# mood

Random speculation on the possible climax of The Jojolands -

The boat out at sea was one of the first visuals we got of Part 9 and, in the intro to Chapter 1, we see it again being ridden by Jodio and Dragona alone. We also get this imagery of Jodio ascending a volcano when he talks about the Mechanism - and while I think it's possible these are just metaphorical, I think it's also possible that they're hinting at the climax of the story.

I say this because Jojo loves its ocean and/or boat endings. Just off the top of my head and without going into spoilers - the endings of Parts 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7 all feature the sea or characters on a boat in some way. It's not always the literal last page, but it's definitely a motif.

The volcano erupting clearly ties into the lava rock and the lava tubes. A volcano erupting would also resemble the end of Part 2 and maybe the natural disasters / calamities of 7 and 8's endings. And with the set-up that is hasn't erupted in a long time, I feel like this is a safe assumption.

It's way too early to theorize any more, but I have some random loose thoughts. With the endings we've had from recent parts, I'm guessing Part 9 will be tragic or at least bittersweet. While the story so far resembles Golden Wind a lot, I wouldn't be surprised if it incorporates some ideas from Stone Ocean's ending. We also only see Jodio and Dragona on the boat and none of the other protagonists which probably means something 😢

The Jojo Wiki claims that in an interview with Noriko Narumi, the woman who designed the Part 9 logo, she listed some proposed titles for the part. The most interesting was "MADE IN JOJOLANDS". This title was scrapped and it's possibly just a reference to the term "Made in America / the USA" - but obviously it's reminiscent of Made In Heaven. It could've just been a throwback, but if Part 9 is the conclusion to the series / the alt. universe trilogy, then I really think it's possible we might get something similar to the Part 6 ending.

A tragic ending involving two siblings out at sea? Phantom Blood and Stone Ocean both have similar conclusions and, if we are to believe that The Jojolands is the last part, I at least think it would make sense for it to follow this trend and reincorporate these ideas. I can't say if Araki would actually do something like this, but I just noticed these little connections and wanted to put them somewhere.

Hohi Aoki and Setsuko Hara in Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949) Cast: Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Yumeji Tsukioka, Haruko Sugimura, Hohi Aoki, Jun Usami, Kuniko Miyake, Masao Mishima, Yoshiko Tsubouchi, Yoko Katsuragi, Toyo Takahashi, Jun Tanizaki. Screenplay: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu, based on a novel by Kazuo Hirotsu. Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta. Art direction: Tatsuo Hamada. Film editing: Yoshiyasu Hamamura. Music: Senji Ito. The opening of Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring is deceptively calm: the usual establishing shots of landscape and buildings and trains, the kind of images with which Ozu typically punctuates his narratives, and a group of women gathering for a tea ceremony. One of the women is Noriko, whose brilliant smile is also deceptive. This is the first film in Ozu's so-called "Noriko trilogy," to be followed by Early Summer (1951) and Tokyo Story (1953), in each of which Setsuko Hara plays a woman named Noriko. The three Norikos have nothing in common except that they are all unmarried. (In Tokyo Story she is a widow.)  The Noriko of Late Spring lives with her father, Shukichi, who is played by Ozu regular Chishu Ryu. (In Early Summer, Ryu plays Hara's brother, and in Tokyo Story her father-in-law.) The deceptions of what might be called the "get-acquainted" section of Ozu's film, which establishes for us the relationships among the characters, lie in the apparent happiness and contentment of father and daughter and the untroubled world in which they live. But Late Spring was filmed only four years after the end of the war that devastated Japan, which was still under occupation by American forces. The wounds and pain of the country and its people are invisible in the film, partly because of occupation censorship, but they provide a kind of tension in the viewer who knows what the characters must have suffered. There is only a brief mention of this in Late Spring: Noriko has been to the doctor and reports that her health has improved. Another character's reference to "forced work during the war" sheds some light on what may have caused her illness. Later, Noriko and her father visit Kyoto, and he remarks how much nicer it is than "dusty" Tokyo, obliquely referencing wartime destruction. The central deception, however, lies in Noriko's apparent contentment with her unmarried state: She feels it is her duty to spend her life caring for her widowed father, and brushes off any suggestions that at 27 she should really be thinking about getting married -- or worse, that her father might choose to remarry. She calls the second marriage of one of her father's friends "filthy." We who have seen this situation before, however, realize that the deception Noriko is perpetrating is on herself. Perhaps because she has lived through so much change and upheaval, Noriko is trying to persuade herself that her current happiness serving her father can be made permanent. And so she suffers a shock when her father displays interest in a beautiful widow, and another when he suggests that she might meet the young man her Aunt Masa (Haruko Sugimura ) thinks would be a suitable husband for Noriko. What Ozu and his frequent collaborator Kogo Noda establish here, working from a novel called Father and Daughter by Kazuo Hirotsu, is worthy of Henry James or Jane Austen -- I think particularly of Austen's Emma Woodhouse and her self-deluding attachment to her father. Eventually, Noriko is persuaded into marriage -- in a masterstroke of direction we never even see the groom -- by her father's lie: He claims that he has been planning to remarry, thereby eliminating any objection Noriko could have to seeking her own path to fulfillment. The film ends with a melancholy image of Shukichi alone, peeling an apple -- a kind of Jamesian twist on an Austenian situation. This magisterial example of Ozu's late style -- low camera angles, absence of pans and dissolves, emphasis on the somewhat claustrophobic interiors of the Japanese home -- is reinforced by Tatsuo Hamada's art direction and Yuharu Atsuta's cinematography, but most of all by the superb performances of Hara and Ryu.

