Lost In Translation

Seven Psychopaths

Director Martin McDonagh seems to have knack for creating films and plays divide audiences. Plays like The Pillowman and A Behanding In Spokane, which featured two of the stars of his latest film Sevenn Psychopaths (2012) in Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell. it is a pleasure to see them get such meaty roles as Hans and Billy. The film also features Colin Farrell in a feature role as Billy's best friend and an Irish, alcoholic screenwriter with writer's block. There are several great cameos and character roles by the likes of Tom Waits, Woody Harrelson, Harry Dean Stanton, Michael Pitt, and Michael Stuhlburg. There is a lot going on in the film and the meta-film that the characters are trying to write and much of this includes Tarantino-esque violence, so it is not for everyone. But if you, like me, enjoy this sort of cartoon violence, black humor, and inventive meta narratives, you will enjoy this film.

Biruma no Tategoto

Biruma no Tategoto is a local asian restaurant serving tasty and hearty Burmese dishes at budget prices. There are several daily lunch dishes, the dish above is a filling spicy vegetable soup curry that comes with rice and salad for only ¥700. I have also been here for dinner recently and had Burmese fried rice with egg and sausage as well as avocado roti wraps which were all reasonably priced. The name is the Japanese title of the 1966 Kon Ichikawa film based on a novel of the same name The Burmese Harp.

The Last Train Home

Lixin Fan's powerful documentary, Last Train Home (2009), chronicles the devastating effects of capitalism on one family's experience as migrant workers. A husband and wife have left their small village to work in textile factories to help support their family. This began when their first child, a daughter, was only one. She and her younger brother were left with their grandparents to be raised as the couple only return once a year during Chinese New Year, something that the film tell us that 135 million migrant workers do every year and try to parent by phone. This has created resentment, especially from the older daughter who thinks her parents only care about money. In the course of the making of this film, she quits school before graduating in order to work. She accompanies her family home during Chinese New Year after quitting her factory job, only to return to another city to work in a night club and have some fun. While at home their is a big fight between the daughter and her father as she disrespects him and is beaten. The scenes of the yearly migration look extremely aggravating and uncomfortable. Life working long shifts in a textile factory doesn't look like much fun either. Their greatest hope is that their son will be spared that existence, and will escape that life through education.

Pol Pot: Anatomy Of A Nightmare

Philip Short's book, Pol Pot: Anatomy Of A Nightmare (2004) is not a conventional biography. Rather it is more of a short history of the political events in Cambodia from about 1951 to present day, which explain how the Khmer Rouge came into power. Short has done an excellent job of putting together sources and explaining what happened to Cambodia during that era. This begins with trying to chase the French out. It continued with fighting the Viet Cong and being bombed into the stone age by the US military. This was followed by a civil war in Cambodia as well. The early stages of Pol Pot's life that included study in Paris and in Europe with the future leaders of the Khmer Rouge. It was here that they first learned of Stalin, Marx, and Lenin. There are many complex events and circumstances that led to the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Many of these had to do with cold war policies in which fueled the Vietnam War. Some of the savagery is suggested to be partly an aspect of Khmer culture, in which people are known to hold grudges for years and repaying a strike to the face with murder years later. It is this crossing a line when when the facade cracks and begets the violence that was seen in the 70s when the Khmer Rouge took over and emptied the cities to start their agrarian revolution. This aspect of savagery was also institutionalized by the Khmer Rouge who would routinely eliminate an entire family once the decision was made to kill the head of the family. It is a tragic story of the waste of human life and corrupting influence of power.

Ta-im

Ta-im is a great local Israeli restaurant. The ¥1300 Ta-im lunch plate offers a good sampling of the menu, with portions of Israeli salad, falafel, hummus, babaganoush and other vegetable spreads, toasted pita bread, soup, dessert and a drink.

