What Dreams May Come Review

What Dreams May Come is a kind of surreal supernatural fantasy drama film released in 1998 directed by Vincent Ward starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Annabella Sciorra about a man named Chris Nielson who dies and his journey through the afterlife and him being a ghost watching how his wife gets on after he dies. Before he died his children died and his wife is left alone and so she kills herself and is sent to limbo and the film follows this story and him trying to save her soul from limbo and reuniting with his already dead family. It centers around both heaven and hell but paints a picture of these places in its own imaginitive way which I really like about this film. The effects are done really nicely to help you get immersed in this world of the afterlife which I think alot of people will find really fascinating.

Watching this movie I actually got creepy chills especially towards the end and in the beginning after he dies and is haunting his wife it was kind of creepy to watch her go through that but the main character Chris you can also identify with that he doesn't want to be forgotten by his life partner Annie. It has a dreaminess to it with the soundtrack and just the fact that he's in the afterlife it plays out like a dreamscape the way they did it you almost feel like you're in a dream yourself which makes this film really stand out amongst other films.

There's a really big surprise at the end that makes sitting through the whole thing really worth while to find out this surprise towards the ending. It's kind of slow moving that's why I say this some people might get bored of it if they have a short attention span but if you're enjoying the story you should stick through it because it gets more strange and there's a big surprise at the end about the characters. I think going into this movie viewing it as a piece of art you should contemplate death and the afterlife and what it means to you and what you're beliefs are about the afterlife and then look at their portrayal of the afterlife. It's pretty philosophical looking at what awareness is and what existence is and what it would be like to be in limbo not knowing who you are or where you are dwelling on your life and really getting lost in yourself but knowing if you have people who love you you can get through anything. It's a metaphor for life and if this idea of the afterlife exists then it can only help you through its wisdom by you seeing this character go through limbo and death and having a loving husband risking his own sanity to help her through her current state of circumstances and also the kids being there and already being adjusted to being dead. It really makes you think doesn't it and I think it's a healthy contemplation and visitation with death while it gets dark at times there's also a lot of serenity portrayed in this vision of death.

I feel this is an important piece of film both as a work of art and as an awakening to a vision of what death is like. That's what is so great about storytelling and film is you get to use it as a way to gain knowledge and wisdom about anything and everything. We can never truly know what the afterlife will be like but if you've seen what dreams may come then you at least have something to go on and can be prepared for it. You can get perspective on what it would be like to haunt someone as a ghost or be haunted by a ghost if you haven't had any experiences like that before. If you subscribe to abrahamic religious views on the afterlife with heaven and hell then this gives you something within your world view to prepare you for that. It shows you the life of a family who all end up dying like we all die but that they can help each other still even in the afterlife as a family you know. It's a great film and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in death. I personally have my own relationship with the idea of death and the afterlife and I think i handle it a bit better than most people do. When someone dies i'm not grieving for very long I accept death. Sure I'll miss their physical presence in my life and that's a sad thought but you also have to understand that we all go through this rite of passage and you can't dwell on the past for your own sanity's sake. Some people might think i'm cold for not feeling that sorry for people dealing with the death of a loved one when they are stuck in the past dwelling on memories and not letting that person move on with their existence or nonexistence. I feel sorry for people struggling through that awareness and i'm willing to help them accept the inevitability of death but logically speaking it is just that inevitable and there's no use trying to fight it because you won't win. All you can do is move on with your own life and accept that it's happened. That's about all I have for this one hope you gained something from it if you yourself are dealing with death and if you're just looking for something artistic to watch this is a good one to try. Ciao!

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Obscure Genres: Vaporwave

Vaporwave is another one of those satirical subgenres born on the internet that really only people on the internet hear about and have a small community for. It has a strong emphasis on the arts aesthetic and less so on the music but with vaporwave I think more people into this subculture do actually listen to the music and are more involved in making the music of the genre.

The aesthetic is that 90s nostalgic aesthetic with a specific color palette and key items that make it vaporwave. With vaporwave what you tend to see is roman statues, windows 95, nihilistic comments done in japanese, glitch art, tropical settings and certain beverages like fiji water, arizona tea and sizzurp of all things. I'm not going to lie with vaporwave aesthetic art you do see mention of drug abuse like sizzurp aka lean or purple drank which is promethazine with codeine mixed with sprite and jolly ranchers, xanax pills, marijuana and sometimes over the counter cough syrups like nyquil. Why is this so? Well I think it has to do with the music which I will get into now:

Vaporwave music is a satire on contemporary consumerist society (whenever I say that to people they call me a hipster =/) and an avenue for nostalgia through sampling 80s and 90s pop, rnb, smooth jazz and muzak or easy listening/elevator music. Its a form of plunderphonics which if you don't know is essentially when you use audio piracy to revision a track making simple edits to make it something new. With Vaporwave what you're looking to do is get a deep vocal sound by slowing down the speed and make it really low fidelity with reverb and phaser or echo effects to get that vaporwave sound. Listen to some vaporwave and you'll understand what i'm talking about. I feel like for it to have a really vaporwave sound it has to have a drone in the background and with applying those effects you can attain that and also get a kind of lighter grainier sound that seems to resemble vapor. 

