Lost In Translation

The Salvation

The Salvation (2014) directed by Danish Kristan Levring is not necessarily an original western, but it is a well-executed film. It follows in the Spaghetti western tradition of westerns, but the twist here is that it is the story of two Danish brothers, Joe (Mads Mikkelsen) and Peter Jensen (Mikael Persbrant) who have come to America to make their fortune. Early in the film a tragedy befalls Joe and the forces of good and evil and revenge come into play. As stated before this nothing new in terms of plot, but Levring and his powerful cast which includes a long-suffering woman, Madeline (Eva Greeen) who had her tongue cut out by Indian and a villainous protagonist in Henry Delarue (Jeffery Dean Morgan). I found it easier to watch and more entertaining than Tarantino's latest western, The Hateful 8. which may be more original but is still the same troupe with even more violence and blood than you see in The Salvation.

Humanity And Paper Balloons

Sadao Yamanaka's fate is one of the greatest tragedies for Japanese cinema during the war years. He was conscripted into the army and died at the age of 28 after having made more than 20 films of which only three still exist. I have previously seen and admired Sanzen Tange And The Pot Worth A Million Ryo (1935). I also was impressed with Humanity And Paper Balloons (1937), which reflects elements of classical Japanese cinema in the framing and use of sets that depict 18th century feudal Japan while commenting on the current politics of the repressive military regime that was driving Japan toward war. In this film Yamanaka examines the class stratification of society and changing of the times as the samurai class is struggling for survival. The story open with a suicide by hanging by a samurai in a poor tenement who couldn't commit harikiri because he had to sell his sword for survival. The daily struggles of these people are chronicled. There's a hairdresser, Shinza (Kanemon Nakamura) who has a gambling problem and clashes with the local yakuza over gambling territory that spurs him to confront the controlling classes not for money but for self-respect and to teach the overlords a lesson. The other main story involves a poor ronin, Unno (Chojuro Kawasaki) and his wife. Unno is trying to get a local merchant to read a letter from his father who had helped in the past in order to be given a position, but he is constantly rebuffed by the man. Eventually this leads another tragedy that closes out the film. The writing and production values are well-done and shows an expert at his peak. This film has been hailed by many critics and directors such as Akira Kurosawa as one of the best jidaigeki (period) films of all-time and I am in agreement with them.

The Deck Coffee & Pie

After eating lunch at Pho 123 Noodle Bar I stumbled across an interesting coffee shop, The Deck Coffee & Pie nearby. I had already eaten so I didn't try the pies, but they had a variety of gourmet varieties of beans and had a cuppa joe the deck would be nice on warmer days.

Like Someone In Love

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami has successfully bridged Japan culture into a universal tale of love, desire, and human connections in Like Someone In Love (2012). The story largely takes place in confined spaces: cars, a bar, a small apartment and the like. Akiko (Rin Takanashi) is a college student with a lot on her plate: a part-time job as a call girl, a visiting grandmother, and a violently jealous boyfriend (Ryo Kase) on top of studies at school. Her boss talks her into a job for a man that he respects, a former professor of his Watanabe (Tadashi Okuno) while dealing with the arrival of her grandmother from the countryside and a jealous boyfriend on the phone. The professor is more interested in companionship than sex and becomes entangled in Akiko's life when offers to drive her to school the next day and has a conversation with the jealous boyfriend who accosts Akiko before her exam. The following day Akiko asks for the professor's help, it seems that she has been beaten up by her boyfriend. While waiting for the professor to get an ice pack at a drug store, she has a conversation with the busybody neighbor that reveals a different side of the professor. The boyfriend then arrives to find her at he professor's apartment and the film ends with a shattered window. The story feels true to life and is not a contrived version of love and life in Japan and could take place anywhere in the world.

Pho 321 Noodle Bar

Yes, yet another winning find by The Japan Times' Robbie Swinnerton, Pho 123 Noodle Bar off the beaten path in Harajuku has authentic style Vietnamese pho on order. I went with the standard chicken, medium sized for ¥980 with fresh toppings to add as you like.

