A Demon's Voice: Japan

Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts

24 September 2018

A Dog Eat Dog World

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The day that I got my dog she ran around the house as though her tail was on fire before finally jumping up onto my Dad's lap to say 'hello'. He'd been reluctant to get her in the first place and so I feel that this was her way of setting things straight and assuring him that everything would be alright. She sat upright, made eye contact, they had their moment, and then she bit him right on the tit. What a good dog. I couldn't love her more! In fact, doesn't everybody love dogs? Even Hitler loved his dog and by all accounts he's gone down in history as quite the rotter. Director Wes Anderson's latest is the stop-motion movie Isle Of Dogs which some astute film-goers have cleverly noted sounds a little like 'I love dogs'. Kind of like nosh it sounds a bit like no shit I guess. Set in Japan in the not too distant future, the film tells of a prejudiced leader that banishes all dogs to a nearby island after they all catch a canine flue. Sadly this island is also where they dump all their rubbish because otherwise I'm pretty sure that they could have made a fucking fortune with the tourist industry. People pay to eat their lunches in cat cafes already and so who wouldn't pay to holiday on an island of dogs? I'd much rather go for a nature walk whilst surrounded by man's best friend than try to enjoy the soup of the day as one cat wretches up a fur ball and another proudly licks its fucking arse.

Something Blindingly Good

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Kubo And The Two Strings begins with a mother and her young son in hiding from their family, which is something I can relate to. In this case it's because Kubo's grandfather has already plucked out one of his eyes and intends to pluck out the other. Me and my Mum genuinely once hid behind the front-room sofa because a relative we simply thought to be particularly boring was knocking on our door. Had they wanted to blind me too? Fuck that shit! Kubo is also told by his mother that he's not to go out at night because he'll be spotted and hunted down by the Moon King. My Mum also told me that when I was a child, although even then I knew that the Moon King was her euphemism for the pedophile that lived three doors down. The stuff I couldn't relate to however were the scenes in which the young boy went on a mythical adventure in which he fought giant skeletons and witches alongside his friends, the samurai beetle man, and a talking monkey. Me and my mate once found a load of beer in the woods alongside some porno mags but that's about as exciting as our adventures would get.

Clawing A Way Back

Despite being in my mid twenties I'm depressingly still not able to grow facial hair. A full beard is completely out of the question and what I can get of a moustache is just embarrassing. Imagine the upper lip of a pretentious French child and that's kind of where I'm up to. Thankfully though, the one thing I can grow is a pair of meaty sideburns which I've insisted on sporting since first being raped by puberty. As a young teen I probably looked fucking ridiculous with my youthful complexion overshadowed by a hedge of spidery pubes that were sprouting out of the side of my face but I didn't care. I still have them now although I think that after about ten years of hatred my ageing face will have weathered enough to, hopefully, suit them. The problem was that when I was young my Mum hated them and I'm stubborn enough that that would be reason enough to keep anything. Nor did it help that to try and deter and insult me she once said, “You look ridiculous, you look like that bloody Wolverine”. Now, I know that I didn't look anything like him at all but as insults go my Mum couldn't have said anything that would make me want to keep my sideburns more that that.

I've been a huge fan of The X-Men since I saw the animated series in the early 90's and Wolverine has always been my favourite character. I guess when I was about three or four years old, I was the kind of cute little boy who loved nothing more than seeing a man stab people in the face with knives protracting from his knuckles. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was released a few years ago and was so bad that its was statistically more shit than an actual shit. Considering that X-Men: The Last Stand was also about as enjoyable as pouring vinegar into an open bollock wound, my enthusiasm for the franchise was sadly being replaced by apathy. With The Wolverine now on release I went to see it, although this time more for the sake of curiosity and hope than anything else. It might be receiving average reviews but I guess no matter how much disappointment a franchise might inflict, there's always going to be a toddler in me that's desperate to see a character that glorifies knife crime.

X-Men 3 was shit...

