Tuesday, December 30, 2008

KILLIN' IT

I recently finally got around to reading Battle Royale, the sci-fi thriller by Koushun Takami about a bunch of Japanese middle school kids forced by the government to kill each other on a remote island. Since I don't feel like summarizing it beyond what I just wrote, he's an easily-digestable clip from the novel's produce page on Amazon.com:


Battle Royale, a high-octane thriller about senseless youth violence, is one of Japan's best-selling - and most controversial - novels. As part of a ruthless program by the totalitarian government, ninth-grade students are taken to a small isolated island with a map, food, and various weapons. Forced to wear special collars that explode when they break a rule, they must fight each other for three days until only one "winner" remains. The elimination contest becomes the ultimate in must-see reality television. A Japanese pulp classic available in English for the first time, Battle Royale is a potent allegory of what it means to be young and survive in today's dog-eat-dog world. The first novel by small-town journalist Koushun Takami, it went on to become an even more notorious film by 70-year-old gangster director Kinji Fukusaku.

The book's setting is rife with dystopia, given the uneven political landscape and fear of Japanese youth. I have to say that, despite the somewhat stilted and unbelievable dialog, I thoroughly enjoyed this book enough to get me interested in other modern Japanese authors. In my queue I have Koji Suzuki's The Ring, a book given to me for Christmas by Zoraida. I've also been getting into Osamu Tezuka manga, having recently read (and fallen in love with) Dororo and MW, the latter of which was also a Christmas gift from a good friend who does not have a blog. More on that later, however.

The issue at hand here is another movie versus book diatribe - I had not seen the Battle Royale film prior to reading the book, and I have to say that after watching it after my complete read-through, I am disappointed. Although this is absolutely an issue of length and content - a 600+ page novel is sure to have a more detailed story than an under-two-hour film - I couldn't help but be bothered by the film's pacing. I felt the novel to be less about the brutality of the killings and more of the sadness caused by them, and one of the major missing elements from the novel in the film was the development of the relationships between all of the classmates. Very little background is given on any character, to the point where development was so spare that I left completely unsatisfied.

Beat Takeshi is good, but his character in the film seemed a lot more personable than the ruthless game master in the book (they even have different names and backgrounds). The end events were also slightly different, and I was let down by how the entire final scene played out. That said, the film was at least watchable and I can understand why it's a cult classic. The film successfully tells its story even though it alienates so many elements and themes from the novel. Taken seperately, I don't think I'd like the film at all if I weren't able to fill in background information that isn't even there. I'd probably watch it once and shelf it.

Right now I'm reading through 1984 because I hadn't really before, a book also given to me for Christmas by a friend of mine who remains blogless. But in between readings I've been on a Tezuka kick. Right now I'm reading through Astro Boy, which I scored a complete manga set of off of eBay a week ago. One of the truly interesting things about Astro Boy, to me, is that as it is Japan's first animated series, the character himself is a long-standing children's icon in American culture as well. The original television show (which I purchased on DVD last year - over 100 episodes that I am still working my way through) is the first anime.


While all of your classic children's show elements are there: morals, friendship, the monster-of-the-week specials, Astro Boy is a strikingly bleak and depressing look into a future populated by corrupt humans and oppressed robots. And as Asimov would have us believe, robots who go haywire go haywire. They go haywire here too. But then there are the sentient robots who exist for good, only to be reprimanded and despised by humans (Detective Gumshoe, a snarky reoccuring character, has a serious vendetta against all robots) just because of one or two bad ones. This is Astro Boy's most famous dilemma: constant alienation and rejection. The unwavering wish to be a real boy.

In the end, though, Astro Boy learns that it's OK to be different as long as you can save the world a thousand times over. But still, so many episodes deal with death and isolation, that you have to feel at least a little sad.

The differences between the stories in the manga and those in the TV show are aplenty. This is obviously because us soft gaijins can't stand to see violence. Tezuka was the man, though, because in one of his (comic-strip) introductions, he complains about the hypocrisy of American executives who asked him to tone down the violence in the cartoon despite unjustly killing thousands over in Nam. For example, there's an episode in the manga which a national holiday exists where robots are created to look exactly like deceased loved ones. In the same episode of the TV show, those robots are created to duplicate those who are currently in space. I have a feeling the original Japanese episode kept the original story and the English one had it changed, because once you understand certain elements of the driving-character the entire episode revolved around, you kind of realize that it's unbelievable that his family would consider him in space and not dead.

