Ice Blog Films

Ai No Mukidashi / Love Exposure (This is a review I wrote a...

Wed, 02 May 2012 20:44:00 -0400

Ai No Mukidashi / Love Exposure

(This is a review I wrote a while ago in a series I was doing on Facebook. To celebrate the Blu-Ray release in America, I am republishing. Love Exposure will be released on August 6.)

There’s a reason most films are short. In ninety minutes, you only have time to explore the dynamics of characters who have a singular goal and believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are right in pursuing that goal.

Be it hero or villain, you see this pattern more than you don’t by virtue of the fact that a single-goal story frame makes for clean and efficient telling. Some films can extend their run-time by introducing dozens of characters with singular goals (Lord of the Rings), but the inverse is rare.

Love Exposure (愛のむきだし), written and directed by Sion Sono, is an example of the inverse. The film’s 4 hours are divvied up among a sparse 5 characters. Through the course of the film, we discover that these characters are not only free from singular goals, they are free from doing what they believe is right.

The plot of the film is impossible to summarize. It touches on religion, love, lust, and family but never focuses on any of them. At times, it’s a screw-ball comedy about the techniques for shooting peek-a-panty photography (a style of soft voyeur that the hero becomes an expert at). Then, without warning, the film will do a major gear-shift and be a dark and humorless character study when the protagonist abducts his reluctant love interest and ties her up in a bus by the beach.

Throughout the film, characters do what they perceive to be right, manage to convince themselves the wrong they’re doing isn’t, and sometimes just go off the bend and do things that are intentionally wicked for no reason other than they want to see people suffer.

Over its 4 hours, the film behaves as a cinematic Rubik’s Cube. Twisting and bending the themes, characters and motivations around each other until all possible wrong combinations have been thoroughly explored. In the last 45 minutes, the sides of the cube finally line up. And, that’s where the water-works begin.

When the characters finally start to see the world come together in a way that isn’t wholly chaotic and sadistic, they become increasingly aware of the pain they created as they twisted it against its will into what they wanted (or thought they wanted or created out of spite and bitterness).

By the time redemption is desired by the cast, it appears to be utterly unattainable. And, after having spent so much time hurting each other, Sono has no shame in turning the screws and letting the cast endure just as much self inflicted pain as they possibly can before the credits roll.

Entropy - As lovely as low budget animation can get (which is to...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:36:17 -0400

Entropy - As lovely as low budget animation can get (which is to say, pretty damn lovely).

Good morning, Internet! This is as good as an animated short can...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 19:04:16 -0500

Good morning, Internet! This is as good as an animated short can be. The sound design is monumental.

Who knows how long this link will be live. But, for now, enjoy!

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 19:31:19 -0500

Who knows how long this link will be live. But, for now, enjoy!

You know… I finally feel like I’m getting to know...

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:48:41 -0500

You know… I finally feel like I’m getting to know the Gorillaz as people.

Good artists borrow. Great artists steal. And, the geniuses?...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:18:42 -0500

Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.

And, the geniuses? Well, they make something brilliant and then pass the copyright along to their intellectual progeny for re-release a decade later.

Good morning, Internet! How about we all start our day with a...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:16:27 -0500

Good morning, Internet!

How about we all start our day with a short clip from the upcoming Disney movie, Brave.

Gorillaz + Andre 3000 + James Murphy = Good Morning!

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:25:32 -0500

Gorillaz + Andre 3000 + James Murphy = Good Morning!:

Just a quickie link to the (**sigh**) corporate synergy machine known as Converse. But, hey, I’ll shill for any company that throws money at the Gorillaz to make new music. Hell, I’d throw the money myself.