Bangkok Found

Alex Kerr has written some interesting and provocative books about Japan and Japanese culture in the past (Lost Japan and Demons and Dogs) and has also written a similarly compelling book on Bangkok and Thai culture, Bangkok Found (2010). Kerr has studied Chinese and Japanese history academically and had lived most of his adult life in Japan before he moved to Bangkok permanently in 1997, therefore he makes several points by comparing or contrast aspects of Thai culture with those of Chinese or Japanese culture. For example he discusses the different roof designs from traditional buildings in China and Japan that point down to the ground whereas Thai roof eaves point up deflecting the negative energy away from the earth. I think he also does an excellent job of explaining Bangkok's appeal to foreigners and why it is such a fascinating and interesting place. Much of this has to do with Thailand's openness to foreigners and all things foreign. Kerr's background and interests lie in traditional arts like dance, flower arranging, and collecting art objects like pots, vases, and the like; therefore he explores the differences of these arts between his experiences in Japan and those in Bangkok. I found the section on Thai etiquette also quite interesting because the wai and bow is something that is absolutely charming and indicative of Thai-ness, but so frequent and out in the open that one doesn't really contemplate the meaning and significance of such gestures. It is important enough to Kerr that he teaches about it, along with the other arts in the Thai culture school, called Origin, that he founded. It is part memoir, part cultural history, and part love letter to one of my favorite cities in the world.

The Interrrupters

The Interrupters (2011) is a documentary from Steve James, known for the excellent documentary about two Chicago basketball players from the projects Hoop Dreams. In this film James returns to Chicago to document how a group known as "violence interrupters" try to combat the disease of youth violence in streets. Many of these "violence interrupters" are former gang members and criminals themselves, so that gives them credibility in the minds of these wayward youths. It is important and interesting look into violence in cities in America and one effective way of fighting it, something tells me if guns were harder to get there would be fewer chances for retaliation and violence from the get go, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Volga

I was showing my new friend Matt (in the middle) around Shinjuku with Pete when we decided to eat at Volga. Matt teaches at the University of Illinois in Urbana with an old college friend.



This is a really old school style izakaya, that a student first brought me to around 10 years ago. I'm surprised it's still around.

The grill master works at an open air charcoal grill at the entrance.

 

Oblivion: Stories

Before reading David Foster’s 2005 collection of short stories, Oblivion: Stories, I thought I was a fan of his fiction. I definitely am a fan of his essays and feature stories, which are interesting and inventive. As for his fiction, I have read his opus Infinite Jest, and the short stories collections Girl With Curious Hair, and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and enjoyed them. But I have to admit; it was a chore to read through most of the stories in this collection. For example, “Mister Squishy” gave insight into the mind of a marketing director for a dessert junk food product whose interior monologue was somewhat tedious. “The Soul Is Not A Smithy” tells the story of a substitute teacher’s breakdown in the form of a grown former student’s mannered recollection. “Incarnations of Burned Children” was a brief, harrowing, and unpleasant read. “Another Pioneer” is almost Borgesian in how the story is given several possible versions and several possible endings, much like a myth, as it is retold by someone who was himself told by someone who overheard it on a United flight, told by one passenger to another. I wasn’t invested enough in the character/narrator of “Good Old Neon,” who I think was a stand in for the depressive Wallace himself, who tells of his fraudulent personality in painstaking and tedious detail. “Philosophy And The Mirror Of Nature” is a strange story about a boy who carries a briefcase full of black widows to a lawyer appointment with his mother who has had several botched plastic surgeries. “Oblivion” is a tedious look at how the issue of snoring or not snoring affects an empty nest couple. The last story in the collection is called “The Suffering Channel” and is about art, commerce, and shit. Even though I didn’t really enjoy reading these stories, I will still give DFW a chance with his last unfinished novel, The Pale King to see if, I am indeed a fan of his fiction.

Samurai Spy

I really enjoyed Masahiro Shinoda's film noir masterpiece Pale Flower and in Samurai Spy (1965), he takes on another genre, the chanbara (samurai film), successfully according to his own vision. It takes place in the year 1614 during the period of uneasy peace that followed the years of warfare that led to Japan being unified under the Tokugawa shogunate. In the 2005 interview Shinoda suggests that he was trying to create an allegory of cold war politics with Japan in the middle between the capitalist Americans and communists Russians. This doesn't seem clear today, but then again neither does the intricate plot of allegiances, secret plots, and double crosses. This is not a typical samurai film with lots of sword play, people are often killed off screen by ninja assassins and in one on one battles. This film also contains another impressive collaboration with the preeminent composer of the 60s Toru Takemitsu and Shinoda (see Pale Flower and Double Suicide). The Criterion special features include: a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, an exclusive new video 16-minute interview with director Masahiro Shinoda, a gallery of key characters in the film, a new essay by film scholar Alain Silver, and a new and improved English subtitle translation.