Lost In Translation

The Best TV Series From The 00's

The AV Club is making Best of the 00's lists and they recently did one on TV series:

1. The Wire
2. The Sopranos
3. Arrested Development
4. Freaks and Geeks
5. Mad Men
6. Breaking Bad
7. The Office UK
8. Lost
9. Deadwood
10. The Shield

My list is as follows:

1. The Wire

2. The Sopranos

3. Mad Men

4. Arrested Development

5. The Office U.K.

6. Deadwood

7. 30 rock

8. Breaking Bad

9. Curb Your Enthusiasm

10. Six Feet Under

Honorable Mention: Freaks and Geeks, Flight of the Conchords, Dexter, and Veronica Mars.

New Cult Canon: A Company Of Men

Neil LaBute gets the AV CLub treatment with his debut feature:

“Women. Nice ones, the most frigid of the race—it doesn’t matter in the end. Inside, they’re all the same: Meat and gristle and hatred, just simmering.” —Aaron Eckhart, In The Company Of Men.

Neil LaBute’s 1997 directorial debut, In The Company Of Men, attracted such a heap of controversy at the Sundance Film Festival that most distributors didn’t want to touch it, even though no other film at that year’s festival was as talked-about. There were worries that lines like the one above—to say nothing of the vile actions they preface—would draw a backlash from arthouse audiences sensitive to misogyny. It had the potential to be another fiasco along the lines of David Mamet’s toxic gender study Oleanna, not least because LaBute owed the great playwright an obvious debt (if not royalties) for his clipped, profane, hyper-masculine dialogue, his spare directorial style, and a closing twist that echoes Mamet’s love of the long con. The film eventually found its way into theaters seven or eight months later, but the controversy stayed with it, and to my mind, the chief complaint was consistently wrong-headed. In The Company Of Men isn’t a misogynistic film, it’s a misanthropic film. Big difference. 

Stranger Than Paradise

Apologies to Facebook readers, but it is worthwhile to re-post a great film review of  Stranger Than Paradise by an interesting director: 

For better or worse, Jim Jarmusch has developed a reputation as the cineaste of cool. He has only himself to blame. For one, he has a rare genius for the suave posture and the shockingly odd image. Think of Johnny Depp in a checkered suit and black bowler, limping through a birch forest in the surrealist Western Dead Man (1995), or the two Japanese tourists in Mystery Train (1989), ecstatic with passion for Elvis Presley, sitting on the floor of their Memphis, Tenn., hotel room with lipstick-smeared faces. He also frequently casts musicians as his actors (John Lurie, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, and Jack and Meg White, among others), and his soundtracks, featuring Charlie Parker, Elvis, and Ethiopian composer Mulatu Astatke, help give his films their distinctive mood—the cinematic equivalent of a world-weary shrug. Most responsible of all for this reputation, however, is his trademark dialogue, with its reliance on antiquated slang, digressive riffs, and bathetic one-liners.

Inoki vs. Ali

There's a good piece on this infamous fight in The Guardian:

Picture Muhammad Ali.

How do you see him?

Standing snarling over Sonny Liston? Shadow boxing on the bottom of a swimming pool? Leaning into the ropes as George Foreman pummels his kidneys? Stooping, shaking, to light the Olympic flame?

How about Ali flapping about on the canvas while an 18 stone wrestler sits on his face? Who wants to remember Ali that way?

There are some things a person should never have to see happen to a man like Ali. This is the story of one of them.

King Rat

King Rat is an extraordinary film-I can’t believe that I’ve never heard of it before. It is one of the best POW prison films I’ve ever seen. It seems that many of my friends know it since it was adapted from a novel by Jamse Clavell based on his experiences at the Japanese prison camp Changi in Singapore-which is now home to the airport. It is the story of survival of the prisoners and what they did to survive. George Segal plays King, an American corporal who runs the camp with his black market schemes. He has a bunch of cronies that carry out his requests and he orders officers around as well. It is extremely realistic and has great cinematography. It is also a study of class and society. Once the camp is liberated by Richard Dawson!? King loses his status and position and once again is a lowly corporal rather than the King. The supporting cast is also quite impressive as well. It is well worth seeking out and watching.