So, it's little things like that that bother me, but it's all good.

In other news, I'm going to see Blonde Redhead again at Terminal 5 tomorrow night. Should be a good show. I've seen them before a year ago and it was a nice way to cap off the year. I end this post with a YouTube video I particularly enjoy, with no reference at all to a part 2 of my end-of-the-year list.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

FUN THEY HAD 2K8: A YEAR IN REVIEW PART 1

This year was an interesting one for the fruitless escapist, wasting his or her free time away carefully mapping out what they're going to read/watch/play next to keep his- or herself occupied. For me, it was a fairly successful year, although once again rather than spend all too much time anticipating things that have yet to be released, I looked back at an entire past's catalog of bullshit. This post is my attempt to categorize, review, and inform you all of everything you may have missed that I certainly did not. A compendium of pop culture non-sense that only those with sharpened acquired tastes would believe to be of any worth. For this post, I'll be constantly referring back to my many little journals I keep where I write down things that annoy me. I present to you, dear reader,

FUN THEY HAD 2K8: A YEAR IN REVIEW PART 1

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY: PROBABLY BAD
Jay McInerney's 1984 airport epic told entirely in the second person is a scathing criticism of yuppie culture, following the antics of yourself, a dude working on "the magazine" with an outrageous nightlife, intent on oblivion. It's probably bad, but it's too great to not recommend since it's a fairly simple read and somewhat iconic. Its self-depricating narrative progressively gets worse as a once-hopeful youth slowly comes to terms with his monotonous lifestyle and hopeless endeavors, and it left me a bit empty inside. It was like looking into a future mirror!

2008 MOVIE "JUMPER"
SUCKED. Sucked. Hard. Some lame story about an angsty teenager who can teleport. Nice job. I only wished I could have jumped out of that horrible movie.

2008 MOVIE "CLOVERFIELD"
Another retarded movie about a giant monster that destroys New York City. Probably great in concept, however much of the film follows a bunch of twnety-somethings intent on saving some chick one of the dudes boned.

THIS QUOTE FROM MY INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES CLASS THAT SUMS UP MY COLLEGE EXPERIENCE QUITE WELL
"Don't try to be too intellectual when asking questions. Yes, this is college, but it's also a journalism class."

2008 MOVIE "PERSEPOLIS"
A finally great French animated film based on a graphic novel by the same name. Nothing particularly moving about the story, although it was interesting enough the whole way through because the art was strangely alluring.

2008 MOVIE "RAMBO"
Excellent. Just the bomb. Great action, lots of explosions and heightening. Sylvester Stallone is the worst actor ever.

JOSIP NOVAKOVICH, CROATION WRITER ON LINGUISTICS
"English words to me are goat turds... despite the stink, I sniff in them the freedom to be away from Croatia and Yugoslavia."

FIRST BATCH OF NEW GAMES: THE SUCKS AND THE NOT SUCKS
StarFox Command: The sucks.
Sega Bass Fishing: The not sucks ironically.
House of the Dead 2 + 3 Returns: The not sucks unironically.
Kirby Squeak Squad: The not sucks
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games DS: The sucks.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl: The sucks ironically.
Octomania: The greatest game.

NO MORE HEROES FOR THE WII: THE SECOND GREATEST GAME
An excellent action game by Suda 51, the only man who knows how to make them right anymore. In an artsy world inspired by Alejandro Jodorowski's El Topo, NMH follows Travis Touchdown, a kid who orders a light sword in the mail and decides to kill a bunch of dudes in order to be the top assassin. To quote Dave, Suda 51 games aren't great games, but they are awesome games.

2008 MOVIE "STREET KINGS"
Keanu Reeves's idiocy is suffuciently blithering.

2008 MOVIE "DOOMSDAY"
The doomiest thing about this film is that I actually sat there and watched on as the greatest genre of all time, dystopian post-apocalypse, is shattered in a string of Audi commercials. Fuck you, whoever directed this.

