culture for dollars
takashi miike, crows
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“Crows” is a movie that changed my life somehow. I’ve seen it in the good time for if I watched it someday else I’d take it as a plain action movie about teenagers fighting eachother. But although almost whole of the 2 hours run of “Crows” is fighting or about fighting, it’s not everything out there.
The movie seems to be clearly about violence but what’s lying beyond it is the conflict of ambitions. The “School of Crows” all those guys are attending may be seen as a metaphore of the world we’re living in, a place where we have to struggle for power to survive. A neverending fight between ambition and the will.
The movie is more “moving” for me because it depicts the stories of teenagers and although their lifes aren’t actually the lifes many people live, they’re somehow universal. Everything we’d see in the movie is compiled in the song by The Street Beats we’d hear during the opening – “I wanna change”. The movie is just about that, people who aren’t really ready to start their lives in the world, living in the place they have to fight everyday for survival and fulfilment of their ambitions to rise to the top. About birds without wings that have ambition to fly and keep flying. About people who want to live as themselves – who want to change and keep changing.
To be in motion forever. Never to stand still and die in motionless world full of wasted ideas and dreams.
beat takeshi, dolls
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Something unusual for Takeshi Kitano – a movie in which people aren’t killing themselves and fighting all the time, but peacefully walking along the paths of their lives and despair. Of course yakuza’s included, but hey – what would be a movie by Kitano without ‘em?
“Dolls” is one of the most touching movies I’ve ever seen. It’s almost static for 2 hours but still those static moments are not boring, they’re like paintings instead. After this movie I’ve had the most beautiful dreams in my life.
The plot isn’t obvious and isn’t complex at the same time. We’re given three stories which aren’t connected for the first sight, but if we’d like to look deeper they’re fitting themselves perfectly. The first one is about a guy who left his girlfriend to marry a daughter of the boss of his company, everything ’cause of his parents who wanted him to do just that. The day of the wedding though his former girlfriend was found and transported to mental hospital for she tried to commit suicide. He’s running away from the wedding, from his life and wandering with his ex-g/f through the world as leashed beggars.
The second story is depicting the tale of an old yakuza boss who’s near death probably and his choice to pursue his career instead of loving the girl that loved him much. The girl promised him when he left her to be at the same bench every sunday (or saturday) with lunch, waiting for him. But he never came. We see him as an old man visiting the place and seeing here there, with lunch for him… And the story goes on, what you’d see watching the movie.
Third one is about a hardcore fan of a j-pop starlet which is involved in a car accident and thus beeing suddenly ugly deciding to quit her career and isolate herself from fans. He though can’t stand it and remembering her face is slicing his eyes to remember her as she were and to meet her even though she said she wants nobody to see her. When he can’t see, he can do it, so it seems as though it’s solution.
Those three stories are simple but moving. I understood ‘em my way and I’m sure everyone’d understand them absolutely different. I get them as stories about the imaginary lack of choice those people have, how their worlds are narrowed to the little shells of material pleasures and how this affects all the people around – people who care about them or people who hate them. There is no ending to the self-speeding circle of destruction all of them are carrying around.
The movie’s obviously about love, but in the vein of all Takeshi’s films I’ve seen – it’s a road movie. We see the seasons changing, characters walking around in pursuit of god knows what yet still they seem to be on the quest for redemption of some kind, or maybe salvation from earthly misery, but well… It seems a bit too much.
“Dolls” is a beautiful movie, groundbreaking I’d say, but somehow motionless. Emotionally distsurbing too, definite must-see for people who aren’t watching movies to eat popcorn throughout.
beat takeshi, zatoichi
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The longest-running japanese TV drama with many side-made movies and merchandise has been remodeled by famous actor/director Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano in 2003. It reminds me of some damn foolish american movies such as Liberator 15 or Rambo 41.2 and stuff, but still I give much credit to the japanese filmmakers so instead of complaining about “what interesting thing can you do with such a boring piece of art” I gave it a try.
And I’m delighted. Zatoichi is not a movie anyway similar to what I’ve got used to by the american cinema, it’s completely different yet still “eatable”. Kurosawa’s pretty hard to watch during a dinner ’cause of his attention demanding long pauses between action, but here it’s action all the time. Zatoichi’s wandering through the world with his walking-stick-sword and though he’s blind he’s slicing rows of enemies without a problem. The movie’s not a complex thing to be amazed by, not even some intelligent philosophical samurai movie but everything you’d expect by some “spaghetti-samurai” movie redone in the XXI century.
The plot is simple, characters are strong and the movie is great for watching alone as much as with somebody else with coca-cola and cigarettes included.
