In Korea, in Seattle

Films this year:

4. Kim Ki-duk, Samaritan Girl (2004)
5. Kim Ki-duk, Address Unknown (2001)
6. Spike Jonze, Where The Wild Things Are (2009)
7. Drew Barrymore, Whip It (2009)
8. Scott Hicks, The Boys Are Back (2009)
9. Brandon Camp, Love Happens (2009)

I rewatched 4 with some friends; still an engima. 5 is another masterpiece that deals with Korea-US relationship in a striking way. 6 is good, but it may cause a nightmare (to me).

7 is fabulous! Drew growing into such a fine director... that's the girl! Ellen Page's childish-look is very funny. 8 is very good for its nice opening, especially. 9 makes me miss Seattle! Jennifer Aniston is as lovely as ever. All of these were in-flight movies. I'll watch them again at a theatre!

Whitman

This year, to me, will be that of Walt Whitman. All his lines touch my heart and kick my butt... with his simple and immense truth! See the following, for example:


After me, vista!
O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,
I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower,
Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.

I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,
I perceive I have no time to lose.

(Leaves of Grass, 193)

World Cinema Continues

Films in 2009:
83. Wei Te-Sheng, Cape No.7 (2008)

A charming and well-conceived film that calls for a subtle socio-politico-ethnic reading of it. Historical complexity of Taiwan is stunning. Now is the time to pay attention to Wu's Pariah Manifest.

Films this year:
1. Toshifumi Matsushita, El regalo de la Pachamama (2009)
2. Chung-Ryoul Lee, Wonangsori (Old Partner, 2009)
3. F.W.Murnau, Sunrise (1927)

1 is a very ambitious staged documentary that deals with the Quechua life today. I liked it immensely.

2 is fascinating, riveting. This documentary was a blockbuster in Korea; you will cry when you watch it.

3 is Murnau's masterpiece that changes its atmosphere totally according to which of two sound tracks you choose.

He never repeated himself (?)

Here is what Stephen Spender says on T.S. Eliot:

"What is immediately striking about the poetry of T.S. Eliot is the difference between the work of the early, middle, and late periods. It is not just that Eliot never repeated himself and that he wrote a new poem only when he had something new to say and a new way of saying it, but that, at successive stages of his development, the poetry seems to proceed from a different consciousness." (T.S. Eliot, 3)

This itself is striking. Is it ever possible that one never repeat oneself? How does he know before he actually writes that he has found something new to say?

My new year's resolution

This year I will reorganize my life around... READING. This will be, once again, the focus of my life. See the great quote from my old mentor (in my heart) Gaston Bachelard:

"J'étudie! Je ne suis que le sujet du verbe étudier."

Philosophers pretend they THINK rather than STUDY, but what you need to do seriously is STUDY, namely, READ. Writers tend to think they WRITE rather than READ, but writing in essence is a series of RE-READING in which one's own writing is in constant struggle with one's predecessors'.

Happy reading to us all.

On water

Some titles I have forgotten to include:

81. Roman Polansky, Knife in the Water (1962)
82. Yves Allégret, Une si jolie petite plage (1949)

81 is so memorable for the rain falling on the lake. Then again, in 82 falls a lot of rain. 82 is all about sexual abuse of a young boy by a much older woman. The title should be read: Un si jolie petit garçon. Stunningly dark, but the beauty is undeniable.

Back then in London and its environs

78. Roman Polanski, Oliver Twist (2005)

Nobody alive today really knows 19th-century London, but this film reconstructs quite convincingly the life of an orphan in the historical setting. Especially charming is the dog; seemingly an Olde English Bulldogge, it is very handsome and looks quite powerful. I wish I could keep a dog like that. And the film probably leads me to read this Dickensian masterpiece after so many years (this time in the original).

79. Andrei Tarkovsky, Ivan's Childhood (1962)

Surprizingly beautiful moments. Of them I like the best the horse eating apples on the sandy beach... simply unforgettable. The film is not really focused on one character, but follows a group of characters intermittently. Of them one remembers Marcia and the camera that incarnates her own eyes in the forest. A great film.

80. Claude Chabrol, Les cousins (1959)

One of the well-known masterpieces of the Nouvelle Vague, this cruel film is full of charm because of its freely moving camera, very retro fashion, and the firmly constructed, literary plot. In fact the film is very novelistic, if you know what I mean. Our sympathy goes to Charles, the provincial boy. And we hate the girl who fell so easily for his cousin, but this hatred was already gendered.

México, the other side

I have been very slow in viewing new films; over the past weeks all I watched were Jean Cocteau's Orphée (1949, one of my all time favorites), Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying (1957, ditto) and Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (an interesting film I can never say I love). Rewatching is good, but having to rewatch is not very much so.

77. Luis Estrada, La ley de Herodes (1999)

Eiko introduced me to this politico-satirical Mexican comedy. Nicely rendered and a bit reminiscent of The Milagro Beanfield War because of its scenery and setting of the remote village. The landscape I suspect is that of Sonora? Just like southern Arizona. Bloody and often hilarious. Animals are especially funny.

Ah, Madagascar!

Films this year:

76.César Paes, Angano, angano (1989)

A masterpiece of ethnographic documentary. "Angano" means folk-tale in Malgache. The film follows nicely the lives of people on the island of Madagascar and how traditional storytelling lives on to teach people a cosmology and the way to deal with their reality.

Astonishingly beautiful sceneries appear unexpectedly. Highly recommended.

In Berlin

Films this year:

75. Tom Tykwer, Run, Lola, Run (1998)

Watched this for the first time in a decade... still lovely after these years. And as was expected, some graduate students who watched it with me loved it immensely. Now is the time for some slow action...