Blacklist New Years Eve Blacklist Tokyo threw an absolutely...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:02:37 -0500

Blacklist New Years Eve

Blacklist Tokyo threw an absolutely amazing New Years Party at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Nihonbashi. Featuring an impressive array of international artists, dancers, and DJs with a special lighting and video show. What an amazing way to bring int he New Year

Calligraphist/ dancer: Mai Nakanishi
Lighting/ Video performance: Stuart Ward
Special Guest artist: YUSURA
Violonist: Paul Florea
Official photographers: Mathieu Buglet, Hiroki Ikesue
Official Video: Ice Block Films

Live Djs:
Mike Wilkins
Cedric
DJ Attikus http://www.youtube.com/user/officialattikus
Dominic Allen
Calyssa

BlackList Dancers:
Jacky, Coco and Kiki

Video by: Ice Block Films
Camera: William Greenawalt
Editing: Jesse Koester
http://www.iceblockfilms.com/
http://www.facebook.com/iceblockfilms
https://twitter.com/iceblockfilms

Nina Sky Japan Tour 2011 @ XEX Nihonbashi CLIENT/クライアントGeorgi...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:52:00 -0500

Nina Sky Japan Tour 2011 @ XEX Nihonbashi

CLIENT/クライアント
Georgi / XEX / Nina Sky

PROJECT
Nina Sky came all the way to Japan to perform at XEX Nihonbashi on December 17th 2011. They threw down and amazing singing and DJ set. It was truly a night to remember.

CREDITS/制作スタッフ
Editing: Jesse Koester
Camera: William Greenawalt
Producer: Georgi

www.iceblockfilms.com

Measures of a Broken Heart A quickie video we did for the group...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:44:00 -0500

Measures of a Broken Heart

A quickie video we did for the group Favorite Underdog. Simple. Short. Original words and music. Enjoy!

Homepage: http://www.favoriteunderdog.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/favoriteunderdogmusic

www.iceblockfilms.com

Happy New Year! Let’s do this 2012 thing. The beginning...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 17:37:54 -0500

Happy New Year! Let’s do this 2012 thing.

The beginning of the new year is a perfect time to reflect on the past and plan for the future. A chance to review that which is important and held dear while whittling away at the extemporaneous. It is, above all other things, a chance to renew the heart, the soul, and the post-production work-flow.

And, that is just what we are planning to do in 2012. This will be a several month-long project that will require a fundamental over-haul of how we make movies at Ice Block. The two main changes will be:

Abandoning the Final Cut software suite for Adobe’s software
Abandoning Apple for a Windows platform

Let’s look at the reasons why, starting with Final Cut and finishing with PCs.

In 2011, Apple pulled support for Final Cut Studio, the backbone of our production workflow. The platform was a perfect fit for us - affordable, robust, and compatible with our clients’ and collaborators’ workflows. The biggest problem with the suite was the lack of render queue and Red support. Both of these missing features ended up hurting us in 2010-2011.

The release of FCPX marked a change of course for Apple and one that is very difficult to support as a professional editor. In the simplest terms, the software lacks what our clients pay us for. The best reviews we’ve heard of the software are that it has interesting features that will be useful in a couple years. The worst are … well, bad.

So, out with the new, in with the old. Adobe wins our 2012 dollar.

With that decision made, we started thinking - Why not build from the ground up? If we’re purchasing software for our clients, why not build a machine just for them too? So, that’s what we’re going to do.

Over the next several months, we are going to build a monster editing suite, with the sole purpose of client service in mind.

How many hard-drives? It might be a number higher than man can count.
How much RAM? Our current plan is to grind as much RAM as we can get down into a fine paste and just smear it all over the circuit board.
Keyboards? Yes. 10 of them. And, they’ll all be made of Blu-Ray players.
Monitors? We might just project onto the moon and edit there.

So, here is the call to arms - If you are a PC user / builder and have some advice on pieces we should get, please hit us up! I haven’t built a Windows machine since I was in high school. So, any recommendations of products will be more than welcome.

Just shoot us a mail at info (at) iceblockfilms.com.

As we cobble together this dream machine, we will be posting pictures and posts about the project.