Blob Opera!

Hey guys,

Some new things:

1. HAPPY HOLIDAYS
   It's not too late to send around Blob Opera as a holiday card.
   

2. If you can't get around to a ton of cities right now, no biggie. You can still experience driving through and listening to different stations.
   

3. Watch A Sun. And watch Waves. Both films about loss, and both over 2 hours. You know. Lengths usually reserved for Marvel now. Is it really that big a deal when streaming?
   
   Waves is another Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scored film.  And Mike Frank points out that sound designer Johnnie Burn does some great things.  Cool name too.
   
   The first half is also a decent look at the pressures on young men navigating the high school years. (Paul Thomas Anderson has his take on high school filming now.)
   
   It's emotional, stylistically bold and adept at getting us lost in a tonal experience, but overall may be too close to its material... A Sun, on the other hand, may have more to say through its narrative, more wisdom to impart, more a sense that the filmmaker and the characters have done some reflecting as to how their story fits into the universe. It asks you to consider the grays of morality and the unfairness of the cards you're dealt and how to act in an imperfect world.
   
   Is the difference in films a difference in cultures? A difference in age? (dir. Shults is 32 and has previously made a pretty cool moody/artsy horror film and a meandering character study that's a touch student film-like, while dir. Chung is 55 with a few more films, including his own horror piece, an interesting tonally eclectic one) Or just a difference in personality?
   

4. Doing visual research for a project next year has led me to some abandoned places.
   

5. Well now I know a little about how Banksy's business and communications operate -- discovered by Ljova.

Feel free to share any of this with anyone you know who'd like it -- you can send the links -- or forward the email so they have the chance to subscribe.

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Chris