I’m working on a new instrumental album, PRISM. It’s color-themed, very much like last year’s Four Mages. I enjoy composing with different colored pens, and Dr. Girlfriend gave me some awesome V5 Precision pens that are great for composing by hand.
This week I’m featuring the third piece I composed for the album, which will likely be the second track on the album, “Red Blur.”
My older brother and I saw Nosferatu (2024) a couple of days after its release, which was on Christmas Day 2024. We attended a 12:30 PM EST showing on Friday, 27 December 2024, and even that early matinee had a very good crowd.
My brother and I had been anticipating the release of this film with an eagerness we rarely experience for movies anymore. I love movies, but there aren’t many films that get me excited to go see them.
Nosferatu promised “a symphony of horror,” according to its tagline (and the subtitle of the 1924 original), and it delivered—in spades.
I’m a huge nerd, which means I love all sorts of oddball things. One of those is stop motion animation.
I suspect that love is a result of nostalgia. I’m just old enough to remember lots of stop motion animation and puppetry still being used in films. There’s also something fascinating about how a good stop motion animator can take figurines and make them do incredible things on camera. The detail and the motions have that trademark jerkiness that, paradoxically, can be incredibly smooth in the hands of a skilled technician.
As such, I decided to dedicate this edition of Lazy Sunday to posts related to stop motion animation:
“Midweek Myers Movie Review: King Kong (1933)” – Audre Myers’s excellent review of the king of classic stop motion animation.
“Monday Morning Movie Review: Puppet Master I-III (1989, 1990, 1991)” – My loving tribute to the corny B-movies that terrified me as a small child.
“Monday Morning Movie Review: The Primevals (2024)” – A recent review that inspired this foray into stop motion animation.
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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I’m working on a new album, PRISM, which will release (God Willing) on Friday, 7 February 2025. The title track from the album is the lengthiest piece I’ve ever composed, clocking in at around 20:23. There is, admittedly, a great deal of repetition within that runtime, as the themes repeat frequently—almost hypnotically, which is part of the point.
“PRISM” is a lengthy exploration of musical themes that double back on one another in a hypnotic folding of sound. New ideas are gradually introduced and woven into this colorful tapestry of sound.
“PRISM” contains flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, and two-hand organ parts.
Sheet music for “PRISM” is available here: https://www.noteflight.com/music/titles/489d8239-5b8f-441a-b9f8-928c6978be63/prism
The piece will post on YouTube on Friday, 7 February 2025 at 6 PM; you can view click on the video below and ask YouTube to send you a notification when the premiere begins:
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I had entirely too much fun with the LEGO® Star Wars™ 2024 Advent Calendar, especially playing with the different little builds in humorous ways.
I pulled some pieces from other sets and made a fun little re-enactment of a famous scene from one of my favorite films, 1985’s Back to the Future:
It’s been several years now since I last taught the fun but short-lived Pre-AP Music Appreciation course that spawned some of these pieces highlighting classical and Romantic musical works, but I still love the musical selections dearly. Bedřich Smetana’s The Moldau still captures my imagination, and I still have not composed anything that comes remotely close to its beauty and genius.
Nevertheless, I routinely cite Smetana as an influence, especially when uploading my pieces to CD Baby for digital distribution. He almost always gets a mention in the “artists like” categories I fill out for each release. Hopefully he’s not spinning in his grave at the thought of that.
With that, here is 11 January 2024’s “TBT^2: The Joy of Romantic Music II: Bedřich Smetana’s ‘The Moldau'”:
We’re well past Christmas now—even past Epiphany!—but I realized I never finished sharing the treasures of the LEGO® Star Wars™ 2024 Advent Calendar! My paid subscribers have also been helping me identify some of the more enigmatic builds in this collection; thanks, y’all!
In case you missed it, check out “LEGO® Star Wars™ 2024 Advent Calendar – Days 1-3”; “LEGO® Star Wars™ 2024 Advent Calendar – Days 4-10”; and “LEGO® Star Wars™ 2024 Advent Calendar – Days 11-17” to catch up.
Now, on with the last of the builds!
I’m working on a new instrumental album, PRISM. It’s color-themed, very much like last year’s Four Mages. I enjoy composing with different colored pens, and Dr. Girlfriend gave me some awesome V5 Precision pens that are great for composing by hand.
This week I’m featuring the second piece I’ve written for the album, “Green Space”:
Last year I wrote about the Puppet Master series, the brainchild of indie filmmaker Charles Band. Band’s Full Moon Entertainment for years produced schlocky, low-budget, but entertaining films that heavily featured miniatures and stop-motion animation. Like many small filmmakers, Band’s company kept budgets low by reusing models and footage in different films, often creating scripts (a la Roger Corman) to fit the props and sets already on-hand.
The guys over at RedLetterMedia did two long episodes on the Puppet Master franchise, and got into some of the details of Band’s approach to filmmaking in those videos:
They did a third video that continued to look at Band’s use of stop-motion techniques and puppetry:
If you’re not enticed at the thought of watching three lengthy videos to understand Band’s films, no worries; suffice it to say that Band was never one to let good (or bad) footage go to waste.
So come—at last!—to today’s film, the first review of 2025: The Primevals (2024).
My birthday weekend rolls on, and I’m settling in nicely to being forty (I assume; I’m writing this post about two weeks out, so I could be doing terribly). As such, I thought I’d look back at some recent, reflective posts that deal with life and all that jazz:
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
The Portly Politico 