Lost In Translation

DVD Notes: Saw

I recently watched a little film called Saw (the rating is total bullshit for once-this is a good movie), which was an entertaining and original thriller starring Cary Elwes and Danny Glover. The concept was conceived by the director, James Wan, and the co-writer/co-star, Leigh Wahnnell. It reminded me of another entertaining low budget thriller, Cube ( again ignore the negative reviews-it's an entertaining film), in which some people were inexplicably locked in a death trap and tried to escape without being killed. This films start with the two main actors waking up chained to the wall of a dilapidated bathroom with a dead body between them. It also seems quite 7-esque and influenced by the work of its director David Fincher. The storyline basically consists of people being punished by a serial killer who creates scenarios where the victims usually kill themselves, so he doesn’t have to do the dirty work so to speak. Stylistically it is Fincheresque in the stop action photography and dark, brooding lighting of the film. Essentially, it kept my attention and had me guessing till the end, which is a grand finale with a twist. Impressive debut.

Festival Time

Here is a clash of tradition and modernity; this fellow is dressed in the tradtional summer yukata(a sort of light coton kimono that was traditionally worn in the steamy summer months) and geta (tradtional wooden sandals), while listening to his iPod. The yukata, these days is usually worn to festivals, I suspect this fellow was on his way to the Yokohoma Hanabi Taikai (firework festival), since he is at Jiyugaoka station, which is on the train line to Yokohoma where the festival was being held yesterday. This is the season for firework displays and festivals all over Japan.

Book Notes: Random Family

Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is a fascinating and disturbing book. She looks at the downward spiral of one family in the Bronx, as girls become welfare mothers, and boys become criminals, along the way everyone’s life becomes more miserable. The book starts out chronicling the lives of Jessica and her brother Caesar, Puerto Rican Americans living in the ghetto in the Bronx. Their mother has had four children and they are living in poverty. Jessica had her first child at 15 and eventually ends up with five. Along the way she hooks up with an abusive but successful heroin dealer, Boy George, who was somewhat of a minor celebrity and an acquaintance of Mike Tyson. Eventually he is put away for life and Jessica is also incarcerated as an accomplice, while in prison she has an affair with a prison guard and has twin babies, immediately she becomes involved with a younger married man. Her brother Caesar seduces Coco, who becomes a major character and several other girls, as he starts his life as a criminal robbing drug dealers and regular citizens alike before accidentally killing one of his best friends. Coco ends up with four children from three fathers constantly struggling to raise them in a poverty stricken environment.

It’s as if the conditions and situations hinted at in the novel I read earlier, Clockers, have been fully explored and the vicious circle of physical abuse, sexual abuse, poverty, drug abuse, and criminal behavior continues among poor choices and a lack of preferable options out of poverty and the ghetto. I have to say reading it took a toll on me, I had to put it down on occasion as the people chronicled in the book continue to screw up, lie, make poor choices, and set the stage for the failure of their children who have never experienced a stable home in their lifetimes. This was one of the books recommended by Nick Hornby, who found it fascinating, but I find it fascinating in the way that a car wreck is fascinating. It also shows what a little bit of money a stable living environment would make all the difference in the lives of these people on the edge, especially the children who don’t have responsible adults to look after them as they are sexually abused, left on their own, beaten, left to eat candy whenever as their teeth rot out, and the imprint of improper behavior becomes ingrained in them. Not a book for the faint hearted, it is a heartbreaking story. Albeit just one of millions I am sure.

Xenophobic Japan

I wasn't surprised to see this item in Japan Today:

Discrimination in Japan is "deep and profound," with government leaders lacking recognition of the depth of the problem and the public having a "strong xenophobic drive," a U.N. special rapporteur said Monday in wrapping up a nine-day visit in Japan.

Here are some reactions by some Japanese people, also from Japan Today.

Consider that second and third generation Chinese and Koreans, who were born and raised in Japan and only speka Japanese, can't get Japanese passports. There are a lot of other subtler forms of racism. Also consider that a publishing company recently re-relased the "Little Black Sambo" stroybook and it has become a best seller, and the pulbisher doesn't see anything wrong with the book-which is nostaligic for the middle aged in the population.

