Evisbeats - Qualia

New arrivals - makes up for finding out your flat in Budapest has got damp...Courtesy of JetSet Records.

Bump them now!

Scruffnuk Dust - Introvert

Hip hop and that from India? Mumbai, in fact...I think.

Interesting noise sounds...from Scruffnuk Dust. Name and such: 'Introvert'.

Every 14 Days....(34)

Frozen Dreams (Tatematsu Wahei)

Tatematsu Wahei (wahey!)’s ‘Frozen Dreams’ was a book that I had spied in the old second-hand bookshop in Balham – you know, the one that’s now an estate agents. I didn’t buy it, because I’m your classic rubbernecker. Though recently at Camden Lock Books at Old Street Station, numerous copies were available on the cheap. I only bought one.

Noboru is the responsible student leading an expedition into the Hokkaido mountains in Northern Japan. Choosing the winter months as it would be quieter, though obviously a lot more dangerous, the group set-off, with the peak Poroshiri their goal, before they all head into the dreaded world of full-time employment.

To start, this feels like the sort of book you’d find in Robin Ince’s ‘Bad Book Club’, with a cover that seems a bit simple and naff, with the tagline ‘based on a true story.’ And to start, it does feel a bit like that. Slightly strange, and perhaps unnecessary, descriptions are included, alongside lusty images in the mind of key protagonist Noboru for the marriageable Yuko. Perhaps the translation isn’t that strong, strange considering it is by Haruki Murakami translator Philip Gabriel, but there’s something about the way it is written that just doesn’t work.

But give it time, and as the journey progresses, the book starts to come alive a little, happily as most of the characters die. Trapped under an avalanche, Noboru awakes to realise he is the sole surviving member of the party, but restricted by his predicament, he cannot move under the snow, and so drifts in and out of consciousness. And this is where the main crux of the story comes into play.  

As he drifts in and out, he lapses into a dream world where his future is played out for him. The story of his first job, apartment and marriage to the now-lying-dead-beside-him Yuko are told and their endless days spent climbing mountains together. It is the life the soon-to-be-graduate wants, but will now never have.

For this reason, ‘Frozen Dreams’ becomes something of an interesting story, with some nice ideas. Being that it is a fictional account of a fictional future, it is difficult to suggest exactly have much is based on a true story, but takes it away from feeling like a cheap and easy throw-away novel for holidaying. But the first half is a little weak and takes some credibility away from the book in the reader’s mind and, like Noboru, you wonder if it was a journey worth taking.

Days to read: 10

Days per book: 14.9

The Analects (Confucius)

'I'm not confused.'

- Alan Partridge

The works of Confucius are the sort of thing that you feel you should read as people refer to them here and there and you want to add your name to the guest list of this intellectual party.

Now, I’ve read such things as ‘The Art of War’ and ‘Hagakure’, so I’m accustomed to the style of these ancient teachings, much like members of the Wu-Tang Clan or Bone Thugs-n-Harmony are. These are short nuggets of wisdom to ponder, re-read and think ‘what the Hell is that supposed to mean?!’

The Penguin (quack quack) edition that I read has extensive background setting from D.C. Lau, which probably serves as a more useful read, giving the teachings some context and further explanation for the lay milkman, providing approximate timelines of the life of Confucius and those around him.

There is a lot of repetition within the actual twenty books of ‘The Analects’ itself; coupled with Lau’s text you feel like you are reading the same pieces over and over. Also, outside of the actual context, many points seem to lack application.

Nonetheless, you will learn a good few things about how you should live your life: benevolence, basically. And how to impress people at parties you’re not invited to, sat alone in your bedroom, night after night.

Days to read: 21

Days per book: 14.9

The Book of Fathers (Miklós Vámos)

This is a book bought for me for a number of reasons - that number being two. For one, this is a Hungarian book and it was bought for me by my Hungarian wife as a birthday present. For two, this, as the title suggests, is a book about fathers, and the day before my birthday, I became a father for the first time, and thus will not get any birthday presents ever again.

This is one of those books that can be considered an epic: it's got more than like two hundred pages, or something. It charts the rise and fall of ten or so (I can't remember) generations of eldest sons, starting off around 1700, covering three hundred years of Hungarian history up to the new millennium. Naturally, not just a story of family lineage, this is a Hungarian history lesson, the many changes to the face a nation with ever-moving borders documented as times move on.

