WITMOT?

Kurosawa followed up on No Regrets for Our Youth with this remarkably bleak comedy about a young couple that simply wants to have a pleasant Sunday together. Yuzo is a disillusioned soldier who is valiantly trying to maintain his dignity and integrity in the ruins of postwar Tokyo. Masako is his relentless chipper girlfriend. They are too poor to live together much less marry. They only have 35 yen between them for the day.

The day goes from one failure to another, each one underlining their yen-less existence. When Yuzo tries to contact an old war chum who owns a dance hall, the management assumes his looking for a handout. When they go to the zoo, they get caught in the rain. When they try to go see a concert, scalpers swoop in and by all the cheap seats, beating Yuzo up when he complains.

Kurosawa has dealt with postwar deprivation in movies like Drunken Angel and Stray Dog, but in neither of those films are as emotionally raw as this one. After Yuzo drives Masako away in an act of misdirected fury, he sits there sullenly in his own apartment, listening to the rain piss down. His desperation is almost unbearable. Kurosawa leaves the shots long in this scene and the camera static. It would have made Andre Bazin swoon.

For the first two-thirds of the film, you could say this is Kurosawa’s most Neorealistic film. Instead of a bicycle, these characters are wandering around a cruel and indifferent city simply looking for some relief from their grinding poverty. A lot of the movie is shot on the streets of Tokyo too, giving Sunday a documentary feel like Rome, Open City and Bicycle Thieves.

Then the last third kicks in. Kurosawa suddenly veers uneasily from gritty Neorealism to a strange mixture of Capraesque whimsy and Peter Pan-style appeals to the audience. Following yet another petty defeat, this time in a coffee shop, Yuzo regroups his shattered spirit and starts looking towards the future with an inkling of hope. When that wisp of a silver lining slips away, Masako turns to the camera and beseeches the audience to clap for our broken hero, shrilly begging “Onegai Shimasu” over and over until your eyes are as dewy as hers. Breaking the fourth wall is a movie like this is really bizarre and jarring. But by doing so Masako, and by extension Kurosawa, is pleading with the postwar audience to think about the future ahead of them and not the yawning abyss below them.

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.

There’s a Monty Python sketch called “Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days,” which starts when someone from a group of upperclass Brits innocently lobs a tennis ball at Michael Palin. The ball strikes him in the head, sending a geyser of blood into the air. He casts his tennis racket aside, which impales the woman next to him. Soon the entire group is missing limbs and writhing in puddles of blood.

I was reminded of this while watching Noboru Iguchi’s The Machine Girl. The plot, as such, is simple. Ami (Minase Yashiro) is the picture perfect Japanese school girl – cute, perky, kind, and serious. But when her kid brother Yu gets thrown off a building by a group of school bullies, she wants revenge. When she confronts the family of one of the kids, she is attacked by the parents. The father hurls chairs at her while the seemingly meek mom turns into a knife wielding banshee who fries Ami’s hand in tempura batter. Ami, however, proves to be a unexpectedly fierce fighter, and soon their kid is lacking a head and the banshee mom – in one of the grossest scenes I’ve seen in a long time – has a knife blade sticking out of her mouth. But that’s just for starters.

Ami learns that the leader of the bully group is the scion of the positively psychotic Hattori yakuza/ninja clan. The father is sort of guy who, as punishment for a minor error, forces a servant to eat sushi made from his own fingers. Ami’s first attempt at taking out the gangsters ends with her own amputation — Hattori lops off her arm. But thanks to the help of Miki (Asami), an ex-biker whose son was also murdered by the bullies, Ami’s stump gets outfitted with a Gatling gun. Soon she’s tracking down and blowing bloody holes into every single one of the bullies. Along the way, there are some ninja attacks, a drill bra, a flying guillotine and the letting of buckets and buckets of blood.

Clearly, Iguchi was aiming for the sort of unhinged lunacy of Takashi Miike’s notorious Ichi the Killer, but the movie never captures that’s movie’s wit or fever-dream visual poetry. Instead, it’s labored and strangely dated, as if it should have been made in 2003. But Machine Girl is interesting because of what it lacks — sex. If you strip away all the weird Tetsuo: Ironman-like flesh and machine fetishization , the plot is not unlike many of the old pink eiga revenge thrillers like Sex and Fury — beautiful yet formidable woman wronged and gets revenge. Many of the conventions are almost identical. The heroine is forced to prove her mettle by facing down a band of rapist thugs. The heroine is captured by the baddies and tortured. But where as Reiko Ike in Sex merely has her flesh exposed, Ami has hers violated — but never exposed. Even in scenes where it would have made sense for Ami to be partially or fully stripped, she remains chastely clothed. Yet this isn’t prudity; the rampant spurting blood, limb slicing and general bodily mutilation border on the pornographic. Instead, this film is shaped by a different aesthetic than traditional pink eiga. Machine Girl is a post-human exploitation flick where blood, not semen, is the bodily fluid of currency.