I don't want to dwell on it, but as I said, the report doesn't really comes as any surprise to me, in a country in which citizenship is based on ethnicity.

DVD Notes: The Mayor Of Sunset Strip

A friend recommended The Mayor Of Sunset Strip, a documentary about DJ and famed groupie Rodney Bingenheimer. I had a vague knowledge of him as a DJ that broke a lot of cool new music in LA (X, The Ramones, Blondie, Iggy Pop, The Smiths, The Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello, Blur, Oasis, and Cold Play among others)“Rodney On The Roq”-is his show, which seems to have been pushed into the 12am-3 am spot after having a more prominent position. It is an unusual documentary; it reminded me a bit of Crumb-the principle characters are quirky and strange. Kim Fowley, another groupie from the era, is a very strange and creepy man who has several great sound bites throughout the film. It is also a sad film about a man obsessed with celebrity and full of regrets. The heady days of hanging out with famous people and sex with young girls has come to a pass and he lives on alone, in obscurity. He’s a gentle soul a bit like Andy Warhol, one of the countless famous people that he has hung out with. In the end what does friendship with Brooke Shields really mean? What does it do for you? Has it redeemed your life? I don’t think so.

HBO: Setting The Standard

Recently I ordered several HBO series DVDs. If they offered HBO here I wouldn’t have to buy any of these DVDs, but now and I’m hooked. Everything they produce is so well done that they’ve really risen the bar for pay per view-why watch regular TV at all?

The first series I watched was The Sopranos Season 5. It was another great season, and I particularly enjoyed the addition of Steve Buscemi to the cast. There were some interesting commentaries from special guest directors like Mike Figgis and Peter Bogdanovich, who like fellow director Steve Buscemi has acted in the series. It always entertaining and has the best production values of any TV series that I can think of, not to mention the cinematography, acting, writing, and music. I don’t want to give anything away, but it ends with a definite opening for another season, which I’ve heard may be the last.

For some reason Six Feet Under has been lagging with the release of their DVDs, my brother says they are starting the 5th Season this year and I have just finished watching Season 3. I can really relate to the mindset of the character Nate Fischer, who has a rough time of it again. I think most of the storylines are pretty interesting, but I get a bit tired of the antics of the mother character. I like how they’ve incorporated Rico into more storylines.

I caught up with Season 2 and 3 of Curb Your Enthusiasm as well. I was inspired by the Larry David interviews I saw on the Seinfeld DVDs that were lent to me. He really makes the art of being an ass very funny. He seems to be pushing the envelope every episode…culminating in the Episode 8 “Krazee-Eyez Killa” and Episode 10 “The Grand Opening” from Season 3. I like how it is a sort of meta-reality as David refers to things in Seinfeld: I was in a “contest” once; I ate a éclair out of the garbage once, etc… Season 3 also included a bonus first episode of Deadwood, created by David Milch, which was great. It makes revisionist westerns McCabe and Ms. Miller and Unforgiven look down right glamorized. I could probably really get into this series as well, but I’ll fight the urge.

The last time I was back home visiting I saw some episodes of Entourage, which also seems quite entertaining and I’ve heard great things about The Wire. Man when are they going to export HBO?

Additions

I have added some links to the "Links" list on the right. Blue Lotus and Azian Brewer are a couple of blogs that have links to mine, so I thought I'd reciprocate. Blue Lotus is by a Canadian woman living in West Tokyo and her blog has lots of great food posts. Azian Brewer is a home brewer from NYC, with an interest in Asian spirits.

Neomarxism is a site I visit occasionally-it has intersting commentary on Japan and Japanese pop culture.

Noodlepie is a blog from Ho Chi Mihn City, Viet Nam-that has lots of great posts about food, particularlly Vietnamese street food-very inspiring.

The Marmot's Hole is a blog from Korea that often has interesting posts about North Korea/Japan relations and Korean culture.

Check them out.

