Lost In Translation

Stray Dogs

I was compelled to see Ming-liang Tsai's latest film Stray Dogs (2013) because of all the press it had been getting. Previously I have only seen his 2001 film, What Time Is It There? This was a curious film for several reasons. On one level it is a beautifully shot film with exquisite interior and exterior shots of modern day Taiwan, but the long takes with little dialogue make it very much an art film. Overall, it is 138 minutes long, and there are several sequences that challenge the patience of the viewer. Like most artistic films, it is shot in a neorealistic manner with long shots and little dialogue. Furthermore, it is the story of an alcoholic father who is struggling to bring up two children as a homeless man and meets a well-meaning and lonely supermarket clerk (a character, who ultimately, is played by three different actresses), who wants/needs to help the fraying family. It works as a human billboard-often in adverse conditions. In one scene he is singing a traditional Chinese song in the rain as he struggles to carry on with his job in a miserable downpour, which reflects the misery and desperation that he is caught up in. There are several drawn out and painful sequences to watch, including two scenes in which people are sleeping, (it is overlong in my opinion, but effective despite these excesses). The subtle ending also is controversial in the execution where two characters spend almost 20 minutes looking at a mural in the abandoned house that he the man and his children live in that was copied from one of the first photographs taken of Taiwan (Formosa). There is a very disturbing scene in which a surrogate cabbage person, created by the children in play, undergoes a number of symbolic indignities by the father. It is a challenging, curious and ultimately worthwhile film.

Guzman Y Gomez

I thought I'd check out the Australian Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez in their Harajuku location in the La Foret building on Meijidori. I ordered two tacos, beef and chicken,and a burrito bowl with chipolte pork. First, the good: three types of sauce (the habernero was really hot), a condiments bar with cilantro, red onions, and jalapeno peppers, and the tacos were served with a fresh lime, tasty pork. The bad: the beef and chicken were tasteless. The verdict is that Firjoles is better, and there's a location in Roppongi, but not bad if you've got a hankering for fast food Mexican in Harajuku. Also, not cheap, the tacos were ¥850.

Walk Cheerfully

Walk Cheerfully (1930) is the first film in the Yasujiro Ozu's Eclipse Series 42: Silent Ozu - Three Crime Dramas. Early Ozu films are quite striking when compared with the austere later films in which his style has become crystallized in a very identifiable pattern of film making. However, in Ozu earlier films there is much more experimentation with camera movement and foreign influences are much more evident-particularly the Hollywood influences. (The same is true of Mikio Naruse's early films as well). I note this, because I recently re-watched his Ozu's 1949 classic Late Spring. Walk Cheerfully is a perfect example of the early Ozu style, it seems to be influenced by the Hollywood crime dramas. Ozu employs innovative camera movements. For example, there are several interesting tracking shots: the film opens with a crowd chasing a man, a petty thief Senko (Hisao Yoshitani) who turns out to be the crime partner of the handsome and rough hood Kenji, a.k.a. Ken the Knife (Minoru Takada) and a camera mounted on a car to give a bird's eye perspective of the road. Ozu also uses bold set designs: including walls covered in American movie posters and a song written in English)—the kind of experimentation one would see much less of in his later films. In this film these two hoodlums decide to go straight after Kenji has met a citizen to his liking-Yasue (Hiroko Kawasaki), who implores him to go straight before she'll see him and Senko decides to follow suit. But this is not easily done since it involves spurning his crooked former squeeze, Chieko (Satoko Date) and former criminal associate Gunpeo (Teruo Mori). They will not let the former gang dissolve peacefully. Unlike most of Ozu's later films, this one has what would be called a conventional "Hollywood" ending.

