Yeah. What the title said. I wasn't expecting much from this album, despite being very impressed with the advance single "So What The Fuss" (which deserved a lot more attention than it got, damn it). After all Stevie hasn't pulled out a really good album in over a quarter of a century, so why would he start now?
For those who only know Stevie Wonder from such appalling garbage as I Just Called To Say I Love You, it's worth pointing out that for the entireity of the1970s he was one of the most interesting and talented musicians working in the mainstream. My first real musical love was Fulfillingness First Finale, and my love affair with that album & its brothers and sisters (Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Songs In The Key Of Life) has continued ever since.
But I cannot listen to any of his '80s or '90s output without cringing. I've always felt that there were two main reasons for Stevie's downfall. First, after the failure of the experimental Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants, he seemed far less inclined to take risks artistically. Second, like many popular artists in the '80s he switched from live drums to machines and he was even more heavily hit because the eccentricities of his drumming could not be replaced by a tacky metronome.
Yet the new album is good, and not just because he's playing drums on it.
I'm not going to say "Oh my god it's the new Talking Book" or anything, but it's a pretty solid album. I haven't absorbed it completely yet, but so far as I can tell nothing about it totally sucks, and prior to this every album since Hotter Than July had a strong element of the big suck. ACHIEVEMENT!
He sounds kinda old now, but that's fine too.
No album highlights yet, but I'm sure to have a list eventually.
This Saturday is my Hallowe'en Party.
It will be great. If you come, it'll be even greater.
If you're reading this & live anywhere near the city I live in, you should have got an email from me by now. Leave a comment if you haven't saying "hey you useless prick!" or something equally edifying.
So part 2 comes after part 5? What the hell.
Ichi the Killer is probably the most potent, entertaining and thought-provoking genre movie exploration of the sex & death, pleasure & pain continuum to come within spitting distance of mainstream world cinema since the original Hellraiser. If that doesn't tickle your tackle, it's also an hilarious OTT yakuza/superhero/splatter epic. I'd say that it's a must-see, except that most people wouldn't be able to handle it.
Miike made Ichi the Killer straight after Visitor Q (which represents the Part 4 I haven't written yet). Where the slightly-earlier movie is a shot-on-video catalogue of depravity with no graphic violence, Ichi is a stylish shot-on-film depraved gorefest. The movies are connected by twisted philosophy and sheer hilarity.
The plot, faithfully adapted from a manga by Hideo Yamamoto, centres around several different factions of yakuza living in a huge apartment building under truce, and a renegade outsider called Jiji who decides to set everyone else against each other to further his own ends. To this end he employs a mysterious figure known as Ichi (Japanese for "1" - the movie's title is basically "Killer Number One") with a spectacular capacity for extreme violence. On the other side is Kakihara, an extreme sadomasochist whose main motivation is to find someone who can inflict the ultimate pain on him - Ichi has killed Kakihara's employer, who previously filled that role, and Kakihara wants Ichi to take over from him.
The first thing you'll notice about Ichi the Killer is that it's relentless. It opens brutally and continues through a series of brutal scenes until it reaches a brutal (though typically ambiguous and fascinating) ending. Most people would probably not keep watching past the opening scene. If you can take it, it's thought-provoking, full of excellent performences, and often extremely funny.
The obvious stand-out is Tadanobu Asano as Kakihara. He's the poster boy, and no wonder: he's a striking-looking man to begin with, but once his hair is dyed bright yellow, his face is scarred up, and his mouth is widened to halfway along his cheeks (with his lips held together by piercings on the corners) he's unforgettable. He is truly remarkable, portraying a man who lives to inflict and receive the most extreme pain imaginable yet remaining utterly believable, charismatic, and yes even sympathetic. His performance has a subtlety and grace that's unexpected.
Shinya Tsukamoto (probably best known for directing the Tetsuo movies) is almost as good as Jiji. This is a finely-shaded performance, which never quite allows you inside to see where he's coming from. Alien Sun (better known as Paulyn Sun, co-star of Stephen Chow's The Sixty Million Dollar Man) is pretty amazing and gonzo as Karen, and delivers her lines in a weird melange of Japanese, Chinese and English. Nao Omori as Ichi kind of gets the short end of the stick with his character, but comes off well regardless. Sabu is great as Kaneko, the most conflicted and seemingly-normal of the yakuza.
Miike pulls out all the stops, going even further into graphic gore than the already-extreme source material. The violence is highly sexualized in a number of ways, which is a big part of the point. It's not surprising that this movie is heavily cut or banned outright in most countries, but I'd argue that cutting anything out comprimises the movie.
