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rain rain rain
Dec. 11th, 2008 12:12 pmLast night I was randomly chosen for a bag search on the T--not a search per se, but I think they were looking for isotopes or something. The policewoman ran a small paper strip over the straps and body of my backpack then ran it through a machine, which didn't find anything, and then I was on my way. I suppose we must be on some kind of heightened alert, if they've been searching bags twice in the last few weeks. I'd never seen any bag searches before now, just heard about them, despite taking the T every day of the work week since well before 9/11.
The bus I took yesterday was covered with tourism advertisements for India. Now there's some bad timing.
Earlier this week I watched the film Sukiyaki Western Django, which was interesting but not quite as interesting as it thought it was or could have been. It's Takashi Miike's Japanese take on Westerns based on Samurai films, more or less, a retelling of Django which is of course a retelling of Yojimbo, with a hefty dose of surrealist folklore/fakelore piled on top. Nearly all the actors are Japanese, but all of the dialogue is in English. I read somewhere that not all the actors actually spoke English and had to learn their lines phonetically, which sometimes meant they were unintelligible but at other times produced a fascinating delivery that affected the meaning of the words being spoken. The one non-Japanese actor is Quentin Tarentino, who tried too obviously to chew too much scenery and ended up annoying. Luckily he's not in it that much. The cinematography was beautiful and creative. The costuming was my favorite thing about the film, a crazy combination of classic Western style, samurai and other Japanese clothing and modern piercings, dyed hair, tattoos, etc. A total feast for the eyes. Where the film didn't work for me was that the gore and violence sometimes took over the story to the point of tedium, and some of the really interesting metaphysically surreal elements were not incorporated that well. I know that this film was meant as an homage to earlier films, but slavishly repeating a genre's flaws as well as its strengths is a bit pointless, at least to someone who isn't obsessed with the genre(s) at hand. I would recommend watching it, if you have high tolerance for violence and gore (and there's one or two rape scenes, which did make sense in terms of the plot/characters but were definitely more graphic than I needed to see), because the visuals are so intriguing and the costuming at least was something genuinely new.
The bus I took yesterday was covered with tourism advertisements for India. Now there's some bad timing.
Earlier this week I watched the film Sukiyaki Western Django, which was interesting but not quite as interesting as it thought it was or could have been. It's Takashi Miike's Japanese take on Westerns based on Samurai films, more or less, a retelling of Django which is of course a retelling of Yojimbo, with a hefty dose of surrealist folklore/fakelore piled on top. Nearly all the actors are Japanese, but all of the dialogue is in English. I read somewhere that not all the actors actually spoke English and had to learn their lines phonetically, which sometimes meant they were unintelligible but at other times produced a fascinating delivery that affected the meaning of the words being spoken. The one non-Japanese actor is Quentin Tarentino, who tried too obviously to chew too much scenery and ended up annoying. Luckily he's not in it that much. The cinematography was beautiful and creative. The costuming was my favorite thing about the film, a crazy combination of classic Western style, samurai and other Japanese clothing and modern piercings, dyed hair, tattoos, etc. A total feast for the eyes. Where the film didn't work for me was that the gore and violence sometimes took over the story to the point of tedium, and some of the really interesting metaphysically surreal elements were not incorporated that well. I know that this film was meant as an homage to earlier films, but slavishly repeating a genre's flaws as well as its strengths is a bit pointless, at least to someone who isn't obsessed with the genre(s) at hand. I would recommend watching it, if you have high tolerance for violence and gore (and there's one or two rape scenes, which did make sense in terms of the plot/characters but were definitely more graphic than I needed to see), because the visuals are so intriguing and the costuming at least was something genuinely new.
