masaki kobayashi's the human condition: reissue of the year

over the years, ive made no secret of my opinions on gritty war films, especially japanese ones. kurosawa is one of my favorite directors of all time and i find ran, kagemusha, and seven samurai to be masterpieces. i love kon ichikawa's fires on the plain and am a sucker for ozu's sentimental tales of japanese post war insecurity.

when i initially heard about THE HUMAN CONDITION, a 9 1/2 hr 6 part epic from masaki kobayashi (director of the outstanding SEPPUKU), i was intrigued but daunted by the undertaking of yet another epic film. but since this one starred tatsuya nakadai, i rolled up my sleeves, ordered a disc a week and dove in.

since i became an extreme cinephile, i can tell whether or not im going to fall head over heels in love with a movie in the first 20 minutes or so. and with this one, i was entranced in the first few minutes. ever since i met kaji, the main character (played by nakadai), i knew that i was going to enjoy spending 10 hours with him.

kaji is a pacifist, a socialist, and incredibly naive. he seems himself as the voice of reason and humanity in an insane time. he is madly in love with his wife, michiko but not enough to go back on his ideals. throughout the ten hours, we follow kaji through being the boss in a chinese labor camp to being sent to the front of the war for his ideals and finally, as a POW in a russian war camp. in each step of his harrowing struggles, we see the pain and frustration of war and what it does to a human being. each part of the film, he has to endure some crisis of faith and conscious.

while the things kaji is doing are awful, it is all in the name to return to michiko and to find a good life for the both of them. despite all the killing and struggle to survive, never does kaji waver from his central core of beliefs. what is painful is watching him see that humanity isnt as good as he thought. throughout the first 3 parts of the series, kaji believed in the communist philosophy and that his new life was meant to be in russia with people who were more civilized and fair. but like the japanese and chinese, the russians too were brutal and violent. so he continues to search and make his way back to michiko despite all these forces against him.

SPOILERS BEGIN

he doesnt make it but the final scene of him lying dead in a desolate plane is so heartbreaking and beautiful (in a sad and gut wrenching way)

SPOILERS OVER

the execution of the above is painful to watch and left me feeling incredibly empty inside. i was so moved by the final scenes and the love in kaji's heart. i didnt cry. i couldnt. i just felt cold and empty. i needed to cuddle a cat but there werent any cats so i watched cartoons.

however, what the movie taught is that love can survive in the hardest and lonliest places. at the same time, since kaji never betrayed his own ability, one cant help wonder if things would have been easier for him. but then again, i guess that this isnt the point of the movie. the point is to embrace the struggle of humanity.

if you cant tell, i was completely floored by this movie. im not sure how its been out of the mainstream for so long but THE HUMAN CONDITION needs to return to the collective conscious of the movie-going public. or at least be fawned upon by critics and filmies alike (which looks like its happening!) this is definitely my favorite DVD watch of 2009 and among my favorite films of all time. absolutely amazing.

i need to go cuddle a cat.

i call it the tingler!

in celebration of halloween, i decided to watch my favorite B-horror film ever, THE TINGLER. made into 1959 and starring vincent price with direction from the legendary b movie director william castle, this is about fear and how it manifests itself. not in the figurative sense, but in the literal way; as in, fear is an organism that builds on the spine of a human and is released through screaming. if a person is not allowed to scream, the creature on the spine builds and kills the person.

make no mistake, this is one of the silliest movies ive ever seen and without a doubt, one of hte most entertaining. and there are fantastic moments of well filmed terror. there is a great sequence that combines B&W with color, a rich red color representing blood which is first seen dripping out of a faucet and then the camera pans to a bathtub FULL of blood. awesome.

and then there is the amaing "science [very fictional]" in the movie. for example, deaf people die of fear. they dont have a chance if theyre scared really badly.

there is something so fun in the massive absurdity of it and the presence of vincent price makes everything better.

i love that this could be a parody of 50s sci fi films in the vein of LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA or THE TRAIL OF THE SCREAMING FOREHEAD.

im not really sure where im going with this...aside from saying that THE TINGLER IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!1

RECENT WATCHING - OCTOBER

if you read a bunch of your recent posts, you remember that i stopped writing about films and made this my travel journal. yes, i went to the UK for 2 weeks had an awesome and didnt watch a single film setting a new non-movie watching record. that was the first time in probably about 5 years that i havent watched at least 1 movie in a week. how outstanding is that? anyway, i got back and indeed, the movie watching resumed. here is a quick recap of my recent watching since returning from my trip:

THEY WONT FORGET

a superior melvyn leroy film from the 30s. this is notable for a). claude rains donning a southern accent and b). lana turner's first onscreen role. if its amazing how much charisma and screen appeal she had when she was 15. turner's character is killed and a murder mystery develops in a small southern town. good film with solid performances

