Sunday 31 December 2017

Music Bits of Noise that I Heard in 2017...

Can't exactly say there has been much to have a positive impact on my ear cavities this 2017. 

Hear were some that were more bearable than others. Though a year more of comedy silliness than really good musical offerings...That's what I heard...


ZEN-LA-ROCK, 鎮座DOPENESS and G. Rina - Seventh Heaven



This is just stupid.



YOUR SONG IS GOOD - Double Sider


Such a collection of attractive men in hats.



Chai - Sayonara Complex


This isn't completely terrible. They're kind of like Blondie for the under-5s.



Sludge Pump - Straight Outta Mount Penglai


Dirty British beat for dirty minds.



bugseed - E.S.T.


More solid stuff from the seedy insect. Decent, you know?!



Onra - Chinoiseries Pt.3


More Asian-inspired stuff from Onra's Vietnamese side. Tasty.


Damu the Fudgemunk - Vignettes


Autobiographical beat mix of words, noises and sounds.


U-zhaan, 環ROY, and 鎮座DOPENESS  - 七曜日


Those guys get to making fun videos yet again. This time summarising the repetitiveness of the seven-day week. And then they got off the bus...



Evisbeats - Week


The leader of the new school releases some nameless beats.



DJ Krush - Kiseki


A series of beats for vocalists. Speak words over it!



Anchorsong - Ceremonial


One of music's nicest men comes with another album of live-production fun. See if live.



Kid Koala and Emiliana Torrini - Music to Draw to: Satellite 


Slow, broody stuff to get your hands moving to. Not the rest of your body, mind!



環ROY - Nagi


Something of a mature album from the young man. Many songs getting - and deserving - promotional video formats also.



It's fair to say there wasn't too much great music this year, but feel free to change my opinion...

Films That I Have Seen in 2017...

Here be some of the moving images that I saw in 2017 that were newly made and released. It's fair to say 2017 was no vintage wine. Largely because a year is a metaphysical concept that cannot be a wine...or even a decent Cheddar. 

But these are the ones that I thought best of these there twelve months...or so...


Always remember: Opinions can vary.


In some sort of order, starting with...

Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno


Director: Yoon-suk Jung
South Korea 

Documentary look at punk duo Bamseom Pirates and their album "Seoul Inferno" - as the title suggests. Music, larking about, "political" lyrics, court cases, questioning of their motivations musically...An at times comedic, at times serious political look at South Korean youth and their "relationship" with their neighbours in the North.

The Death of Stalin


Director: Armando Iannucci 
UK/France 

Iannucci-san and friends take their political comedy away from modern-day UK/US politics to Twentieth Century Russian naughtiness following the demise of some famous figure. Joshing and bants galore alongside the dark side of politics to make one laugh and consider. 

Vegalta: Soccer, Tsunami and the Hope of a Nation


Director: Douglas Hurcombe and Geoff Trodd 
UK 

Combining two of my great passions: Japanese culture and Gary Lineker; alongside one of my loathes: mass death caused by a natural disaster, "Vegalta" takes its name from the Sendai football team who rose up the J-League standings in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. Fans and local residents affected take a look at how the team's success gave them some brief hope after such a huge loss.   

Noise


Director: Yusaku Matsumoto
Japan 

First time director takes a look at youth and motivation in the backdrop of the Akihabara Massacre of 2008. Generational differences create pressures on the youth of the day, creating the potential for a snap-point. Noisy and bleak, "Noise" offers a voice to the little man.  

Junk Head


Director: Takahide Hori
Japan 

Stop-go. Stop-go. That old animation technique is making a comeback. Don't take the plot too seriously with this one; more enjoy the ride around as a human's mind is transplanted into a mishmash robot hopelessly wandering the strange underworld of botched clones. Inventive, if a little mad, this one feels straight out of the Nineties. 

Love and Other Cults


Director: Eiji Uchida
Japan 

Uchida-san's second collaboration with the good folk at Third Window Films. Ai is well mental a one and gets herself caught up in all kinds of wacky cults, gangs, sex scams, nuclear families in an attempt to find herself. The message is: slowing down a bit is a good way to help you find a bit of peace of mind...and then you get off the bus. 


...and those from 2016 with delayed release in the UK that I pretended to first view in 2017...


After the Storm


Director: Kore-eda Hirokazu
Japan

Kore-eda-san's annual festival tourist delivers a nice enough journey about a private detective unable to leave his ex-wife behind. Perhaps a little too comfortable, but with enough realism to keep you interested, this maintains Kore-eda's position as the better Japan person director still churning 'em out with regularity.

Kills on Wheels


Director: Atilla Till
Hungary

Three disabled killers fool Budapest's drug dealers with their unassuming status, though the English title gives little away as to the additional depth offered below the surface. A coming-of-age piece more than a violent action thriller. 