A time piece is found by the first of the eldest sons and is subsequently handed down to the next generation. Luckily, all have a son as their first born. Alongside this, a journal is kept - the titular Book of Fathers - which each son in turn adds to before passing it on. These two heirlooms combined mean that each father/son/Hungarian has the ability to see into the past or the future, using history to their advantage, or foretelling their demise. Each is gifted, yet flawed, changing their name, religion and even nationality, only to return back whence they came.

The family move across different parts of Hungary's geography, though starting Germany, moving to Debrecen, Eger, Pecs and Budapest, migrating around Europe and America along the way. Culture and the arts are developed, religion is persecuted and wars are fought as history dictates. But with a book as ambitious as this, it can often be difficult to get the ideas fully articulated.

With many characters to cover, they can't all be fully developed, with variation in the level of interest in each. Some pack a long journey into a short life, while others burn out slowly and quietly. Following the nation's history as well, much like some of the characters, you can see what's coming and so certain chapters in the Book of Fathers are building to the inevitable. The style of writing seems to develop as time passes, which could be to show the development of language over time, or laziness in the writing/translation.

As with any family, this is a bit of a mixed bag, but I like ambitious ideas, and while it may be a bit of a skim to fit three hundred years into one novel, the changing of the guard means that you don't get too bored with any one character. As we approach the new millennium and the book's conclusion, it feels appropriate in the current climate, with migration shown as something that has always happened, yet proving that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Days to read: 30

Days per book: 15.0

Content Provider (Stewart Lee)

As I don't read newspapers (they're essentially all scum that I wouldn't wipe my arse with, unless really desperate after Villa beat Sunderland away and the Sports Cafe in Newcastle doesn't have any bog roll, and someone had left one open on a page that just so happened to feature an article about West Brom), I don't get to read all these Sunday supplement articles by the comedians whose newsletters I otherwise regularly subscribe to.

So, following on from the likes of Brooker, Mitchell, Iannucci, et al, comes Lee. Largely formed by some of his Observer articles in the absence of David Mitchell - holidaying with his wife, and Charlie Brooker and his wife - there are also some other works for other publications, some not used.

Lee likes to mess around with his audiences, and many of these are subversive works, written in the guise of 'The Character Stewart Lee'. Much like his stand-up, there are lots of allegories to make political points, always tinged with the juvenile. You, therefore, aren't always quite sure how to receive each, some feeling genius, others just strange ramblings of a man that should get out more.

But ever the mischief, Lee wants you to feel that way. The majority of articles come with short introductions from 'the real' Stew Art Wee and are followed by some comments left on the publication websites in response to the works, the majority of which are negative, picking out the often deliberate mistakes, set as traps to lure the armchair pundit into moral outrage.

'Content Provider' confirms Lee as an enigma, intent on dividing opinion, as all good comedians should. Reading consecutively, this can get a bit grating, like cheese, and so should maybe should be consumed an article at a time, whenever you have five to ten minutes to sit down and put one away, you know, like a - don't say it - toilet book.

Days to read: 15

Days per book: 15.0

Politic 30

Largely bug seed-influenced beats and such, but some other 
heads in there as well...Listen for noises...

Street Mentality - Shibuya 15/06/2012

Track Maker - イシズカケイ
Digging for Windows - Zach de la Rocha
Trial 'n' Error - K.M.D
アレかも - 田我流 and カイザーソゼ
Khane Whistle Reprise - DJ Kensei and stillichimiya
Midnight City Lights - bug seed
Method - bug seed
Saddle Flap - bug seed
Moonlights - bug seed
Pizza Pizza - bug seed
Beautiful Spring - bug seed
Heat Haze - bug seed
Summer in the City - bug seed
Travelog - bug seed
Soul Diggin' Pt. 2 - bug seed
Colour - bug seed
Stand Alone - bug seed
Into Your Mind - bug seed
Alluswe - bug seed
Introvert - Scruffnuk Dust
Three Little Birds - Bob Marley

Creepy (60th BFI London Film Festival Part III)

The first lesser-known-Kurosawa film I saw was 1997's 'Cure', an interesting psychological thriller about a detective trying to solve a series of murders. It worked well and didn't fall into any traps that can so regularly happen with films such as this, keeping the focus on the psychological aspects rather than becoming too horrific.