thing i want to watch in honor of fall/halloween season🎃:

Rewatch:

-possession 1981

-twin peaks fire walk with me

-X

-perfect blue

-tale of two sisters

-audition

-cure

-paprika

-rosemarys baby

-sisters

-dressed to kill

-blair witch project (orig.)

-trick r treat

-maybe goosebumps or something even rl stine related lol

Have yet to watch:

-death note (in progress lol)

-the hell house llc trilogy

-Pearl

-the bride of Frankenstein

-house of terror

-house of a 1000 corpses

-speak no evil

-evil dead

-orphan first kill

-noriko’s dinner table

Oh. Mystery solved. At some point Bern and Lambda watched the Noriko Trilogy together and their takeaway was that marriage is for people similar to the late Ryū Chishū and absolutely no one else.

Movies I watched this Week #113 (Year 3/Week 9):

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2 with both Anthony Hopkins And Vanessa Kirby:

🍿 The son, my second by French playwright Florian Zeller (after ’The Father’). A very slow and atmospheric family drama about not-intuitive father Hugh Jackman who can’t realize that his estranged 17 year old son is being crippled by an overwhelming cloud of depression. I liked the Hans Zimmer score. 5/10.

🍿 “... Good evening, Pussy...”

The Dresser by Richard Eyre is based on a British play and movie from the early 80′s. It tells of an aging Shakespearean actor who is playing ‘King Lear’ during the Blitz. Hopkins is the grand old master, and Ian McKellen is his loyal assistant. Grand acting all around in the old theatrical tradition, where each movement is busy and even small physical gestures are extended and emphasized. Majestic and mesmerizing - 9/10.

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3 more with Bill Nighy:

🍿 Notes on a scandal (2006), another English film directed by Richard Eyre. Cate Blanchett is a pretty teacher who starts an affair with a 15-year-old pupil of her, and Judi Dench is an older school colleague who’s infatuated with her. It also features Bill Nighy, cute teenager Juno Temple, and Joanna Scanlon (From ‘After Love’). 6/10.

🍿 I recently saw Kurosawa’s classic ‘Ikiru’ again, in anticipation of the new British adaptation, Living. So now I can say, it was a serviceable retelling, but why was it necessary? 6/10.

🍿 Another mandatory re-watch of Hot Fuzz, the perfect buddy-cop comedy-action homage to everything from ‘A fistful of Dollars’ and ‘Chinatown’ to ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘The shining’.

The dialogue is one quotable line after another: ‘What's the matter, Danny? Never taken a shortcut before?’, ‘Feel free to spool through!’, ‘Ever fired your gun in the air and yelled, 'Aaaaaaah?', ‘No luck catching them killers then?’, ‘If we don't come down hard on these clowns, we are gonna be up to our balls in jugglers’, ‘Everybody and their mums are packing ’round here.’ The whole brilliant script is exquisite. 10/10.