PASSAGE TO MARSIELLE

the claude rains-athon continues! this michael curtiz director film from the 40s stars humphrey bogart, peter lorre, and syndey greenstreet alongside rains. for film buffs, you will note that this the core that made up casablanca, curtiz's legendary film made the year earlier. aside from the cinematic interest of seeing this reteaming, the film is told in flashback...in a flashback...in a flashback. its not a great movie, but an interesting watch overall. also, as an interesting aside, this film stars michelle morgan, the french actress that curtiz originally watched cast in casablanca for the role that went to ingrid bergman. morgan turned the role because she wasnt offered enough money

WHERE DANGER LIVES

the last film in my claude rains-a-thon also stars robert mitchum and mauren o'sullivan. this is an excellent film noir about a doctor who falls in love with a insane patient. to make things more complex, mitchum gets a concussion and is slowly deteriorate healthwise as the film progresses. its DOA mixed with a lil hitchcock (notorious perhaps). great noir!

UNDERCURRENT

from claude rains and robert mitchum, i moved on to a robert mitchum movie. a vincent minelli noir also with katherine hepburn making a rare film noir appearance! robert taylor plays hepburn's husband which might be crazy and trying to kill her and its up to mitchum to save the day. if someone needed to save my life, i would probably choose mitchum too. shes in good hands.

THE BANK JOB

lets move forward in time by ahead 60 years. this was the jason statham 2008 film which was actually pretty good. ive always been a sucker for a well done heist film and this is indeed one of them. not much to say about it aside from it was solid and entertaining.

GREY GARDENS

this is referring to the HBO film with jessica lange and drew barrymore from earlier this year. ive of course seen the maylses brothers documentaries (grey gardens and beales of grey gardens) and find big and little edie to be two of the most fascinating crazies ever to live. this film is actually a nice little footnote to the docs and provide some more background information on the lives of the beales mother/daughter. i can see how they didnt get a theatrical release but as a TV film, its a good watch.

CLEAN, SHAVEN

weird. creepy. unsettling. interesting. 90s indie at my peculiar.

METROPOLITAN

another 90s indie movie, director wilt stilman's debut (last days of disco, barcelona). this one is in the vein of yuppie talking movies (thanks IMDB). this shares a couple cast members from kicking from screaming, another one of my favorite 90s indie movies about nothing. metropolitan is a satircal film about the vapid lives of new york debutantes. its a nice social commentary with witty conversation. a decent, engaging film overall

curious about curious

years ago, i watched I AM CURIOUS YELLOW a 1967 genre mixing swedish film that combines frank sexual politics, gender roles, and fiercely political socialist rhetoric. i must admit that i initially rented it because i heard about the boatloads of nudity and sex in it. it was one of the first major films to depict sexuality in such a way and i was curious (har har). the film is not a sexy one and at times is very dull and if youre not interested in gender roles and socialism, then this movie is not for you.

luckily, i am.

the star of the film lena nyman delivers one of the bravest performances in film history. her frank sexuality and openness with her body was remarkable for 1967 and director vilgot sjoman managed to create a film that was marketed as pornographic but is way more political than anything else. it even features a quick interview with martin luther king, jr about his views on civil disobidience! for a film that a lot of people initially wanted to watch for tits, this is a pretty big departure.

despite all this admiration i had for this blue, i didnt really enjoy it very much. flashforward ahead 2 years later and i watched THIS IS CURIOUS BLUE, the follow-up film done the year after. its a continuation of the ideals and politicisizing of the first time but with a decidedly more bitter and ironic tone. to be honest, i really preferred this one.

with both of the films, there are elements are staged documentary and filmed sequences and in this one the film between fiction and non-fiction was blurrier. my favorite scene was a staged conversation betweeen sjoman and lena about wavering committment to the film. it was a staged scene but the feel was so natural and completely shatters the fourth wall of cinema.

there are even some michael moore-like displays of civil disobidience and literally tearing down the walls of western political society in favor of a socialist regime. BRILLIANT! any idea what i just said? no well...ummm...lena nyman is naked a bunch of times again. believe me, you see everything. open and spread-bare political rhetoric and all!

i just dont like 8 1/2

this is going to be a short one.

tonight i re-watched frederico fellini's masterpiece 8 1/2. unanimously considered one of the greatest films ever made, i never gave it a serious watch. i tried watching it about 5 years ago but couldnt get into it. however, a lot has changed in those years. during that time, ive experienced virtually all of fellini's catalog and enjoy quite a bit of it. ive gotten into luis bunuel and dusan makavajev; really out there filmmakers. so, when i saw it was going to be on turner classic movies, i DVR'd it to gave it a second chance.