Like the rest of us, Wolverine is now suffering from the aftermath of X-Men: The Last Stand and is rightly living a life of shame. Haunted by memories of a woman that he loved and murdered, he's wandering the Earth like a wounded bear which might explain an early scene in which he meets an actual wounded bear. If you like your metaphors to be obvious and very annoying then this is the film for you. To cut a long story short, some old dying Japanese man tracks Wolverine down and drags him to Tokyo for a pre-death chinwag. Things don't go too well though and suddenly our snazzy haired anti-hero is wrapped up in somebody else’s shit which, despite being nothing to do with him, still results in several attempts on his life. As the film progresses it becomes very apparent that the message it's trying to convey is that 'helping people isn't worth the fucking bother'.

Okay, so on the bright side I didn't hate The Wolverine but nor did I particularly love it. It is a text-book definition of an average film which to be fair is such an improvement over its predecessor that I think it actually deserves some praise for that. It's like when the thick kid spells his name right and you feel you should pat him on the back for managing not to dribble at the same time. Also, it's good to see that Wolverine is still so enjoyably cool that Hugh Jackman must get into character by smoking cigars rolled with John Waynes dead scalp. Not only that but since his sweary cameo in First Class, he hasn't half developed a fucking potty mouth on him. However sadly I would say that one of my biggest gripes with this film was in how for the majority of its running time he'd had his powers taken away from him. One of the main selling points of the character is surely his mutant healing abilities and so to remove them is slightly defeating the point. When someone punches Wolverine, I don't want him to wince, I want him to get angry and start smashing shit up like a drunk Mel Gibson during the Sabbath. I understand the logic behind him suddenly being vulnerable as supposedly it provides the film with a sense of threat. However does anyone really think that Wolverine is going to die? With the exception of Brandon Lee, there isn't a bullet out there that a studio would allow kill a main character in a valuable franchise.

"My garden needs tending!"

Many people have criticised the third act action sequence as being a bit out of place and although I kind of agree, I still loved every single fight in this film. The movie is composed of two elements - one part mystery and the other part action, but in honesty I think that it's the latter that's done much more competently. The drama kind of feels like a Chinatown for idiots whereas the fight scenes are actually pretty imaginative. For example there's an enjoyable scene near the end in which Wolverine is shot with so many arrows that despite dying and gushing blood from his back he ends up looking like Toy Story 3's loveable Mr Pricklepants. The films problem is therefore actually in its inability to blend its tone in a particularly un-obvious way. It doesn't help either that the end is completely obvious and the villains are a little on the shit side. I won't give away who the mysterious big bad is although anybody who doesn't work out their identity should probably think about waking up their brain from its forever-sleep. Plus there's another baddie here called Viper who spits poison, seduces strangers with a kiss and dresses in green. Short of having flowers sprouting out of her vagina, she's basically just Uma Thurman's desperately slutty Poison Ivy. I guess I'm not an expert but perhaps if comic book movies are going to start ripping each other off then maybe Batman and Robin is the one to avoid.

Still, like I said though, The Wolverine is an enjoyable but average film. It doesn't do anything spectacularly wrong and there's enough in it to make it worth at least two hours of your life. Unless of course you're dying and two hours is all you've got left, in which case I'd just crack on with the consequence-free rape and murder. The film has a strong main character, two well rounded female leads plus it makes good use of Japan as a location and culture. Oh but when I say, “well rounded female leads”, I should clarify that I do obviously mean it in terms of their depth and not as a smutty Roger Moore-esque one liner that refers to their tits. Film is a male dominated medium and so it's always nice to see some non-men get a look in too. Although having brought attention to it I'm sure that they do have nice tits as well. Personally I'd recommend The Wolverine to anyone who hasn't already seen it and I'm sure I'll end up buying the DVD. In fact, now I know it's just a guilty pleasure I'm kind of looking forward to seeing it again.

