Japan Ai

Appealing to girls, fangirls, comic chicks, and girls who dream of visiting Japan. This tall girl's adventure is a comic travel log from when Aimee Major Steinberger and two of her closest friends dropped everything to go to Japan to shop, lounge in the onsen, and see the Volks headquarters where her favourite doll is made. And yes, its main appeal is toward girls.

Bright colours or black and white sketches (or both) and a handwritten blurb decorate each page with pieces of Aimee's adventures and explains various pieces of Japanese culture she runs into, including all the lolita fashion shops, cosplaying, Kyoto shrines, and the Harajuku district.

The story was great because it wasn't straight forward. They had misadventures, misfortunes, and even shook things up in the bathhouse. Aimee got to live out a dream so many of us only ever can dream about. I loved the way she zoomed through the best of Japanese youth culture, and I didn't feel like I missed anything.
To top it off, if anyone felt like they did miss something, Go! Comi has over 60 pages of unpublished pages from Aimee's travel journal they didn't have room to print!

Girly: 10/10 Fun: 10/10 Comic-feel: 7/10 Desire to go to Japan increased by: 100000/10

The Eye / Gin gwai

In celebration of the downright Americanized COPY of the Chinese film Gin gwai, I've unearthed my copy of The Eye and revisited the awesome horror for purposes of review. It's going to be hard not to tell you about the biggest difference between the two, but I can just say "hollywood-ized."

This film was unlike any Asian horror I've ever seen. Angelica Lee remains so incredibly gorgeous, even as dulled down to 'Plain Jane' as she was. I was saddened with how Hollywood-esque they made the lead in the American version (and on top of that, she wasn't a very convincing blind-nearly-her-whole-life), but what can you expect? But the new one was almost exactly like the Pang Brothers' one, save for the ending.

I would have liked to have seen more develop between Mun and Dr. Wah (he had mentioned that she was more than a patient to him about halfway through). I also wanted to see more ghosts. I mean, don't get me wrong. The ghosts were great (the woman in the window of the diner was extremely creepy with that scary tongue and all). I had hoped that each ghost revealed would also reveal perhaps how that ghost had died, but that wasn't so for a couple of them.

The effects were classically cultist of original Asian horror cinema. Of course, that means they were home-made, yet awesome. The 'pop out and scare you' vibe was first class. They used the music well to keep the tension alive. And holy crap, the fiery bodies. You must see them.

fx: 8/10. story development: 9/10 fear factor: 8/10

Perfume

Das Parfum: Die Gescheicht eines Mördedrs, written by Patrick Süskind was excellent. Not a minute of reading it was wasted. It should have been a rather quick read (the pacing made it so in many places), but I kept getting distracted.

The book focuses on scent, a concept that cannot be grasped by smelling the page, but by diction (and here is where the book parts from the film, in that there are no descriptions in the film and you have no idea what details of scents are being smelled half the time). I found the concept of so many sensations from one book a delicious creation. By the time I had finished, I had a renewed sense of smell, and I swear my nose became much more sensitive than before.

The ending was not what I had expected (well, Grenouille's ending was, but only at the last moment). I had hopes of Laure remaining alive, or running away with Grenouille, or him helping her to escape, but alas. And alas again, I have said too much.

As I said before, I loved the pacing of this book. It was in that way a hasty narrator speeds through the background story of a film's character, but keeping all the details. I love that. And well, this book isn't that fresh in my head anymore, and I'm sorry to say that I've sadly reached the end of this review. Short, wasn't it? I suppose there isn't really much to be said for books unless it's fresh in your head. I'll try again later.

Smell 0/10. Imagery of smells 10/10. Character development 9/10.

Alice

Něco z Alenky (aka Alice) is Jan Svankmajer's surreal look at Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Wonderland here means, a crumbly old house and yard filled with raw, walking meat, living animal skeletons, and tube socks with a mind of their own.

Go down the rabbit hole, or if you're this Alice, a drawer, down an elevator shaft that looks like a masochist's pantry, and enter the world of Jan Svankmajer, complete with stop motion, live action, meat, dolls, and puppets. Most of the elements from the original story are there; the Queen, the cards, the caterpillar, the Mad Hatter and March Hare... I think I found everything, except for the Cheshire Cat and Door Mouse.