and the result was pretty much the same.

i still dont like it. i think its wierd, often dull, and though i agree that the direction as well as marcello mastroianni's performance are excellent, if not sublime, the movie as a whole is lost on me.

in some ways, im kind of glad that im not going crazy for this because it means that not every film in the upper echelon i like. if my tastes as to what is the best of the best is the same as everyone else, it wouldnt terriblt original for me now would it.

so with that, 8 1/2, the searchers, and l'atalante would never be in my top 100 (or 10000!) of all time.

the joy of being a captive audience

its been 2 weeks since i watched a movie. i slept on the plane ride over to the UK and whilst in the UK, i only watched season 2 of burn notice so i spent OVER two weeks not watching any movies. this is some sort of personal starvation record of film. though now that im home and facing a full DVR, i whet my appetite with a couple movies on the way back.

people watch movies on planes that they would NEVER watch in a theater or even DVR but with 7 hours and no charged laptop battery, watching YEAR ONE with jack black and michael cera seemed like a great idea. i had some vague interest in seeing this in theaters but the extraordinarily bad reviews swayed me and my $12 but at 30,000 ft, i was pretty excited to see it. there were other options but im not sure you can call terminator: salvation an option.

while i didnt love the film, i laughed consistently throughout the picture. it was actually not a bad watch and had some genuinely funny moments. when it was finished, i was happy. i had actually benefited from being a totally captive audience. to even more of a suprise, i started watching the latest woody allen movie whatever works and didnt enjoy it as much as i thought i did. however, i only watched half of it as i fell deathly ill 45 minutes in and collasped after a horriffic trip to the lavatory but that is TMI.

but back to year one.

how often has that happened to people? they get on a plane, watch a movie they would never see in theatres and end up enjoying it. quite often. i also watched marley and me.

well, i sort of watched marley and me. i didnt actually listen to the soundtrack but i caught myself looking up every now and again at it. i didnt want to watch this for many reasons, namely: 1. its a family film, 2. jennifer aniston, 3. owen wilson, 4 (and most important): i know that the freakin dog dies and when did i look up? WHEN THE DOG WAS AT THE FUCKING VET AND BEING PUT TO SLEEP!!!!!!!! and yes, i got teary. from a movie i wasnt watching without a soundtrack.

i changed my mind. being a captive audience sucks.

did i also mention i watched the last 30 minutes of transformers 2 on the plane as well and considered attempting to crash the plane to avoid anyone else having to watch it when it looped again.

great, now im on a no fly list for that statement. dear, government, i didnt actually mean that last statement. it was meant in jest because transformers is evil. please remove my name from no fly lists as it was a joke. sincerely, mpathy h

Day 12-14: the highlands, the peat, the sheep, and the sheep

in scotland there are approximately 34598098230948267821098 sheep to people. i discovered this on my way up to inverness from edinburgh. it was to leave edinburgh so early as it is really a fantastic city with excellent food and terrific ambiance and my good friend stef, a canadian.

we drove up via pitlochry, a small quaint town which is mostly a whiskey distilling town including blair athol which is one of the makers and suppliers of bells blended whiskey. they also make an awesome single malt and is one the older distillers in scotland. we of course went on a tour and cathy even tried whiskey and i have a series of 3 pictures detailing it. i am not going to describe them as the pictures each tell a thousand words, mostly hilarious...for the viewer.

however i am getting ahead of myself. before going up to pitlochry, we stopped at stirling which has an impressive castle. a very impressive castle in fact and if you know braveheart, you will know that this castle was the one of robert the bruce, the king of scotland during the time of william wallace. also at stirling castle was the residence of mary queen of scots for a bit and that of james the 2nd. the views from the top are amazing and i can definitely see how a ghost would want to haunt this castle (which it does). there was a murder most foul there and the dead guy's ghost haunts the ground. definitely not a bad haunt.

the town of stirling is, like most olde cities, walled in with the old section of the city looking well...old. its also on a giant hill. so cathy and i climbed up to the top of the hill where the castle roosts. i told cathy there wasnt a parking lot knowing full well there was. so we walked the mile uphill...happily! it was a great view all the way up

we went on a castle tour and enjoyed it thoroughly.

after that, we went to the william wallace monument. we didnt walk up the tower because it was too expensive and we were already at the top of a mountain.

after that it was up to pitlochry and enjoyed the quaintness as well as the whiskey. mostly the whiskey.

