Lost In Translation

DVD Notes: Vacation Rentals

War of the Worlds wasn’t high on my list of movies to see, but my sister had just received it from Netflix and it had been getting good reviews-so I gave it a shot. The special effects were impressive, but the “errant father makes good” subplot and the hackneyed upbeat Hollywood ending sort of made it hard to swallow.

Happy Endings directed by Dan Roos, who made the intelligent and very funny film The Opposite of Sex, was a satisfying ensemble character study. The lead story involves step siblings Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) and Charlie (Steve Coogan) as they try to find happiness in life. There are several subplots involving other characters played by the likes of Tom Arnold, Jason Ritter, Maggie Glyllenhall, Laura Dern among others. The stories are interwoven throughout as the stories and characters converge. The characters are funny, flawed, and realistic. They blindly struggle through life trying to find contentment. There are funny and interesting written asides that appear white on black, which comment on the action and inform the viewers about the fates of the characters. It seems that all of the characters have certain mysteries unto themselves and that like most people their happiness is dependent on other people. The endings are happy, but realistic and unpredictable.

Steve Carrell has proved his comedic mettle in the American version of The Office and furthers his reputation in the entertaining The-40-Year Old Virgin. It’s a good natured film that could have been more sophomoric. It has gotten universally good reviews and is mostly entertaining, however there are a couple of misfires like the musical sequence near the end of the film that seems to have been lifted from the tepid film-The Anchorman.

Pretty Persuasion joins the ranks of biting high school satires like Heathers, Clueless, Election, and Mean Girls as it takes on the culture of celebrity, racism, popularity, entitlement, and a host of other targets. Eve Rachel Wood, who was so impressive in Thirteen is equally good here as the scheming Lolita exploiting everyone around her. There are good supporting roles by Ron Livingston, James Woods, and Jane Krakow.

Purple Butterfly is a film that could have bee great had it been edited differently. As is the intriguing, noir-ish spy film starring the enchanting Ziyi Zhang is a bit of a confusing mess. It is set in Japanese occupied Shanghai before WWII, and Zhang has fallen in love with a Japanese student and then becomes radicalized when her brother is murdered by a Japanese zealot, and gets involved in a game of cat and mouse with her former Japanese lover who returns as a spy for the Japanese. In another plotline a Chinese man is mistaken for a member of the resistance and his lover is killed in an inadvertent shootout. There is a bleak gray tone for the film that suggests a sort of foreboding for the doomed characters. There seems to be a nod to Wong Kar-Wai in its romantic doomed tone, however, it’s incoherence detracts from the overall effect.

Bad Education garnered a lot of praise last year. Most Pedro Almodovar films have something to engage the viewer and this is no exception.  And it had a very interesting and complex plot structure that seem to expand as the movie progressed. There were also some inspired performances, especially Gael Garcia Bernal.

Pocket Penguins

This is the 70^th anniversary of Penguin books and to celebrate they have released 70 Pocket Penguin editions of short paperbacks (about 100 pages) on various subjects-fiction and non-fiction. Here's the history of the groundbreaking concept:

In 1935, if you wanted to read a good book, you needed either a lot of money or a library card. Cheap paperbacks were available, but their poor production generally tended to mirror the quality between the covers.

Penguin paperbacks were the brainchild of Allen Lane, then a director of The Bodley Head. After a weekend visiting Agatha Christie in Devon, he found himself on a platform at Exeter station searching its bookstall for something to read on his journey back to London, but discovered only popular magazines and reprints of Victorian novels.

Appalled by the selection on offer, Lane decided that good quality contemporary fiction should be made available at an attractive price and sold not just in traditional bookshops, but also in railway stations, tobacconists and chain stores.

He also wanted a 'dignified but flippant' symbol for his new business. His secretary suggested a Penguin and another employee was sent to London Zoo to make some sketches. Seventy years later Penguin is still one of the most recognizable brands in the world.

I picked up two of Pocket Penguin editions to read over the break. The first was #3 Otherwise Pandemonium by Nick Hornby, which included the titled story which had originally been published in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and the original composition “Not A Star”-written for this volume. Both stories involve videotape in their plots and are entertaining. The other selection I read was #65 Short Short Stories by Dave Eggers, which were originally published in the British publication, The Guardian. Most of these frivolous one to two page compositions were occasionally entertaining. But I think they are too short for Eggers to develop characters effectively, which I think is one of his fortes. Many of them included some political screeds against the current administration, which I imagine went down quite well in knee-jerk liberal England, but seem misplaced in fiction.

Winter Break 05-06

Today I'll be flying back home for the holidays, so I don't imagine there will be as many posts as usual, but I'll try to post when I have time.

