Sunday, May 22, 2011

Takashi Miike's new film "13 Assassins" at Landmark Theatres: Apr 17 - Jun 30


Rather than just my usual 'informing' style post, this one's going to be in the form of a review, as not having written anything in advance of having seen the film, now that I've seen it, I feel it's noteworthy to the extent that it deserves a deeper investigation/presentation. Rare thing to want to call a film a 'masterpiece'. I almost never engage in that kind of nonsense, especially within genre-film. Well, we've got just about exactly that here. Takashi Miike reigns in most-all of his indulgent sensibilities and delivers a (largely) straight-up, stoic, refined period-drama set in the last couple decades before the beginning of the Meiji era, the twilight of the Shogunate and the end of feudal Japan. A tale of a widower in his later years, who after decades of peace has begun to yearn for death. Suddenly he is approached with the most audacious of missions; bring down a corrupt lord, half-brother to the Shogun, who has, in his sadistic misuse of power and stature, starved, tortured, enslaved and reduces hundreds to misery, loss of property, their families, their homes. This mission from within the Shogunate itself. Bushido preventing them form outwardly acting against the half-brother of the Shogun, yet knowing his power-mad sadism with reduce whole prefectures to desolation, those within the parliament of the Shogun know they need to prevent this corrupt Lord from joining their circle of policy-making influence.

This mission falls on ex-Vassal to the Shogun, now turned contemplatively domestic, the definition of 'Twilight Samurai' living on his stipend of Koku; Shimada Shinzaemon, in what he perceives as his own 'waning years', idling them away with reading and fishing, his own Dojo, now only attended by one pupil. Shinzaemon immediately knows this opportunity for what it is; to end his own life definitively, with with honor in the most righteous, justice-driven series of events he has ever known... as a 'walking through the eye of a needle' where the odds are against him and any that he may recruit to his cause. The corrupt Lord in question; Naritsugu is known and reviled by many for his deeds, so it's of little difficulty for Shimada to find those sympathetic within his kin for the mission, especially with a secret order issued from Lord Doi among the Shogunate, and the startling 'evidence' of Naritsugu's crimes that Doi presents to Shimada.



What ensues is both a prototypical Samurai revenge tale, (not unlike classics such as "47 Ronin"), wherein the cast of 'assassins' is hurriedly assembled for their suicide mission to oppose the bureaucratic disaster of a corrupt Lord's coming to power, while also being a film that only Miike himself could have made. A tour de force of the power of justice, the insanity of violence, the righteousness of retribution and the need to decisively act against those who themselves exploit the infrastructures of bureaucracy and power to mask their own personal desires to inflict suffering and war in a play of ego and arrogance. And then there's the closing confrontation between these forces. I've been told that the swordplay that closes the film is 40+ minutes long, yet the choreography, the pacing, the cinematography and the dramatic flow of events is so well assembled, that even after having seen the film, I'm skeptical. Which lends much credibility to what is one of the most powerful sword-on-sword action sequences dedicated to film. This is followed by a in-the-throes-of-death dialog and series of events that could only have been made effective by what proceeded it, all 40+ minutes. Beautifully shot (even some of just the damn light quality in this film is startling for it's precision), immaculately well acted (in-particular by Kôji Yakusho, who has had many great roles, but this may be his finest) and mostly evenly-handled in it's adherence to the traditions of the Jidaigeki Chambara (period drama swashbuckler) genre, this is Miike's first real grab at a larger cinema legitimacy since 1999's "Audition". And hopefully the beginning new more 'formal' period of stylistic/cinematic exploration by him.

Link to Landmark Theatres "13 Assassins" site

Link to Official "13 Assassins" Japanese site

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Boris' new albums "Attention Please",『New Album』& "Heavy Rocks" released May 24


