Interval at Addictive TV/Optronica’s night out at Waterman’s. Some fine fine short things — respect to Tom Wall and Somniscope [above], and of course Addictive themselves for a reprise of The Italian Boj, which was quite a thing last year at the South Bank…

We were at the ‘World Sneak Preview’ of Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed at the ICA tonight. Complimentary sake and sushi, a lovingly-prepared but very silly flipchart presentation from the producer about the politics of the world in which it is set, then the film. The technique is impressive — the city of Olympus is beautifully rendered, the battle set-pieces are fluidly choreographed and edited, the whole nicely balancing genre conventions and virtuoso hyper-realism. Although the first few minutes owe too much to The Matrix-meets-Avalon, and in parts (to my eye) the human characters suffer somewhat from traditional anime styling, Appleseed is something genuinely new in feature-length animation: detail everywhere, lovingly rendered, with sinuous tracking and editing.

Less successfully, the film contains way too much exposition (even without the flipchart!), in the style of some Russian epic from the 60s — I’ll be surprised if it makes it to American multiplexes without some trimming down. The music supervision also jarred: it was nice to see Basement Jaxx turning up for the premiere, but their music — and that of Oakenfold and the rest — on the soundtrack made no sense thematically or emotionally, and seemed to be just a hook for an international audience.

But if you can ignore the turgid moralising — which just slows down the action — the 3D animation and design (the mecha are great, while the Mobile Fortresses out-scale any city-stomping weapons platform I can remember) is stunning. All the big fast things were perfect. Go see it at a big cinema with decent Dolby when it’s on release next month, or get it on DVD (evidently scheduled for July) and turn up the sub-woofer.

I first saw Rybczynski’s Tango, I Can’t Stop and some of Orchestra on the ABC’s Sunday Spectrum strand on TV back in the 80s in Tasmania (the original Sunday Spectrum doesn’t even rate a mention on the ABC website, but it was really important at the time. I seem to remember the work of Rybczynski, Michael Snow and Ed Emshwiller all being shown within the same month. Revelations.)

I’ve been hunting The Fourth Dimension since Tokyo. Tim saw it at (I may be wrong) Image Forum, and made it sound a thing worth tracking down. That was probably 13 years ago. The DVD set, including all the above and many more, arrived over the weekend.

So far, The Fourth Dimension is the treasure. It looks rendered, but given that it was made in 1988, I guess it’s most likely built using exquisite compositing, anamorphic lenses and motion control damped with several hundred tonnes of concrete. Unfortunately, the transfer suffers from streaky video artifacts and a washed-out palette, suggesting that the DVD was dubbed from laserdisk rather than digital or cine master. It’s also a shame the DVDs come with no notes other than a ‘making of’ for Orchestra. In fact, the whole package feels a bit thrown together. But given that these films seem to have been unavailable for years, it’s nice to have them in any form. Can’t help wondering if the ones originated in Hi-Vision will be rereleased in a more modern HD format sometime soon.

Zbig is quoted as having a systems approach to his film-making:

“l am only an observer”, Rybczynski explained, “I planned the operation and watch what would come out of it”.

All the films, to my eye, are much improved by watching them patiently, settling into the mood with the sound off, as ambient video art.

A selection of Zbig Rybczynski’s early films and his HDTV work from the 80s is now available on DVD. Shame it isn’t HD-DVD. And shame I don’t have an HD-DVD player. Oh well. Really wish I could find this stuff on Japanese HD laserdisc (and that I had one of those ancient MUSE HI-Vision decks to play them on…)
Oh and Happy New Year. I’ve been very busy with work and thinking, and this is the first thing I’ve seen this year that I’ve wanted to post. More to come soon…