WITMOT?

Brian Eno and Kevin Kelly published a list of unthinkable futures 15 years ago in the Whole Earth Catalog. Now you can read in here. [via Boing Boing]

A very cute cartoon series about pandas and the recent Sichuan earthquake.

You all will be glad to know that the 61-year old British grandmother who started running around the world in 2003 has returned back to the UK in spite of being approached by a drunken guy with a bloody ax in Siberia, encountering a polar bear, and receiving 29 marriage proposals.

Really cool animation of a John Lennon press conference.

Continuing with Hilarious McCain blow ups — a funny viral video about John McCain dropping the C bomb on his wife.

I should have been a lot nicer to Steve Guttenberg.

East-side Angeleno culture in the Far East. [via LA Curbed]

The top ten political sex scandals in US history.

A helpful guide to the shadowy groups that run the world.

Now, THIS is a resignation letter.

Geek gets a 15 inch tall robot girlfriend.

Alex Kerr argues that one of the main difference between Japanese and Chinese literature is that while Chinese literature is focused primarily on justice, Japanese lit is focused on debt. A sweeping generalization, yes, but there’s a grain of truth there. Watch any Hong Kong kung fu flick and nine times out of ten the plot will be about a pure, if physically fit, guy who runs afoul of some evil corrupt gangster/warlord/high-ranking bureaucrat. The hero loses face and frequently a trusted friend or mentor, but in the end the baddie gets his ass kicked and justice is restored. Watch any Japanese yakuza/samurai flick and nine times out ten it’s about a low level peon with integrity who has to juggle his sense of morality with his obligations to his group and superiors. The film ends with either the main character getting killed or disillusioned with the cupidity of his superiors.

Rarely have I seen the dichotomy as vividly illustrated as with Nobuo Nakagawa’s Snake Woman’s Curse. The film’s set in the waning days of the Edo period, in a backwater feudal estate. The landowners – the Onuma clan – are greedy, corrupt landlords, utterly indifferent to the suffering of the farmers tilling their field. One such farmer, Yasuke, grown too sick with TB to farm and has fallen deep into debt. At his funeral, Onuma orders that their ramshackle house be torn down and that his attractive wife, Sutematsu, and even more attractive daughter Asa work off their debt at their estate. The Onuma’s wife, fearing that her husband might seduce (i.e. rape) the beleaguered Sutematsu, she has her beaten for stealing an egg. The woman eventually dies. Asa gets raped by landlord’s thuggish son, ruining any hope of getting married. She eventually kills herself. No Jet Li-style ass-kicking here. No earthly justice.

Instead, justice is meted out in the form supernatural visitations. Onuma, his wife, and his son start having hallucinations of the dead family and, for some reason never really made clear, snakes. It really bums them out, so much so that they eventually off themselves. This has to be the most passive aggressive revenge drama I’ve ever seen. The poor family suffers all sorts of pain and indignities, but that’s OK in the long run because the landlord will feel really bad about it. It’s the sort of pathetic fatalism that bullied kid might dream of while planning a suicide.

Yes, this is a ghost movie in the spirit of Nakagawa’s Jigoku. And there’s some nicely surreal moments, like when Onuma’s son’s new bride turns slowly into a snake. Yet this strangely disempowering ending felt at odds with other elements in the movie. Nakagawa imbues the movie such a loathing for the rich upper class here that you are practically begging for a Marxist revolution. His critique of feudal economic disparity and in particular the hierarchical mindset that still shapes Japanese culture today was pointed and filled with barely contained rage. I kept hoping that the daughter would take the straight razor she commits suicide with and slash the landlord’s throat in his sleep. But no. The family had debt, as unjust as it might have been, and they paid it off with their lives.

My regular culling from the internets:

I think we’ve all felt like this sometimes at the office.

Holy crap! The thing people will do for attention. Some guy in China, in commemoration of the Beijing Olympics, stuck 2008 needles in his head.

Werner Herzog is my hero. Check out this bizarre interview he had with Defamer.