Yeah! Some Summer tunes! Do I dare announce such a thing? Are we actually gonna see more than one week of Sun now that it's the end of May?? ...So who else is rocking this hard? Nobody? Ha. By rocking, I mean just that, there's all kinds of bros and chicks doing the Metal that are bringing the heavy these days, just about nobody thinks to make the rock as blastingly 'from the sun' as Boris. Not only that, but three albums of such rock blasting released simultaneously. "Attention Please" being their full-on exploration of all things Shoegaze and fuzzed-out heavy pop, yeah, pop. It's light and airy and fluorescent in exactly the way many of the "Japanese Heavy Rock Hits" 7"series was, but more substantial in the variables played with and a good bit more rich in it's construction... and then of course there's the ladies. Wata in all her subtle, breathy Japanese is the vocal focus of this one. Curious tale in the construction of this album, as the recording sessions it was drawn from produced the Japanese-only raved-up J-pop of "New Album" and then as a bi-product, the seriously Metal/Bro Rock stylings of "Heav(ier) Rocks" which acts as a brilliant companion piece of sorts, as 'Heavy' is exactly that. A counterpoint of sorts to the fuzzed-out high altitude glide of 'Attention' where the dynamics have been turned Waaaaaaay up and the drumming, juxtaposition of the rhythm section, the Otoko on vocals and just pure riffage take front stage. Check that: "Attention Please came to be following Boris touring the world in 2008 in support of their last album, Smile. The trio set about recording new material and a new album was completed, then abandoned. The band sought to challenge themselves further, and the end results are two new albums of dramatic growth and the most powerful extension to Boris' unparalleled creativity, Attention Please and the all new Heavy Rocks (not to be mistaken for their earlier 2002 release, Heavy Rocks)." - Taken together, these albums are damn near perfection. Can't think of a better release to hit first thing as the season changes.
All three of them.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Seattle International Film Festival : May 19 - June 12


First off to address grievance/concern with the curatorial direction SIFF seems to be taking as a trend since 2009; AGAIN this year, rather than the usual post expressing my ebullient enthusiasm in an exclamatory tone, this post is to begin with criticism. As a paragon of International World Cinema in the United States, even on occasion eclipsing San Francisco, Chicago and New York in scale, depth and dictionary-definition diversity, the Seattle International Film Festival has established itself over the course of the past decade+ (I can really speak for previous decades, having only seen them in print and not attended in-person) as a focal-point of visionary cinema curatorialship. Admittedly, years like 2009 were even then, a bit thin, but even then I found some 22 films of gravitas or curiosity worthy of attending, by both directors of note and new developing artists. Overall not a bad year, but not on par with the stellar run we'd seen spanning 2001-2008. Figuring it was a one-off lapse and the recession and funding issues with SIFF having opened their new theatre and home to their film archive and offices, I assumed it was a product of the times and singular qualitative dip on their part. Even then, not a significant one, as I saw much, much great cinema that year in the festival (also see the posts here from SIFF '07 or '08 for reference).

This year, immediately when the schedule was posted on Thursday May 5, there was a visible void of progressive, inventive, notable, names, titles and works in the New Global Cinema category (customarily SIFF's largest and richest) that one would expect (and have become accustomed to) in seeing self-evidently there when doing that quickly browsed shortlist. Off the top of my head, doing a run-down of the films I've known have been out there in international fests awaiting arrival in the states and looking to SIFF to hopefully bring them to our city; New Cristi Puiu? No. New Andrei Ujica? No. New Hong Sang-Soo? No. New Zhao Dayong? No. Masahiro Kobayashi? No. New Kazuyoshi Kumakiri? No. New Takashi Ishii? No. New Catherine Breillat? No. New Jia Zhang-Ke? No. New Sergei Loznitsa? New Li Hongqi? No. New Takashi Miike? No. New Kaneto Shindo? No. New Michelangelo Frammartino? No. Things like the new James Benning docu or the new Huang Weikai docu? No and No. Or for instance, one of the most lauded Japanese films in a decade, that has yet to play anywhere near our city; Kôji Wakamatsu's "Caterpillar"? Definitely a No. And I'm not even going to inquire about the film that won the world's most prestigious cinema award of 2010, that we've still not seen play here; Apichatpong Weerasethakul anyone? So, yeah. You get the idea. My usual 20-30 films annually in SIFF reduced to this in 2011. Grateful as I am to have an ongoing annual International Film Festival in my town, as far as the sum totality of everything I'm going to/am curious to see, this is a pretty sorry sight:

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Friday, May 20
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11:59 PM - André Øvredal "Troll Hunter"
Egyptian Theatre
TROL2011A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44304&FID=206

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Saturday, May 21
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6:30 PM - Mike Cahill "Another Earth"
Egyptian Theatre
ANOT2111A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44460&FID=206

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Saturday, May 21
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10:00 PM - Paddy Considine "Tyrannosaur"
SIFF Cinema
TYRA2111A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44454&FID=206