Plus the scenes of death and fight are not the same here as in the western cinema. If you’re going to fight somebody important, then you’d fight him at the end of the movie for sure but still you wouldn’t fight him for 20 minutes as if he was some semi-god-fucker (like in movies with jean claude van damme), but you’d slice his guts in three or four cuts and it’ll be over.
But the watcher’d be delighted.
Kitano blew my brain off with his idea for lessening the damage cause to the viewer because of the blood flowing everywhere in the movie. He wanted it to look as if the flowers were blooming out of the dying enemies, and damn he did it. It’s interesting and you’d watch people die in this movie with artistic pleasure.
Kinda crazy, but artistic.
Damn great, recommended. 8+/10
marilyn manson, high end of low
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When Reznor’s repeating himself in some strange time-loop making albums that nobody’s actually willing to listen to, Manson’s going onwards pissing people off, even more than before.
If years ago he was irritating just the majority of American society, now he’s pissing off even his fans.
I’m not disappointed by the albums he’s making now and I’ll never will, just ’cause I’m never expecting anything. I learned to take it as it comes and – admire or hate, but never to expect.
So “The High End Of Low” is somehow going back to the roots of rocknroll. The things I see here are the influences taken from Alice Cooper (Devour, I Have To Look Up…) or The Stooges (Pretty as a Swastika). Manson’s also sweet in his bluesy-melancholy for the sake of being melancholic (like in Into The Fire).
I loved this album from the beginning of the first song and I love it now after several listens. One of the best records I’ve heard in months.
kaizers orchestra, ompa til du dør
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If I actually have to say something for the begining – “Ompa…” is one of the best albums I’ve heard in my miserable life. One of those few in which you fall in love after first seconds and you’re just wrapped in it for lots of years. It’s a must-hear, must-have and must-know for sure, but well, what is it?
Imaggine Tom Waits going folk’n'roll with a bit of smoother vocals and norwegian lyrics. Imagine the atmosphere of Emir Kustirca’s movies, with musicans tied to the trees, with elephants runing free and people drinking eastern-european amounts of vodka – and all of this wrapped in music, bound together by beautiful songs. Song you’d try to sing-along but you’d get pissed cause you know no fucking norwegian.
But who cares? I’m from easter-europe and still I can say it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in my life. Those guys caught the atmosphere of folk music of Ukraine, Poland, Russia etc., used some tempos and melodies, instruments
typical for gypsy stuff and so… They’ve got it. They’ve got it similar to Gogol Bordello but Bordello is punkish as hell when it comes to energy when Kaizers are darker and more “kusturican”.
There’s a bit of reggae here, a bit of rocknroll, a bit of rhythmic melorecitation, a bit of… everything, and that’s it. Kaizers made this great eclectic album absolutely fucking brilliant and it’s 10/10 points on the scale.
terry pratchett, night watch
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Many people around the world argue whether Pratchett’s writing is still some kind of artism or just a plain craftmanship. Sometimes they also argue about the comic-element of the book, for as we all know – everybody who misunderstood the meaning of his writing thinks he’s just another plain comedian. But he’s not, what we can actually see with no problems if we’d just leave those damn Rincewind books (which are great also) and read something else.
So here, the Night Watch is somewhere around the fifth place in the novels about Samuel Vimes, the commander of the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork, and to some extent it’s the best one (along with the next one – Thud!). The Watch as such evolved here, although the plot’s taking us back in time. And Samuel Vimes who back in the first novels was just a character who took over the author’s mind – here’s the one, who rules the city, who commands everybody even though he’s back at sergeant’s rank.
We meet Vetinari here, but not as beloved patrician – as an assassin, we meet young Fred Colon, young Sam Vimes, we meet Lord Winder even for a while, we meet Downey of assassins… and as the book’s about Time after all, then we meet Lu-Tze of course. The cast is an all-stars play with everybody even if just for a while. We start to understand why watchmen are wearing lilac flowers, why 25th of may is an important anniversary, what Sam thinks about his “fatherhood”…
Even though this novel takes place about 9 months after “The Fifth Elephant” we can see that Pratchett’s becoming better every time he’s writing about The City Watch. It’s pretty tough probably, as we all feared, cause you couldn’t place a novel in Ankh-Morpork without the Watch… But as the Moist Lipwig’s books show us – it’s probable, and Pratchett’s only getting better and better at it.
hans zimmer: matchstick men
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As we all know – Nicholas Cage is a great actor, “Matchstick Men” is a great movie and Hans Zimmer is a genius. I do like his music, as everybody, but I’m bored with his works made for action adventure hollywood blockbusters. The OST to “Gladiator” was for me a journey through hell, it was so boring I could have slept to that. Promoted by Lisa Gerrard (or whatever her name is, never liked her in DCD either), the phenomenal singer blah blah, and only by that… The OST to “The Pirates of the Caribbean” is also just a pattern repeated all over again. Although Zimmer made Badelt look absolutely poor with his works – it’s stil not the thing I actually want to listen to in my home without the movie on.