Although whilst I've still got you here, I do have a slight theory. A while ago Nick Cave wrote a script that was meant to be a sequel to the film Gladiator in which Maximus was brought back from the dead and became a warrior through time. Is it just me or would this not have been a fucking amazing idea for a Wolverine movie? Just a thought, I guess. I suppose you could argue that, that idea was done in the opening credits of X-men Origins: Wolverine but that was a shit film that we've all forgotten and so should consider my suggestion an original idea. People think that the key tragedy of Wolverine is his extraordinarily long life which inevitably means that he's going to be suffering the loss of a lot of loved ones. But on the flip side to that it also mean he'll outlive a lot of people that he considers cunts. Finding out that someone you hate has died is always a good day if you ask me and I'm already well into preparing my, “Fuck You Piers Morgan Party”. However, for me the real tragedy of the character is that more or less nothing can kill him and yet he still mopes about looking like a fucking tramp. He could make a hell of a lot of money with some sort of Jackass style television show and from that point on live quite happily for the remaining centuries. I know money can't buy happiness but it can buy things that will make you happy, like medicine for sick children, computer games and a lot of cheap prostitutes. Anyway, as you can probably tell I'm never sure how to end these blogs so lets just save me three hours of struggling and say it's ended now. Blog has ended, see you next week and good bye!

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12 November 2012

A Dog's Death

Last night I watched 13 Assassins which is a 2010 Samurai movie directed by the controversial Japanese film-maker Takashi Miike. On average, it seems that Miike releases about two or three films a year which is, to put it bluntly, completely fucking mental. There was this one time that I was climbing around the bathroom, pretending to be Tarzan when I slipped and actually cracked my cock on the sink. Because of this, I then had to go and spend a few hours in hospital whilst doctors made sure that I didn't die of a bruised knob-shaft. In the time it took me to tit about and waste valuable NHS time and money, Miike would probably have completed about nine new movies. If I have any national pride, it's in our ability to dismiss a huge achievement because it dared to impress us. I don't know about Japan, but over here in Britain we have a saying that says 'nobody likes a show off'.

Despite his immense back catalogue however, and up until last night, I'd actually only seen a couple of his films. Audition was one of them and is probably my favourite Japanese horror-rom-com to feature someone desperately drinking from a bowl of genuine puke. The other was Ichi the Killer which has got to be one of the most mental films of all time. It starts with its title being spelt out in real jizz and then degrades down hill from there. From those two films alone I was kind of under the impression that Takashi Miike is a man of extremes. Apparently he's also made a few kids films too which suggests that he's either a lot more diverse than I'd released or that there's a lot of fucked up children now out there.

Set in the 1840's, 13 Assassins starts with a scene in which a lone Japanese chap commits the act of Hara-kiri. This is basically when somebody uses a dagger to tear themselves open and rip their own guts out. Apparently it's got something to do with the Samurai honour code but in reality it just looks like suicide for the hardcore. According to wikipedia, “it is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators”. With that in mind I think I know exactly what I'd like to see Piers Morgan do to improve his ratings on his next show. Despite its graphic nature, Miike shows distinctive restraint here by keeping the majority of violence off screen. I guess this instead has the effect of showing us the emotional pain of the scene rather than simply shocking us with a gratuitous shot of Shogun offal. In this case Hara-Kiri was committed as a way for the character to express his disdain towards the films main villain. Thank God then that Facebook was invented so that now all we'd have to do is de-friend the cunt and tag him as a picture of a shit.

The villainous Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira looks a bit like a cheap Chow Yun-Fat action figure and really is a massive wanker. I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but when someone practices archery by committing infanticide, I think it's safe to assume they're probably a wrong'un. In another horrendous scene we're introduced to a woman who has had her family killed, her tongue removed and all of her limbs chopped off by him. Simply because of his twatish whims, he's turned her into an orphaned, meaty, draft-excluder. On top of all that, he also likes to shag the occasional woman using the same favoured position as British personality Jimmy Saville. The immoral position of course being that there's nothing ever wrong with a good hard rape. So yeah overall, Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira is really kind of a rotten Japan-apple. Thankfully though, the noble Samurai are on hand to dole out their honourable justice which apparently doesn't require a trial or evidence but will result in an on-the-spot execution. So I guess they basically have a similar legal system to that of Texas.