Convience Store Employees and Cultural Values

In the most recent column of “U.S. Culture-lessons from the classroom” Kimiko Manes discusses the different origins of each culture’s values. She starts off talking about criticisms or observations about Japanese culture told to her by foreigners who have lived in Japan that have never occurred to her:

Here’s an example. An American friend who lived in Japan remarked that female clerks at any store will always bow and say: ”Ichiman-en oazukari shimasu. X-en no okaeshi de gozaimasu. Arigato gozaimashita.” (I will take this 10,000 yen bill. Your change is X yen. Thank you very much.) At every store, the words are exactly the same, and said without any expression. My friend remarked that he almost felt that they were like robots, and found it unnerving. I was rather surprised; this was something I never thought about.

Here in the United States, store clerks are usually unaccommodating. When I meet a nice one, I feel like it’s my lucky day. Japanese female salespeople are polite and extremely helpful. They are well-trained as store attendants, and I perceive their delivery of their lines as a sign of serious professionalism.

I have to agree with Manes here, in essence, I think that service industry jobs are performed with a seriousness that is often missing in America. However, I also find it a bit robotic, so when I go back to America I often experience culture shock when dealing with service industry people who talk directly to me. But it’s usually in a nice, good-natured manner.

Unfortunately at the time of the writing of this post the article is not availiable online, which is is too bad, because this time around she has some interesting information to share about Japanese cultural conditions.

Book Notes: Murmur

After reading Frank Bruno’s Armed Forces, and now J. Niimi’s Murmur I am starting to appreciate the artistic scope of serious pop music. I guess I’ve always appreciated pop music, but after reading these two books which show the dedication that went into realizing the songs in the studio by adding sounds layering and maintaining themes and motifs holistically throughout the process-which is often reflected in song order and cover art as well. Somehow I can’t say that I would be as impressed with a careful rendering or say, a Brittany Spears recording session, which I guess is a case of disposable pop versus artist who are trying to create art for the ages. I think R.E.M., like Costello before them, has succeeded in doing that, they still sound timeless and vibrant today 20 years after hey were first conceived. Murmur and Reckoning were two albums I got into after discovering them during the Life’s Rich Pageant Tour of 86’ (I declined to joined my co-workers from Chuck E. Cheese to make the pilgrimage to Seattle to see them perform live-it wasn’t until earlier this year in march that I was able to finally see them live). However, this cassette tape, along with The Smiths ”Meat Is Murder”/Sex Pistols “Anarchy In The U.K.”, among others (especially The Replacements), represented the young adult soundtrack of my life.

Niimi starts out discussing the early days of the band and their recordings, of which The Chronic Town EP preceded the recording of Murmur. This is followed by a discussion of the actual process and the specific atmosphere of recording Murmur with engineer/producers Don Dixon and Mitch Easter. In the next section, Niimi discusses the album track-by-track and note-by-note. Then he goes into detail concerning the themes and motifs, which are present. For example, how southern gothic is expressed through the lyrics, music, and album artwork and graphics. There are more specific dsicussions about interpretations and lingusitic interpretations of the lyrics. I found the book to be informative, thought provoking, and entertaining-a must for any R.E.M. fan.

Lolita Turns 50

There's an interesting article in Slate that re-visitis Nabakov's great novel Lolita. I read it in college, but somehow I think I'd probably get more out of it now:

Lolita turns 50 this year, and having stayed so perverse, it remains fresh as ever. To fully appreciate its perversity, though, one must first appreciate that it is not obscene. Your run-of-the-mill obscene masterwork—Tropic of Cancer, say—demands that you, enlightened reader, work your way past the sex and excrement to recognize how beautiful it is. But with Lolita, you must work past its beauty to recognize how shocking it is. And for all its beauty, for all its immense ingenuity and humor, one easily forgets how shocking Lolita is. To wit: Later in the narrative, Humbert has settled with Lolita in a small town called Beardsley and set up a semblance of a normal suburban life. Humbert is called into Lolita's private school for a parent-teacher conference, where he is told that she is "antagonistic, dissatisfied, cagey" and "obsessed with sexual thoughts for which she finds no outlet." In essence, Humbert is being offered an inventory of the damage he has wrought on his stepdaughter, but all he can do is sneer inwardly at the messenger, a psychobabbling crone named Pratt, and then … and then … well, what happens next is so shocking, and yet so calmly and economically detailed, it had somehow absented itself from my memory of the novel.

Click here to read the rest.

December Sky

Christmas tree lights in Shinjuku at dusk.

"Shy?": Seken and Society

Seken is described in Brian J. McVeigh’s book Japanese Higher Education as Myth as:

The surrounding world of community consisting of neighbors, kin, colleagues, friends, and other significant persons considered important.

As a result, some people are seen as to have lost their identity due to it. Some women feel pressure to get married because of it. And it can lead to excessive self-monitoring due to this obsessive concern of what people think of you and has especially counterproductive results in the classroom.

