Links I Loved Part 2: Enya, Torture, Etc.

Okay so a little less than a month ago I wrote a post highlighting various articles that I had found and enjoyed along my Internet travels. Click here to revisit that stellar piece of writing. Anyway, in that article I decided to send a shout-out to my audience to comment if they would be willing to see more articles in the same vein latter on in my blog writing. And since my loyal reader El Lobo was cool with seeing more link based posts, I think I'm going to run with the idea and make such posts a regular part of the blog. So without further ado, here's a miscellaneous collection of Internet based stuff that I have enjoyed:

Daniel Craig on Enya and Torture:  Hands down one of my favorite moments from the David Fincher remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was the use of Enya's "Orinoco Flow" in the background as Daniel Craig's Mikael Blomkvist is being tortured by the film's killer.  It was such an excellent, unexpected juxtaposition.  Curious as to what others thought of this scene I did a quick search online to find more information.  As a result I found this short article that explains how the vintage Enya track was selected to accompany the crucial scene. I'm not going to summarize the article here as you can read it for yourself in like five seconds, and you should as it's a rather entertaining tidbit on one of my favorite movie moments of the last year.  Now can somebody get Enya herself to comment on the scene, 'cause I'd love to read that.

On a related note, check out this New York Times article from the mid-1990's which chronicles the trend in film of juxtaposing scenes of brutality with innocuous pop tunes.  This article is made all the more interesting by the fact that it was written well over a decade before The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  It's thus a testament to the film that the Enya torture scene felt as fresh and effective as it did.  Or maybe I'm just a sucker for these types of juxtapositions.

The Grey trailer:  Okay, I realize that a dude vs. wolves movie would normally sound pretty idiotic, but you stick Liam Neeson in the lead and suddenly it seems worthy of a watch.  I'm not saying it'll be a cinematic masterpiece, but I personally can't wait to see Liam Neeson continue to develop his badass action persona of Taken fame.  Humorously, there was at one point even Oscar buzz for Neeson's role in The Grey.  Check out this article about the film's release date which writes, "...most of the buyers who previewed some 30 minutes of footage from The Grey are describing Neeson's lead turn as pure 'Oscar bait'".  Personally I couldn't care less about acting chops.  I just want to see some wolves get their asses kicked in the most outrageous way possible.

Retro Polish and Czech posters for kaiju movies:  As the title says, here's a collection of posters for Japanese monsters movies from Poland and Czechoslovakia.  The posters date back from the late 1950's to the early 1980's and they are obscenely cool.  The Polish Godzilla vs. Hedorah poster from 1971 is particularly awesome with Hedorah's eyes and body pattern in the shape of Godzilla's distinctive silhouette.  It's very cool and iconic looking.

The Seventh Seal

I recently had the opportunity to see the 1957 Swedish film The Seventh Seal in theaters.  I jumped at the chance to see the film as I had heard great things about it, especially from my trusted friend El Lobo who has mentioned the movie a few times in his blog.  The Seventh Seal was written and directed by the acclaimed filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.  Truthfully, my knowledge of Bergman's career and life history is rather lacking.  The only previous movie I'd watched from the man was The Virgin Spring, and I gave that one a go simply because of its well-documented influence on the 1970's horror film The Last House on the Left.  But this was part of the reason I wanted to see The Seventh Seal, to broaden my knowledge and to experience a classic for the first time in a theatrical setting (rather than watching it alone on my grungy laptop screen, for example).

The Seventh Seal is in the medieval Europe during the plague, where the ever-present threat of sickness and death loom large.  The film begins with Death approaching a knight (played by Max von Sydow) on a shoreline.  Death has come to take the knight's life, but in a clever effort to delay his inevitable death, challenges Death to a game of chess.  Death agrees, choosing to play the black pieces ("It becomes me well", he says).  I loved the imagery of the hooded and robed figure of Death standing against the shore.  At the risk of sounding like a 15 year-old goth, I have always found personifications of death to be both incredibly interesting and appealing.  The representation of Death on display in The Seventh Seal appealed to me through its clean, iconic look as well as its playful characterization (the idea that Death would acquiesce to a game of chess with a mortal is innately intriguing).