The story from here on in is hardly complicated, which isn't particularly a bad thing. You don't exactly need a brain to be able to follow the plot of porn and I've got no qualms with that... Here, the first half is spent recruiting assassins and the second half is the inevitable showdown. This is all fair enough although I do question some of the manipulation used to convince people to join their dangerous mission. At one point a group of Samurai are told to fight on the grounds that, “he who values his life dies a dogs death.” Most dogs are peacefully put to sleep to avoid any more suffering when they've reached a fine old age. Kurt Cobain on the other hand had a shotgun in his mouth and then blew his fucking brains out. Unless the dog was Korean and given a choice I'd definitely go for the one that doesn’t involve Courtney Love faking my suicide.

Not that killing themselves would be a problem for any of these characters by the way. They all seem so eager to die that you could be forgiven into thinking that this film was the lucid hallucinations of fame obsessed teen girl. I'd hate to disrespect the Samurai traditions but the only time that I'm that desperate for death is when I accidentally catch a glimpse of Psychic Sally Morgans shrivelled face of bullshit. I'm usually not a fan of censorship but with its constant themes of suicide and honour, my suggestion would be that maybe we shouldn't show 13 Assassins in Bridgend. That's presuming of course that there's anyone there left to watch it anyway.

I've read several reviews of this film and the majority seem to be under the impression that the first half is a little dull. I think I'm going to have a disagree slightly but that might be a fault of my own more than anything. Admittedly it's a little slow and talky but I've not seen that many Samurai movies and so this was all quite new to me. I therefore found it all quite interesting, just as a glimpse into how that culture worked. I guess being able to see how somebody else lives is one of the great things about cinema. Another example like that could be something like City of God which brilliantly depicted life in the Brazilian slums. Oh, and there's also Lord of the Rings which taught me that all New Zealanders are hairy little midgets and also a tiny bit gay.

In regards to the second half of the film, there's no doubt that the action is both exciting and well handled. For a director more renowned for flicking body juice at the screen, the gore here is also admirably held back. In fact, there's more emphasis on kineticism and choreography than splatter and spaff. Personally, I would say that there's no doubt that here, Miike has drawn significant inspiration from legendary director Akira Kurosawa. 13 Assassins has an old school and classic feel to it that's more in line with Seven Samurai than whatever sex fuelled snuff films Miike usually seems influenced by. The final showdown involves the Assassins rigging up a town with so many traps that in the end it plays out like an ancient and lethal re-enactment of the tacky 90's game-show Fun House. If there's any mistake then it would probably be the inclusion of a herd of obviously CG'd cows that charge through the town. Having said that, it's nice to see that the herd have found work since appearing in the opening scene of Mars Attacks.

Another criticism could be that overall, the characterisation does at times seem a little bland. On Team Honour, there's thirteen individuals but only a couple of them have any memorable personality. The leader is your usual angry Obi-Wan and there's also some Japanese Brundlefly that falls out of a tree and refuses to fuck off. With long hair on top of a bald head, the rest really just come across as a gang of miscellaneous Easterners attempting mimic the look of musical comedian Bill Bailey. I realise that we don't have time to delve too deeply into every-body's back story, but as things stand they're all just a little too disposable. When people die I should feel emotion but here I just found myself ticking each new death off like a nonchalant Nazi reluctantly working the late shift in Auschwitz.

In the end, 13 Assassins is a perfectly decent action flick set up by an interesting first half of exposition and off screen mutilation. Compared to learning what's in Auditions' sack, this might not be the most memorable of Miike's films but it's still worth the ride. Also, considering how many movies the show-off makes per year, it's a shame that only a handful leak out into the rest of the world. Beyond the fun of just watching the movie, this taught me so much about Japan that I didn't previously know. I've been doing a Newspaper round for about ten years and these days I'm a little lazy with it. I'm meant to deliver about three-hundred papers but in reality I think I post about two and then throw the rest in the canal. In comparison to my act of complacent efficiency, the Samurai take their job way too fucking seriously.