The name vaporwave doesn't actually constitute that vapor sound though the name comes from vaporware which is when a business puts adverts out about an upcoming product that may seem too good to be true and ends up being too good to be true they never release it but get all this attention for that product. It's nonexistent. I think that's where the nihilism came from with vaporwave because we know nihilism is the philosophy of life being meaningless all religions being false just your life being a big pile of nothing but that doesn't mean its a bad thing because if you know your life is meaningless then you can make the best of it by having fun or wearing your "yoloswagg" as it were lol. So we have the vapor in vaporware and wave actually being a marxist term to describe something that perpetuates itself and is meaningless in its philosophy giving it even more nihilist swag. 

All in all classic vaporwave is uninspired in its creation making use of its source content as a crutch for whether the song is good or not by itself but focusing on the vibe by the artist making the edit to whether its good vaporwave or not. There are of course subgenres within vaporwave like vaportrap for example that still has that vaporwave vibe and those iconic synths that really bring vaporwave to a new level as an artform to progress the genre which I believe is why this genre didn't die out fast like some other genres because there is room to explore with vaporwave and the vaporwave community welcomes that. One thing I really enjoy about this genre is the satire on consumerist society the nihilism in it (I'm not a nihilist myself but I enjoy nihilistic remarks) the fact that you can make a vaporwave track in around a minutes time and the fact that alot of the big vaporwave lp releases are released on cassette tape <3

Here comes the time where I share some videos to help you explore vaporwave for yourself giving you some examples and some interesting videos on the subject to help you grasp it.

How to Make Vaporwave by Frank Jav Cee

Vaporwave: A Brief History by Wolfenstein OS X

V A P O R W A V E  L P ' S playlist by myself



Key artists:

-Ramona Andra Xavier aka vektroid aka VectorFray aka vektordrum aka Macintosh Plus, New Dreams Ltd, PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises, Laserdisc Visions, 情報デスクVIRTUAL, and dstnt
-Saint Pepsi
-Oneohtrix point never aka chuck person
James Ferraro
Blank Banshee
T E L E P A T H
Internet Club

More Things to Check out:

Most Famous Record Label: http://dreamcatalogue.net/
The Archive of the Vaporwave Library Project: https://web.archive.org/web/20150219214318/http://vaporwave.me/
The Vaporwave Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vaporwave/

Labyrinth Review

I've probably seen this at least 500 times not even kidding. You know how people have movies they watch on a regular basis like going to sleep or while cleaning or doing work etc. This is one of those movies for me, that and the dark crystal. Those old Jim Henson fantasy films are among the best fantasy films of all time and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Labyrinth is a timeless classic that just can't be missed. If you haven't seen this yet then well you need to.. like right now if you can afford to.

Not to be confused with Pan's Labyrinth, Labyrinth is a 1986 British American film directed by Jim Henson, executive produced by George Lucas, and based upon conceptual designs by Brian Froud. The film stars David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King and Jennifer Connelly as Sarah the one trapped in the labyrinth.  So it's a movie about a girl who gets her baby brother kidnapped by goblins and she has to go to the goblin kingdom to get him back even though she doesn't like him very much she feels obligated to because he's her little brother.

People at its korny and has bad acting. Maybe the korny bit sometimes but I don't think the acting is that bad. I think some people confuse the two sometimes though. It's kid friendly and I would say pagan friendly as well. Sure it is part musical with the whole David Bowie thing but that doesn't overtake the film. I wouldn't say it's purely a musical, I'd say it's a fantasy film with a couple musical numbers.

