While most Japanese know of a new Disney or Pixar film by its brand first, learning of the title and story later, Americans and other non-Japanese fans of anime and manga, with a few diehard exceptions, generally have little to no awareness of the studio names behind the medium. Instead, they bounce from one title to the next, possibly pursuing an artist, but developing no sense of a studio’s character or identity, and thus no brand loyalty. Indeed, if there is a brand associated with anime and manga, it’s national. Japanese pop culture is branded as “Japan”: Cool Japan, J-Pop, and the former coinage, Japanimation.
By Roland Kelts.
I’ve always admired artists and writers who pushed the boundaries of the generally accepted moral norms. … I’m not interested in making conventional art. I’m looking for beauty in marginal, transgressive expressions of human nature and sexuality. My work is not about shocking or provoking anyone, it’s about expressing myself in the most honest and radical way. It’s about rejecting taboos and stereotypes and celebrating diversity, life and love in different shapes and forms.
Night is another frontier that we’ve yet to truly tame. We may have mapped the entire landmass of the earth with GPS but controlling the hours after sunset eludes us. The nocturnal walk through the streets, familiar by day but changed utterly by night, can be a disconcerting experience. The dark brings out the undesirables that dare not show their faces in the cold light of day. “All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal” in the words of that gentle misunderstood soul Travis Bickle. That is its curse and its glory, when buoyed by the dutch courage of drink we choose to embrace it and join the ranks of the damned. “Most glorious night!” Byron wrote, himself no stranger to hedonism, “Thou wert not sent for slumber!”
Seen from the rear, a lone motorcycle with sidecar weaves along the unmade road in a dense brownish fog, sprawled upon it lies the bullet sewn corpse of a man who carries a placard in his stiffened hands stating ‘I insulted a German soldier’. From the nearby fields trucks unload the obscure shapes of soldiers. They peel off symmetrically from the fog bound vehicle in a silence loaded with menacing intent. Then, as Florya races about the shacks and outhouses like a cornered rat, they close in across the folds, their gradual appearance through the fog all the more intimidating. As the sun rises and the fog clears, the whole body of German troops arrives in the village heading for the main square where the forlorn wooden church at its centre is soon surrounded.
The Flipside series offers an incredible overview of both emerging youth cultures and London as a world centre of libidinal energy during the 1960s and 1970s, documenting the clubs that played a key role in winning London the appellation ’swinging’.
Bryan Ferry is played exquisitely by Ripley (who co-runs the excellent Night Of The Long Swords night in Old Street) and his performance, vocally, is stalker-faithful. It’s delicious to hear that velvet gargle, the aural finesse — without actually having to be in the same room as Ferry. Close your eyes and you are most certainly starting to ‘dance on moonbeams’, ‘by the pale moon’, and ‘in Quaglino’s’, etc. It’s that good. It’s sometimes a little rough round the edges, which (still with eyes closed, plus drugs) makes you actually believe you are witnessing one of Roxy’s first-ever gigs.
Songs have a magic way of presenting themselves, and it’s the way this song came to be, and the ease in which it came out, that I could tell it had epic roots that needed to be explored. Analogy: If a musician is an antenna, and a song is a frequency we channel, then OOOM comes from deep eternal place in the centre of the universal heart, and it required an epic frame to exist within…All of my inspiration sources are rooted in an emotional, passionate, subconscious place. The intellectualising only comes after the creation, as a tool to communicate the overall intent of the project. As for the film and the choice to not have any dialogue and only music, that was based on a desire to communicate in a universal language.
As he has shown exactly how lacking in integrity these money-inflated idiocy panderers, marching in lockstep, can be, and that whatever they have said in the past cannot be trusted, I see no reason why we should begin to trust them now. The critics got it wrong before by praising what they should have condemned, and now they have got it wrong again by condemning what they should have praised. The only integrity visible is that of Damien Hirst, who has consistently spoken his mind, even though people acted as if the implications of what he said did not really matter — until he called their bluff.
