VVC Discs II

[thuviaptarth]

Hi. There is no VVC Discs I, or rather there will be, but I am starting from Disc II because that was the disc in my machine when I flopped down for a break today. I am not in prime vid-watching mode; I could tell by the way images would blur if I didn't concentrate and the way I couldn't distinguish lyrics to any song I didn't already know, and also by the way it was too much effort to move the six inches between the couch and the DVD player to put in Disc I. Nevertheless, I will record my first reactions because in fandom we cherish our own first reactions even if not always everybody else's and also if I wait to post until I have a brain again, I might never post on the vids at all.

So. Disc II

cesperanza, "Lifetime Piling Up" - It was a vid about Ernie, which I processed about as well as I usually process vids about Ernie, which is to say, not at all. Sorry! I am sure it was highly enjoyable to people whose brains don't have defective Ernie cognition. The credits were excellent.

sdwolfpup, "The Loyal" - This is about Gabriel Byrne, or That Guy I Always Mistake For Gabriel Byrne. I think it might be That I Guy Always Mistake for Gabriel Byrne. He has dark hair and hollowed eyes and a big nose. I like him. In Children of Men, he is protecting the second coming of Mary from the hordes of people who want to take her away or who are happy about the imminent death of humanity, and who can blame them? Well, I can blame them, because Mary is a scared, unhappy-looking young black woman who clearly wants to be left in peace, and my sympathies are with her. Also there is a thin redhead who dies. This goes in the "Watch Again When Have Brain" column, and also "Watch Again When Not Feeling Quite So Sour About Men Driven by the Tragic Deaths of Women." It looks like Not Gabriel dies at the end of the movie, though, presumably leaving Mary to be driven by his tragic death, so maybe that is okay. I will have to think about it.

sisabet and sockkpuppett, "Women's Work" - MY LOVE FOR THIS VID CANNOT BE TEXTUALLY RENDERED.

Jarrow whose LJ I have forgotten because it followed by numbers at the end and numbers are hard right now, "Falling from the Sky" - I kind of remember liking this, but not in detail, and not as much as "God Is A DJ" or "Cold Cold Water". But this is probably because I do not have a brain and also have given up on BSG since I last saw a Starbuck vid.

feochadn, "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" - I have no idea what was happening except the guy in the mask was probably the Leper King. This was incredibly gorgeous and I will watch again when I am able to make sense of visual imagery. It reminds me a bit of destina's Gladiator vid in the way that it takes advantage of the glorious visual and narrative scope of cinematic source (as opposed to most TV source).

flummery, "Tamacun" - This is charming and fun and funny and you could probably dance to it. If you weren't laid out on the couch with one limp hand occasionally fumbling with the volume controls.

astolat, "The Adversary" - The source is extra gorgeous, isn't it? And the storytelling is so crisp. It captures a lot of the things I dislike about Twin Peaks very well. (It's hard to remember what I liked so much at this point, and I did like it. Kyle MacLachlan. The soap within a soap. I was very taken by that soap. And somebody--Leo?--being tied up and forced to watch it. It was inane. Oh! And Lucy and Andy! Lucy and Andy were awesome.)

barkley, "Cold As It Gets" - Tyra! Some of the clip choices seemed excellent lyrics matches (Jason's fall, Matt Saracen and his grandmother) but didn't quite work for me as Tyra's POV, or as the best match within Tyra's life. On the whole, though, it's got a lot of Tyra's desperation and determination in it.

heresluck, "Nothing New" - Very well-done interpretation of Mal/Inara as much more romantic and sympathetic and significantly less dysfunctional than I see it. I wish the show had been this persuasive.

Jescaflowne, "Another Sunday (We Built This City)" - In theory I am pro-SGA vids that are not about Bert and/or Ernie, but in practice this one lost me some time after the credits. The credits were awesome, but special effect piled on special effect just bores me after a while.

dualbunny, "Cosmia" - I am pretty sure I would have found Joanna Newsome's voice physically painful through the vidshow speakers, so finding her merely incredibly annoying through my TV speakers is actually a step up. The otherworldly bizareness of her voice is a good match for the movie, though, to which the vid did justice.

harriet_spy, "Southwood Plantation Road" - Martha is hot. Sorry, I have not seen anything past Eccleston; I suspect this vid is fairly context-dependent.

anoel, "The Trouble with Poets" - I know HL only through vids, so anything context-dependent is lost on me; in this case, I had difficulty telling the POV, which I think is probably just due to my state of mind, and I had difficulty telling what "poetry" meant in the context of the vid, and whether it changed with each verse or remained the same, which I suspect will not be improved with my state of mind. I think this would have benefited from a clearer application of the song's ruling metaphor, and closer attention to varying the visual style with the changes in musical style.