The Matador Redux

The Matador (2004) is an excellent little indie film written and directed by Richard Shepard. It star Pierce Bronsan as a hitman, Julian Noble, who has lost his touch and finds friendship and support from an unlikely source-a whitebread salesman, Danny Wright, from Denver played by Greg Kinnear. They bond in Mexico City where both have landed at the fabulous Real Camino hotel. There are several globe trotting sequences where hits take place before Julian's landing in Denver at Danny and Bean's (Hope Davis) home where Julian coaxes Danny into helping him for one last job. There are several great cinematic sequences throughout the film: a courier walking through Mexico City to deliver a briefcase, a clandestine meeting with the agency middleman before a window looking into a ballet class, and a hilarious scene where Bronson walk through the lobby of the hotel in briefs and boots and with sunglasses on with a lit cigarette and beer in hand before taking a plunge in the pool after kicking off the boots-all to the The Cramps classic "Garbage Man." I have seen the film several times before and wanted to get the DVD since it has several extras: deleted scenes, feature Commentary with director Richard Shepard, Commentary with Peirce Bronson, Greg Kinnear and Richard Shepard, Making the Matador featurette, and The Business & the Treatment: Feature Radio Program discuss The Matador. I was surprised to learn from the director's comedy that another favorite film, Sexy Beast, inspired the director to write a non typical hitman movie since that was a heist film that didn't have the last heist scene in the film.

Timbuktu

Timbuktu (2014), last year's compelling winner for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, was written and directed by Mali’s Abderrahamane Sissako. It is a spellbinding visual feast, as well as a chilling portrayal of a Muslim ruled region that fights to keep the local population pious by the overzealous policing of everyday life-no sports, singing, and women must be covered completely. The effects are seen in a number of examples of the people living in the village and in the case of a nomadic family living on the edge of the desert raising cattle living a simple existence that is shattered by an unfortunate incident. But it seems theses jihadist rules don't necessarily need to be followed by the Muslims in charge.  One such example has a jihadist political leader who is a notorious smoker. In another case of hypocrisy, the leaders overlook the clandestine kidnapping and marriage of a young girl who did not want to be married to a stranger.  There are a couple of magical set pieces during the film as well: in one case some young boys play a soccer match without a ball while some musicians gather in the dark of night and create joyous music before being taken in by the jihadists.

Chili Parlor 9

Chili Parlor 9 has healthy fast food with a variety of vegetarian and beef chili dishes. I went with the works: cilantro, cheese, sour cream, onions, and jalapeno peppers on rice. It is just across the street from Yasukuni shrine and I'll be back at some point.

Tales Of The Taira Clan

Tales Of The Taira Clan (Shin heike monogatari1955) is Kenji Mizoguchi's second color feature and his second to last film. It is yet another historical-based drama that was adapted from a historical novel by Eiji Yoshikawa. It is a Rashomon-style story in which the the protagonist, Kiyomori (Raizo Ichikawa) the son of a samurai who doesn't know the his true birth origins (he is told three stories from various people) before he learns that he is the bastard son of the former emperor. Essentially, it is the story of the samurai uprising in the 11th century when they serve the emperor, but suffer penury because power is divided between the monks of the temple of Hiei and the Emperor's advisers are trying to keep the samurai under control and out of power. I think this film is one of Mizoguchi's best due to the combination of a compelling narrative and Mizoguchi's cinematic artistry which elevates it from some of his other late period films in story strength-it seems he was extremely consistent in producing memorable images through his cinematic interpretations of what sometimes were mediocre scripts. This film has any number of arresting images: the opening crane shot that move through a market to the entrance of the arrogant monk entourage, the forest attack scene as well as other sumptuous battle scenes. Throughout the film there are various examples of Mizoguchi and cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa's inventive and original cinematography with shots from behind flames, curtains, framed doorways and in nature. Mizoguchi was truly at his peak in his late period, after this film he would make only one more film and end his career on a high note with the masterful Street of Shame.

