In her latest book, What It Is, Lynda Barry provides methods, exercises and general motivation for getting your creative juices flowing. Large portions of the book are dedicated to memories: What is a memory? What is the past? Where (and why) do we keep bad memories? Why are memories important? A few recent blasts from the past have had me thinking over these questions.
I downloaded a fan-subbed version of the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie. For those who don't know, I was a huge anime fan in college and Neon Genesis Evangelion is my favorite series - hell, it's pretty much my favorite anything. Books, albums, movies... I have to admit that my #1 spot remains shamefully devoted to a Japanese cartoon from 1996.
The new Eva movies are a reanimating/retelling of the original story: about 3/4 of the scenes remain basically the same, but look nicer and sometimes have computer-animated additions. Of course, this means 1/4 of the scenes are (shudder of spine-tingling anticipation)... NEW.
Here's the great part: they didn't fuck things up with the new stuff. (Are you reading this, George Lucas?)
It was awesome. It was so awesome. For 97 minutes, I was bursting with this feeling that was a combination of nostalgia and euphoria; I don't know of any English word to adequately describe it, but we could damn sure use one. I was literally giggling when I paused the movie halfway through to polish off the remains of our pantry's cookie stash.
When the new X-Files movie came out earlier this summer, Lucy went through the same thing: almost two hours of fantasy bliss, revived straight from her adolescence.
It's a rare privilege to be transported so completely back into your past by something brand new. When I was watching that movie, I felt the Evangelion feeling; there's no other way for me to define it.
Three more Eva movies are planned for release over the next 2-3 years. Funny to realize that I already know exactly how I'll feel when I watch those as well.
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