Bonus: A reel of Bloopers and gags. Yarp.

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Life among the ruins: my first by ‘least-known’ black filmmaker Charles Burnett, Killer of Sheep. A masterpiece of Italian Neo-realism in Watts, CA of the early 70′s, and the most blatant example of how industry snubbed and crushed Black film throughout the 20th Century.

This was Burnett’s no-budget student film thesis at the UCLA School of Film, and was practically ignored and unseen until recently. A profound slice of life poem of a poor community struggling to survive. Especially sad are the children playing in the street, jumping on roof tops.

The allegory of the ‘Sheep to the slaughterhouse’ (The main character, Sam, works at a meat factory) was a bit thick, but the tender dancing scene played on the background of Dinah Washington's ‘This Bitter Earth’ and the rest of the film was devastating. 8/10 poetry. I plan on watching Elvis Mitchell’s new film essay ‘Is That Black Enough for You?’ about The History of Black Cinema in the 1970′s next.

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2 new Belgians dramas about little girls:

🍿 The remarkable Playground, an extremely simple but brilliant story of schoolyard bullying. A shy 7-year-old girl witnesses her brother being abused as she is drawn into it with tragic results. Quiet, powerless and nearly mute, she has to go through small traumas that are too real and overwhelming. Told exclusively from a child’s (literal) point of view. Oscar-submitted debut feature from a young female director. And Again, the little girl was tremendous. 9/10. 

🍿 The Broken Circle Breakdown, a 2012 drama about a Belgian couple of Bluegrass musicians who can’t cope with the death of their 6-year-old daughter. The exact first half as they fall in love and their daughter is born and then gets sick is hard to watch. The second non-linear half is more of a melodrama.

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Late Spring, my 4th by Yasujirō Ozu, and my 2nd of the “Noriko trilogy”, about the life of single women in postwar Japan, in this case a woman who lives with her widowed father, and who doesn’t want to marry so as not to abandoned him. An understated poem, like a sound of a flute.

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Revisiting Roy Andersson:

🍿 Being a human being (2019) is a loving portrait of Roy Andersson, my favorite Swedish director, in the three long years as he was shooting his final movie. A slow and wistful journey of a unique iconoclast crafting meticulous Trompe-l'œils in his Stockholm studio. Vulnerability, insecurity and mortality are mixed with his alcoholism, his relationship to Goya, the perfection of his craft.

I’ve seen all his work, (except of Giliap!). It’s a pity he will probably not do more. The trailer. My favorite film of the week.

🍿 So I had to watch again his moving About Endlessness, the subject of the documentary above. A sad, absurd masterpiece composed of 31 small visual poems, a flawless gem of art. Every word I wrote about it last year still stands.

🍿 I also learnt about his 1987 “educational” short about AIDS Something Happened (Någonting har hänt), which caused controversy because it already featured the signature style that he used in his last 4 films. I can’t find a full copy of this 24 minutes film: Only clips: The Sex-ed class applying condoms, the Volunteers in prison and the Congress of Physicians.

Bonus, his Studio 24 YouTube Channel offers some of the many commercials he directed during his Wilderness Years.

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First watch: Richard Linklater hilarious classic School of Rock, which retained its freshness due exclusively to Jack Black’s irreplaceable commitment. Few comedies from that period stayed wholesome. Sarah Silverman plays the bitchy girlfriend. 7/10.

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2 more with Samantha Morton:

🍿 The Whale, my 2nd by Darren Aronofsky. Brendan Fraser will surely win this year’s Oscar for his portrayal of the morbidly-obese father who tries to connect with his estranged daughter before he expires. And he will 100% deserve it. The whole movie takes place in one living room, and there are only 5 characters, 4 of which are good. 9/10.

🍿 Sweet and lowdown, Woody Allen’s Django Reinhardt’s mockumentary with Sean Penn playing the fictional jazz guitarist Emmet Ray. The ‘Genius Artist’ as a misbehaving louse, who’s always excused because he produces such sublime ‘Artworks’ - the usual Woody Allen dilemma. And Samantha Morton was nominated for an Oscar, in spite of the fact that she does not utter a single word of dialogue in the film, as she plays a mute laundress. 3/10 for the story - 9/10 for the soundtrack.