I first saw this movie on mute, being projected on the screen of my local goth club Vertex. I asked the DJ what he was playing, and I barely heard what he said (something something Alice), but I figured it out easily enough. I was immediately won over by the choppy animation and the creepy dolls and puppets, and of course, I know of no other filmmaker that uses raw meat and taxidermy to animate a fairy tale.

+10 for creepy. +6 for background sounds. +9 for including Pig and Pepper.

Maximum Minimum

I was excited to bring home a free poster advertising Kraftwerk's DVD of their 2004 world tour, and doubly so when my boyfriend brought home the DVD itself. I could have worn a hole in the disks (oh wait, they come with holes!) from watching it so much. It's great to watch in bed, and as background video at home gatherings. Moog synths are popular here around the house.

This 2-disk DVD release comes packed with what I think is the very best of Kraftwerk. I was thrilled to hear the band open with The Man-Machine. I think it's my favourite track. The band gets animatronic during the song Robots (of course), which I found super fun, because I'd never seen them perform that way before. The dvd show is a truly profound audio and visual spectacular.

Kraftwerk is a band that's way ahead of its time, and still might be. I wish I had been exposed to them when I was younger.

10/10 for visual amazement. 10/10 for the best-of quality of the selection.

Suicide Club

Suicide Club!!! I would have to say that this is my favourite Japanese cult classic so far. This goes TOTALLY against the grain of Sion Sono's normal array of gay porn films. What a refreshing concept. Many thanks go out to my little sister for letting me borrow it.

Any movie that starts off with 54 cute school girls clasping hands and jumping onto subway tracks in front of a fast moving train is worth watching. On one hand, you just know it's going to be good, but on the other, you just know it's not going to get any bloodier than that.

Suicides are popping up all over Tokyo and it's up to Detective Kuroda (and a couple other detectives whose names escape me) to find out why. None of them seemed depressed. The suicides were sudden, and booming. Things seem to go nowhere until Kuroda is tipped off by someone known only as The Bat, who shows them a website with dots representing the boys and girls who've done themselves in (and the dots appear before the suicides!). What does the site have to do with all the deaths? And does the hottest sensation j-pop band of adorable girls Dessert have anything to do with them?

There are many bloody scenes accompanied by the cute music of Dessert, and there's even a wanna-be copy cat killer who goes by the name Genesis (j-pop artist Rolly), who kidnaps The Bat and makes her tell police it was him, while he serenades her with a song. My sister found this part disturbing. She was talking about when Genesis kicked a sack (containing a dog) until it stopped yelping and was all bloody, while I replied, "I know, his voice is terrible!" His voice isn't really that bad, and in fact, the song he sings frequently gets in my head for days.

The ending is full of holes, which I wasn't particularly happy with, but after a couple times of watching it, I found that I could piece together things that were missing.

Bloody: 10/10. Funny: 7/10. Story: 8/10. Ending: 5/10.

Battle Royale

The future of Japan is here (not really, I hope), and it is known as The Republic of Greater East Asia. The nation has collapsed, and a record-breaking 15% of the population are unemployed. 800,000 students rebelled and boycotted school, becoming something to be feared by their seniors. Soon, the Millenium Educational Reform Act was passed. AKA: The BR Act.

The movie starts out with a bang. A bloody Ai Iwamura looking slightly traumatized by what she has just done. Then off to one year later, when the next Battle Royale begins.

The idea of pitting classmates against each other in an attempt to lower teenage population so only the strong survive is something of which Johnathan Swift would be proud. And forcing them to participate until they died or won by way of an explosive collar around their necks is a nice touch. I want the impossible-to-find box set that comes with a replica of the collar.

The way you can be someone's best friend one minute, and poisoning them the next... it definitely plays with the psyche. As well does telling the person who just killed you that you forgive them because you've always loved them. I never would have thought of this kind of stuff. Every death was great. Every kill... well, I wasn't a huge fan of Kazuo's tactic of shoot first and ask questions later (he was a little too trigger happy, if you ask me).

The ending was as expected. The good guys win, sort of. I didn't expect the way of it, though, which was what I'd hoped. I hate movies that are too predictable.

For senseless murder, 9/10. Creativity, 10/10. Romance, 2/10. Action, 100/10.