I don't get around to watching a lot of music videos, but this just appeared on my tv screen for a few minutes, and now I feel like Chris Martin is going to haunt my nightmares forever. Or a Chris Martin puppet, specifically. I have no issue with puppets, cute puppetty music videos, or puppets in rock star likenesses even. I once saw Beck play an entire set behind a small stage of Jim Henson Studio puppets, and that was bloody brilliant. The main problem I had with it was, aside from the general creepiness of the puppets (possibly a deliberate attempt to avoid being too cutesy, but really, who can tell?) is that it's SO bizarre, SO disturbing, (eerie, frightening, ghoulish, gruesome, hair-raising, horrible, menacing, nightmarish, ominous, shuddersome, sinister, terrifying, threatening, unpleasant, weird, etc...) that not only does it sit very uncomfortably with the song - Life in Technicolour, quite a classic Coldplay-being-amthemic, optimistic type of song - it actually completely distracts you from it. It insists that you don't listen to the song at all.
This is just waiting to be ripped off by an ad agency and/or music video. Look out for the horse (or maybe dog?) walking through the car park. That's my favourite :) There are some great still photos here. Found via this good effort from Alistair. (My efforts unfortunately went quickly downhill once the ratio of alcohol consumed overtook the level of inspiration, combined with my little camera giving you about 1 second to complete your masterpiece. Will have to give it another go now I have a more flexible camera, and sober friends!)
I've had a couple of DVDs sitting on my shelf for a while and hadn't got round to seeing them this weekend, and they were BOTH great! Not just good, absolutely go-and-buy-it-now fantastic. Saturday's showing was A Scanner Darkly, adapted from the novel by Philip K Dick, about a not too distant future where everyone is constantly under surveillance in a battle against widespread addiction to new drug 'Substance D'. It's really beautifully, strangely accurately, animated through rotoscoping. At times you really have to remind yourself that it's animated because your brain kind of tricks you into thinking it's 'real'. Which complements the story quite well, too.
I also finally got around to watching Spirited Away. Again really beautifully animated, and a really charming, lovely, funny and engrossing story. The only other Studio Ghibli film I've seen is Princess Mononoke which I caught on tv a while ago, and I'm definitely going to hunt some more down now...