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I decided to take a bite of the list of films with 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which I haven’t seen yet. The earliest one (1920) is the classic The Golem: How He Came into the World. A silent German expressionistic-style monster classic with distinctly medieval Jewish flair. Some interesting special effects and an ending with ‘a little girl meets the monster’ that was later copied in ‘Frankenstein’. (Photo Above).

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God’s angry man, Werner Herzog’s 1981 documentary about Gene Scott, the earliest of the televangelist grifters. What an amazing phenomena, how the religious scammers, charlatans and con-men took over the world! 7/10.

At the heart of the Herzog’s touch is him finding an outrageous topic and simply sticking a running camera in front of it.

Bonus: Robin Williams as Gene Scott.

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First re-watch in many years: Peter Weir’s thriller Witness. Well-executed, unhurried direction in a rare story set up among the Amish. The sub-plot of pretty widow Kelly McGillis looking for love with TWO males right after her husband was dead and buried seems out-dated. With a cameo by Viggo Mortensen in his first film role. 5/10.  

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Chelsea Handler: Revolution, her latest stand-up special with screeds about Covid, choosing to be childless, sex and pot. 3/10.

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Grand Canons, by Alain Biet. A Visual Symphony of Thousands of Everyday Objects, from flyswatters to light bulbs.

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(My complete movie list is here)

Late spring (1949)

dir. Yasujiro Ozu

SETSUKO HARA as Noriko in Early Summer (1951) dir. Yasujirō Ozu

I Was Born, But... (1932) dir. Yasujiro Ozu

Prior to watching this as a film student, I had some familiarity with the works of Ozu. I'd first watched his film Ohayō (1959) for a film analysis class in a previous semester, which was his second venture into color film after Equinox Flower (1958). It was my first introduction to Ozu, and subsequently my favorite film by him, with its iconic Ozuesque pillow shots and warm mellow depictions of life in suburban Tokyo.

Afterwards I'd seen Tokyo Story (1953) and then Early Summer (1951) (the former of which we'll be watching this week), making up 2/3 of the Noriko trilogy starring the late and beloved Setsuko Hara. I found both films to be not only compelling, but also tackle the themes of defying societal expectations of marriage as an institution in interesting and distinct ways through the character Noriko. Ozu has a distinct grasp on his style of filmmaking, and his ability to reuse elements of this in combination with relatable and heartfelt screenplays is what makes a beloved filmmaker in Japan even today.

So watching I Was Born, But... (1932) was a surprise divergence from his sound films which I'd been more familiar with, but an interesting one at that. The distinct lighthearted themes of Ozu are still present with the exception of the lack of sound from the characters. What always amazes me about silent films are the actors' ability to effectively communicate through gestures, poses, and body image, without the need for sound. And this film is no exception with the antics from brothers Keiji and Ryoichi and their eventual overtaking of the local school gang.

I also really loved the parallels made between the brothers and how they handle school and their father at work. Specifically, there is a match cut in the film where the scene transitions from the men working in the office at their desks to the children working at their desks. This cut makes a very interesting message about how children and the insistence for them to be obedient and mannered are no different from the men in the workplace that are tasked to do the same. Ozu at this point seems to say that adults are still children at heart albeit with more responsibilities and life experiences, at least from my personal interpretations.

I can see how some of the cultural differences and jokes expressed in the film can be lost upon some viewers. However, I didn't find anything particularly confusing or out of the ordinary, especially with the gags. I didn't find them any different from when watching a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton film. You can definitely see the deadpan gags here that resemble that of Chaplin and Keaton's films given this was released during their popularity in film. I think I also owe the lack of confusion to my prior experiences in studying the language here at university and having been to the country twice. But even without the background knowledge, I find the themes and jokes in this film to be universal and able to be understood in western spaces.

Overall, I thought that I would be bored watching Ozu's renowned silent film. Instead I am left smiling and warmhearted, which is no surprise given his other works. I look forward to rewatching Tokyo Story next as my initial reaction to it wasn't too positive, but perhaps revisiting it this time around will change my mind otherwise.