The character of the knight, dubbed Antonius Block, is also an intriguing personality.  Disillusioned by the events around him, Block desperately wants to believe in a god, but is continuously frustrated by the lack of evidence supporting the existence of a higher power.  The knight's crisis of faith is well illustrated in the confessional scene in which Block laments, "What will become of us who want to believe, but cannot?  And what of those who neither will nor can believe?", to the figure of Death who Block mistakes for a priest.  The knight's struggles for certainty in his beliefs raise interesting questions about the nature of faith.

And it's easy for the audience to sympathize with Block's crisis of faith as the harsh realities of life during the Black Death leave many people vulnerable to manipulation.  This is hauntingly illustrated in the film during a scene in which a young girl, accused of causing the plague through her relationship with the devil, is burned at the stake.  Unable to face the up to their bleak reality, it is all too easy to displace one's problems onto a scapegoat.  But this is one of the things that makes the film's medieval setting so fascinating.  It is interesting to watch what happens to people's beliefs and convictions when disease and death become a major part of the reality of everyday life.

Thanks again to El Lobo for recommending The Seventh Seal.  I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and found that the images and themes presented in the story gave me plenty to mull over and think about for hours afterward.  I look forward to reading more about the film, and discovering more about the environment in which it was written, filmed, and released.

New Year's Resolutions

With the inevitable passing of 2011 now behind us, I took some time to reflect on my life in the past year and scheme on how I want the upcoming year to play out. But I refuse to participate in those cliche New Year's resolutions relating to exercise and finance and the like. Instead I have composed a list of goals for the upcoming year which are considerably more nerdy, obsessive, and trivial in variety. I thought these goals would make for some great Zombie Baby fodder as they place undue seriousness on matters of trivial minutia. But what could be a greater way to plan out your life, you know?

Let me start out by describing what I'm going for here. As a mortal, I am aware of how finite time is, and I'm all about having maximum fun in the inevitably limited time I have on this earth. And being a being a human of the geeky persuasion, maximum fun means watching as many movies and reading as many books as possible. I don't want to be lying on my deathbed thinking, "Damn, I wish I'd watched Tokyo Gore Police more often". So with that in mind I'm always up for maximizing my free time and making the most of it. It is all too easy to waste hours on the Internet. Such activity provides some basic entertainment, sure, but the emotional and intellectual payoff of web surfing is minimal at best.

Tokyo Gore Police

So I try to be conscious of my free time and to wield it with care and caution as any responsible slacker ought to do. So with that in mind, I've calculated the number of books and movies I would like to consume in the upcoming year, as well as the number of blog posts I'd like to produce. The numbers are as follows: I would like to watch 500 movies, read 50 books, and write 100 blog posts in 2012. I came up with these numbers by examining how I spent my free time in 2011 and by calculating roughly how much more I could feasibly cram into my leisure time. Those interested in 2011's numbers can look at the lists I kept online of what I watched and read. Click here to see what I watched and click here to see what I read in the past year. Naturally you can simply look at the blog archives to see what I previously wrote (and why wouldn't you want to revisit my old posts? That shit is gold!).

I should probably add that I won't be posting regular updates on my progress on these goals on this blog, but those interested in such things can track what I watch here and what I read here.  I always find it fun to peek at what other people read and watch, so here's me giving back.

So how about you guys, what are your plans for the upcoming year?

I Hate Twitter

Here's something I'm shocked that I haven't written about yet: my intense hatred for Twitter.  Over the summer I wrote about how I have long harbored a distaste for Facebook, but this is worse.  As vapid as Facebook often is, I can still understand its usefulness as a tool.  I also have to say that Facebook, unlike Twitter, has provided me with some entertainment and worthwhile distraction in the past.  Granted I pretty much lost interest in in Facebook two or three years ago, but at least there was a period in my life when it did have relevance.  On the other hand Twitter has never had any relevance in my life.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to understand Twitter.  It's something that a large number of people find compelling and enjoyable and I would love to share in their joy.  But I've tried and I ultimately just can't get into it.  Not only do I find the website dull, but there are a lot of elements to its design/popular use that I find actively irritating.