Goodbye South Goodbye

Goodby South Goodbye (1996) directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien draws to mind the petty gangsters of Mean Streets and prefigures Hou's own 2001 film Millenium Mamabo, which depicts equally restless and aimless club kids in modern Taipei. It is the story of small-time gangsters Gao (Jack Kao) and his stooge Flatty (Hsu Kuei-ying). They struggle to make good in every scam and scheme they take — from a Shanghai arcade to a plan to cash in on the sale of pigs in their ancestral village. The Taiwan Hou depicts is one of dilapidated houses, decay and urban sprawl. Hou delivers a formal cinematographic triumph with slow, insinuating dollies and pans. Several set pieces stand out: cars with tinted windows driving through the city, a scene where the characters ride a scooter and motorcycle through the roads of the jungle land in the south, and the finale is shot with detachment using a long lens. Not to mention bold uses of color filters. This film is essentially a lament for "money-crazy" Taiwan. The character's cell phones ring constantly, but nobody manages to communicate with another. They are constantly on the move but are going nowhere as the last scene so succinctly demonstrates.

Dirty Havana Trilogy

Pedro Juan Guiterrez's novel Dirty Havana Trilogy (2002) certainly lives up to its name. The filthy tales of sex, squalor, desperation, depravity, desire, and sadness call to mind similar writers of living on the margins of decent society like Bukowski and Miller. It is a series of vignettes divided into three sections (novels): "Marooned in No-Man's-Land," "Nothing to Do," and "Essence of Me." The stories take place during the special period in the early to mid-90s when Cuba was struggling from the effects of the collapsed Russian empire, which left the country unmoored and people struggling and starving in away that they had not previously known. It seemed as though the first two volumes were used to make the reader comfortable with the depraved appetites of the protagonists so that he could create more disgusting and desperate and depraved goings on in the third part of which many were extremely dark and less humorous than those shenanigans depicted early in the novel. In between all the filth and depravity Gutierrez manages to pain a portrait of what it is like to live in Central Cuba among the decay and poverty that creates a less than ideal picture of the failings of the communist system in Cuba. I ma glad that the people are finally going to get a taste of the wealth that lies beyond the waters surrounding the Caribbean island would-be paradise.

The Empress Yang Kwei Fei

The Empress Yang Kwei Fei (Yokihi 1955) is Kenji Mizoguchi's first color film and an adaptation of a classic Chinese myth. In order to gain some modicum of authenticity he worked with the Shaw Brothers. Thus it was a Daiei and Shaw Brothers co-production. The idea was that it would be an international production released in Hong Kong, however, the fact that this Chinese tale is completley in Japanese and features no Chinese actors led to the decision not to release it in China and the Shaw Brothers made their version of the story. The story is about Emperor Xuan Zong (Masayuki Mori), who is grieving over the death of his wife. His advisers hope to find him a new wife in order to re-establish his rule over the nation and help keep them in power. However, Xuan Zong has little interest in the high court ladies they present him. In desperation, General An Lushan (Sô Yamamura) finds a distant relative Yang Kwei-fei (Machiko Kyô) working in the kitchens and presents her to the emperor. She captures his attention due to the fact she looks very much like his dead wife and a has a shared passion for music among other things. She gains favor with him for these reasons. However, when An Lushan isn't given the dues he thinks he deserves for the discovery, he leads a revolt against the Yang family, suggesting a bitter end to the seemingly sweet love story. It seems that this film has been dismissed by a number of critics including Donald Richie who calls it a "rather dull if pictorially beautiful reworking of Chinese history." The story of the ultimate female sacrifice and lack of independence of the Princess reflects the main themes and motifs of Mizoguchi's career and seems to be more consistent than many of his other late career films in my opinion.  As usual there are many cinematically interesting shots: from behind bushes and those framing figures in the palace and elsewhere. There are two extraordinary set pieces within the film as well: the bathing scene in the jade tub and the hanging scene which focuses on the discarded robe, slippers and earrings as the Princess sheds as she advances to the gallows for her ultimate sacrifice for the Emperor and the people. But the scenes are notable for what they don't show and are extremely effective artistically and emotionally.