Another thing interesting about this flick is the strong female characters. The women in movies like Cloistered Nun: Runa’s Confession and especially Tattooed Flower Vase are portrayed as being at the mercy of their own sexual desire, ready for whatever advances from men. Ichi the Killer treats women as sex objects and punchlines. But women here — between Ami, Miki, and Hattori’s drill bra wielding wife — are so powerful and dominant that the men almost disappear into the background. I wonder if this is tied to the filmmaker’s fetishization of damaged flesh and machines?

Anyway, here’s the Machine Girl’s trailer.

Links from my compulsive trolling of the interwebs:

Behold! The future eco-city. Some very very cool stuff in there.

And then there’s this. Stereoscopy photographs turned into animated GIFs. [h/t Joan]

A new law in Japan declares any guy with a 34″ waist to be overweight and will force anyone not conforming to these national guidelines to “guidance” and possibly “re-education”. Average waist size for Americans? 39 inches.

Speaking of strange stories coming from Japan, try this one. Hiroshi Nozaki killed a Filipina hostess and stuffing the body parts in a coin locker. Eight years ago, he was charged with, you guessed it, chopping up a Filipina hostess and trying to flush it down the toilet. Link

And even more from Japan, Diet member Yukihisa Fujita has publicly questioned the official version of the events of 9/11. He’s one of a number of politicians now doing so and one senses more will in the future.

An article about Objectum-Sexual, featuring a woman in love with the Berlin Wall. [via Boing Boing]

A hilarious review of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. [h/t Ted]

A fascinating article about the dangerous world of artificial diamond production. [via Boing Boing]

A blog entry on Watanabe Kasumi’s photo book Gangs of Kabukicho. [h/t Ted]

Tony Jaa quite literally kicks ass.

Speaking of that, here’s a list of action heroes that probably should be brought up on murder charges.

This is depressing. [h/t Joan]

Who knew that laughing babies in slo mo would be so disturbing.

The reason why your life is going to hell, if you’re white, middle class, and straight.

My regular culling from the interweb:

This is an old news story but it boggles the mind. Lydia Angyiou of northern Quebec tackled a 700 pound polar bear that was threatening her kid.

Stupid things caught on video: Ow my balls. The perils of vandalism. [h/t Ted] And why you shouldn’t use a compact car to pull a trailer.

Stabby strikes terror in Akihabara.

A really unnerving video about cell phones. And there’s the same experiment, but in Japanese. UPDATE: Looks like these vids are fakes. Check out here and here for answers. Damn you, youtube tricksters. [h/t Joan]

And speaking of fakes, that video of that guy freaking out in an office that I linked to last week, is in fact a viral video by that guy who directed the upcoming Angelina Jolie flick Wanted. Damn you, Russian tricksters.

More than you ever wanted to know about the Incredible Hulk.

This is just cool. BMW has released a concept car covered in cloth. As a result, it can change shape. Check out the video.

John McCain’s top ten public freak outs. UPDATE: Here’s ten more notable freak outs.

A fascinating article about the vast freewheeling market of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay.

One shop in particular, I’m told, is a clearinghouse for drugs. Armed with the proper introduction, in I went. In lieu of a traditional greeting, the owner simply asks me what I’m looking for, and how much of it I’ll need. “And, yes, we have cocaine,” he adds as an afterthought.

And then there’s this, scientists are worried about a lack of sunspots, arguing that it might auger another Little Ice Age.

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.

Kimstim released a couple of months ago a mess of Nikkatsu Roman Porno and thanks to the glory of Netflix, I’ve been catching up with them. The other day, I caught Cloistered Nun: Runa’s Confession. The director Masaru Konuma is famous for directing some of Naomi Tani’s more popular S&M flicks like Tattooed Flower Vase and Wife to Be Sacrificed. No, full-body tattoos or forced enemas here though. Instead, this flick features what one might expect from a “nunsploitation” movie — habit-ripping acts of sacrilegious sexual congress. The star — the giggly Runa Takamura, the half-Japanese, half-German go go dancer for the girl pop band Golden Half — has little of the dark charisma of Tani and is only semi-plausible as a nun.

In the film, Runa freaks out and joins a convent after her evil step-sister Kumi doinks her boyfriend. Once cloistered, she gets manhandled by a salivating gaijin priest. In one scene, he throws her into pile of mud and spilled milk and proceeds to soil her and her habit. Three years later, Runa shows up at Kumi’s doorstep. She has forgiven Kumi for her previous transgressions and on top of that, has a business proposition. Her mission is selling off some land cheap. Soon Kumi and Runa’s callow ex have ponied up the money to buy. Along the way, Kumi gets her comeuppance from the nine or so guys that she’s engaged to in the form of lavishly produced gang-rape. Of course, Runa’s out for revenge and bilks the money out of not only Kumi and her weaselly ex, but also the evil gaijin priest (who speaks laughably bad Japanese).