2008 MOVIE "SUPERHERO MOVIE"
Actually got one laugh out of me. Exactly one.

2008 MOVIE "IRON MAN"
Watch for an hour as Tony Stark builds a super robot suit and then has it destroyed in an anti-climactic scene, and then spend another hour as he does the same exact thing. But it's the best movie ever, am I right?

SECOND BATCH OF NEW GAMES: THE BLARGH AND THE NOT BLARGH
Mario Kart Wii: The blargh.
Boom Blox: The multiplayer not blargh.
Zack & Wiki: The anime not blargh.
Soulcalibur Legends: The super blargh.
Dragon Blade Wrath of Fire: The tears-of-blood blargh.
Samba De Amigo: The not blargh ironically.
Wii Music: The not blargh unironically.
Sonic Unleashed: The greatest game.

2008 MOVIE "SPEED RACER"
Eye candy with a feel good ending and a cartoony presentation. At times pays nice homage to the original anime, other times it pinches a loaf on it, but it's all forgivable. Probably my favorite movie I saw in theaters this year. How sad.

2008 MOVIE "SON OF RAMBO"
I don't remember this film much, but I wrote "cute" next to the ticket so I'm assuming I liked it.

2008 MOVIE "Indiana Jones and th whatever the fuck this movie is called"
Aliens controlled everything and there's a shitty UFO sequence at the end of the film, it was like a punchline to a cruel joke.

2008 MOVIE "THE HAPPENING"
It happened to suck.

2007 MOVIE "LIKE A DRAGON"
A movie based on the unpopular Yakuza games, directed by Takashi Miike. And it really ruled. Really.

THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL TRUCK
An unfortunate accident spelled the end of the reign of the Beautiful Truck, the only woman I've ever loved. The five-speed 1990 Ford Ranger will truly be missed. It has been replaced by SUV the Suburban Ussault Vehicle, which isn't nearly as cool, but at least it has a few features the Beautiful Truck didn't. For instance, I can roll the windows up and down, I have heat, I have a CD player, I can tell how much gas is left in the tank, the emergency brake works, the speaker system works, and it generally isn't a huge pile of metal crap on wheels.

2008 MOVIE "WALL-E"
It was good, I guess.


2008 MOVIE "WANTED"
"Action cheese, but I liked it." That's what I wrote. Looking back, it probably sucked, I don't know. I don't even remember what it was about. Didn't they curve bullets or something? Did I really go to see this?

2008 MOVIE "DEATH RACE"
Paul W.S. Anderson's disasterous remake of the god-damn-incredible movie from the 70's, which starred Stallone when he was still unironically good.

1975 MOVIE "DEATH RACE 2000"
Please just watch this instead, I'm serious.

THIRD BATCH OF NEW GAMES: THE WHARF AND THE NOT WHARF
Sega Superstars Tennis Wii: Not wharf.
Sega Superstars Tennis DS: Not wharf.
Space Invaders Extreme: Not wharf.
Arkanoid DS: Not wharf.
Pokemon Pearl: ???
Bangai-O Spirits: Not wharf.
Kirby Super Star Ultra: Not wharf.
Sonic Chronicles: Not wharf.
Legend of Kage 2: Not wharf.
Exit DS: The greatest game.

CHRONO TRIGGER FOR THE DS: THE SECOND GREATEST GAME
A remake of the SNES classic RPG by Squaresoft, right before they started being terrible. It furthered that crazy half-real-time-but-not-really fighting system that stays consistently fun. And it predates the angsty animeness of their future games. It was honestly made right when they games started being good and right before their games started being terrible. The DS port is good enough.

In hindsight, this isn't even the tip of the iceberg. So, I'm relabeling this "part 1" and I promise a "part 2" forthcoming, although I anticipate this to go up to "part 20" at this rate. In the next installment I'll talk about the other movies I saw this year that didn't suck (most of which didn't come out this year), more of the books I've read, and further on the list of games and random pop culture things from my book. Maybe I'll even make a list! Who knew so many stupid things could happen in just one year!