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Sunday, May 22
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9:00 PM - Takeshi Kitano "Outrage"
Neptune Theatre
OUTR2211A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44233&FID=206

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Tuesday, May 24
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7:00 PM - Sophie Fiennes "Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow"
SIFF Cinema
OVER2411A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44265&FID=206


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Wednesday, May 25
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7:00 PM - Aleksei Fedorchenko "Silent Souls"
AMC Pacific Place 11
SOUL2511A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44306&FID=206

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Saturday, May 28
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1:00 PM - Raul Ruiz "Mysteries of Lisbon"
Egyptian Theatre
MYST2811E

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44273&FID=206

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Saturday, May 28
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9:30 PM - Various "Animation United" / Damian Nenow "Paths of Hate"
SIFF Cinema
ANIM2811A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44516&FID=206
http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44619&FID=206

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Sunday, May 29
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10:00 AM - Mahamat-Saleh Haroun "A Screaming Man"
AMC Pacific Place 11
SCRE2911M

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44263&FID=206

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Wednesday, June 01
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6:30 PM - Rafi Pitts "The Hunter"
Admiral Theatre
HUNT0111A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44238&FID=206


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Thursday, June 02
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7:00 PM - Mohammad Rasoulof "The White Meadows"
Egyptian Theatre
MEAD0211A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44226&FID=206

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Sunday, June 05
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9:00 PM - Sergio Caballero "Finisterrae"
Harvard Exit
FINI0511A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44372&fid=206


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Monday, June 06
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9:30 PM - Tsui Hark "Detective Dee & the Mystery of The Phantom Flame"
Egyptian Theatre
PHAN0611A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44307&FID=206

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Wednesday, June 08
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4:30 PM - Sivaroj Kongsakul "Eternity"
AMC Pacific Place 11
ETER0811M

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44364&FID=206

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Saturday, June 11
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6:00 PM - Anh Hung Tran "Norwegian Wood"
Egyptian Theatre
NORW1111A

http://www.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=44268&FID=206

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Eccentricities Flourishing in Bureaucratic Immensity: How Transcendental Boredom & Immersion Will Save Us All in David Foster Wallace's The Pale King


Finished the new David Foster Wallace today at the park! Obviously, this post differing the one of last month when the book was solicited, as this is impressions after the read itself. No doubt I'll be reading it a second time, almost immediately when the Pale King Book Club is ready to go. For now, what I have to say is damn, it was nice out there with all the solar-inductive vitamin D, to be immersed, yes immersed in this kind of depth of intellectual/existential life-affirmation through the tedious lives of the ultimate bored; employees of the IRS. But really, let's begin with a quote; "Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”

This in a sense, not only being the theme, but also, almost in a meta-literary sense, Wallace's objective with the (unfinished) novel. From The New Yorker "The Pale King" expands on the virtues of mindfulness and sustained concentration. Properly handled, boredom can be an antidote to our national dependence on entertainment, the book suggests. As Wallace noted at a 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, true freedom “means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.” In the new novel, a character comments, “Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain, because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from.” - This is the concept explored here, to the extent and genius that Wallace explored entertainment, habit and addiction in "Infinite Jest". As David's notes, shared in the editorial at the end of the book state; “They’re rare, but they’re among us. People able to achieve and sustain a certain steady state of concentration, attention, despite what they’re doing. Midwest meditation semifinals. Contestants hooked up to EEG -- it's who can achieve and maintain Theta waves for the longest period of time. It's the ability to be IMMERSED".

That very thing, we have right here, in this book. And Wallace is suggesting, that through that kind of discipline, anti-distraction, self attention, and again; "because something that’s dull fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way" we're made to face our-selves in a way that's seemingly less and less common in daily life with all the noise, distraction, media, texting, spectating, digital documentation of ourselves having experiences, having dialogs about our spectation of experiences, banter, hyperbole, hysteria and the braindead megaphone of the media, that most-all of us seek to fill a larger, and larger part of our time on a daily basis. This novel explores the antithesis to that and is, in itself, in a way, both meta and literal, that very thing. Transcendental boredom seems a radical answer to what we're missing from our daily content of life, but hell, if that's what it takes to break us free from the cycles of near-addictive entertainment and distraction, maybe it's the unsavory antidote to what is really ailing our twitter-brains. Good luck.