Firstly, and most obviously, I hate the 140-character limit.  Yes you can consume thoughts more quickly when they are packaged in tweet form, but more often than not I find that such writing sacrifices depth for brevity.  Much of the pleasure of reading for me comes from getting comfortable with the author's voice and becoming absorbed in their words and ideas.  I find this type of enjoyment missing from the world of tweets.  Before I can get really absorbed into the author's argument, they've already switched to a new topic.  While some might argue that such writing allows for a larger scope of topics to be covered, I rarely see Twitter users take advantage of the medium in this way.

Also I despise people who use Twitter to broadcast their "witty" thoughts and observations about the people and events occurring around them.  Even worse are the users who attempt to compose snarky commentary about the people around them.  I have seen way too many people post inane tweets about "fashion don'ts" and the like that they observe in the world around them.  The passive aggressive sarcasm contained within these posts pisses me off.  It's so pathetic to write judgmental comments about someone from behind your computer screen instead of saying something to that person's face.  In this way I hate how Twitter acts as an enabler  for the mindless negativity of society's cowards.  On a less severe note I'm also bored with all the fake Twitter accounts that chronicle the lives of fictional characters.  They were amusing a year or so ago, but the joke's been done before and now they're simply tedious.

A rather small component of Twitter that absolutely drives me nuts are the short biographies that users write about themselves on their Twitter page.  I hate them because more often than not they are hellishly pretentious.  You know the type of thing I'm talking about, "student.  artist.  writer."  (I made that bio up, but the format and content is very closely based off many real user biographies I have seen on Twitter).  If I have to describe to you why such self-indulgent self description is loathsome then you'll never get it.

Lest I be too negative (oops, too late) I would like to close my post with a mention of the one thing I love about Twitter, the infamous Fail Whale.  I love it because it's ridiculously cute.  I love the serene expression on its face as the multitude of birds strain to lift its massive whale body.  It's a fantastic image.

Kinji Fukasaku's Graveyard of Honor

This afternoon I took the time to watch Kinji Fukasaku's 1975 yakuza film Graveyard of Honor. Fukasaku is perhaps most famous amongst youngsters as the director of Battle Royale (2000), the film in which schoolchildren are pitted against each other on an island and forced to fight to the death. Before Battle Royale went into production, though, Fukasaku had already had a lengthy and productive directorial career. Fukasaku was particularly well-versed in the crime genre. His five film series The Yakuza Papers (1973-74), in particular, stands as a landmark moment in the yakuza genre for many film historians and critics.

All that being said, I was pretty unawre of Kinji Fukasaku's pre-Battle Royale output before this year. I first became interested in his sixties and seventies films after watching the relatively obscure Blackmail Is My Life (1968) on Netflix. Though I watched it on a mere whim, I walked away impressed with the incredibly stylish and amoral world presented in the film. Despite being over forty years old, Blackmail still felt fresh and hip and I became interested in seeking out similar fare.

Which leads me, of course, to Graveyard of Honor. I viewed Graveyard today with moderate expectations that were exceeded by the wild and frenetic ride that the movie presented. Regarding plot Graveyard of Honor is basically your standard rise and fall story, though the movie places considerably greater emphasis on the protagonist's fall from power than his ascent. But with a descent this spectacular, bloody, and dramatic, such a choice is difficult to argue with.

The film's self-destructive protagonist is Rikio Ishikawa (played by Tetsuya Watari, who might be most recognizable to American audiences as the lead in 1966's Tokyo Drifter), a hyper-violent yakuza with a severe lack of impulse control. Ishikawa sees himself as a balloon, which continuously rises through the air until it inevitably pops. The balloon metaphor is echoed multiple times in the film's visuals. At various points in the movie there are shots in which a singular red balloon is prominently displayed on screen. Far from being cheesy, I found the balloon motif to be an effective way of creating a visual link between all the different various events in the film. Shots of the balloon serenely floating in the air also made for a chilling and effective juxtaposition against the chaotic violence of the rest of the movie.

Speaking of the violence, I was impressed with how disorienting and frenetic the film's moments of violence were. Blood flows freely here, in shockingly vibrant shades of red. True, the blood on display in Graveyard of Honor looks very garish and 1970's, but to me that only adds to the brashness of the action and the retro appeal of the film.

Rikio Ishikawa, the film's aforementioned lead, is the most frequent and unpredictable perpetrator of the bloodshed. As such he's a difficult character to sympathize with fully, but he's a thrilling figure to watch. Ishikawa moves with an animalistic intensity, cutting and gutting anyone who dares get in his way. From the outset it is clear that Ishikawa is on the fast track to complete self-destruction, but one might be surprised at the havoc he will cause and the trials he must endure before getting there.

