another film. It made me wonder, how many years had this homeless dude been sad about that? How many films had he seen since and gone away thinking about how much his friend would have loved that…?

What actually happened to Jimmy? Who knows.

I went away from the whole conversation realising the power and escapism film can bring to a person, and the emotion it can evoke. In amongst all of the crap put out there, always appreciate the films that hit it home for you.

The ones that you walk away from with the tight feeling and pensive vibe.
The 1995 masterpiece directed by Larry Clark and Harmony Korine, ‘KIDS’ always does this for me.
If you’ve never watched it, stop what you are doing, go out and find it. It’s about two skater dudes by the name of Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) and Casper (Justin Pierce) who bum around Manhattan with their friends smoking up, fucking and getting screwed. There is the girl, Jennie (Chloё Sevigny) and her friend, played by Rosario Dawson. It was Dawson’s first role in film, and she was found for it whilst chilling on a stoop in Manhattan. The actors famously play themselves, and most of the kids in the film were just kids in New York. It’s a long, complicated, truly beautiful and deeply cynical story of love, drugs and nothingness. Then everyone gets AIDS.

Apparently Jimmy the soldier who fell in ‘Nam would have loved it. Given that AIDS hadn’t hit by the time he died, it makes me think that maybe he just had a great taste in film from the outset.

Film does good things for people. May people continue making cinematic pinnacles of excellence.

On a total side point, CANNES in a VAN is picking up speed, getting closer to coming to be all it should be and some people have been noticing it. And these people are good people who represent good things. More on that in (impending) time.

After New York, where I also talked about film with some old Sicilian men in Little Italy and some total assholes in Tribeca, who clearly knew a lot but sadly were about as transparent as something astonishingly see-through, I spent a week in Birmingham. Riding motorbikes.

I went on a tour of the Triumph motorcycle factory as part of the course I was on, where amongst other things I learnt that the company have two factories in Thailand. Whist the business minds working in the factory openly admit that this is because against the Queen’s Finest Pound Stirling, the sum total of £1 to roughly 69Baht as an exchange rate allows for some serious revenue to be made; it leaves me wondering something. The sentence involves the words ‘labour’ and ‘child’.

There might be a story in that if anyone is interested…

Sadly no one that I met at the factory, or actually, anywhere in Birmingham knew very much about film. Or even where Cannes was. So that was unfortunate. There were however a lot of vans.

I am off to a shoot re CANNES in a VAN, so keep reading because one day I might write something interesting.

And go watch KIDS.

Jamie

Music and that. Written the day before I hit NYC

The house in which I live has a kitchen and I am sat in it.
I am listening to Without You I’m Nothing by Placebo. Who are excellent, if often quite silly on occasion. I covered one of their gigs for a mag a few weeks ago.
They looked very smiley and healthy, which was really odd.

Today I did some things, few of which were of any interest. However, I did think “hmm, if I were going to Cannes, and I had a van and knew some dudes with whom to go, what kind of thing would I take with me”. Luckily this hypothetical thought was of some use because it reminded me that I am in fact going to CANNES in a VAN and I will be taking films there with my buddies. Or rather my buddies are taking films and I’m going with them. Or something. I’ve yet to work that one out.

Not long ago, I met up with some people I know and watched an onslaught of their short films and projections set to music. Their project and installation was going by the name of

WHAT THEY COULD DO, THEY DID

and if you give a shit about ‘Art’ I would strongly advise checking out at least some of it.

They jammed in an old car showroom garage thing in Peckham. Mostly and by accident I ended up working the door and offending people who took themselves very seriously. Then a man tried to sell me a duvet, and some crack. Peckham is rubbish.

Art is often ridiculous. It is sometimes necessary to scream “you are recycling and recycling again you talentless fucks” but this should be kept to a degree of severe rarity. Mostly because it upsets people and only encourages them.

However, in and amongst the somewhat confusing art (-core) there were a few things that really grabbed at me. Or rather, witnessing them was a bit like being punched very hard in the throat and having your eyes stabbed out… in a good way.

YEBOROBO

THE FRANKEN ORPHANS (FRONTED BY IGNATZ HOCH)

H (yeah, as in like the guy from Steps but only in the sharing of a name)

AN EMPTY ORCHESTRA

Another few SUPERB acts to check out are:

THEY DON’T SLEEP (see them live, it’s Entirely worth every moment)

MIMI LEUNG (who has changed her performance name so many times that I can not keep up, but I do not care because the girl has skills to the degree that skills should be spelt with a Z. Go see her skillz.)

You can find them all in or around myspace or on Google. Go and look!


Ok, an interlude and ending all at once:

I have just taken Placebo off of my play-list because much like anything to do with Billy Corgan it is hard to make it through a whole album without wanting to stab oneself in the ears. Having moved onto a mangled hybrid mix of tracks consisting of Tool and some old-school tunes by The Offspring with a bit of Like a Train Through a Pigeon (excellent hard-core band) thrown in.

I am wondering if I should listen to something sensible.

What is sensible music? Any ideas? If you have any drop me or the other CANNES in a VAN dudes a line and between us (and our shamelessly joyous contact book) I am pretty sure we can book you some kick-ass gigs and get a couple of releases put out there in exchange for you not sucking and giving us at least one free trip to London Zoo. We will launch you on something with the word Shallow in it. Really.

Oh yeah, do you have to be white to like Bruce Springsteen?
I remember an episode from the days of the Fresh Prince where the answer was strongly suggested to be “yes”. I’ve wondered that ever since.

Go cyberspace.