The Informers

I'm something of a completist, so I figured I still needed to read the last two Bret Easton Ellis novels, American Psycho and The Informers (1994). The Informers reads like a collection of short stories interlinking several characters who are slumbering through life at loose ends with little direction or drive. There is an element of fantasy and horror as it is revealed that some characters are vampires. Ellis is something of a moralist trying to reveal the evil and lack of morality in the mid 80s, even though the book was written in the mid 90s. I think some sections worked better than others, but there is the same sort of unease that builds over the course of the book. The people seem completely unknowable and distant as though they were from another culture. I like the slow descent into depravity as revealed through unanswered letters in "Letter from L.A." and the rock n roll excess of "Discovering Japan." I'm saving what many considered to be the best for last, American Psycho-which I feel I know somewhat intimately already since I have already seen the film and read much about it.

Diary Of A Teenage Girl

I have to admit that Diary Of A Teenage Girl (2015) is something of an auspicious debut by director/writer Marielle Heller. There is a strong ensemble cast as well with Bel Powley as a sexually adventurous teenage girl growing up in 70s San Francisco with a bohemian/permissive mother (Kirsten Wiig). She decides that she wants to lose her virginity to her mother's boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard) and this doesn't come off as creepy or needy, but it is not without its complications. It is essentially a non-traditional coming of age story that is a bit raw and in your face, but I suspect many people have had life experiences not unlike this. However, I think life is often in your face and doesn't unfold the way you always want it to.

Kamiyama

Robbie Swinnerton has unearthed another oasis in Shibuya, the charming Kamiyama that has a great ¥1000 soba lunch set. At night it operates as more of an izakya. It has a nice little entrance with bamboo and a window view also with bamboo. Reasonable priced food in a calm atmosphere.

Red Lion

I have enjoyed samurai films by Kihachi Okamoto in the past (Kill!, Sword Of Doom, and Yojimbo Meets Zatoichi) and thought that Red Lion (1969) with Toshiro Mifune would be an entertaining film. Generally speaking it lived up to that promise, but I couldn't help but feel that Mifune was hamming it up quite a bit here. It is something of a farce with Mifune playing a misguided would-be warrior, an illiterate peasant with dreams of glory. It is set during the last days of Shogunate rule and the dawn of the Meiji Restoration, a period of great flux and change. Mifune's peasant is again manipulated, this time by Sekihe samurai, who find in Mifune's Gonzo a patsy unwittingly ready and eager to do their dirty work. Mifune's Gonzo, adorned in an expansive red wig borrowed from the elite samurai "liberating" his hometown from oppression, and his former lover Tomi (Shima Iwashita) among them. Particularly in its final reels Red Lion is a real mess, but Mifune's performance, a variation on his Seven Samurai role, is entertaining for the most part-but he is laying it on thick.

Masculin Feminin

Masculin Feminin (1966) is another Jean-Luc Goddard 60s classic. It most concerns "the children of Marx and Coca Cola": a serious-minded, impressionable, romantic, Communist revolutionary, 21-year-old named Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud), just returning from his dreaded military obligation and getting his act together as a protester of the Vietnam War and as an activist in Parisian labor disputes. In a café he becomes smitten with Madeleine Zimmer (Chantal Goya, real-life star), a pretty girl his same age who aspires to be a pop singer. Madeleine stylishly dresses and plays hard to get but the two soon become lovers; he moves into her flat with her two roommates Elisabeth (Marlene Jobert) and Catherine (Catherine-Isabel Duport). In the end she gets  pregnant and he dies leaving her to deal with the future on her own. Throughout the film there are the usual Goddard tropes of young people living their lives. The Criterion treatment includes: archival 1966 interview with actress Chantal Goya, new video interviews with Goya, Kurant, and Jean-Luc Godard collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin, conducted in 2005, video discussion of the film between French film scholars Freddy Buache and Dominique Païni, Swedish television footage of Godard directing the “film within the film” scene, trailers for the original theatrical release and the 2005 rerelease, and a 16-page booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Adrian Martin and a reprint of a report from the set by French journalist Phillippe Labro.