Spring Fair and Metropolis
Apr. 22nd, 2012 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinianFriday: Spring Fair in Puyallup with marzipan_pig! We don't do this every year like the harvest-time fair, but occasionally we get it together for this one too. Great weather this year, cool with sunbreaks and no rain at all. Going on Friday, we missed the crowds, which was a little strange; it did mean we got to see more mascots and clowns than usual, including a guy riding a giant chicken (on stilts inside the suit, I think). Highlights included an impromptu monster truck parade, Swifty Swine races, miniature horses and pygmy goats, and the Land of Wool with spinning, yarn, and real little lambs. Neither of us liked the dancing horses, who just seemed uncomfortable. I got dahlias that I need to plant soon, good plump tubers with shoots coming since the selection was still nice, and a head-crushing hairband from which I plan to harvest the adorable brown and polka-dotted fascinator.
Saturday matinee: Metropolis with restored footage and live music by Alloy Orchestra at the Cinerama. $30 a person was a bit excessive, considering Alloy Orchestra turns out to be three dudes. However, the movie is beautiful, a great look at early science fiction filmmaking with a good score and effective cinematography. Despite some slight overamplification I really enjoyed the show.
The three musicians did a great job, and it was a lot of fun to see them on stage making the sound effects and performing the percussion. All the non-percussion was synthesized, which was a little disappointing from a spectator's perspective but likely inevitable given their staffing restrictions.
Metropolis was severely edited shortly after its initial release, and the footage removed was thought to have been lost entirely until a print was found in Argentina a few years ago. The quality of the formerly lost footage is not good, but in a way it's nice that there's a marked condition for it. I'd never seen any of the edited versions, so this way I could guess at how confusing certain events would've been. (Pretty darn confusing! How did real Maria get away from the evil inventor without this footage?)
Of course I loved the Art Deco style, and I really wonder just how many things I've never suspected were visually influenced by this film. The Thin Man so obviously needs a white-clad counterpart. And when they first show the inventor's house -- a mysterious little house left behind as the city grew up around it, which everyone avoids or fails to notice -- I fully expected to find the Dimension Witch inside it.
marzipan_pig! We don't do this every year like the harvest-time fair, but occasionally we get it together for this one too. Great weather this year, cool with sunbreaks and no rain at all. Going on Friday, we missed the crowds, which was a little strange; it did mean we got to see more mascots and clowns than usual, including a guy riding a giant chicken (on stilts inside the suit, I think). Highlights included an impromptu monster truck parade, Swifty Swine races, miniature horses and pygmy goats, and the Land of Wool with spinning, yarn, and real little lambs. Neither of us liked the dancing horses, who just seemed uncomfortable. I got dahlias that I need to plant soon, good plump tubers with shoots coming since the selection was still nice, and a head-crushing hairband from which I plan to harvest the adorable brown and polka-dotted fascinator.Saturday matinee: Metropolis with restored footage and live music by Alloy Orchestra at the Cinerama. $30 a person was a bit excessive, considering Alloy Orchestra turns out to be three dudes. However, the movie is beautiful, a great look at early science fiction filmmaking with a good score and effective cinematography. Despite some slight overamplification I really enjoyed the show.
The three musicians did a great job, and it was a lot of fun to see them on stage making the sound effects and performing the percussion. All the non-percussion was synthesized, which was a little disappointing from a spectator's perspective but likely inevitable given their staffing restrictions.
Metropolis was severely edited shortly after its initial release, and the footage removed was thought to have been lost entirely until a print was found in Argentina a few years ago. The quality of the formerly lost footage is not good, but in a way it's nice that there's a marked condition for it. I'd never seen any of the edited versions, so this way I could guess at how confusing certain events would've been. (Pretty darn confusing! How did real Maria get away from the evil inventor without this footage?)
Of course I loved the Art Deco style, and I really wonder just how many things I've never suspected were visually influenced by this film. The Thin Man so obviously needs a white-clad counterpart. And when they first show the inventor's house -- a mysterious little house left behind as the city grew up around it, which everyone avoids or fails to notice -- I fully expected to find the Dimension Witch inside it.