Janken

"Janken" (or "Rock, paper, sissors" as it is known to us) is a national obsession and the topic of this week's Cultural Conundrums by Kate Elwood in The Daily Yomiuri. She begins by saying that she has become skillful at the game since living in Japan. I found this true as well, since it is constatnly being used to make decisions in schools (elementary and junior high schools on the JET Program) where I taught when I first arrived-I still have students do it in class when they are practicing new grammar points or doing surveys and they absolutely love it (they also are enraptured by BINGO and HANGMAN--especailly at the college level). There's a variation as well, when kids are just playing it for fun, when one person has lost the other one says something like (I 'm not sure about the precise wording) "aidakosho" and point in a direction and if the loser looks in the direction pointed, they get a punch in the arm or something along those lines. Kids could be entertained for hours with this simple game. Anyway, Elwood notes:

...Rock, Paper, Scissors remains a part of everyday life for many Japanese people at least through their mid-20s. This is perhaps because it relies to some degree on psychological profiling of one's opponents to achieve success. (Apparently, this is the case--I just throw out any old hand formation. Then again, I usually lose.)

Rock, Paper, Scissors is used constantly by my university students to decide any conceivable matter. When I tell them that many U.S. college students know the game but don't play it much, they sometimes nod and say, "Oh yes, they flip a coin, right?" Umm...My instinct is to answer no, U.S. college students don't flip coins much, either.

A casual survey of my college-age U.S. acquaintances bears out my intuition. "When was the last time you flipped a coin?" I asked. No one could remember. "So how do you choose who will do something everyone wants to do or, conversely, something no one wants to do?" I persisted. Blank looks. "We just...decide," they said, with bemused looks.

I used to frequently use this method to decide who would make late order pizzas with my co-workers when I was working in the kitchen at Chuck E. Cheese's in college and got quite good at it (anything to get out of work). But I disagree with Elwood, I am pretty sure it keeps getting used well after the late 20s to decide teams at tennis, basketball, etc...We used it just this last Saturday to decide who would sit first on a basketball team with 6 players.

Piano Recital

A friend of a friend's father, HakuKuon Kim, was the composer of songs played by a piano virtuoso, Rinrin Park, at The Bunkyo Cultural Center in Korakuen yesterday. They are both of Korean descent, and these themes were incorporated into the songs. I haven't been to a classical concert in years, and I was impressed with the songs and the pianist's ability. I liked how on one song she manipulated the strings by putting her hand into the piano to create sounds that were similar to that of the koto (I'm not sure whether it's on purpose or not), a traditional Japanese instrument. A cello player accompanied her later and created soundtrack worthy material as well. I was bemused to see a couple of people using flash photography (no flash from me-really!), and another guest who didn't turn off his cell phone and actually answered it!

July 2005 Magazine Round-Up

In GQ, there's a feature called "The 20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die" in which a writer searches for the 20 best burger joints in the US. Seattle's Red Mill Burgers comes in at #17, and #1 for Onion Rings. There's another Real World article "Leaving Reality", a clever article written by John Jeremiah Sullivan. It focuses mostly on people, i.e.. The Miz and Coral, from the second season of the Real World in NYC-one that I didn't watch, but I am familiar with these people from Real World/Road World Challenge. It's about what happens to the cast members after they've finished their 15 minutes of fame. There's a well-written feature, "The American Dream CASE# RS106247", about Russian immigrants from rural Russia that end up in Jacksonville Florida to live their American dream. The Politics column answers the question: What does congress do with their time? It looks at how congress spends it's time and money.

Harpers also has a large in-depth feature on pork spending by congress in the article, "The Great American Pork Barrel." It also has Haruki Murakami's best short story, "Chance Traveler," since the excellent collection, The Elephant Vanishes. I also found Eric Hoffer's (author of Among The Believers) notebook fragments intriguing.

And Esquire has features on 10 Men, none of whom are all that interesting to me, but Chuck Klosterman has written his usual entertaining article(Crazy Things Seem Normal...Normal Things Seem Crazy) on Val Kilmer, whom Klosterman called "advanced" in an earlier column, noting that, basically, he was doing roles that were beyond other actors' conception. Very funny.