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AROUND THE HORN: The Dreams Deferred Edition

  • May 21, 2012 10:44 am

FUN FACT: I didn’t always want to be a filmmaker.  A sampling of the dreams I’ve abandoned since childhood include the standard little boy aspirations of fireman, race car driver, and RoboCop.

What you probably didn’t know (and my family is keen to remind me of as often as possible) is that one of my biggest career goals was to be manager of a Toys”R”Us.  Clearly, I didn’t know what the job actually entailed – I thought I could bring home whatever toys I wanted for free – but this was something that stuck to me for a good part of elementary school.

What are some dream careers you’ve outgrown or left behind over the course of your life?

QUENTIN:

Here’s my story about dream careers. My sister wanted to work in a clothing shop all her life as she loved fashion. As a kid, she would buy toy cash registers and make me play customer-and-cashier with her. After graduating from college, she returned to Hong Kong and finally got a job as a salesgirl at the high end fashion department store Lane Crawford through family connections. She was so psyched. On her first day of job, she got so exhausted that she fainted. After that, she was sick for a week and never returned to that job again. That was that.

PHILIP:

When I was a kid wanted to be a Playboy photographer. Even wrote an essay about it on career day in 5th grade and got in trouble. Actually my job now isn’t too far off from this.  Read more...

Why I’m Distributing My Latest Film on Kickstarter

  • April 12, 2012 1:16 pm

DAVE

Tucson, Arizona native Dave Boyle made his feature debut in 2006 with Big Dreams Little Tokyo.  He followed up with White on Rice, which was released in theaters in 2009.  In 2010, he began a multi-film collaboration with musician Goh Nakamura.  The first two films in the series, Surrogate Valentine and Daylight Savings premiered at the 2011 and 2012 SXSW film festivals respectively.  

Franchise.

It’s a word you usually associate with faceless corporations. In the movie world, a “franchise” is a cash cow: Twilight, Iron Man, and budding franchise The Hunger Games all come to mind.

But what about sequels that aren’t made as a blatant cash grab? What if the creative team just felt like they had a really great thing going, and that the story wasn’t over?  Read more...

Music of the Heart

  • January 19, 2012 12:12 am

I got inspired by my fellow Offender Jerome’s “Around the Horn” and decided to write about the music of the heart. Once upon a time, I fell in love with a bisexual guy in college who was also an advocate of non-monogamous relationships. He was always dating a guy or a girl when we were dating in college. He was my first boyfriend. Between my junior and senior year in college, I listened to New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” like a broken record. I was surprised that cassette tape survived my rewind and play for two years. I was obsessed… or in love the very first time!?

 Read more...

Little Dragon Tales

  • November 29, 2011 1:54 am

YouTube Preview ImageDoes this strike up any flashbacks to Chinese school for any of you ABCs out there? Either way, this nostalgic take is a collaboration between The Shanghai Restoration Project and Yip’s Children’s Choir, bringing Chinese electronica music to the masses. Entitled Little Dragon Tales, the CD of electronically enhanced Chinese children songs is being released today on iTunes and Amazon. Great stocking stuffers!!

It’s the End of R.E.M. as We Know It (And I Don’t Feel Fine)

  • September 22, 2011 12:02 am

I don’t think I’ve followed R.E.M. since the 1990’s—no new CDs or downloads, no concerts. When original drummer Bill Berry left the group in 1997, R.E.M. just wasn’t R.E.M. to me. But when the band announced yesterday that it would officially be calling it quits after 31 years, it still had an effect on me.

You see, R.E.M. was my band. As much as I love groups like the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, they weren’t mine. They were handed down to me by previous generations—I wasn’t even alive during their true heydays. But I discovered R.E.M. on my own as an impressionable, music-obsessed kid—before the masses knew they existed. They belonged to an elite class of ‘80s bands that were mine in that sense—U2, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone, Public Enemy. Even at that age, it was clear those guys had something “special” that distinguished them from most of the one-hit flavors of the month. They were the real deals. And there was a certain amount of pride I felt that I recognized their artistry before most other folks did. I still remember exactly where I was when I heard each of these guys for the first time.  Read more...

