While I await the viewing of Geinus Party Beyond, a collection of anime shorts, I’ve discovered Ani*Kuri15, an awesome collection of 15 one minute anime shorts by an impressive line up of directors made for the NHK channel.

While the official website that hosted them seems to be down at the moment, you can find these videos on youtube quite easily, though almost all of them don’t have english subtitles. But that doesn’t matter much, cause these videos are in the hands of some damn fine directors. Here’s a couple of my favourites…

A Gathering of Cat by Makoto Shinkai. I love this guy’s films, check out Voices of a Distant Star and Places Promised in Our Early Years if you can.

Invasion from Space – Hiroshi’s Castle by Shōjirō Nishimi. This guys a newcomer, but he was involved in the awesome Tekkonkinkreet and basically this short is a helluva lot of fun.

Project Omega by Shōji Kawamori. From the creator of one of my favourites The Visions of Escaflowne, this one is just fun.

Good Morning by Satoshi Kon. By far one of the best anime directors out there and one of my personal favourite filmmakers of all, this short is just… great.

Been cripplingly sick with the flu for the last few days and feeling like a totally unmotivated dead member of society. One night had me going with restless sleep and occasional vomiting, but I’m now through the worst of it, so happy fun times lie ahead of me. Only major victim was my room that turned into a sea of snot filled tissues and mugs filled with leftover soup, tea and other congealed liquids that were beneficial to my well being.

In saying that, here comes the happy fun times of knowing that the schedule for this year’s international film festival is out. I’ve been having issues with the site today, probably because of the new design and some obvious bugs going on with its layout, but not before catching a glimps of at least a few films of worthy note… David Lynch’s Inland Empire is topping the charts, so is Satoshi Kon’s Paparika, Ghibli’s Tales from the Earthsea, Hezrog’s Rescue Dawn, Tekkonkinkreet and the indulgently fun looking Daywatch. No doubt there are a lot more, but having such issues with the site at the moment, I can’t really see the whole list. But hopefully it’ll fix up soon, or even better, someone in Auckland can be a good sport and send me a few copies of the booklets as opposed to be being a selfish biach (you know how you are you whore).

Other than that, I really have nothing much else to report, so it’s off to bed with me and if luck is going my way, I’ll be well enough to go join in on the festivities for Shirow’s birthday party. But until then, here is more examples of the awesomeness that is the Japanese and human tetris. I miss that Naoki bastard.

Some issues with blogger and little bits of apathy prevented any posts from happening this week. Plus there was actually a lot of working during the day and editing during the night that kept this site at bay.

We had our Pictures of You wrap party on Friday which was a nice affair to see people again, catch up, drink and look totally ridiculous. A big happy birthday to Old Friend Scott for yesterday… I spent Saturday well and truely hungover all day and sleeping and eating a lot and the recovery was just in time for me to work a graveyard shift where once again, I watched movies, read comics and abused drunk customers (orientation week man…). Just about to head out to film some more of Spit-Takes and knowing that I’m not gonna watch enough on a cheap Tuesday, thinking of going to a film tonight… Oscar season, always too many to go to.

Quickies… Proof that the universe’s karma is against me, Penn Radio which I’ve recently been listening a lot, had its last show on Friday. Which is a shame but I think its missing out on the rest of a Moon Landing conspiracy thread you can download the casts here and here. Which is facinating stuff, but we’ll probably never hear the conclusion to it.

The new trailer for Paprika is out and just simply look amazing. Satoshi Kon is one of my favourite directors and everything he makes and touches turns to edible gold. Watch any or all of his previous works and you won’t be disappointed, my personal favourite is either Perfect Blue or Millennium Actress… Actually I really love the series Paranoia Agent, which would just leave out Tokyo Godfathers, but I loved that film too… screw it, trailers here.