Harmonium


Director: Koji Fukada
Japan

Tadanobu Asano playing some sort of strange person moving into a family home and invading every aspect of their lives with some sort of sinister motive? Can you come round next Tuesday, Asano-san? You can't escape it, can you?! Nice film...but not nice in that way.

The Long Excuse


Director: Miwa Nishikawa
Japan

Sachio's wife's death in a car crash unveils the car crash that is his life in Miwa Nishikawa's well-paced and developed film. It gets inside its characters' heads, as one would hope a film would do. As your life gets worse, so will your hair. 

Destruction Babies


Director: Tetsuya Mariko
Japan

Remember little Akira from "Nobody Knows"? Well, he's grown-up now and likes hitting people in the face. A film that will perhaps annoy many, the realism in the fighting and harsh comment on the surrounding violence of society leaves its mark at least. That Yuya character deserves a slap, hey?!


That makes a nice round total of 11...A football team of films...in the way that Luton Town are scoring lots of goals in the fourth tier of English football...

Wednesday 13 December 2017

Blade of the Immortal

"Over-the-top" and "excessive" are two phrases that can be pointed in the general direction of director Miike Takashi: the high-octane montage that greets us to the “Dead or Alive” trilogy; the comical blood-splatting of “Ichi the Killer”; the extensive battle scene of “13 Assassins”. All are examples of pushing cinema to its limits of taste, morality and viewer boredom threshold.

The third is an interesting one. His late Nineties and early new millennium films were often notable for their excessive violence, however, this violence was often creatively twisted into place alongside other, often stronger elements. The nature of relationships and power balances between characters in “Ichi the Killer”; the slow-building tension of “Audition”; the nostalgia of…”Nostalgia”. With the budgets more limited, Miike would seemingly earn his stripes and get creative, but now with the budgets and hype much greater, has excess simply become self-indulgence?

Based on the manga, “Blade of the Immortal”, the supposed ninety-ninth film of Miike’s now one hundred not out career, starts with Manji (Takyu Kimura) with a price on his head, fighting off a hoard of bounty hunters, while trying to protect his younger sister. A troubled, masterless samurai, Manji duly fights them all off, but at the cost of numerous wounds. Pouring blood worms into his wounds, a mysterious old woman heals Manji, giving him the curse of immortality, though the same cannot be said for his sister.


Switching forward fifty years, Manji has been living a desolate life alone and un-aged, but is sought by the young daughter of a dojo master killed by the Itto-ryu: a school determined to resurrect the skill of sword-fighting as a necessary evil, unlike the simple physical education it has become. Wary at first, Manji vows to help Rin (Hana Sugisaki) get her revenge, largely, it seems, because she resembles his young sister. Bloodshed ensues as the Itto-ryu (and others) challenge Manji to battle one-by-one, soon discovering his immortal powers.

The Itto-ryu also seek to become the Shogun’s fencing school of choice, but find themselves deceived by the Shogun’s army resulting in a three-way stand-off between Manji and Rin, Anotsu (Sota Fukushi, the head of the Itto-ryu) and the Shogun’s vast forces…and some other side story characters thrown-in again at the end to further the silliness. What results is a perhaps overly-long sword fight between hundreds of men and a couple of women in the vein of "13 Assassins".

On balance, there is probably more bad than good with "Blade of the Immortal". Over-indulgence perhaps the main problem. While we expect this to be a slash-fest with arms chopped-off galore, when this is the main crux of the film, it becomes a little tedious. An obvious comparison, "Ichi the Killer" centred around two main characters and their sadomasochistic relationships with those who hold power over them. The gore is an amusing and fun distraction, rather than the main draw.


Here, Miike chooses to go for long, drawn-out fight scenes that offer little after the first thirty seconds other than just adding to the body count. Little is particularly developed in terms of characterisation, other than Manji coming to terms with immortality being a fate worse than death and his explanation to Rin that revenge only leads to bloodshed - something Miike adequately shows. Villain Anotsu delivers a surface-level monologue midway through the film, but beyond this, the audience is given few clues as to whether to love or loath him.

Extended fight scenes is nothing new to Miike, with "13 Assassins" having the mother of all battles, but this was an epic battle to which the film had been building, rather than a extended slash-fest, having already had some earlier slash-fests.


The film looks pretty in parts, with some good cinematography and the special effects fit the bill. But as a bigger, more anticipated release than perhaps his films in the Nineties received, the bigger scale has come at the cost of creativity. His peer Shinya Tsukamoto still works to limited budgets, but still creates some inventive and interesting works.

Manji is referred to as the "Hundred Man Killer" and Miike is now a one hundred production director. But with his recent trajectory, his career seems not so much immortal, rather a slow death.