The Kim Sisters

  • August 1, 2011 12:05 pm

It’s rare to find out about Asian musicians in the US mainstream from the ’60s and ’70s, aside from the likes of Kyu Sakamoto or Pink Lady. But, the Kim Sisters from South Korea, were also part of this legacy. Three sisters, Sook-ja, Mi-a, and Ai-ja, they were the daughters of famous Korean music conductor Kim Hae-song (1911 – 1950), a classical music conductor and popular composer who was captured and killed by the North Koreans during the Korean War, and Lee Nan-Young (916 – 1967), one of Korea’s most famous singers before the World War II, best known for her 1935 nationwide hit song, The Tears from Mokpo.  Read more...

Why Japan is Awesome Reason #484: A Device That Plays Music When You Slap Your Friends’ Faces

  • June 22, 2011 10:22 pm

There’s been a lot of cool stuff out of Japan this past week from meat made out of shit to spam burgers, and now comes this new toy from Takara Tomy. It’s an instrument that makes music when you smack your friends:

That’s right—now children can make beautiful music together by slapping each other in the arm or face. What better way to motivate our youth and teach them that becoming good at something like playing music takes a lot of pain and suffering? Check it out:

 Read more...

North Korea’s Kids Got Talent!

  • April 9, 2011 3:26 pm

Check out this video clip of a gaggle of kindergarteners playing some mean guitar. Notice that the guitars are adult-sized and they jam, shake their heads, and smile in unison. It’s like the mass games, but boiled down to gooey cuteness. YouTube Preview Image It is known that children train in extracurricular activities like music and sports for hours on end and for many years in North Korea. It is not to say these particular kids don’t enjoy what they do, but it is definitely a lot of grueling work.

(Via Goh Nakamura)

Wooden Xylophone

  • April 6, 2011 7:34 pm

Check out this inventive video that opens to a serene forest scene. You then notice a long, wooden track that juts down a steep hill. Cut to a close up of a ball and then it’s pushed over an edge as it rolls down and then bounces down the track, forming a familiar tune…. YouTube Preview Image Not bad for a cell phone commercial, huh?

From Watching to Stalking Rosie Okumura

  • January 20, 2011 5:15 pm

When I was at a friend’s birthday party, someone started playing a music video on the computer and said it was his friend’s video. At first I was like “OK?” I honestly didn’t have high expectations for a friend’s friend’s Youtube music video. I only hoped that it wouldn’t be so bad that it was embarrassing. But I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging it was. The song is called “Stop It” by Rosie Okumura. The beat is catchy. Rosie’s pretty hot and has a good voice. The video is also decently made and styled. And I played it a few times.

 Read more...

Things to be Grateful For

  • November 24, 2010 1:05 am

On Thanksgiving, many of us will be hard pressed to find things to be thankful for, what with the lackluster economy and having to suffer full body scans at the airport.

As a writer, however, I have had the privilege of researching many stories over the years which have made me realize how fortunate I am to be living in the here and now, rather than in the over there or back then.  It just takes a moment to contemplate over the things that have been banned in the past or are currently banned in other countries to know what to be thankful for.  Here are my top 10:

1) Art

Creating art that did not conform to the ideals of Social Realism was banned in the Soviet Republic during Stalin’s rule.  Besides political and religious art, the ban included abstract art, expressionism and anything depicting nude bodies.  Avant garde artists who did not adapt to the policies were often either murdered or sent to the gulag.  Even after Stalin died in 1953, nonconformist art was illegal until the mid ‘70s. 

I am grateful that although I am not an artist and cannot distinguish between an authentic Pollock and a kid’s spaghetti painting, I can at least admire both without fear.

 Read more...

musical contemplation: a-ha’s “take on me.”

  • July 1, 2010 12:00 am

Music is a beautiful thing.  Along with Arrested Development, it is one of the few things that justifies the existence of human civilization.

"Once in the history of time comes a sitcom like Arrested Development.” - EW

The aural magic of voices and instruments creates sounds that transcend race and creed.  When done well, a song can lift our spirits to the highest heights or drag them to the lowest of lows.  That is the power of music.

i googled 'muscular music note' and got that. fuck yeah, internet.

We all know it in our bones when we hear such a song: our blood chills; our face goes numb; and we can’t move.  Thankfully, we can also distinguish between listening to a great song or having a stroke.  Read more...