I've since seen a number of his films, including 2008's mini-masterpiece 'Tokyo Sonata', gaining him greater international acclaim, particularly on the festival circuit, and as such his films are met with expectation, though perhaps mixed reviews.

'Creepy' is very much a film of two halves. It pains me to say that this is 'Cure' meets the Shia LaBeouf-driven 'Disturbia; largely for two reasons: for one, I've reviewed a film as 'X' meets 'Y'; and secondly the admission that I have seen the Shia LaBeouf-driven toss bag.

The first half is something like the vein of 'Cure': a former homicide detective and expert in criminal psychology takes a role as a lecturer following an attack by one of his suspects. Soon realising - on what appears to be his first day - that the life of an academic isn't quite as fast-paced, he starts to look at an unsolved case, from a purely research perspective, he tells his wife.

It is here he uncovers a mysterious story of a family that disappears, leaving only the daughter behind; a daughter that can't remember nothing. All this is being played alongside the middle-aging Takakura and his wife moving to a new neighbourhood, next to one neighbour that makes it very clear they couldn't give a damn about you; the other, the slightly odd Nishino, played by strange-faced Teruyuki Kagawa.

Gradually, as Takakura suspects, the two stories start to merge, with Nishino all that he seems on the surface in the head department as well. The revelation, however, sees the film take a turn for the worse. Much like LaBeouf's neighbour in 'Disturbia', Nishino's strange, homemade death dungeon, that seems implausibly dank in a typically suburban household, is uncovered, with all the psychological images you'd formed in your mind now shown to you on the screen.

In the second half of the film, Kiyoshi Kurosawa decides against the psychological, focusing more on showing the crimes in facto (Latin), which takes away all the first half might have been building. The more that is shown, the less 'creepy' it becomes. This is a disappointment from a director that has worked to create such good psychological pieces in the past.

The mystery is too easily solved, and the suspense is lost, feeling more like an out-and-out horror, that isn't particularly, well, creepy.

Ten Years (60th BFI London Film Festival Part II)

What I like when I go to a cinema is to pay West End prices and have the projectionist take three attempts to show the correct subtitles on a film. Well done the Price Charles Cinema! It's not the first time I've had failings of the digital age - DJs have had their over-reliance on their MacBooks exposed when they crash, lost with little to do except try and re-boot as soon as possible. While it just takes a moment's patience from the audience, it doesn't put you in the best of moods to start a film.

I, therefore, got three attempts to view the start of the opening short, 'Extras' as part of the five short stories that make up 'Ten Years'.

'Happy Together' by Wong Kar-wai is one of my favourite films, an allegory of two gay men from Hong Kong travelling across Argentina, seemingly exiled from home. A film made just before the UK's hand-over of Hong Kong in 1997, the anxieties of what will become of Hong Kong over the next fifty years have been something looked at in the arts, as well as played out in the real-life streets of the SAR.

'Ten Years' is five shorts set in and around the year 2025, ten years after the film was made: in 2015, Maths fans. Each take a more-than-slightly controversial look at various aspects of life and how they could be changed in the future, as China's influence grows. I'm sure China took kindly to it.

'Extras', the opening tale, is regarding two Triads, chosen to be pawns in a political chess game with public opinion. The National Security chiefs feel that their role will be undermined, with little fear among the populace. Therefore, the two hapless Triads are offered big money to shoot at two politicians, creating public fear, highlighting the need for Security Forces. An inside act of terror, this is one for conspiracy theorists all over. The short itself, however, is fairly simplistic and feels a little amateurish in execution. It's probably best that this one flies by at the start.

 The second is by far the strangest of the quintet, and left me feeling even the actors don't really know what is going on. A couple of 'specimen collectors' go about their 'research' in an abandoned building, but little is really clear as to what exactly they are doing, or why. With parts that remind of György Pálfi's 'Taxidermia' and others 'The Shining', this is a random collection of 'specimens' of scenes, thrown together with little coherent story to speak of.

The first two a bit weak, thankfully the third picks up the pace greatly. A taxi driver struggles with the new policy that all drivers must speak Putonghua instead of Cantonese to be able to pick up certain fares. This leads to comedy moments as he tries to learn pronunciations of words, such as 'David Beckham.' But for the driver that previously had to learn English to get work now struggles with another language being forced upon him, potentially taking his livelihood as a result.