Simply put, this is an amazing movie. If you can take extreme sexual violence, and can also see past such transgressive material to the subtext beneath, you must see it. Most people should avoid it though.
Next up: The Happiness of the Katakuris.
Love to all my beautiful friends.
Love to all my wonderful work-mates - never had real love for my work-mates before.
Love for Labour Weekend. *yay!*
Love for those I have lost.
Love for those I still have.
Love for those who I have temporarily misplaced.
It is sunny outside.
Change is hard, but good. Yay for change.
I got something on my mind that I don't want to think about, so I'm gonna talk about movies! Hopefully that will at least change my point of distraction.
Dead Or Alive 2 is not a normal sequel. It doesn't continue the plot, the characters, or even especially the themes of the first Dead Or Alive. In fact it's a very different sort of movie, much gentler and more character-oriented. Both movies are about yakuza and are basically action/thrillers, but DOA2 adds strong elements of nostalgia, male bonding, and magic realism to the mix.
And yet in a weird sort of way, it is very much a follow-up to DOA. Stars Riki Takeuchi and Sho Aikawa both return, though they are playing very different roles. Aikawa, who played the melancholy cop in DOA, this time stars as a flamboyant blonde hitman; Takeuchi, who was previously staunch beyond belief, this time plays the more sensitive and introspective of the two. The pair of them meet when they are both sent to hit the same target, and realise that they were childhood friends.
There are oblique references to the first movie, and I got the feeling that this is kind of the first movie turned upside down and inside out: the two deadly rivals are now best friends since childhood; instead of individuals playing gangs against one another, there are gangs hunting down the individuals; the roles of the two stars are very consciously flipped; the constant death and corruption of the first is replaced throughout by symbols of new life and childhood innocence.
The movie deftly combines surrealism, humour, emotion, outbreaks of brutal violence, and the odd glimpse of Miike's trademark perversity. It is a true virtuoso performance from the director, who is able to flip between moods and styles without breaking his stride. One scene (contrasting an hilariously stupid and inappropriately sexual play for children with brutal gangland hits) stands out in particular, and the typically ambiguous ending is a beauty.
Shinya Tsukamoto (probably best known as the director of the Tetsuo movies) has an hilarious role as a magician who hires Aikawa at the start, and there is a good role for Miike regular Kenichi Endo as the third member of the group of childhood friends.
Some will probably be infuriated by the slow pace, the lack of a traditional three-act structure, and the refusal of the movie to make coherent sense. Others will love it dearly as yet another example of Miike's unique take on cinema.
Next up: Full Metal Yakuza
I've been feeling unhappy all morning, and I couldn't figure out why.
I just worked it out: I watched the original, unedited, unmodified, Raymond Burr-less Japanese-language version of Godzilla early this morning before getting out of bed.
I had heard that it was a very different and much better version than the American version, which cut out 30 minutes and added 20 minutes of new footage featuring Raymond Burr (Perry Mason himself) as an American reporter. I wasn't quite prepared for how much better, or the ways in which it is different.
This original version of Godzilla is a very good movie indeed, with well-developed characters, a good storyline, and (these are the biggest differences from the American version) a very downbeat tone and a strong anti-nuclear message. Yes it still has a huge monster rampaging around destroying shit, but the monster is now a metaphor, the destruction of Tokyo stands in for the destruction of Hiroshima less than a decade earlier, and the movie is extremely heart-felt.
Basically it's a total downer, and a terrible way to start the day. Oops. But now I've worked out why I feel so crap, I can fix it. yay for lunch-time being right fucking now bitches!
Yes, we are having a Hallowe'en party on Saturday October 29th.
There will be proper invites closer to the time, this is just advance warning that you'll need to get your costumes organized.
In the words of Billy T. James - "There'll be a prize for the biggest hat." And if you get that references, you're well on your way to winning the prize.
The theme is post-apocalypse, or just Hallowe'en.
If you've been one of my Hallowe'en parties before, you know what to expect. Although this time I probably won't be painted a different colour.
Yes, Part Three arrives before Part Two. That's because Part Two is Ichi The Killer, but I'm still gonna write about this one first.
The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) is one of the most bugfuck-brilliant movies I have ever seen. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is the story of a family of screw-ups who move to the middle of nowhere to open a guest-house. They immediately run into trouble when their first guest turns up dead and, to avoid bad publicity, they bury him in the woods instead of reporting it. Unfortunately their next guest also similarly inconveniences them, and a pattern starts to emerge.