The film should have ended with Runa and her lesbian ex-nun girlfriend on a boat to Australia, laughing at all their ill-gotten money. Instead, it ends with Runa and girlfriend are on said boat getting raped at gun point. They are naked and all smiles as wacky, kooky music gets played over top. Seriously, what the fuck? There isn’t even a remote attempt at making it make narrative sense. As I noted with Tattooed Flower Vase, the real point of pink eiga is not eroticism but a bolstering of the seemingly very fragile male ego, buffeted by modernism and changing gender roles. Kumi is victimized for being a duplicitous bitch and Runa is victimized early on for looking cute in a habit. Sex is almost always used as a weapon of power and control and the male culprits are never punished for it. Except for the end of this film. Both the ex-boyfriend and the priest are duped out of a pile cash. And for that reason, Runa gets raped at gun point.  And because she’s a character based on fantasy instead of anything close to human psychology, she loves it.

My regular culling from the internets:

Global warming marks another victim: nivicolous hominis or the snowman. What is this world coming to? [h/t Joan]

Why I love the internet: Young Hilary Clinton. [via Americablog]

For some reason, people have been sending me a lot of furry videos. Here, here and here. Warning: while not exactly NSFW, it probably will make you feel unclean. [h/t Ted]

Adolf Hitler was such a fan of Snow White that he reportedly offered Walt Disney any price to make movies in Germany. Disney refusal is either a good or bad thing depending on your feelings towards Disneyland. I’m ambivalent. A Norwegian archive dug up these drawing by der Fuhrer himself.

There’s this news of a homeless woman who lived secretly in a man’s closet for over a year in Japan.

Is Indiana Jones a pinko? [via Boingboing]

My weekly culling from the internets:

With so much talk in the news about nature disasters, I thought include some unnerving info about earthquakes in LA. Here’s a map of the San Andreas fault. And here’s a recent government study of what would happen if a Sichuan-sized earthquake hit Los Angeles. Here’s what to do in case of an earthquake.

The Scorsese remix of dramatic chipmunk. See the original here. Perhaps the best film of last year. (h/t Ted)

And then there’s this classic bit of police incompetence. Japanese custom officials slip a traveler 124 grams of hashish and then lose the guy.

And speaking of Japan, here’s a gorgeous photo set of Japanese highway interchanges. (from Pink Tentacle)

A list of the best covers from World Weekly News.

And just in case there are some among the millions of daily readers of Witmot? who might believe some of the idiot lies floating about my man Obama, here’s a video.

Remember those mutterings last year about the mysterious NAFTA superhighway that was to run from Mexico to Cananda? It was largely dismissed by the mainstream media as a paranoid fantasy. Here’s a spirited critique of it on the House floor from someone who’s definitely not a crank, my former congresswoman Marcy Kaptur. Definitely worth watching. The gist: that Capitalist bastards are seeking to create a privately run 10 lane freeway from Mexican ports in the Pacific, through the heartland of the States to Canada. The result — a commercial artery from Asia to WalMart that bypasses union longshoremen and government oversight.

My weekly culling from the internets:

America, the 97th most peaceful country in the world. Has a nice ring to it.

If you’ve had enough the US of A, here’s a list of six micronations. And I’m not talking about dinky nations like Andorra, Liechtenstein and the Vatican. Micronations are states of often dubious legality consisting of one or a couple people. The most famous one is Sealand, an abandoned oil platform a former WWII military platform in the North Sea. Last year, I bought a Lonely Planet guide book on micronations which is a blast to read. Recommended.

Tales of a high school douchebag.

And then there’s his tale of junior high school students who are rebelling against Bush’s idiot No Child Left Behind program. (I honestly can’t think of a single thing that Bush has done right as President.) (h/t Ted)

A great article by the New Yorker’s George Packer about the (thankful) decline and fall of conservatism. Packer makes an interesting point that for most of its reign, and especially after the end of the Cold War, conservatism wasn’t really FOR anything, just against things — anti-abortion, anti-government, anti-tax etc. When they got to the actual task of governing, from Reagan on proved to be really inept.

Hilary as the black knight. (from Americablog)

Why men should go to a barbershop.

The perils of drinking your own urine.

Exactly. And speaking of cars, here’s a guy who loves cars WAAAAY too much.

A photo gallery of Japan’s burakumin. (via Boingboing)

The idiots in LA’s metrolink spend millions to bring down a blog that criticizes it. Way to use tax payers money.

New Weezer video featuring some of your favorite faces from Youtube. (h/t Joan)