Telling the future?

Films this year:

74. Kim Ki-duk, Birdcage Inn (1998).

Emotionally far-fetched and often tepid and boring, the film shows its true color in the final 10 minutes or so. You'd be chilled to see that many of his future works are foretold in this odd piece. Spiritual sisterhood (the undertone is lesbianism) played against the theme of the sacred whore; like that in his later masterpiece Samaritan Girl.

And who else lets the snow fall in the summer? Lets a gold fish swim in the sea? Marvelously insane.

Dangerous Altitude

Films this year:

71. Lu Chuan, Kekexili: Mountain Patrol (2004)
72. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Café Lumière (2003)
73. The Coen brothers, Blood Simple. (1984)

71 is a visually stunning pseudo-documentary which is based on the true story of the porchers and the privately organized mountain patrol of the region. I am not sure if actual killing of the animals has been involved in the production, but it looks that way. The quicksand is chilling. The beauty of the land over 4700m or thereabouts is divine.

72 is a masterpiece set in Tokyo with almost unbelievable performance from the singer Hitoto Yo. Her portrayal of a young woman who choses to become a single mother is so convincing, uncannily natural. Asano Tadanobu is good, too.

It seems that Zhang Yimou is remaking 73! This already classic thriller is so... Coen-like. What other than this tautology can explain their films. Weird and fascinating.

In Bangkok

Films this year:

70. Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Last Life in the Universe (2003)

Fresh and nice, with immer breathtaking Chris Doyle's cinematography. The story has some subtle moments, which are pleasing, and some incongruities, which are interesting. Asano Tadanobu is an interesting actor who may possibly have a pan-Asian appeal. Got to see more from this director.

Remembering Dalian

Films this year:

68. Zhang Yimou, Happy Times (2000)
69. Kim Ki-duk, Breath (2007)

68 is a film with a very unhappy ending. It makes every sensible person cry. My Chinese student says it's a story with a real backdrop of a heavy recession and a mass internal immigration to Shin-sen. Nicely done, comic, and ruthlessly sad. Set in Dalian and I liked it all the more for it.

69 is like an absurdist drama. The story is far-fetched, yet the whole piece is more than attractive. The strangeness of the heroine is well over-done, but you'll get used to it. With so little number of actors and settings, how can he make this much sensation? Amazing.

Korea in Winter (simply unbeatable)

Films this year:

63. Albert Lamorisse, Le balon rouge (1956)
64. Albert Lamorisse, Crin Blanc (1953)
65. Kim Ki-duk, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003)
66. Matt Taylor, Gate (2008)
67. Kim Ki-duk, 3 Iron (2004)

63 is a very famous short film. Charming, yes, but nothing moving. On the other hand, 64 is formidable! The mud-slide scene is exciting, the ending heart-breaking and takes your breath away. Camargues invites me.

65 is probably Kim's best work ever. Chillingly beautiful and the imagination behind it is otherworldly. True genius!

66 is an interesting documentary covering three Japanese monks who walk on summer days from San Francisco to Trinity Site, Nuevo Mexico... to return the fire of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima that has been kept for 60 years at a temple... an amazing true story. As a film it's rather ordinary, but because of this extraordinary walk I appreciate it highly.

67 is again fascinating.

Another WOW

Films this year:

62. Wong Kar-wai, Chungkin Express (1994)

A masterpiece of cinematography and a schizo piece as far as its story line is concerned. And all the more convincing for it!

Falling into fall

Films this year:

55. Andrei Tarkovsky, The Steamroller and the Violin (1960)
56. Kim Ki-duk, Samaritan Girl (2004)
57. Kim Ki-duk, The Bow (2005)
58. Wong Kar-wai, Days of being wild (1991)
59. Tony Gatlif, Latcho Drom (1992)
60. Kim Ki-duk, Time (2006)
61. Kim Ki-duk, Crocodile (1996)

55 is Tarkovsky's cinema school graduation work. Genius is brimming. 56 was my first Kim and I was astounded. Very strange and powerful. The same goes with 57. Mythological, funny, and moving.

58 deserves to be a cult. The stream of narrative is so turbulent and beautiful. 59, one of my all-time favorite from my (possibly) favorite world-cinema director.

60 is again so crazy... metaleptic use of the first encounter between the two (in fact one) women is so effective. 61 is harsh, yet brilliant moments including the unexpected ending.

Let's keep rolling the ball.

Darkness & Light

Films this year:

52. Werner Herzog, Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972).
53. Werner Herzog, Where the Green Ants Dream (1984).
54. Chang Tso-chi, Darkness and Light (1999).

Herzog is always deeply satisfying. Aguirre is so dangerous! And the Green Ants, too.

54 is one of the few perfect films ever. I wrote in my Japanese blog an attempt at the analysis of it. I watched it twice in a row. Maybe I will treble the experience.

Off to the South of Japan now.

Done!

I've just finished proof-reading my new book: Don't Worry, Books are Unreadable Anyway. This will appear on the 24th of September. At the last minute I added a very short piece for the memory of Shingo. It concludes and opens the book toward the ocean where the islands of books are scattered.

Water and Blood

Films this year:

49. Armagan Ballantine, The Strength of Water (2009).
50. The Coen brothers, Burn After Reading (2008).
51. Joe Wright, Atonement (2007).

The new Maori film 49 offers a sheer beauty of northern North Island. 50 is so funny because of Brad Pitt's impersonating Jim Carrey (as if). In 51 again I encounter the strength of water, in a different sense. Very powerful.

But of them 49 remains the one I'd like to watch over and over again.