Setsuko Hara as Noriko in Tokyo Story (1953) dir. Yasujirō Ozu

I know you've said before that you think Caine and Drake are pretty one-dimensional (and I agree completely). I was wondering if there were any other villains that you wish had been explored more instead of giving those two more page time in later books. Or if there were any characters that you thought could have had villainous potential that were unexplored??

wow, interesting question! i think my main problem with caine and drake is that they’re just kind of blandly evil, one-dimensional like you said. i think, ideally, villains should feel like real people.

funnily enough, i think zil probably comes closest to embodying that in this series. he’s mean-spirited from the beginning, but it’s only under lance’s influence (from what i remember) that he becomes a real threat due to his gaining confidence. i think it would have been nice to see more of him in the series—he’s insecure in his role as leader of the human crew, which makes him fallible. he’s also kind of unnerved by lance’s neo-nazism. he’s arguably the most intelligent out of the crew aside from lance. he’s not sympathetic, per se, but he is compelling.

i would’ve liked to see him interact more directly with the protagonists—especially astrid, because i think she should get a chance to one-up him in some way after he was thinking creepy thoughts about her in hunger. also, i think astrid, being the smartie she is, would probably be most likely to try to persuade him to turn over a new leaf—she’s a normal, and a white, aryan-looking (gag) normal at that, which would probably satisfy lance, and she still has distinct power in the fayz. though zil could probably poke a hole in her argument by pointing out that she only really has that power because she’s sam’s girlfriend, which is true. anyway, they could have words about it.

i think zil is compelling because he has the potential to be redeemed. it’s a slight potential, because he’s already done some pretty evil things, but he’s not totally evil—he has to justify the violence he commits in order to accept it, which is more than caine or drake does. we never forget that, at the end of the day, he’s still an insecure, blustering twelve-year-old. he’s an anti-moof bigot, but he could change. i think lance, more than zil, represents total irredeemable evil. he represents what zil could descend into being. he’s the devil on his shoulder (astrid could potentially be the angel if she maybe switched tactics from lawful punishment to direct emotional manipulation).

i’m a sucker for human villains and natural disasters being the principal antagonists, which i think is why the first four books work so well? i think fear and light suffer from the gaiaphage taking control of the narrative, villain-wise, when i think it worked best when used sparingly. gaia is pure evil, nothing more. she’s fun to read about in her own way because she’s so villainously campy, but that’s kind of it. she’s not really interesting, imo.

i think the reason why i harp so much on the insufficient “humanity” of antagonists like caine and drake is because that’s the principal strength of books (lord of the flies, battle royale) in the “kids trapped in place and forced to survive” genre: what do the actions of the characters say about human nature? about society? about morality? in lord of the flies, the message conveyed is ultimately a bleak one: the kids all descend into savagery in one way or another, with the purest one of them all, simon (the jesus figure) being driven insane, and the intellectual (piggy) being murdered. the story is all about “the darkness in the human heart,” to paraphrase the last line of the book.

in battle royale, on the contrary, the message is ultimately one of hope. despite the characters living in a dystopian fascist society that sacrifices one class of students to a killing game, the main character shuya clings to the idea that he and his classmates can figure out an alternate way to survive the titular battle royale aside from murdering each other. his compassionate view of humanity is validated by the pov vignettes given to all his classmates. all of them are given distinct personalities; some are kind, like shuya and his allies noriko and shogo, and some are drake-esque sadists, while the majority fall somewhere in between (my personal favorite characters are the girls that team up with one another in order to protect themselves from possible sexual violence from the boys. they hole up in a lighthouse!). but all are tragic in the sense that they’re children thrust into an unfair and cruel situation. even then, though, the nobility of certain characters shines through.

for instance, there are two girls at the beginning of the game who are best friends and don’t want to kill anyone. they (foolishly or bravely) use a megaphone to call out to the other kids in hiding, asking if they can all band together. shuya and several other characters are tempted, but sadly the girls are both fatally shot soon after their announcement. they die in each other’s arms after affirming their friendship, tears in their eyes. shuya and several other kids are devastated by the girls’ deaths. while some more callous characters deride them as being stupid and naïve, the reader is ultimately meant to mourn their deaths and the lost potential of a class-wide alliance. they know that their enemy isn’t their classmates, but rather the fascist government that makes them kill each other in the first place.

