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Nov. 28th, 2005 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickTwo film reviews and a website for all ya'll.
First, the website. While I generally despise all things Microsoft Excel and particularly macros, sometimes there exists a thing of such glory and delight that I force myself to tolerate both the Excel and the macros. This is such a thing. For more than a little while, I have been plagued by the fact that kanji have more than one reading and that I cannot accurately determine which reading I should be using for any given compound. V. frustrating stuff, that. And yet, here, here, meshed in the snarls of Excel Macros, is a free thing designed to teach me all the fucking readings by putting them before me in handy compounds ripped directly from the damn JLPT tests. Now how fucking cool is that? Very. Plus, y'know, free.
Movie Review #1: Happiness of the Katakuris is by that nice director Miike person who also brought us the arterial spray comedy* Ichi the Killer and the disturbing Audition which assrapes the implicit contract between viewer and filmmaker. (Note: If I'm calling a flim disturbing, you may rest assured that it's disturbing.) Anyway. Happiness of the Katakuris is a musical about the Katakuris, a family that runs a guest house in some remote area. The people who visit their guest house keep dying and they bury them around the place so's to avoid the bad reputation that their guest house would get if word got out that their guests were all dying on them. Happiness of the Katakuris has its moments and it's not every day that the family-values zombie musical genre of film gets another member. (Maybe you think that's a good thing, but when you can start timing the gratuitous explosions in the latest Summer Action Blockbuster, family-values zombie musicals start to make sense, okay?) It also has several running gags and some very nice claymation. I like claymation.
*Not everyone agrees with me that Ichi the Killer is a comedy.
Film review #2: Taboo, a film by Nagisa Oshima, a director whose work I am not yet familiar with. I picked this movie because, well, hell. You think I'd pass up A Gorgeously Filmed Study of Homosexual Lust that ALSO has swords, samurai era costumes, and that really pretty Tadanobu Asano whose delights I have mentioned previously? (Just so that you know, I do actually watch movies in English sometimes. Honest.) It's a lovely film with all kinds of entertainment value. In addition to the very pretty Asano, you get the luminous, pouty performance of Ryuhei Matsuda as the piece of the plot. He does a pretty solid job -- I wouldn't have thought anyone could get that much mileage out of a pout. I was also rather impressed with the decidedly sparkley Shinji Takeda who was as much a joy to look at as a samurai as he was playing the sullen son of the Katakuri family in, d'oh, Happiness of the Katakuris. The film as a whole has got less lust than you probably think, though I'm okay with that because the rest of the film is really quite satisfying. As with many efforts on the foreign-films-I-like front, this has good use of color and mood. It's more subdued than stuff like House of Flying Daggers but still effective. Costumes and settings were rightly solid, as one expected in a period piece. Attention to detail was pretty meticulous and interestingly, the camera work was solid enough that I admired it.
First, the website. While I generally despise all things Microsoft Excel and particularly macros, sometimes there exists a thing of such glory and delight that I force myself to tolerate both the Excel and the macros. This is such a thing. For more than a little while, I have been plagued by the fact that kanji have more than one reading and that I cannot accurately determine which reading I should be using for any given compound. V. frustrating stuff, that. And yet, here, here, meshed in the snarls of Excel Macros, is a free thing designed to teach me all the fucking readings by putting them before me in handy compounds ripped directly from the damn JLPT tests. Now how fucking cool is that? Very. Plus, y'know, free.
Movie Review #1: Happiness of the Katakuris is by that nice director Miike person who also brought us the arterial spray comedy* Ichi the Killer and the disturbing Audition which assrapes the implicit contract between viewer and filmmaker. (Note: If I'm calling a flim disturbing, you may rest assured that it's disturbing.) Anyway. Happiness of the Katakuris is a musical about the Katakuris, a family that runs a guest house in some remote area. The people who visit their guest house keep dying and they bury them around the place so's to avoid the bad reputation that their guest house would get if word got out that their guests were all dying on them. Happiness of the Katakuris has its moments and it's not every day that the family-values zombie musical genre of film gets another member. (Maybe you think that's a good thing, but when you can start timing the gratuitous explosions in the latest Summer Action Blockbuster, family-values zombie musicals start to make sense, okay?) It also has several running gags and some very nice claymation. I like claymation.
*Not everyone agrees with me that Ichi the Killer is a comedy.
Film review #2: Taboo, a film by Nagisa Oshima, a director whose work I am not yet familiar with. I picked this movie because, well, hell. You think I'd pass up A Gorgeously Filmed Study of Homosexual Lust that ALSO has swords, samurai era costumes, and that really pretty Tadanobu Asano whose delights I have mentioned previously? (Just so that you know, I do actually watch movies in English sometimes. Honest.) It's a lovely film with all kinds of entertainment value. In addition to the very pretty Asano, you get the luminous, pouty performance of Ryuhei Matsuda as the piece of the plot. He does a pretty solid job -- I wouldn't have thought anyone could get that much mileage out of a pout. I was also rather impressed with the decidedly sparkley Shinji Takeda who was as much a joy to look at as a samurai as he was playing the sullen son of the Katakuri family in, d'oh, Happiness of the Katakuris. The film as a whole has got less lust than you probably think, though I'm okay with that because the rest of the film is really quite satisfying. As with many efforts on the foreign-films-I-like front, this has good use of color and mood. It's more subdued than stuff like House of Flying Daggers but still effective. Costumes and settings were rightly solid, as one expected in a period piece. Attention to detail was pretty meticulous and interestingly, the camera work was solid enough that I admired it.
