I finally got two DVDs I’d been waiting for in the mail today, and I’d recommend them both. At least for a rental:
Interstella 5555 by Daft Punk and Leiji Matsumoto
This is a long-form video for the entire Discovery album by Daft Punk, done as a 70’s sci-fi anime film. The animation supervisor and character designer was Leiji Matsumoto, who did among other things, “Star Blazers”/Space Battleship Yamato. I was such a huge fan of “Star Blazers” that I can’t see his art without thinking of the 70’s, and vice versa. And it works so well for the music, of course, since the album is house/techno music just dripping with references to 70’s disco.
It’s a pretty cool concept, both the idea of doing an anime video for an entire album and the story itself. An pop band from a friendly planet in another dimension is captured by evil aliens, disguised to look human, has their memories erased, and are taken to Earth, where they’re promoted as the most popular band on the planet. The friendly aliens call on the rogue captain of a guitar-shaped spaceship to fly to Earth and rescue the band (which he does willingly, because he’s a huge fan of Stella, the band’s bassist).
In practice, it starts out very, very cool but just loses steam after the first four songs or so. This is partly because the album itself has the same problem – it has a great start and then just kind of peters out. Also, it’s very obvious that the bulk of the budget went into making the videos for the first four songs, which were the album’s single releases (at least in the US) and which were shown frequently on video channels and elsewhere. (Cartoon Network ran all four videos in order as part of a Toonami special). The rest of the movie has almost exactly the same style, but it’s obviously composited with computers, and the characters frequently go off-model. It’s as if the first four songs were a feature film, and the rest of the movie were the direct-to-video knock-off.
Still, it’s a great idea, and I was impressed how they were able to keep the whole thing interesting with absolutely no dialogue. There’s some on-screen text, but no dialogue or subtitles, and the text is used only when it’s absolutely essential. You’d definitely have to be a fan of the album to enjoy it enough to buy it, unless you’re just a huge huge fan of 70’s anime. I was already a fan of the record, and of Matsumoto, but I think it’d still be at least worth a rental for anyone who likes electronic music and/or anime.
The Work of Spike Jonez
All of Spike Jonez’ music videos, with some commentary and additional info (and some more short films on the second side of the disc, which I haven’t watched yet). I already had some of these because I’d bought the Beastie Boys and Bjork’s video collections before, but for me it was all about finally owning a copy of “Weapon of Choice” by Fatboy Slim, which is one of the greatest videos of all time. Next to “It’s Oh So Quiet” by Bjork, which is also on this DVD.
There’s really not much to say about this one. There were a couple videos that I hadn’t seen before, and a couple that I hadn’t realized were by him – “California” by Wax, with the burning man running to catch a bus, and “Cannonball” by The Breeders, with my imaginary girlfriend Kim Deal. The commentaries are brief, of course, and except for Bjork’s they’re not at all insightful. It’s clear in all of them that it was Spike Jonez who was driving the ideas behind every one of them and the musicians for the most part just let him have his way. So you’re left wondering why they interviewed the musicians at all if they were just going to keep saying, “That was Spike’s idea.”
Like I said, I just bought it for “Weapon of Choice,” so I knew what I was getting. One thing I learned that I hadn’t known before: the gymnast in the video for “Elektrobank” by the Chemical Brothers was played by Sophia Coppola.