melina123, "Dreams Are Not My Home" - Torchwood is not my show. Or even a show I have seen. From this vid I have deduced that the brunette woman who wears too much make-up is living in a virtual world, or a thought experiment, possibly Matrix-style and possibly just, um, Philip K. Dick style, that Jim Carrey movie whose name I can't remember right now. It is a dream world. Finding this out makes her very unhappy. It makes me a little happy, because crying washes away her makeup and makes her look better. John Barrowman looks younger in this vid than he did in the 9th Doctor episodes. This confuses me.

killa, "Woodstock" - I watched the download with the revised ending first and it is awesome. AWESOME! I have no idea what is going on, except that in the future, life will be very sad for Theo Huxtable and that guy from the Buffy movie and 90210. Also, a plague will kill lots of people and the American military will take care of the rest.

butterfly, "The Tower" - So I am pro-more-lesbian love stories in vids, but I am kind of anti teachers sleeping with their students, even as part of a lesbian coming out story.

not sure, "Bring Him Home" - Musical numbers that are very strongly contextualized in the source are always a hard sell for me, and this one had the additional cognitive dissonance of taking a song about the French Revolution and, um, applying it to the enemy. Couldn't watch it.

not sure, "Never Ending Road" - too sweet for me; I like my love stories with more edge.

keewick, "Sugar" - This is also AWESOME. keewick did two of my favorite vids this year. I think this one is about The Beauty Myth.

kiki_mystic, "Stronger Forest" - The weird green brush is initially very effective for the warped view of Sylar's mind, and I like a lot of the initial melded shots, but the blurriness got to me overall and I think the effects would have worked better if not used throughout the entire vid.

not sure, "On the Grind" - Bad source/song match; not just the racial issues, but the very gritty complex textured music just didn't work with the squeaky clean visuals.

Comments

[nestra.livejournal.com]

This is about Gabriel Byrne, or That Guy I Always Mistake For Gabriel Byrne. I think it might be That I Guy Always Mistake for Gabriel Byrne.

The fact that you can't remember who Clive Owen is almost reconciles me to the Bert and Ernie thing. Except it makes me sad that you live in a world without David Hewlett and Clive Owen. Who should totally make a movie together, because I would be a very happy girl.

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

My world is sad and strange. At least the American military isn't trying to kill me. Yet.

[anoel.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comments on my vid! Poetry remains the same until the end where it switches from poetry as fighting/killing to more literal as talking/connecting. I was afraid it might be too context dependent actually. What kinds of musical changes would you have liked to seen varied visually?

Your Ernie and Bert descriptions never fail to be cute hehe. I definitely agree about Sugar and if you wanted to talk more about this and The Beauty Myth that would be awesome. Good to read your vid thoughts!

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

IT might be context-dependent, or I might have been too brain-dead. The kinds of musical changes I would have like to have seen reflected in the music are things like changes in the cutting or the subject of the clips or the internal movement to changes in the speed in the beat -- I think this is tempo? but I am handicapped by my lack of musical knowledge. There are places where the song seems to speed up or slow down, or where Peter Mulvey's voice gets deeper or lighter or more intense or more playful, and the vid seemed to match the lyrics -- when it was focused on the lyrics -- as text, but not as spoken-word, or sung-word, with the extra layers of meaning created by changes in tone. Does that make sense?

The impression I got from "Sugar" was that Lana was trapped by all these men she loved or liked and who may even have loved or liked her, but who saw her as a thing to set aside, a prize, an object, a Beautiful Girl, in ways that she was sometimes conscious of and sometimes not. And that she was struggling to articulate (via the vid and her actions in the vid) what she felt and who she was, but felt trapped in who she used to be, or who she used to think she was, as reflected in the eyes of men (Clark, Lex, Whitney). But this is coming from someone who doesn't watch the show, so.

[anoel.livejournal.com]

So sorry it took so long to reply to this but thank you SO MUCH for your thoughts. I can see where paying more attention to the things you mentioned would help the vid and will take things like that into consideration the next vid I make.

Yes, definitely in terms of Sugar. It's even more interesting when you consider the writers who often seem to think of her in those terms as well.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

You are kind of hilarious.

::wishing for "yay snark" icon::

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

It is not very snarky! My love and confusion are mostly sincere.

[bradcpu.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the thoughts! Very interesting, and I can't wait to get a disc of my very own.

Just fyi, "Stronger Forest" was made by kiki_miserychic.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

I... am tireder than I thought, because I really really thought Ces had done a vid about Sesame Street till the second time you mentioned an orange muppet character's name.

Now, I will go sing myself to sleep with "I Love Trash."

[vonnie-k.livejournal.com]

HAHAHA, the Burt and Ernie thing never gets to be not-funny. And I haven't even grown up watching Sesame Street.

I was flabbergasted at Keely's Lana vid, (and a good one!) knowing the absolute vitriolic hatred the character seems to elicit from SV fandom at large. It was a character study, and a deliciously meta character study to boot -- sort of a reclamation of a female character who's been ill-served by the writing. Fascinating stuff.

Heee! at your Children Of Men vid review! You know... I think you might like the film. The gender issue isn't quite straightforward, and I adored Kee, the African girl who's the second coming of Mary. *bogarts Clive Owen*