the drive up through the highlands was amazing. i am going to try and describe it. so, there werent mountains but hills and there werent any "towns" just tiny tiny villages but none of these were actually visible through the road. it was just hours of peat covered hills with craploads of sheep all around us. little white dots on the mountainside that look like snow; they give a lot of character to the hills. there were also highland cows, long haired cows with huge horns.

it was just like this hours and it never got old.

we arrived up in inverness rather late at night and went out to a dinner at a swanky restaurant. it was a bit overpriced but fish up there is fantastic. trout and salmon were as fresh as iceland , boston, and the west coast combined.

the next day we went to culloden battlefield, clava cairns, and loch ness.

clava cairns is a series of a neolithic burial chambers from 2000 BC. around each chamber were a series of standing rocks. it was like stonehenge but not as impressive but still pretty remarkable when you together that 4000 years ago, olde timey humans were doing stuff in the very sheep covered grounds you are standing in. the air was mysterious and a bit cold and wet but it was raining.

next up, we to culloden battlefield. in was on this battlefield that the dream of an independent scotland died. this was the site of the last battle on english soil. on this battlefield was the last stand of the jacobites and their energetic leader bonnie prince charlie. it was an exceedingly bloody and tragic battle for scotland and the guides were clearly still affected. the moor that the battle was fought on war was surrounded by nothing and just an eerie flat landscape where thousands of people died. i encourage you all to look up the battle of culloden and watch the peter watkins film about culloden. also, tilda swinton lives near there! if i had more time i would have went to her town and waited and tell her how awesome she is. the last of england...hell yeah! the deep end? ORLANDO!? YEAH!

but i digress. last stop was loch ness. there is a common misconception that people go there for the monster. no. it is the largest fresh body of water in britain and is also home to uruhquart castle, some of finest castle ruins in the north of scotland. its right on the water and is picturesque. the loch is also surrounded on all sides by magnificent hills so the loch ness monster is really almost an after thought when compared to the brilliant scenery. we took a boat out that went to the castle and cruised around. lovely!

at that this point, i still hadnt got into any accidents with the car. ill cut off your curiousities now and say that i didnt get into any accidents at any point and got the full deposit back on the car. so :P to all of you. however, we paid for gas upfront and we were told to return the car empty, something that i took literally and when we pulled into the parking lot of our hotel (sorry car park) the gas gauge said we had about 24 miles left till the car runs completely out of gas. all we need to do was drive to the airport.

end of story for now.

that night we went to see franz ferdinand, the native sons of scotland, at a TINY venue in inverness. normally, these guys play to arena in the UK and large 5000 person theatres in the US and seeing them in a venue that holds 1500 is amazing and unique. unfortunately, there were about 2000 people there and the venue was COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY PACKED! we spent the entire concert halfway between the inside and outside of the venue. we were literally standing in the double doorway that opens to the dancefloor because we didnt want to getting too inside. yeah, this was definitely way too overbooked. however, we both enjoyed the show quite a bit. immensely in fact as both of us are fans of this delightful scottish dancey pop group.

that was the last night of our trip im afraid

the final day however was an eventful and busy busy day. we did the following

- got in our car which stopped registering how much gas we had left and we made it...BARELY to inverness airport whcih was actually about 15 miles out of inverness. we were so close to running out of gas

- the happiest moment of the trip for me was seeing the 250 quid deposit for the rental car credited back to my credit card

- flew to london gatwick

- dropped our bags (which weighed 60 kg, or 150 lbs total) at victoria station baggage drop and hopped on the tube to knightsbridge

- knightsbridge is the stop of harrod's the famous department store in london which has everything. literally. everything. its posh, opulent, decadent, and has a 7 story egyptian escalator.

- we went to high tea at the georgian restaurant there on the 5th floor and had traditional high tea with sandwhiches, scones, tea, and cakes AND a chocolate tea (in celebration for chocolate week at harrod's) with chocolate cake fruit sandwhiches, chocolate chip scones, and white chocolat ein whcih to dip fruits ::drools::

- gave meera offensive thing from york. she LOVED it.

- bolted out of harrod's, went back to victoria, picked up our bags, and headed towards paddington. at this point, it was 530 and our flight leave at 730.

- at paddington, we got on the heathrow express at 556 and was at terminal 5 by 615

yes, we made our flight. BARELY. we made final boarding call and got on the plane. SUCCESS

our flight home was without incident and we got home at 1130 which would have been earlier if we could actually find our car in the tech square parking garage (third floor, front)

and that was it. we were back in stupid america. we ARE back. ill have more thoughts on this but i have to lot to do. i have to deal with the pictures and start scrapbooking the trip and of course start watching the incredible amount of stuff on my DVR which is 100% full and that is not even counting the last 3 eps of curb, bored to death, always sunny, and mad men which are waiting on demand for me.

fin.