Seven gestures that could, just could, get you killed abroad.

Anthony Lane from the New Yorker articulates why I don’t like Sex and the City.

Someone called “The Decapitator” is lopping off the heads of billboard ads and replacing them with bloody stumps. Bloody good work, I say.

Cheap renders of a cool idea for L.A. — The Hollywood Freeway Central Park. Basically, they would cover a stretch of the 101 Hollywood freeway, which is already below grade, with a park.

Top 10 scientists that almost killed themselves for science.[h/t Ted]

And then there’s this trailer for a Korean film called The Good, The Bad, and The Weird.[h/t Joan]

There’s an interesting article about the failed fascist coup against FDR in 1933. I referenced previous here regarding Hitchcock’s WWII era flick Saboteur.

And speaking of that, Behold! Stalin’s crazy attempt at recreating a breed of half-man/half-ape for crude industrial work.

Summer Palace is film I always suspected would get made. The events of Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were so dramatic and cinematic that it naturally captures the imagination of artists. During the protests — starting from Hu Yaobang’s death on April 15 through to the government’s bloody crackdown on June 4th/5th — youth in China experience a sort of condensed version of the 1960s. Imagine the Free Speech Movement, Woodstock, and Kent State all jammed into six weeks and you get the picture.

Not unlike the American government in the ’80s, the post-Tiananmen Square government distracted its citizens with a heady combination of economic boom times and virulent nationalism. The Chinese government had to as the protests called into question its very legitimacy. Almost 20 years later, most of the main student leaders of the protests are still exiled. Though the romantic sweep of those spring months still command the imagination, talkin about the protests publicly carries grave risks. Director Lou Ye — who graduated from Beijing University in 1989 — was banned from making movies for five years as punishment for making this film.

Summer Palace was screen in competition in Cannes and was hailed not only for its political daring, but also frank sexuality. As J. Hoberman of the Village Voice noted, not only is this movie the most sexually explicit film to come out of China, it’s more explicit than the six runner-ups combined. Though the pairing of sex and politics is a long one in cinema, Lou Ye’s film is not Closely Watched Trains or even The Dreamers. It’s a portrait of a lost generation.

Yu Hong (played by Lei Hao) is a willful sullen lass from the North Korean border who, once she gets to a Beijing university, plunges headlong into the messy abundance of life. This includes exploring her sexuality with (among others) her fellow student Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo). At first, the two are insanely happy, stealing away into an empty dorm room for frankly depicted quickies. But as the protests start ramping up in the background, doubt and suspicion seeps into their own private eden. Yu Hong becomes jealous and Zhou Wei starts sleeping with Yu Hong’s erstwhile best friend Li Ti. As the crackdown explodes around them, Yu has a nervous breakdown and flees Beijing, leaving Zhou behind. Up until this point, the film mirrors the youthful energy of the characters with a tone that’s both giddy and nervous. The camera, frequently hand-held, feels voyeuristic.

After the crackdown, the movie speeds past other major Chinese historical milestones — like the Hong Kong handover — before catching up with Zhou and Yu in the present. Zhou lives as an intellectual in Berlin and continues to make unfulfilling love to Li Ti. Yu sports a bad haircut and shacks up with a married guy out of loneliness. Both seem still seem traumatized by these unhealing scars from the past. The parallels between these two wounded ex-lovers and between China and its intellectuals are clear though not overbearing. Thankfully, Lou Ye roots the drama in the characters rather than an allegory. The regret and dull existential panic these Yu and Zhou felt of hitting your 30s and feeling your life slip out of sight is both palpable here and universal. And that’s what lingered in my mind days after watching it.

Summer Palace is not a perfect film. It sometimes veers close to the self-indulgence and the structure gets unwieldy in places. It is, though, a haunting and glorious mess.

My weekly culling from the internets:

This could possibly be the most hilariously overwrought movie ever made. That’s right, Werner Herzog and Nicholas Cage are remaking Bad Lieutenant.