And here comes “Matchstick Men”, the soundtrack which is absolutely great and as always lost in the sad truth that nobody cares about film music. I don’t either, but sometimes while watching the movies I fell in love in some tracks, it was that way with M-Men.
It’s almost an hour of great music in that beautiful sad&happy vein of being “slow” or “easy”. It’s a swinging music for the evening. A little of wanna-be-bossa-nova, a little bit of swing, a little bit of oriental sounds and all in the cream of electronic-dehumanized instruments and production. Great amount of keyboards and stuff like that, a bit of symphonism here and there… I’m absolutely in love in this OST ’cause it’s un-pretentious, it’s not pompathic, it’s not a crazy blockbuster soundtrack that sounds like everything else. It’s a bit paranoic and strange, but at the same time it’s lovely.
If you like “easy” but “sad” music, than it’s for you.
evanescence: fallen
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I like the music which purpose is to sell itself. It’s usually good – even better than the music that was made on a non-profit basis. I like commercialized rock and metal then and I do have a soft spot for some kinds of pseudo-gothic imagery.
Evanescence is the quintessence of everything I mentioned. It has great production, great melodies, nice vocals, great singles, and that amount of being cliche that it’s almost sweet to listen to them. Their lyrics aren’t a high-class poetry, but who cares? It was meant to sell millions of copies, not to create ART.
It’s too bad that their new album is crappy. Still, it’s great music for walking the dog. As for me, if he had to use numbers, it’s 9/10. Album worth listening if you like nonambitious cliches. I do.
max brooks, world war z
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I like authors who doesn’t pretend that their books are something wiser or better then they actually are. “World War Z” is not a philosophical novel about the condition of the world, it’s not a commentary to the current political events, nor is it a compilation of nietzschean philosophy mixed with pessimism or socrealism. No, ‘World War Z” is a good XXI-century pulp fiction you’d read in a tram or in a bus just ’cause it’s nice to read. It’s like way more bloody, way more sad and way more grotesque Harry Potter. And still it’s ten thousand times better.
It’s a great book for the casual reader. You can open it and then close anywhere and you want and you won’t lose the track of the events. It’s written in the simple language anybody would probably understand, and it makes no problems for the reader – no matter whether he finished Harvard or just a primary school.
“World War Z” is almost like a script for a giant 12 hours long movie. It’s dynamic and absolutely not boring even though some of the events may not interest you personally. Sometimes you’d probably turn the page, but the novel is constructed in the way that you can skip even whole chapters and you won’t lose much.
This book is way better than “Zombie Survival” in anything you would like to compare both of them. It’s not stupid and sometimes the things that author though of would amaze you as a reader. It seems as though he spent months trying to imagine the world with zombies in our real world and then describe it with great details.
Even though it’s just pure fiction, it’s great thing to read. When you’re tired of everything else, you can go on with “World War Z”. It’s a better way to spend some evenings than to go see movies in the cinema or waste them in any other way. Even though it may be a waste of time ’cause you’d gain almost absolutely nothing out of it – you’d spend your time happy that you at least read a book, heheh.
I’d say it’s worth the money you have to pay for it. Nice to read.
max brooks: zombie survival
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Well, I’m from Europe. Eastern Europe, if the statement before is not enough to judge me well. One of the things nobody has to teach me is how to live and how to survive the potential war, even with zombies. I have this whole shit in my DNA.
I’m not a great fan of horrors and stuff that has something to do with supernatural powers such as zombies or other gremlins, but I’m in no opposition. I’ve heard that this book is interesting even though it’s just a pure fantasy, so I took a look and suddenly I became disgusted. Even though the author states at the beginning that it’s mostly for Americans whom after reading seem as people totally handicapped and retarded – this book is just a waste of time.
I know it’s a tongue-in-cheek comedy but after all why should I pay something around 10 euro for completely useless shit? You know, this book could be a great “pulp-reader”, but it’s a waste of time instead.
Terry Pratchett with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen wrote “The Science of Discworld” mixing a normal short story in the universe of Discworld with chapters absolutely off-it, totally scientific. If Max Brooks’ve done something like that here, it would be a cool book. Give me a story and I’d advocate this thing, but instead of reading a book I feel as if I’m reading a manual of a boy-scout.
This stuff, ‘Zombie Survival’ lacks the story. It’s hollow just ’cause it’s absolutely useless. Do you really have to read about keeping your health condition on a good level? That your ears and nose are important?
No, you don’t have to. But if you’d mix this book with some short stories that would show the ideas of the chapters in a movie-like style, then it would be great.
But it’s not. Waste of time and even bigger waste of money.
