Lost In Translation

English Boys In The 80s

These two films, This Is England, and The History Boys both take place in England in the 80s and follows a groups of boys as they grow up into an unstable society. However, these films depict two very different ways of life and show how race, class, and sexual orientation affect the core of most people’s experience.

This Is England is a semiautobiographical story of director Sean Meadows who grew up too fast as a skinhead. His alter ego is Shaun, a lonely boy whose father died in the Falkland War. He falls in with a group of friendly skinheads. Things change when Combo arrives on the scene after being released from jail and brings his white power National Front ideology into the group and splits it up. It is a disturbing look at what the lower class subgroups that feel disposed and powerless will do in order to create a sense of purpose and power through hate. The fact that Shaun is truly 12 years old is impressive, but I find it hard to see him as anything other than a mascot-he doesn’t seem to be precocious the way that I think a person would have to be in order to be accepted by those older in the teenage years. This sense of youth and nativity is stretched thin with credibility with the clearly decade or older Goth girlfriend of Shaun. I think this depiction of growing up too fast too young is an ailment of many societies where lack of money, education, and parental supervision prevail. It is a cautionary tale in the sense that it depicts how things can go horribly wrong when one feels the need to grow up too fast.

The History Boys shows a very different set of young men who have done extremely well academically on the national achievement tests, the A-Levels. There is another round of tests which will establish who gets into what schools they get into, so the school is trying to prepare them as best as they can so that it will give prestige to the school. The boys come from a variety of backgrounds (it is a private school-which is the British equivalent of an American public school), so they are all overachievers from lower to middle class backgrounds of different ethnicities. The film debates the merits of education for education’s sake as education as a means of financial success and future mobility, as seen in the different teaching and educational philosophies of Irwin, a young iconoclastic teacher trying to get the students to think out side the box and Hector, a traditionalist who is trying to impart a love of learning in the boys. However, there’s an undercurrent of homosexual relations love and relations between men and boys. I guess this inevitable since it is a boy’s school; and England has a long tradition of such behavior at these schools. Unlike the boys of This Is England they have bought into the status quo and will compete to gain entry into the world of money and status despite their backgrounds and class, rather than rebel against it and reveling in the outsider status. Incidently great soundtrack: New Order, The Smiths, etc...

Ueno Station

The cavernous Ueno station.

"Don't You Evah" Spoon

WIRED recently produced a video that sees Keepon, a robot developed by Hideki Kozima and programmed by Marek Michalowski, dancing to the track “Don’t You Evah” by Spoon, with all locations in Tokyo. Via Tokyomango.

This video is awesome and the new Spoon is growing on me. Check it out.

The Battle of Algiers

I finally got around to watching The Battle of Algiers after hearing so much about the cinema vertie style of the film and its realistic depiction of the insurgency against colonial France. Made in black and white in a documentary style by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo in 1965, it was based on real events of Algeria war of independence from France. I felt the accuracy was verifiable by my experience of reading Alistair’s fine history, A Savage War of Peace. For example, it documented bombings by young Muslim women in western dress that targeted civilians at bars and other social outlets on the same day as well as characters based on the real FLN insurgent leaders-one of which was a petty criminal before taking up the cause of independence. The French’s use of torture is also well documented in the film. I found the film more than 40 years later to still be vital and ripe for comparison to he current situation in Iraq.

Now Or Later?

Nathin Rabin, critic for the AV CLub, has finally seen Casino Royale and asks this:

So here’s my question for you, dear reader. As civilians, do you like to experience the hot new thing as soon as it comes out or do you like to wait until the buzz and hype has died down and things can be viewed with a little more distance and detachment? In other words will you be rushing to see Superbad this weekend or are you willing to wait for it on DVD?

He also refers to the pleasures of watching Freaks and Geeks on DVD and suggests that it might be better to get all the episodes in context since they aired erratically. Generally, I'd prefer to see a movie getting all the hype, but I am somewhat insulated since I live in Japan and it often takes longer for entertainment to arrive (if it it gets distributed here at all). Thus you don't have people quoting Napleon Dynamite everyday at work. In addition, I think some films like Casino Royale, the Bourne films, Children of Men, etc...beg to be seen onthe big screen for the full cinematic expereince. As for TV I am a fan of watching the DVDs at my liesure over waiting week to week for episodes to air (this is how I saw most of the following series: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Wire, Arrested Development, Entourage, Freaks and Geeks, The Larry Sanders Show).

At My Age

I was inspired to get a hold of the new Nick Lowe album, At My Age, after reading this interview in the Onion AV Club. I guess I am most familiar with his work as a producer for artists like Elvis Costello (he also penned one of Elvis’ biggest hits “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding”), The Pretenders, and The Damned. Of course I also knew his early stuff from MTV like “Cruel To Be Kind” and so on. I even had his country album The Impossible Bird (on cassette? Now lost) at one time. But he has been off the radar for some time. This album is a revelation, I’ve been listening to it two or three times a day since I got it (it is only 33 minutes long). But it is a great pastiche of styles: “Ray Charles-like country soul, smoky late-night jazz, lush Western swing, and even a bit of Rockpile-style rockabilly.” So I can hear echoes of Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, etc… That is to say that it has a sort of old timey feel to it, but it has the distinction of being fresh and vibrant at the same time. It is truly a strong album and all of the tracks are great, but I particularly like “A Better Man,” “Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day,” “Not Too Long Ago,” and “I Trained Her To Love Me.”