The fourth is probably the most controversial, a mockumentary about someone self-immolating themselves outside the British Consulate. Speaking with various academics and writers on the subject of protest movements, it tells the story of a young student whose imprisonment inspired others, as they try to identify the silent protester. It speaks of many subjects, relevant in light of recent movements in Hong Kong, and how these could tragically develop as the years pass.

The fifth and final story is of a vendor whose son, along with all other children, has to take part in activities on behalf of the government, keeping surveillance on all shops and points of sale. The smallest of things will be noted, with common sense forgotten as the young children blindly follow orders. Picked up for advertising 'local eggs', when the approved 'Hong Kong eggs' should be used, he questions his son as to what it is he is doing in his role, concerned that his son is becoming a brainwashed trooper for the secret police. But soon he learns that his son has been assisting some of the shops he is sent to keep an eye on, showing that independent thought and protest are still alive and well in the future's youth.

These five Orwellian visions of what may become of Hong Kong are varied in quality, but all raise interesting anxieties present among a people as to what the future may hold. Well, maybe not 'Season of the End'. As a UK resident, while different in their circumstances, the situation in Hong Kong reflects the uncertainty that surrounds the UK's political future and what impacts, with various doomsday scenarios playing out in the minds of all concerned, if you're bothered, that is.

It could prove that there is little change afoot, but the human mind cannot cope with uncertainty, and Hong Kong has another thirty years of anxiety ahead of it before anyone's ideas can be founded.
   

Kills on Wheels (60th BFI London Film Festival Part I)

Usually, I gleefully await the arrival of my BFI London Film Festival programme in the post, highlighting all the films I would like to see before whittling them down to a good seven or eight titles that I will actually watch, work, money and being a single entity that can't be in two places at once allowing. But given that I've recently become a father, I can no longer make such selfish journeys to as many films as I may wish.

So, this year, I'm a little limited in the selections I've made, choosing films I definitely want to see, with the exception of Kore-eda Hirokazu's 'After the Storm', as I can't purchase sold out tickets. My first choice ended up being the Hungarian (my son's mother-tongue) film 'Kills on Wheels' (or 'Tiszta szívvel' if you're my wife - translating along the lines of something more like 'Pure Heart').

The English title is a bit simplistic and attempts to dumb down the film to make it more attractive for popcorn fodder. And, yes, while this is a film that involves people in wheelchairs that may or may not take the lives of some of Hungary's, and Serbia's, less law-abiding citizens, there is a bit more going on here than just that.

Rupaszov is a disabled former fireman, recently freed from prison for shooting a police officer when losing his way after an accident that left him paralysed from the waist down. Randomly, he befriends young Zolika and Barba, two disabled youths living in a care home. Taking them to a club to get drunk, he uses them as his assistants in his deeds for Serbian drug baron, Rados, under the belief that nobody would suspect a cripple.

Soon, Rupaszov's talent for picking-off Rados' enemies gains him a nice income and the Serbian offers him big money to take out his key rivals. But, on learning that his seated hitman has been using accomplices, Rados soon sets about making sure all three are 'taken care of.'

On the face of it, the premise is that of a low-level gangster movie, with the disabled element adding something of a twist. But with writer-director Atilla Till having volunteered in care homes; and with some of the leads and most of the extras disabled themselves, this is more a film about the lives of two young kids with disability trying to find their place in the world. Much like we all do at their age.

Zolika struggles to accept his estranged father's payment for his potentially life-saving operation, believing his disability is the cause of his parent's divorce. This leads to some quite personal scenes of novice actor Zoltan Fenyvesi. Rupaszov's physiotherapy is always accompanied by various disabled extras demonstrating rehabilitation methods in the background. But these physical challenges are played alongside more comical ones: Barba struggling to input the correct number at a vending machine; and Rupaszov unable to even flinch at being stabbed in the leg.

The true story of the film is Zolika and Barba's regular attendance at conventions in attempts to get the comic book they are working on published, as Zolika tries to come to terms with his situation. The English title looks at the more face-value aspects of the film, whereas the original Hungarian title fits much better thematically.

The Hungarian film I viewed at the London Film Festival last year, 'Son of Saul', was nominated, and went on to win, the Oscar for best foreign language film. 'Tiszta szívvel' is the Hungarian entry this time around, and probably won't reach the same heights, but is a strong offering tackling difficult subject matter.