Lost In Translation

Summer 2011: Singapore-Malaysia-Thailand

On Saturday (the 13th) I will fly to Singapore to visit a friend and stay in Southeast Asia until the 24th. However, I have been to Singapore twice and I was originally planning to go to Borneo with my friend, but he has to work, so I have deiced to take the train from Singapore to Bangkok. It is a trip I first read about in Paul Theroux's book The Great Railway Bazaar-a trip he later revisited in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. I found this useful site on train travel in Singapore and Malaysia to help plan the trip. I will take the first six hour leg and then spend a night in Kuala Lumpur (I have been there once before on transit to Vietnam about 12 years ago, but want to see it again). From there I will go to Butterworth, which has a ferry to old colonial capital town Georgetown on Penang where I will stay a night as well. From there its onto Bangkok to meet friends who will be visiting in Thailand, before flying back to Singapore for a couple of days before returning to Tokyo.

Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002

I previous enjoyed reading Salman Rushdie’s first book of essays Imaginary Homelands, so I thought I would also read Step Across This Line: Collected Essays from 1992-2002. I also enjoyed many of the essays in this volume, however, many of them were concerned with personal freedom and Islam due to this experience of having gone underground to avoid the fatawa that was on his head-which is completely understandable given the situation. However, some of his points are repeated too frequently in these writings. I most enjoyed his essays about other writers and literature the most. For example his defense of Granta magazine’s Best Young Novelists for 1993 (Rushdie had been named one on the 1983 list). I also enjoyed his essays about India: ”Gandhi, Now” (exposes the real man behind the myth) / “The Taj Mahal” / “A Dream Of Glorious Return.” Some of the columns he wrote for The New Yorker were entertaining as well-his use of Shaggy’s infectious song-“It Wasn’t Me.” I was also impressed by “Step Across This Line” from the Tanner Lectures on Human values at Yale University from 2002.

BFI: L.A. Confidential

Manohla Dargis looks at one of my favorite films of the 90s in her British Film Institute (BFI) book on the film L.A. Confidential. It is based on the book of the same name by James Ellroy that I read sometime around the release of the film. I realize that i still need to read the other books in his L.A. Quartet and have already ordered The Black Dahlia and The Big Nowhere for starters. I also have read his autobiographical book My Dark Places, in which he discusses his true crime obsession inspired by his mother's murder at the age of 10 and his subsequent personal investigation into her murder-it's a fascinating book. I think director Curtis Hanson and co-screenwriter Brian Hegland did an excellent job of keeping the spirit of the novel alive while paring down the complex story lines into a workable film. Curtis Hanson's vision of the glamorous and lurid Hollywood of the day in which pitched meetings with pictures of true crime and hipsters like Chet Baker in order to get the idea of the stylized L.A. he was trying to get actors-one that James Ellroy was also witness to and that inspired his novel. The film is also a tour de force of ensemble acting with it's three leading men-Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kevin Spacey in career making performances. It's amazing the film got made with an Aussie and Kiwi in two of the three leading roles, but it had a lot to do with seasoned actors like Danny DeVito and Kim Basinger signing on. The locations and period details presented with a modern take on the sunshine noir combined to create a stunning achievement of modern film noir-one of my favorite film genres. I also bought the deluxe edition of the film to revisit before reading the book and it has a full disc of extras as well as an informative commentary from the actors, producer, and director. 

The Bad Girl

Several years ago I read a book of essays by John Updike (I believe it was Odd Jobs) where he reviewed a couple of Mario Vargas Llosa novels and they garnered high praise from Updike. So I mentally decided that I would seek out some novels by him at some point-after he won the Nobel Prize in 2010 I realized the time was right to begin reading him (Incidentally, his Japanese translator, Keisuke Dan, is a colleague of mine at Meiji University). I have to say I was very impressed and entertained with my first Llosa novel, The Bad Girl and I expect to read several more over time. The story feels familiar in some ways and it has been suggested that it is a variation on Flaubert's Madame Bovary-a tale of a gold digger a woman who seduces men for their money, power, and position rather than following her heart. However, throughout the years she returns to what was her childhood lover Ricardo Somocurcio, who has moved to Paris and has become a translator. However, I see more of a similarity between "the bad girl" and Holly Golightly from Truman Capote's classic novel Breakfast At Tiffany's. Llosa is skilled at setting time and place as the novel takes place in the 50s in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima in Peru, then Paris in the early 60s, followed by London in the swinging late 60s, and so on throughout the life of Ricardo who is living in Madrid at the end of the novel when the bad girl tracks him down for the last time. It is a dramatic and seemingly realistic tale of romance, desire, and disappointment.

Ugetsu

Ugetsu (1954) is Kenji Mizoguchi's masterpiece and probably one of the finest Japanese films of all time in the hallowed company of Ozu's Tokyo Story and the best of Kurosawa. It may have been one of the first period films made that made a statement about contemporary society. In this film Mizoguchi was making a statement about the consequences of war as well as dangers of greed. However, as much as it is rooted in the realities of the lawless time of the civil wars before the Meiji restoration it is also a supernatural ghost story. There are some extraordinary cinematic scenes like the intro to the film that is a moving crane shot that unfolds like a scroll-70% of the film was shot from cranes with few close ups. Mizoguchi was also known as stickler for period details in regards to props and sets that needed to be accurate. The story was based on two short stories by Akinari Ueda ("The House In The Thicket" and "The Serpent's Lust") as well as one by Guy de Maupassant ("How He Got The Legion Of Honor")-incidentally both of these are included in the booklet in the Criterion Collection edition along with an original essay by Philliph Lopate. Some of the other features in the double-disc set are: new, restored high-definition digital transfer, audio commentary from Tony Rayns, Two Worlds Intertwined a 14 minute appreciation of the film by Japanese film maker Masahiro Shinoda, Process and Production a 20 minute video interview with Tokuzo Tanaka, first assistant director on the film, 10 minute interview with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa from 1992. The second disc is Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (1975) a 150 documentary by Kneto Shindo about Mizoguchi. I think it is required viewing for serious film goers.

The Driver

The Driver (1978) is a unheralded gem from Walter Hill (48 Hours) starring Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern, and Isabella Adjani. It is a noirish heist/action film with several well-filmed chase scenes. It seems the role was written for Steve McQueen, but O'Neal pulls the role off as the laconic getaway driver who takes up a challenge from the obsessed cop (Dern). There is a sense of camaraderie between O'Neal (The Driver) and Isabella Adjani (The Player) who helps him in the cop bank heist challenge that is at the center of the film. I think I enjoyed the double crosses among the underworld characters more than the chase scenes, but it is a sort of minor classic of the genre and highly entertaining.

Decline And Fall

A couple of months ago I read Christopher Hitchens' biography Hitch 22 and he spent some time discussing some of his favorite authors and one of them was Evelyn Waugh. Waugh is a writer that I much admired as well, however I had read only Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust, and The Loved Ones. It made me realize that there was still a lot to explore by the master satirist. So I decided to go back to beginning and started with his first novel Decline And Fall. It is an entertaining book that takes on class, education, the penal system among its subjects of satire. I suppose there's a fair amount of black humor and several original and memorable characters. A fair amount of philosophizing, as well. One character puts forth the idea that some people are meant to active in life, while others are more suited to being passive spectators in life. It's an impressive debut, and Waugh seems to have found his voice in his first novel. Next up are his second and third novels: Vile Bodies and Black Mischief.