anyway—tangent aside—i think those two aforementioned novels are really solid examples of the genre gone is in. gone has more of superhero vibe to it, given the focus on powers and mutations and paper-thin evil villains, but i almost think the way that’s executed almost detracts against the aforementioned “kids surviving, etc.” genre? like, that’s all about the messiness of morality and human nature and whatnot, and while superhero comics can weave that into their narratives (watchmen, the brat pack) those are usually deconstructions of the genre than straightforward examples of it. the superhero genre is usually morally black-and-white and really action-focused. this is why i think we get the strange tonal mixture of kids reacting realistically to the trauma of starving versus reacting fairly unrealistically when faced with brutal superpowered violence, such as when brianna decapitates drake like it’s nbd. or anything brianna does, really.

there’s a shift from the realistic to the unrealistic that’s fun, but tonally dissonant from each other. so there’s this sort of disconnect, at least for me. i sympathize greatly for astrid when she’s slapped by drake and forced to call little pete a slur, for instance, but how many times does drake or caine murder a kid in cold blood? at some point it gets...idk, old? as the violence gets more cartoony the less it interests me aside from morbid fascination, and there’s just so much of it. it gets desensitizing after a while. i think that’s why, even though i think it’s handled fairly believably in gone, i had a lot more trouble with the monster trilogy’s blend of absurdism (the animorphs-style mutations like dekka turning into a cat woman with medusa hair and another character turning into a praying mantis with super speed, etc.) vs. grimdark realism (ICE forcibly deports a character’s father, terrorist violence is a common theme, the san francisco bridge is destroyed, a baby boy is mutated into a giant fuzzy caterpillar and then gets blown up by the military—like this is budding dystopia-level dark and the narrative doesn’t seem to realize it). it just feels too heavy and too light at the same time. the contrast of tones does a disservice to both of them. idk what i’m saying let’s get back to your actual question lol

as for characters with villainous potential...hmmm. tbh i think astrid has villainous potential? i mean, i like the idea of her moral righteousness escalating in a way that makes her more morally gray. she’d have to probably latch onto more powerful kids in order to have any leverage over sam and the gang, given her powerlessness. maybe she could manipulate orc into being her bodyguard while she plots to usurp sam or something asgjsjk. i think she could be a powerful threat if she wanted to be! it’s fun to ponder. i heard of an au where she joins the human crew that i thought was sort of interesting!

what do you think, @goneseriesanalysis? any villains you wish had been dived into more, and/or characters with villainous potential you think would have been cool to explore?

Yuko Miyamura in Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000)

Cast: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Takeshi Kitano, Taro Yamamoto, Masanobu Ando, Kou Shibasaki, Chiaki Kuriyama, Takashi Tsukamoto, Sosuke Takaoka, Eri Ishikawa, Hitomi Hyuga, Yuko Miyamura. Screenplay: Kenta Fukasaku, based on a novel by Koushun Takami. Cinematography: Katsumi Yanagijima. Production design: Kyoko Heya. Film editing: Hirohide Abe.

