Month: April 2003

As you can see, I’ve made the text color darker, after quite a few comments about the difficulty to read the previous pale beige I was using (and I admit it was not a good choice on my part, but I liked it for esthetic reasons, which I realize shouldn’t be the first thing to take into account when designing a blog, even one that is very image-based like mine). I hope that this will make all the entries (for the main blog as well as the new moblog) easier to read. Please let me know what you think.

As for the moblog (Tokyo Boy), I’ve setup a seperate site for it, although the latest entries will always appear here (it was set to show the last 10 entries, but I’m becoming so active with it that I’ve just changed it to 16). I just have to finish a few things with the TB site (setting up archives and such) and then I’ll post a link to it. I’m also considering doing something similar with TB.Grafico, my photolog. Right now it’s just setup as a category of my main blog, which means that my pics appear also in the flow of the main blog, but the page that it creates (the catagory page) is getting too long.

Next up, getting GEISHA done, and then I’ll let you know what I have in store for the next issue after that (yup, that’s me, always thinking ahead).

There’s an article on Dr. Nakamatsu (or NakaMats, as he prefers) in this week’s issue of METROPOLIS (it’s not a permanent link, so after a week it’ll be linked in the column to the right, for issue 474). As I was reading the article I had the Dr. Nakamatsu theme song playing in my head.

I would love to stay at the HI design hotel in France. I just found out about it this afternoon while leafing through the latest issue of WALLPAPER. The inside is total eye candy. I need to go there, I just need to…

Today’s DAILY YOMIURI features an article on Shinjuku’s Golden-gai, a street populated by lots of tiny bars. I still haven’t gotten around to checking it out, but would like to sometime. A friend of mine went to a few bars in the area and said it made for an interesting outing.

It seems like a whole bunch of Japanese films will be part of this year’s Cannes film festival next month. The following is from the latest Midnight Eye newsletter:

The annual Cannes film festival has long been a hotbed for Japanese cinema. This year is no different, with six films joining the fray in the various Cannes sections. In competition for the Palme d’Or we find Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s BRIGHT FUTURE (formerly known as JELLYFISH ALERT) and Naomi Kawase’s latest film SHARA. Takashi Miike’s bizarre yakuza/horror offering GOZU and the animations NASU: ANDALUSIA NO NATSU (directed by former Ghibli animator Kitaro Kosaka) and INTERSTELLA 5555: THE 5TORY OF THE 5ECRET 5TAR 5YSTEM (Reiji Matsumoto’s renewed collaboration with the French band Daft Punk) are in the Director’s Fortnight section. Finally, the 35-minute HITOKOROSHI NO ANA by Chihiro Ikeda is showing in the Cinefondation (student films) section. Ikeda is a student at the Film School of Tokyo.

Cornelius is finally going to release his long-awaited remix album CM2 in June. Here’s the track listing:

1. Tender / Blur
2. Curiosity / K.D. Lang
3. Family / Crue-L Grand Orchestra
4. Mixed Bizness / Beck
5. Hot Computer / Gering
6. Since I Left You / The Avalanches
7. Fish / Bonnie Pink
8. We Are All Made Of Stars / Moby
9. garigari-kun / Denki Groove
10. tsunami / Manic Street Preachers
11. Butterfly / Towa Tei
12. Brand New Day / Sting
13. Heartbeat / Tahiti 80

My Golden Week holiday has now officially started. Ten days off. Oh yeah.

I’m getting excited about the upcoming Mori Art Museum, which only opens in October.

Since I’m Canadian, I really should mention this. There will a Canadian animation festival taking place at the Tollywood theatre in Shimo-Kitazawa from April 29th to May 23rd. Here’s the description from Real Tokyo:

With such prominent representatives as Norman McLaren or Co Hoedeman, the standard of animation made in Canada is extraordinarily high. After all, they have that enviable institution with a history of more than 60 years, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB/ONF). Showing at this festival are 12 shorts the NFB/ONF has produced since 1980, divided into four blocks. The variety of films featured in each programme couldn’t be greater, which makes the choice painfully difficult. If you ask me to pick a single one, director Jacques Drouin’s “Ex-Child” should be a safe recommendation for both fans of animation and art. Take the chance and enjoy the cream of pin screen animation.