God Lives In St. Petersberg

I saw that Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters With Che Guevara, was compared to Tom Bissell, and this alone made me curious about him. Then I realized, it was name that I thought I had heard before. Then I realized that I read an interesting piece by him in Harper’s about a trip he took to Vietnam with his father, who was friends with Philip Caputo (author of the Vietnam war memoir A Rumor of War-on my to read shelf). So when I saw a copy of God Lives In St. Petersburg, I snapped it up. It is an engaging and entertaining collection of stories set in the wild days of the post Soviet breakup of the Central Asia, a dangerous and unpredictable place that is not to be taken lightly. Bissell skillfully creates memorable characters and describes telling details and context to make the stories come alive. A journalist gets malaria and is stranded in a remote area without medicine. A couple on the rocks unwisely decides that the antidote to this is “Expensive Trips Nowhere.” A scientist arrives to study the Aral Sea and is kidnapped in a political ploy to bring attention to the people who have been devastated by the pollution to it. A spoiled ambassador’s son goes too far for even central Asia and is exiled back to the US to avoid bringing any more shame upon his parents. In another story an evangelist finds difficulty on preaching to Muslims who have suffered great hardships with little hope in the future.

August: The Crulest Month?

Here in Tokyo I often think that August and Feburary contend for the the cruelest months-August because of the unrelenting heat and Feburary for the bone chilling cold and dreariness of winter. In this "recycled" article from Slate's David Plotz, circa 2001, makes a case for the cruelty of August:

August is the Mississippi of the calendar. It's beastly hot and muggy. It has a dismal history. Nothing good ever happens in it. And the United States would be better off without it.

August is when the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when Anne Frank was arrested, when the first income tax was collected, when Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe died. Wings and Jefferson Airplane were formed in August. The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour debuted in August. (No August, no Sonny and Cher!)

August is the time when thugs and dictators think they can get away with it. World War I started in August 1914. The Nazis and Soviets signed their nonaggression pact in August 1939. Iraq invaded Kuwait Aug. 2, 1990. August is a popular month for coups and violent crime. Why August? Perhaps the villains assume we'll be too distracted by vacations or humidity to notice.

Outdoor Izakaya: Ra Ra Ra

A while back I met some friend in the Ochiai district in Shinjuku ward-west of Takanobaba. We started at this outdoor izakaya,Ra Ra Ra, which has outdoor garden seating, which is rare in Tokyo. Later we ended up at a funky karoke place as well.

Overlooked: Breach / The Lookout / The Station Agent

Breach is a compelling film, even if it wasn’t based on a true story about an American traitor spy. Chris Cooper is excellent as always, and Ryan Phillipes is convincing as the motivated up and coming agent who learns to admire his protégé and mentor as he does his assignment spying on him. Cooper steals the show with his portrayal of the arrogant, seemingly buttoned down agent who has been selling secrets to the Russians for 22 years and has a predilection for strippers and sex tapes of his wife. Director and co-writer Billy Ray, who detailed the misconduct of journalist Stephen Glass at The New Republic in 2003's Shattered Glass, which also starred Ryan Phillipes, does a great job of creating suspense throughout the film.

The Lookout is a different kind of heist film; in fact I’m not really sure if it’s a heist film at all, however, there is a robbery. Chris Pratt, with a top-notch performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is trying to piece back his life after suffering a gruesome car accident after prom and has suffered some head trauma and tries to learn how to get by day to day on his own. The first half of the film shows his daily struggle, therapy, and life with his blind roommate Jeff Daniels. He has a contentious relationship with his wealthy father, who seems disappointed and untrusting of his son in his new incarnation. The fact that he has a night job as a janitor at a small bank attracts a local hood, who manipulates Chris and enlists him into the heist plan. It goes wrong and Chris asserts himself in the end in the face of a true trial. It is an entertaining and well-made film by Scott Franks (screenwriter of Get Shorty and Out of Sight)

The Station Agent is one of those indie films from a few years back that was getting a lot of positive press, but I never got around to seeing. Finbar McBride, dwarf, has a pretty ordered life in which he goes to work at a model train shop with his best friend and employer. When he dies and is left a train station in rural New Jersey by his friend he is faced to interact with people who won’t let him be as much as he tries to continue his solitary existence of routine and train spotting. Joe (Bobby Cananvale), the hot dog stand vendor, who sets up shop across from his station is charmingly obnoxious-one of those people who can’t spend too much time alone, becomes a friend. His other unlikely friend is Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), is a well-played woman in pain over a lost son. These three unique individual come together as an unlikely trio, it is an enjoyable whimsical film in the best sense of the word.