In my brief and admittedly superficial exploration of Japanese cinema, I have often been struck by how postwar filmmakers take a rather harsh attitude toward the generation born after World War II. Even so hip a director as Nagisa Oshima paints a rather jaundiced picture of wayward teenagers in films like Cruel Story of Youth (1960), though suggesting that American influence at least helped push Japanese young people into delinquency. Masahiro Shinoda's Youth in Fury, made the same year as Oshima's film, focuses on the student riots against the Japanese-American mutual security treaty, suggesting that the political impotence of the young is to blame. An older filmmaker like Keisuke Kinshita, in The Young Rebels (1980), blamed the rebelliousness on parents, a familiar scapegoat. And then there's Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale, which subjects the problem of turbulent youth to what we might call a final solution: mutual extermination. In an era plagued by depression and unemployment, the government passes a population-control law: Each year, a middle school class is chosen and sent to a remote island where they are forced to fight to the death. If you're thinking this sounds a lot like The Hunger Games, have another drink. In fact, Suzanne Collins, the author of The Hunger Games trilogy, the first book of which appeared in 2008, has said that she never saw the film or read the 1999 novel by Koushun Takami on which it was based. Her claim is plausible: Battle Royale stirred up so much controversy in Japan over its violence that it wasn't released theatrically in the United States until 2011, partly because American distributors were scared off by memories of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Fukasaku's film is in fact like a bloodier, more barebones version of The Hunger Games movies (Gary Ross, 2012; Francis Lawrence, 2013, 2014, 2015). It's also funnier and scarier because it has been shorn of the Olympic Games-style spectacle of  the American movies. Instead, we get a "training video" in which a ditzy instructor (Yuko Miyamura), a parody of Japanese game show hosts, explains the rules: Each player gets a bag of supplies that includes a "weapon" -- ranging from a semiautomatic rifle to a paper fan -- and they are all fitted with monitoring collars that will explode if they try to remove them, as well as if the game ends on the third day with more than one survivor. The film, written by the director's son, Kenta Fukasaku, doesn't waste a lot of time on character development, except for two principal combatants, Shuya (Tatsuya Fujiwara) and Noriko (Aki Maeda), who fall in love along the way. There are also a trio of villains: Mitsuko (Kou Shibasaki), who relishes the thought of killing her classmates, and a ringer, a "transfer student" named Kazuo Kirayama (Masanobu Ando), who is really a psychopath brought in by the sadistic director of the game, the schoolteacher Kitano (Takeshi Kitano), to spice things up. There's another supposed transfer student, Shogo Kawada (Taro Yamamoto), who is actually a survivor of an earlier game, but he turns out to be a good guy, seeking revenge on Kitano for his girlfriend's death in that game. Aside from these characters, most of the players are nondescript, except for the computer geek, Shinji Mimura (Takashi Tsukamoto), who manages both to hack into the game's system and to construct a bomb he plans to use to take out the game headquarters. There is much vivid killing in the film, but it's paced so fast, and the characters are mostly so undefined that, except for the fact that these are kids killing kids, it's easy to get caught up in it all. It's not surprising that it's one of Quentin Tarantino's favorite movies.

أجمل خمسين فيلما شاهدت لحد الآن

01- Zerkalo 1975 

02- Eternity and a day 1998 

03- In the mood for love 2000 

04- Mulholland Drive 2001 

05- Rashomon 1950

06- Citizen Kane 1942

07- Dekalog 1989

08- Nostalghia 1983

09- Persona 1966

10- Sacrifice 1985

11- It's a wonderful life 1949

12- The Faith Trilogy 1961-1963

13- Trilogy of Decadence 1960-1962

14- Kes 1969 

15- Alice in the Cities 1974 

16- Hiroshima mon amour 1959

17- Three Colors Trilogy 1993-1994

18- Seven samurai 1954

19- Noriko Trilogy 1949-1953

20- Le Samuraï 1967

21- Werckmeister Harmonies 2000

22- La Strada 1959

23- Stalker 1979

24- A man escaped 1956

25- Damnation 1988 

26- Les 400 coups 1959

27- La passion de Joan d'Arc 1928

28- The Seventh Seal 1957

29- Kings of the roads 1976

30- Satantango 1983

31- Life is beautiful 1998

32- The double life of Veronique 1981

33- Andre Rebeliv 1970

34- Paris, Texas 1984

35- Solaris 1971

36- Sunrise 1927 

37- The Turin Horse 2011

38- There will be blood 2007

39- Wild Strawberries 1957

40- Psycho 1959

41- A bout de soufle 1960

42- Chinatown 1974

43- Dolce Vitta 1959

44- Amarcord 1973

45- Ikiru 1952

46- Vertigo 1958

47- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975

48- The lives of others 2008

49- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 1994

50- Days for being wild 1999

Just watched Tokyo Story with @catgirl-dannyelfman and wanted to thank her for being a great friend and one of the best Noriko Trilogy watch partners I could ask for.

As requested by ❤anon❤ to post my favorite 60 women from films, here you go! As ive seen on pbs shows about greatest books, please applaud between every one of these!