Tokyo Vice

I have to say that I really enjoyed Jake Adelstein’s memoir about crime reporting in Japan, Tokyo Vice, for a number of reasons. To start with it provides an insider’s view of what it’s like to be a reporter and how the journalism machine in Japan operates. This insider’s view reminds me of Masao Miyamoto’s descriptions of being a government employee in The Straitjacket Society. It seems both jobs require arcane knowledge earned through experience and insider mentoring, long hours, bullying, and a very unhealthy lifestyle that is heavy on smoking and drinking. In addition, Adelestein started out in the Saitama news bureau office in Urawa and I started out living in Japan in Eastern Saitama and know or have been to many of the places where he reports crime and murders take place. Adelstein also has a lot of insight into the particulars of Japanese culture and society, from mizushobai (sex industry which includes hostess and host clubs) to yakuza and police. His explanations of how the police operate and the ambiguity of the law when regarding issues like prostitution, sex trafficking, and child pornography make it troublesome to enforce. It wasn’t until Japan started getting national attention as a haven for sex trafficking that they created laws to stop it. This s a common occurrence being spurred to change by international pressure-it’s much easier to carry on with status quo. Family law that encourages child abduction is likely to continue until enough foreign pressure has been applied on the Japanese government. Furthermore, he spends a chapter on the significance of instruction manuals in Japanese society explaining there are manuals for everything from sex to suicide, at least the ratio is 3 to 1 in the top 10 sellers on Amazon Japan. I also found it interesting that he was at the forefront of crime trends that I remember reading about as they emerged over the years: host clubs that targeted teenage girls that ran up thousands of dollars of bills. Then there was the loan sharking trends that drove many to suicide with the sky-high interest rates-these spawned the “it’s me” scam where people called old people and claimed to be relative by saying “it’s me” and having them transfer money to their bank account. I think it has a kind of hardboiled style to the narration and a fairly quick pace. I look forward to reading his subsequent books he has planned on other aspects of crime and Japanese society.

Getting Any?

Getting Any? (1995) is Takeshi Kitano’s fourth film and has largely been considered a failure by his critics for good reason. It is a straight up sketch comedy with little plot. It is a big departure from his previous films up to this point, which is probably the point. It is more similar to the kinds of things Beat Takeshi does on TV. I think there were some funny set pieces in the first segment, but the comedy is very hit or miss and runs dry throughout. I was surprised that it was so well received by the customer critic on Aamzon.  

Transactions In A Foreign Currency

After reading Under The 82^nd Airborne by Deborah Eisenberg, I realized that I found another impressive American short story writer. This was confirmed by her first collection of short stories Transactions In A Foreign Currency. Eisenberg, the recent recipient of a Mac Arthur Genius Grant, has a very precise style and excels in writing dialogue and creating stories that derive from relationships between people that ring true. I was expecting these stories to take place in Central America like those in Under The 82^nd Airborne, but only the final story “Broken Glass,” was set there. The rest take place in different places, but several of them are New York stories. I look forward to reading the only other collection that I haven’t read yet, All Around Atlantis. Hopefully the new grant will give her time to greatly expand her limited oeuvre-the other short story collection Twilight of the SuperHeroes wasn’t as impressive as the two earlier collections I read. 

Rum, Sodomy, & The Lash

The 33 1/3 series has taken on the classic Pogues album Rum, Sodomy & The Lash by Jeffery T. Roesgen. There have been many different approaches in this series-some that are traditional critical discussions others are more artistic. For example, Joe Pernice wrote a very entertaining novella about The Smith’s album Meat Is Murder. Colin Meloy, of the Decembrists, wrote a compelling personal memoir about The Replacements’ seminal album Let It Be. Roesgen tried to combine the two styles by writing a short story using historical references form sources of the painting used as the cover art about a disastrous sea voyage to Africa that ended in cannibalism and tragedy. I found myself skipping the narrative and reading the discussions of the songs from the album that were referenced by a number of sources and gave a lot of insight into the conception of the album. I think it would have been better id the author had focused on that and left the story of the ship, The Medusa out of it completely.

Yanaka

I visited the Yanaka area of Tokyo near Nippori station earlier today. It was my first time and it was a bit of a revelation. I was going to go to an art exhibition, but it was closed since it was a holiday (ironically culture day) I may go back tomorrow.

I think this is a pretty cool photo...

Can you see the buddah?