Those in the market for bold films with style to spare should give Graveyard of Honor a go.  Watching this film fueled my desire to further explore Japanese crime movies, and, as always, I look forward to learning more.

The Kid Whisperer

The book I'm currently reading is entitled The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence and is written by authors Henry A. Giroux and Grace Pollock. Mouse That Roared is a rather dry academic diatribe against Disney's corporate ills. Academic ramblings aside, I did find one interesting bit of trivia regarding Disney's corporate research team in my reading. In the authors' words, "On way in which Disney discovers 'emotional hooks' that lure boys into the 'wonderful world of Disney' is to hire child psychologists, anthropologists, and other researchers, such as Kelly Peña, also known as the 'Kid Whisperer'".

First off, what an awesome nickname. Second, I love that somewhere in the world there exists a group of full grown adults whose job it is to observe and study children, all for the sake of Disney's bottom line. I was intrigued by this sentence in Mouse That Roared, so I decided to do a quick bit of supplementary research on my own online. After a speedy online search I came up with this awesome New York Times article on the aforementioned Kid Whisperer.

A quick summary of the article for those not interested in reading it: basically in an effort to try to seize the attentions of the lucrative 6-14 year-old boy market, Disney hires researchers to study young male test subjects. These researchers assemble notes on their encounters and hand these notes to Disney, who uses the research in the creation and marketing of their media properties. The investigative work these teams do, according to the New York Times article, involves researchers going through the boys' closets, watching them shop, and conducting one-on-one interviews.

I found this story fascinating. It provides a tantalizing look behind the scenes at the marketing machine that is Disney. It also sheds a bit of light on some interesting individuals I'd love to know more about. I want to know what makes the members of this research team tick. I mean, how surreal would it be to get paid to go through a 12-year-old's sock drawer?

2011: A Year of Nostalgia

Last month my dear friend El Lobo wrote a post titled "2011 Has Been Boring". Besides having a fantastic title (simple, straight forward and charmingly negative), he made a rather convincing argument that 2011 pretty much sucked in terms of pop cultural output. And while I'm not one to disagree with him, there was one trend in 2011 that I absolutely bought into, and that was the way in which numerous Hollywood films capitalized on our collective nostalgia.

I'm not going to produce a comprehensive list of every nostalgia inducing theatrical release, but here are a few I can think of off the top of my head: Super 8, Winnie the Pooh, The Muppets, Hugo, and the re-release of The Lion King. These titles used different strategies to capitalize on nostalgia. Pooh and The Muppets promised to reunite audiences with beloved characters, but in the context of all new storylines. Super 8 and Hugo expressed nostalgia for bygone eras and, more generally, the emotions and relationships of childhood. And as for the 3-D re-release of The Lion King? Well, that was pretty much a straight up cash in, but it was one I bought into and thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless.

I've read before that nostalgia for the past is indicative of a deep dissatisfaction with the present and a fear for the future. Perhaps then the current interest in nostalgia-inducing movies stems from the economic hardships many face in today's weak economy. Another possible reason for the plethora of nostalgia pictures is that they appeal to a broad range of people. Not only does Pooh bring in the kiddies, but it also appeals to childless twentysomethings like me who grew up with the franchise and would love an opportunity to revisit the Hundred Acre Wood. And obviously a larger Pooh-watching demographic means more cash for Disney.

And that brings me to another point, that from a spectator's standpoint I'm really loving these films. I suspect I'm not the only one. During screenings for both The Lion King and The Muppets I have watched the audience spontaneously burst into applause as the final credits rolled. This is something I don't see everyday, so I always find it touching to witness collective applause when it happens.

Good news for the nostalgia fans is that the such releases show no signs of stopping as we approach the new year. The first half of 2012 alone will see 3-D theatrical re-releases for the late nineties blockbusters Titanic and Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. While it's scary to me that the we've come far enough away from the 1990's that the decade can now carry nostalgic clout, I have to otherwise reiterate that I'm kind of loving this trend. Granted studios can, and probably will, end up taking this trend too far and run it into the ground, but for now let's all bask in the warm nostalgic glow of clever marketing.