Battlecats at Rudy's

Friday, August 12, 2005

Just returned from the Battlecats show at Rudy's.
Opening band was Brother Kite - indie to the maxx. What they lack in originality, they make up for in well-practiced-ness.
The Battlecats, though, were great. My favorite performances are on the precipice. I love bands that seem like they're just about to fall apart. That's why I love the Replacements and the White Stripes - if you listen to the live recordings, you see how close they are to the edge, and what kind of brilliance occurs there. The Battlecats played tonight in their pyjamas, they wanted to be relaxed for the return-home show. Well, relaxed and lubricated it would seem. Sean took the stage and it took a while to coax Jimmy and Kelley from the bar. They played average, for them. They played new songs and old. At some point, Kelley got pissed a Jimmy and kept yelling at him to play right. Sean took off his clothes. They had to stop a couple of songs to try it again. They couldn't even make it through "Let 'em Work." At one point, they broke into "Is it my Body," by Alice Cooper. They argued and settled on playing the Battlecats Theme, but Jimmy wanted to keep playing, so they did one more and he still wanted to play, but Kelley turned off his amp. Undeterred, he continued unamplified for one more song. Stalking around the room and ending up standing on a bench, he ended the night in glorious fashion, using an empty beer pitcher as a slide.

Movie - Steamboy

I've always wanted to like anime. I was the first person I knew to watch it. When I was 13 or 14, the Sci-Fi channel would show anime movies on weekend mornings. I saw Vampire Hunter D and Ghost in the Shell and Akira and I loved them. I guess I set the bar a little high with those because everything I've seen since has sucked really bad. There were things I wanted to like, things like Cowboy Bebop that seemed to have a great aesthetic and make great references to western culture, but in the end it was all superficial. The references didn't hold up and didn't connect to the story in any meaningful way. I've since become disenfranchised and, but a few exceptions, normally hate most anime. Those exceptions have been limited to the work of Miyazaki and, now, Steamboy. I'd even go so far as to say that Steamboy is the best anime I've seen.
It's great because it captures a spirit of imaginative creativity, but still reads as very human. It's set in 1866 England and the main characters are a family of inventors, working with steam. It's a boy, his father and his grandfather. The father and the grandfather have a conflict about the ends of science, but what's great is that neither is played as evil. The father says the value in science is power and the grandfather says it is to better humanity. The boy jumps back and forth in his allegiance. There is a third element in Dr. Stephenson, a fellow inventor and rival of the family who says the value in science is to aid the nation. It's a complex and meaningful debate that's played out in the setting of a world's fair type event.
The movie not overly fantastical, but still has a joyful spirit of wonder. In the way most anime imagines a future full of bizarre technology, this movie takes the same logic, but from a different starting point. It extrapolates from the period technology insane creations that never were.
The final act is action-heavy, but on the whole, the movie is more character and theme than plot. Patrick Stewart voices the grandfather, so that's a plus.
I don't know. Maybe I've judged anime too harshly. It's not right to judge a medium based on it's predominant genre. It's like condemning comics because superheroes are stupid. I'll need to see more work like this to keep up my optimism, though.