There's alot of cool little puzzles in the movie that are solved for you. It's definitely an adventure film not much suspense or thrill. There is a few action scenes that keep you entertained but there are some real slow parts you may think are kind of boring. You just have to get past those parts really. All over its an enjoyable experience with fantastic creations you'll never forget. It's pretty immersive. It's easy to get lost in the story, in the labyrinth and you do feel like you've just been on an amazing journey to the goblin kingdom after its over and done with and you'll want to go there again and again or at least that was my experience and I've never met a person who didn't like this movie and lots of people will get a good kick of nostalgia when you mention something from this movie. So join the club watch labyrinth it's really good classic fantasy.  And one thing I want to point out is this is the earliest instance I know of hearing the word "hogwarts" nothing wrong with that, just saying though.  ;)

The Dark Crystal Review

I've seen this 500 times at least just like labyrinth. Guess I'm a sucker for classic fantasy, go figure.  I really love the dark crystal it has alot of special meaning to me. I've watched it many times and have searched for metaphorical meaning in it like the olde bardic tradition of studying a story for insight and I think there's alot to offer with this tale. It gives it alot of replay value to see new meaning in the events. This movie is filled with mystery and magick.

The Dark Crystal is a 1982 British American fantasy film directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz and stars Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw and Percy Edwards. It's a tale of ancient magic and good vs evil set in the form of an adventure of the last of a dying race of elf-like humanoids called gelfling. the main character is a gelfling who is prophesized to be the one who can return balance to their world after the evil race of vulture people called the skeksis take over the world ruling with the power of the dark crystal. They find out about the prophesy and kill all of the gelfling minus 2 who escaped and we're raised by different races of people one with small gnome like forest dwellers and one with a bizarre race of druidic wizard creatures that look like lizard/tortoise humanoid type things. As you can tell it's very nature and ancient pagan based with alot of fantastical creatures based loosely on real animals but the creatures in the dark crystal are definitely unique only minor things are relatable to reality most of the creatures are completely imagined to create the world of the dark crystal.

Most all the creatures are puppets or animatronics, some are people dressed in costumes. For this reason some of the movement like speaking and walking make it quite obvious this is only a puppet the movement looks very fake and lifeless at certain moments while at others look real as ever. It can be slightly inconsistent they may have had difficulties or puppeteers that weren't as experienced as others which is a Shame because the creatures and the story is so incredible that the technological inferiority of the time makes the quality of the film suffer but there is still a unique charm to those old puppet fantasy films. It's the viewers decision whether the fact that this is pretty much an all puppet movie is a hinderence to it or not. All in all the story and the aesthetic of the world and the creatures that inhabit is just superb. It's one of the best fantasy films of all time. It progresses just fine there's a balance of dialogue and action and it's all filled with great mysticism that makes it very very special indeed.

Malice in Wonderland Review

Like I may have mentioned before I love anything alice in wonderland I have an affinity for it and search for great media related to the story because I just think it's so awesome it can't be missed. Malice in Wonderland is no exception. This is an excellent film. It's a little strange but that's what I love about it. It stays true to the oddness that is Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland (the books mind you) while making it fresh and modern; abstract and artistic.

Malice in Wonderland is a 2009 British fantasy adventure film directed by Simon Fellows, written by Jayson Rothwell and  starring Maggie Grace, Danny Dyer, Matt King and Nathaniel Parker.  The story is based on alice in wonderland but set in an urban London ghetto with the queen of hearts being a mob boss and the white rabbit being a taxi driver and alice gets lost in this underground world of drugs and prostitution trying to find her memory after getting hit by the white rabbits cab after running away searching for her real mother. It's a bit more complicated than that but that's the gist of things and boy is it wild. The things they come up with for this film while still keeping it wonderland is phenomenal. Any fan of wonderland with an appreciation for the surreal and creative rendition will love this as much as I do.

The Alice character is beautiful and charming which she should be because she's the main character. Whitey is a funny cockney cab driver that helps alice through wonderland making it really surreal but totally true to the white rabbit character and the more the story develops the more you feel for him and want him to succeed. You can't have a book based alice film without the duchess and her peppered soup and this film doesn't let you down the duchess character is great I loved it.  The caterpillar is a drug dealer and helps alice get to the duchess in this movie which isn't really what I was expecting but I did enjoy that short scene with him in it really puts you in that world of urban wonderland, not the best way they could've  done it but it ended up working and I wasn't disappointed moreso wished there was more. I won't go through every character the last I'll say is everyone's favorite the mad hatter is played by a female freightline dispatcher with a small diner set as the headquarters for an underground prostitution ring definitely not what I saw coming but it's surely creative use of the character and trust be it does work to the films benefit. It's the most thrilling and suspenseful part of the movie and they still made it work to the classic wonderland tales well while at the same time but being a copy of the original.

All around this is just a great movie any alice fan will be proud to own and even if you just like artistic, dramatic, fantasy or adventure films this fits the bill in those categories as well. It really is an obscure gem and is worth the search for it.