Frezno's Criterion Challenge: August 2023 Trip Report

Holy hell, with this installment of the Criterion Challenge, I've crossed the 2/3rds mark. 8 months of this. Absolutely wild. I have enjoyed myself so far, and hope I will continue to enjoy myself. Certainly, I have some enjoyable films to talk about here, and so I will do that right about now. Honestly, it's hard to bullshit enough to get an opening paragraph before talking about these, but... actually, I lied, it's really easy to bullshit enough words to get a paragraph filled. I'm literally doing it right now, and now I pretty much have enough. It's the oldest trick in the rambling raving rants book, and now that the trick is done... Kino.

A Post In Solidarity With The Strikes

Well, this isn't exactly how I intended to return to the blog after the big 10th anniversary fete. Even so, things are how they are, and so I'm here to explain the situation and how things are going to go around here for the rest of 2023 and beyond. I'll try to use some of that 2023 brevity to explain, and really I've just done so to stretch this out to a paragraph or so. Wait, that's the opposite of brevity. Damn it, get with the program. Okay.

You are likely aware of the current strike going on in America, with both the Writer's Guild and Screen Actors Guild Of America currently on the picket line for a better deal with the big studios. They are standing up for their right to fair compensation for their work, and naturally I agree and stand in solidarity with them. Where this goes from just a moral stance to actually affecting my hobby here is when this deals with the notion of promoting struck work. I came across a video from Youtuber Council Of Geeks, explaining how she would not be covering anything Doctor Who-related due to the strike once a statement was released from them clarifying that Doctor Who did indeed fall under the strike order. As someone who's part of a weekly Doctor Who podcast, I was also concerned at the thought that we'd been crossing the picket line, and so I made this video aware to my cohosts. We thus decided that it was only right to stand in solidarity with the strikers and put any Doctor Who related talk on hold until such time as the strike resolved.

The Frezno's Raving Rants Tenth Anniversary Retrospective

Welcome, friends and lovelies, to the festivities. If I've timed things correctly it is August 16th, 2023. Ten years ago today, this blog was created out of the spark of an idea. Ten years. Think of it. A child born when I first crafted those words is now old enough to be in the fifth grade. Ten years. A not-insignificant fraction of a human life. Ten goddamn years. Over that time, this blog has shifted in its mission statement and what it has talked about. To wit, I myself have also shifted and changed in those ten years. I often speak of my internal landscape, and this space represents a decade-long road map of it. Our party, then, is a metatextual retracing of my steps. We're going to go over a brief history of Frezno's Raving Rants. What inspired the posts, what led me to do and say the things I did back then, and what led me to the me I am today.

Whether you've been a constant companion on this trip, or you've somehow just stumbled upon this party, you are welcome to accompany me on this adventure down my metaphorical memory lane. It's alright. I've done this introspective song and dance before. I've never done it quite so thoroughly down my own timeline, but it's a party and one can be indulgent. Take my hand, if you so please, and come along with me. Let us celebrate and discover what made this blog tick, and how it grew and changed as I so did. Let the Frezno festivities... begin.

My Summer Of Symphogear

Alright, so what in the fuck are we doing back here of all places? The astute among you will remember a long-running series on this blog, from 2020 and 2021, where I wrote basically a fucking novel about this dumb show. There are things about it that I'm fond of, and things about it I'm not fond of, but that's basically the kind of creator I am: in my head my writings have the shelf life of milk, and anything past six months I look back at and go "oh my god this stinks, what was I doing?". To wit, then: I was successfully able to express my thoughts and emotions about what the show meant to me. I kind of wish I was able to do it without bloating the word count by giving lengthy plot summaries of what happened in the show. It makes me feel like an out-of-touch Internet reviewer when I do that shit, a Doug Walker or a Quinton Reviews. I don't like it, but the words on Symphogear are out there and are like that and I just have to deal with that regret. These words are not a replacement for them.

We're back here because of my own absolutely ridiculous aesthetic chasing. There's no easy way to admit what I did, so let's just say it outright. One day in the spring, I was fooling around with things in my basement when I got an idea. My PS3 had the option for AV cables, and could play Blu-Rays. What would happen if I were able to hook it into my old VCR via those cables? What sort of things that came out on Blu-Ray, years after the VHS format faded away, could be retroactively ported over to tape? The hookup worked, and then I got a further idea. A VHS tape on SLP mode can hold 6 hours of video, at fuzzy lower quality. The runtime of a season of Symphogear on Blu-Ray is just over 5 hours. The result?

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: July 2023 Trip Report

A very happy welcome to the second half of my Criterion Challenge Trip Reports! It's hard to believe that we have gone through half a year of cinematic wonder. It's also hard to believe that I've dragged my feet a little on some of these. I shall have to try and make September a big one, because August has me doing a lot of writing and we know what kind of madhouse October will be on the blog. Regardless, here we go. Some more movies to try and expand my cinematic horizons and make me better at something or other, and we start with...

The Warring States Of Love And Hate (Inuyasha)

Right, then. Let's get back on the same page, shall we? So, to recap: I found this improbability in late February while cleaning out the basement:

The rediscovery of my long-lost off-air recording of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was a terrifying enough bit of synchronicity, which I talked about last May. I briefly mentioned also watching the last bit of that tape, the spare 90 minutes for taping. What was on there filled me with a pure sense of nostalgia, a longing for a long ago time. Now that Twin Peaks is done and dusted, I can go back and tell you exactly what those 90 minutes were. They were three episodes of anime that I recorded on VHS in the year 2005, specifically off of Bionix, the Canadian youth channel YTV's weekend programming block for older youth and teens. (The astute among you may recall that a chance encounter with YTV two years prior to this taping, in 2003, was my reintroduction to Sailor Moon.) 

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: June 2023 Trip Report

Welcome back, my friends, to the broadening cinematic horizons which never end! It's once again time for a Criterion Challenge Trip Report, and can you believe that after this one we're halfway done with the year and the challenge? How time flies. This month's challenge also took place during Pride Month, so I slotted in some films with queer themes. If I'd thought of this beforehand I would have saved The Times Of Harvey Milk for this month instead. Nothing stopping you from watching it yourself for Pride Month, except for the fact that by the time you read this Pride Month will probably be done. Well, still watch that movie anyway. And probably a few other movies on this list that I watched in June 2023, if they're good. Let's find out together if they were or not, starting with...