And speaking of bizarro filmmakers, watch this video of David Lynch putting panties in his mouth. This is creepy even for Lynch.

There’s this EXTREMELY unsettling article about Bush’s plans for a possible police state.

And here’s an even unsettling more article about alternative (or just plain perverted) uses of maggots. Seriously not for the faint of heart. Really. (h/t to Ted who told me much more than I wanted to know about his fetishes.)

And then there’s this tragic/hilarious newspaper clipping detailing that sad fate of Od the Thai circus clown.

What’s funnier than a trailer for a trashy Hong Kong exploitation flick except a trailer of a trashy Hong Kong exploitation flick in German.

There’s this hilarious list of devastating international insults. My favorite are the Bulgarians with phrases like “You’re as ugly as a salad” or “Your mother sucks bears in the forest.”

Finally, the Chinese blogosphere is all a buzz about the run of bad luck China’s been having lately. First there was a massive blizzard that hit 1/25. Then there was the Tibetan riots/demonstrations that started on 3/14. And then there was the Sichuan earthquake on 5/12. All of those days add up to 8. 8/8/08 is the date of the Olympics. Cue spooky music. Along those lines, Liu Bowen from the Ming Dynasty wrote a poem, which is engraved on the Jinling Pagoda in Nanjing, that is supposedly prophetic. It predicts Chiang Kai-shek by name, along with Japan’s invasion and the rise of Communism. I’m told the translation loses a lot and is probably done by someone really into Falun Gong. But there is this striking line.

Hard to avoid the fierce Tiger, Fortunate people live at a mountain village
Vanity cities submerged by vast flood
Fancy skyscrapers became muddy ruins

So according to this, investing in Shanghai real estate might not be a good idea. (h/t to Joan, who spends all day at work looking these things up.)

My weekly culling from the internets:

Here’s a fascinating/disturbing article about the rich Chinese imitating the American wastefulness and stupidity. Behold, Orange County, China.

Speaking of China, here’s a pic of what happened in Sichuan on May 5, a week before the big earth quake. According the Chinese blogsphere, there were all sorts of rumors that an earthquake was coming.

For our paranoid readers, here’s a step by step way of figuring out if there’s a spy camera in your room. And there’s this step by step guide of what to do if you are approached by the police.

And this unintentionally hilarious police video (set to the Benny Hill soundtrack).

An local LA artist is trying to make traffic medians islands for art.

This blog lists all the things that are younger that John McCain. Things like Plutonium, Alaska, Spam, and Mt. Rushmore.

More about presidential candidates: Mike Gravel has either put together political commercials or performance art pieces. I’m not sure which, but they are REALLY WEIRD.

Here’s a list of weird mythical creatures from around the world. My favorite is the Popobawa from Tanzania, a flying sentient penis that doinks men in their sleep. It was reportedly responsible for another penis panic like the one I reported the other week.

And then there’s this exceptionally creepy ad from the 1970s.

Holy Crap! This is an absolutely amazing Sony Bravia ad. And this is the making of video of the commercial. These Sony ads have been some of the best things committed to film including this one and this one (see making off vids here and here).

Finally, under the shameless self promotion department, here are slideshows I wrote for Yahoo. You can see them here and here.

My weekly culling from the internets:

-Quite possibly the best movie trailer ever.

-A Chinese company uses Red Guard imagery to sell fertilizer. A lot of people thought that Mao was selling the Chinese a load of fertilizer during the Cultural Revolution. Now here’s the real thing.

-Finally, Wesley Willis‘ doppelganger is running for president. One of his platforms: “To Prove the United States Government killed my sex life, my wife sex life, my daughter-in –laws sex life both may [sic] sons and other of my family members sex life… “

-If you happen to be in Pennsylvania, take advantage of this opportunity to take a ‘make your own gorilla suit costume’ workshop.

-And here’s Cory McAbee’s latest short Reno. The music is by his band The Billy Nayer Show and it features dancing cowboys.