Lost In Translation

Blade Runner 2049

I have to admit I was excited to hear that Denis Villeneuve (Sicario and Incendies) was the director for the sequel to one of my favorite Si-Fi films of all time, Blade Runner 2049 (2017). I was equally ecstatic to hear that Roger Deakins (most Coen brother films )was the cinematographer. It is also clear that the production team put together a great group for the art direction that seems to provide continuity for many of the same visual motifs from the original film, while creating anew one in Las Vegas based on the visual palette of Michaeangelo Antonioni's Red Desert. The only miscue in my opinion were the giant advertising holograms, which I thought were an unnecessary distraction and addition. The visual look if the first film was what was most important for me, but I was also hoping for a compelling story. I feel that it delivered on that level as well, it is a simple story not unlike it's predecessor and has call backs to the original film that might have put of viewers who were unfamiliar with the source material. All in all, I found it to be a very statisfying sequel-perhaps one of the best of all-time.

Soeurs

Soeurs is a little restaurant, only 8 seats, that specializes in Mediterranean food including exoctic fare such as Moroccan cuisine as well. I had my first Moroccan beer here.

This is a cold eggplant dish.

A seasonal  mushroom omelette prepared with a tajine.

Pasta with tomato sauce and nuts. The chef is very friendly and the food is excellent-there aren't so many Mediterranean places that do food like this. So I'll definitely be back again.

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold

Joan Didion is one of my favorite writers, I think her non-fiction is peerless-but her novels are more hit and miss for me. I was looking forward to Griffin Dunne's documentary on Didion, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017). I was unaware that he was her nephew, and this affects how he approaches his subject-protectively. There isn't much new territory covered here, but it allows for some choice readings of Didion's great writing and will likely create new readers among those who view the film having not know of the author before. I guess I was unaware of how chummy Didion and her late husband John Gregory Dunne were with entertainers and Hollywood types, but it isn't really surprising because I did know they wrote a couple of screenplays as well, most notably Panic in Needle Park. This reminds me that I still need to read Blue Nights and will at some point as I am a completest.

Shiva Dining

Shiva Dining is a fairly new Indian-Nepalese restaurant in the Pearl Street shotengai, it is a solid chocie. The M set above has two types of curry (keema and chicken potato), nan, tikka chicken, salad, and a drink (lassi) for ¥880.

Diabolique

Henri-Georges Clouzot has created a top notch thriller in Diabolique (1955). It is a murder mystery with a twist, a woman (Vera Clouzot) who owns a boarding school with her tyrant husband (Paul Meurisse) plans to murder him with his mistress (Simone Signoret). However, things do not go as planned.

Sasaki Seimenjo

Not long ago a new ramen shop opened near Tokyo Joshidai, Sasaki Seimenjo, and I tried it for the first time. I got the shio ramen for ¥800-light with thin noodles-so not too heavy for lunch.

A Hijacking

I recently learned that one of the writer-directors of the new Netflix crime series Mindhunter was Dane Tobias Lindholm from an episode recap, and the critic recommended his film A Hijacking (2012). This film came out the same year and was overshadowed by the Tom Hanks vehicle Captain Phillips, also about a hijacking on the high seas by Somali pirates. This film is realistic and shows the European point of view, which does not end with Navy Seals freeing the crew. I was also delighted to see Pilo Asbaek and Soren Malling in the lead roles, both of whom starred in the Danish TV drama Borgen, of which I was a fan-and where Lindholm was also a writer.

Portrait Of Hell

Shiro Toyoda's Portrait Of Hell (1969) starring Tatusya Nakadai feels something like an overlooked classic. I am familiar with Toyoda by reputation only; his films are hard to come by in the west. In this film, an adaptation of a classic story by Ryuosuke Akutagawa ("Rashomon"), he focuses on the theme of hell on earth. Nakadai plays a Korean master artist, Yoshihide, under the patron-ship of selfish and cruel daimyo, Hosokawa (Kinosuke Nakamura). Yoshihide also has his weakness as he is stubborn and arrogant-he refuses to let his daughter marry the man of her choice which leads to her being forced to become a concubine of Hosokawa and later is responsible for her death due to his pride. Toyoda uses cinematic techniques to maximize the effects of hell on earth with split screens, superimpositions, color filters, and distorted voices from the fiery depths that haunt the wicked still on earth.

Mindhunter

David Fincher's latest Netflix series, Mindhunter (2017), is another winner. This one is based on he true crime book Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit written by John E. Douglass and Mark Olshaker. It is set in 1977 where FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathon Goff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCanally) with the help of criminology academic Dr. Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) begin to interview serial killers in order to n order to understand how such criminals think and apply this knowledge to solving ongoing cases. The character actors that portray the real-life killers are exceptional in their roles. The series is smart and unconventional but also has the look of a Fincher film. So the cinematography is top notch as is the writing and acting. I liked the score and the 70s soundtrack even though sometimes it was "too-on-the-nose"-how could they leave out The Talking Heads "Psycho Killer"? I was pulled into the world and watched all ten episodes in three days and am very much looking forward to the second season.

The Lusty Men

Nicolas Ray (In A Lonely Place and Rebel Without A Cause) takes a look at the life of rodeo cowboys in The Lusty Men (1952). it star Robert Mitchum as Jeff McCloud, a former rodeo star, who has decided to hang up his rodeo spurs who meets an up and coming rodeo cowboy, Wes (Arthur Kennedy) and his wife Louise (Susan Hayward), and they decide to go on the road. All three actors put in great performances. McCloud has agreed to coach Wes for half of all the winnings, resentment builds as Wes turns out to be more successful than they imagined. Further strain builds as the temptations of rodeo, "belt buckle babies" (rodeo groupies) appear as do victory parties-McCloud also develops an attraction for Wes' wife. There is also some impressive cinematography and action scenes shot by Lee Grimes.