He also refers to it as the “official gaze.” That is to say, it is “a normalizing gaze that scans, screens, selects and shunts students through education-examination system” based on hensachi, or standard deviation mean-where one’s place is measured against all others in society based on test taking ability. I think he’s onto something with this idea. I think it helps explain what some people call the “shame culture”(people acting in a moral way to avoid the shame of society by breaking its laws) and what I see often as a sort of paternalism. People go through life waiting to be told what to do, after a life of being told what to do and how to act and behave through school, which acts as more of a socializing institution than a educational institution. And as a result, they behave properly because they feel they are being watched and judged on their behavior and it also inhibits them from acting out in a way that would draw attention to them and undermines the confidence needed to hold views contrary to the status quo. I’ve talked about the kohai/sempai (senior-subordinate) relationships, and I think this adds to situation in that, the underclassmen fele that they need to follow the example of the upperclassmen. These relationships are particularly potent during the university experience. This behavior seems to crystallize in the classroom where they are being watched by their peers while trying to disappear in the anonymity of the crowd. As a result, this lack of self-challenging and adherence to norm can lead to apathy, de-motivation, and demoralization. It would seem to explain the lack of intellectual curiosity that I see everyday in the university classroom.

I’m not sure this is a good synopsis of his ideas and mine; however, it has got me thinking about these concepts as they apply to people in different roles in society. But it’s something I need to think about more thoroughly. But I think there is a connection to this idea, because I don’t fully buy into the myths of Japanese people being naturally “shy” and “passive.”

Bonenkai Season

The end of the year in Japan often involves bonenkais, which are end of the year parties where you forget all your troubles. This picture was taken at an event called West Coast Party Night-it was originally organized to bring together people who graduated from West Coast American colleges (ie several alumni groups), but it is now open to anyone. It was held at a really nice restaurant called Shunju in Akasaka.

Bird Song

Here's an itneresting article that argues that too many white players are unfairly compared to Bird, the latest being Spokane born and bred Gonzaga standout Adam Morrison, who is tearing it up this year. I remember I was once compared to former Sun Jeff Hornacek by a brother while palying on the outdoor court at Green Lake in Seattle, now that was unfair-that guy was freaking ugly. Here's a bit from the article:

The allure of the Bird comparison is that many of the qualities that made him great—his court vision, his anticipation, his leadership—are stereotypes associated with white basketball virtue. Take a look at these tidbits from Morrison's nbadraft.net scouting report: "Old school right down to the stripes on the socks ... Like a coach on the floor ... Great intangibles, competes and inspires others to play hard ... Fundamentally solid, does all the little things to help his team win ... Sees the floor well, and is creative finding teammates for baskets ... Runs decent, but needs a head of steam." Let's run that through the racial translator: "[White] right down to the [white] on the [white] … Like a [white] on the [white] … [White, white] and [white] … [White], and is [white] … [White], but [he's really slow and also he's white]."

As far as we've come in pro sports, we've yet to reach the point where white basketball players can be comfortably compared to their black peers (and vice versa). One problem is that black basketball players don't have many white peers. The pool of modern-day African-American basketball stars is orders of magnitude larger than that of white ones. When it becomes clear that Grant Hill—or Harold "Baby Jordan" Miner, for that matter—isn't the next Michael Jordan, it's easy to ratchet things down a notch or 12. But if a white swingman falls short of Bird territory, revising him down to an appropriate level is almost too cruel. The next Tom Gugliotta? The next Brian Scalabrine?

To be fair to Adam Morrison, he is a better case study than his Caucasian brethren—he consciously modeled himself after Bird, even emulating his patented high-release shot. It's also true that the current player whose skills most align with Bird's is the Mavs' Nowitzki. Europeans like Nowitzki, Peja Stojakovic, and Pau Gasol come closer to matching Bird's size and skill than any of the stiff-legged white Americans now plying their trade in the NBA. Still, none of these guys are in the same league with Bird when it comes to passing or toughness—they just make the American guys look even more pitiful by comparison.

The folly of strict racial comparisons is clear when you try to conjure Bird's best historical analogue. The only other scoring big man who could match Larry Legend's rebounding ability, floor-bound approach, and pure mastery of the space around him is Magic Johnson. And he isn't white.

A 1997 Sports Illustrated piece argued that the lack of white stars in the NBA has caused a "white inferiority complex." As a consequence, half-decent players become whites in shining armor. In that SI piece, Keith Van Horn complains that ever since he was in high school he felt the burden of being compared to Bird. Who did he liken himself to? African-American swingman Derrick McKey.

Bird is one guy who never had a white inferiority complex. Actually, he did—he thought every white player was inferior to him. Last year, Bird said in an interview that back in his playing days he "really got irritated when they put a white guy on me." Why did he care if whitey guarded him? "[B]ecause it's disrespect to my game."

The fact that every fair-haired forward gets compared to the Celtics great means that Bird's leaden feet—rather than his scoring, rebounding, or passing—will be his legacy. Now that's disrespectful.

Click here to read the entire article.