Story-wise it is a remake of the deadpan Korean black comedy The Quiet Family. However there are several big differences in the plot, and a couple of characters are added. The Korean version was also not a musical, and did not feature claymation sequences, and did not have sumo wrestlers or winged demons, and I don't think it was set on a volcano either...
The cast of the movie cannot sing or dance particularly well. This is fitting, as some of the musical numbers resemble karaoke.
All in all it is an odd wee movie, and often very funny. It isn't anywhere near as extreme in terms of sex and violence as Miike's most famous works, but he's hardly restraining himself here as the movie is strange from beginning to end.
Next will be Visitor Q. Holy shit!
What the hell is with the self-importance of media in this country, pretending that they are important and making themselves news? This whole issue with One News anchor Judy Bailey not getting her contract renewed is a prime example.
The newspapers are referring to Bailey as "the mother of the nation." I guess journos' mothers must do nothing more in the way of parenting than read the newspaper aloud to their kids at the dinner table - that's all Bailey does for New Zealand. If she's really our mother, it's long past time for CYF to remove us from her care.
Bailey's $800,000 salary was minor news because it was a frivilous waste of public money. Her departure from her job is not news at all. People in the media have an over-inflated opinion of their own worth. The truth is that they do very little positive for us. Their agenda is simple: get as many people looking at them as possible, by any means necessary. That's entirely what this bullshit is all about.
To fuckery with Judy Bailey. It doesn't matter in the slightest which hand-puppet is mouthing the lines designed to keep us watching through the next commercial break.
I have decided to explore the films of Takashi Miike. This is a daunting process for two big reasons. First, he is the current alt.cinema favourite, and is being analysed to death; second, I am a neophyte to his films (he's made almost sixty in fifteen years, and I've seen three) and to Japanese cinema in general.
Dead Or Alive (1999) was one of Miike's breakthrough movies, along with the same year's Audition. It is a cop vs. gangster action melodrama, focusing mostly on world-weary Japanese cop Jojima (Sho Aikawa) and tough Chinese gangster Ryuuichi (Riki Takeuchi). Most critics describe it as a conventional yakuza movie with a bravura beginning and ending, but to me the middle section is only conventional when contrasted with these totally bug-fuck bookends.
The bulk of the movie may lack much of the savage violence people tend to associate with Miike's work, but it is consistently inventive and surprising and there is no shortage of taboo-busting. The supposedly conventional middle section has no shortage of twists and turns, and to be honest I found the plot quite difficult to follow. It's also exciting and often very funny.
The basic story (as far as I could make out) sets up the two main characters in opposition. Jojima is cynical and distracted by his home life, where daughter is suffering from some kind of life-threatening illness for which they cannot afford the treatment - he takes this so stiocally that his wife feels that he doesn't care. Ryuuichi is an immigrant from mainland China and leads a band of thugs who want to take over from the Japanese yakuza, upsetting the balance of law & order that Jojima is trying to maintain.
There is some interesting subtext about minorities attempting to find a place for themselves into a society that is largely hostile towards them - this should resonate with some of the problems in New Zealand at the moment. As far as I can tell from my limited experience Miike's movies, for all their flash, have plenty of philosophical and social content along these lines - another reason I'm interested in delving further into his filmography.
I can't really describe any more without giving away some of the cool parts. I'd recommend giving it a view. I'd also recommend NOT reading the back of the video cover, unless you're one of these sick perverts who likes knowing all the surprises a movie has to offer before you watch it.
Next will be Ichi the Killer. Oh my.
Orson Scott Card liked Serenity even move than me.
"I'm not going to say it's the best science fiction movie, ever.
"Oh, wait. Yes I am."
He compares Joss Whedon to Shakespeare. I think he's going way over the top, but hey.
"You don't bring peace by killing people. You bring enemies by killing people."
- David Lynch
So I wrote to TVNZ asking if they could release these shows on DVD.
I got a very nice reply saying that they can't, but who I could contact. I don't think they'd object to me publishing it here so you can join me in a letter-writing campaign to see Jeremy Wells shit on DVD:
Hi Pearce
Interestingly enough, both of these programmes are produced by the same company. Unfortunately it is this company, not TVNZ, that currently holds the copyright to the productions. You could try contacting them to get copies (they will probably also be able to tell you if there are plans to release the series commercially on DVD/VHS). Their contact details are:
Great Southern Televisin
Po Box 91428
Auckland
Tel: 64 9 374 2900
Fax: 64 9 374 4517
I hope they can help you out further!
Best wishes
Saffron
"I do not feel that it is the specific responsibility of a director to always tackle social issues... I feel that it is almost impossible for cinema to do little other than recognise the existence of such attitudes, as opposed to actively changing them."
- Takashi Miike