1. Amy Dunne played by Rosamund Pike on Gone Girl 2014

2. Alma played by Vicky Krieps on Phantom Thread 2017

3. Ponyo on Ponyo 2008

4. Patsey played by Lupita Nyong'o in 12 years a slave

5. Omocha played by Isuzu Yamada in Sisters of the Gion 1936

6. Tonya Harding played by Margot Robbie in I, Tonya 2017

7. Valkyrie played by Tessa Thompson in Thor: Ragnarok 2017

8. Jennifer Check played by Megan Fox in Jennifer's Body 2009

9. Dona Flor played by Sonia Braga in Dona Flor and her two husbands 1977

10. Princess Yuki played by Misa Uehara in The Hidden Fortress 1958

11. Lady Asaji played by the Isuzu Yamada again in Throne of Blood 1957

12. Carmen Jones played by Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones 1954

13. Sabrina played by Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina 1954

14. Oharu played by Kinuyo Tanaka in The Life of Oharu 1952

15. Blanche DeBois played by Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire 1951

16. Norma Desmond played by Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard 1950

17. Gilda played by Rita Hayworth in Gilda 1946

18. Laura Hunt played by Gene Tierney in Laura 1944

19. Mildred Pierce played by Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce 1945

20. Ki-jung played by Park So-Dam in Parasite 2019

21. Cleo played by Yalitza Aparicio in Roma 2018

22. Elle Woods played by Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2001

23. Clementine "Tish" Rivers played by Kiki Lane on If Beale Street Could Talk 2018

24. Madeline played by Helena Howard on Madeline's Madeline 2018

25. Anne Graham played by Tonie Collette in Hereditary 2018

26. Marlina played by Marsha Timothy in Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts

27. Paula played by Noamie Harris in Moonlight 2016

28. Sook-he played by Kim Tae-ri in The Handmaiden 2016

29. Elaine played by Samantha Robinson in The Love Witch 2016

30. Thomasin played by Anya Taylor-Joy in The Witch 2015

31. Maggie played by Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a hot tin roof 1958

32. Emmanuelle Riva's anonymous character in Hiroshima Mon Amour 1959

33. Eurydice played by Marpessa Dawn in Black Orpheus 1959

34. Betty played by Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive 2001

35. Mon played by Machiko Kyô in Older Brother, Younger Sister 1953

36. Kiyoko played by Hideko Takamine in Lightning 1952

37. Cabiria Ceccarelli played by Giulietta Masina in Nights of Cabiria 1957

38. Mamma Roma played by Anna Magnani in Mamma Roma 1962

39. Cléo played by Corinne Marchand in Cléo from 5 to 7 1962

40. Charulata played by Madhabi Mukherjee in Charulata 1964

41. Licia played by Adrienne La Russa in Psychout for Murder 1969

42. Ganja Meda played by Marlene Clark on Ganja & Hess 1973

43. Claudine played by Diahann Carroll on Claudine 1974

44. Foxy Brown played by Pam Grier on Foxy Brown 1974

45. Conchita played by Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina on That Obscure Object of Desire 1977

46. Gorgeous played by Kimiko Ikegami on House 1977

47. Alma Starr played by Natalie Wood in This Property is Condemned 1967

48. Anna played by Isabelle Adjani in Possession 1981

49. Vivian played by Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman 1990

50. Mozelle played by Debbi Morgan in Eve's Bayou

51. Elizabeth Bennett played by Keira Knightley in Pride & Prejudice 2005

52. Masako Kanazawa played by Machiko Kyô in Rashomon 1950

53. Elena Tejero played by Ninón Sevilla in Aventurera 1950

54. Masako played by Chieko Nakakita in One Wonderful Sunday 1947

55. Beatriz Peñafiel played by Maria Felix in Enamorada 1946

56. Celine played by Julie Delpy in the before trilogy

57. Ed played by Holly Hunter in Raising Arizona 1987

58. Mrs. Chan played by Maggie Cheung on In the mood for love 2000

59. Kitty March played by Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street 1945

60. Sumie played by Noriko Sengoku in Scandal 1950

Old Guard: Force Multiplied

So after watching Old Guard last Sunday and being worried about what the ending would mean for the next movie, I went and read Old Guard: Force Multiplied.  Each issue is only $2 on Comixology ($4 for issue 5), so it’s a total of $12.  And really, most of the content not covered in the movie is in issue 4 and 5 (total of $6), so overall not a bad return for money.

Anyways, I'm keeping the details light and relatively spoiler-free for the first 3 issues, and then go into more depth for issue 4 and 5, so spoilers under the readmore.  (I’ve also added links to each issue if you want to click through and exchange money for content)

Note: in the comics, Andy has long hair and Nile has short hair.  Quynh is called Noriko and has short hair.

issue 1: backstory about Andy that we mostly know.  Some heist stuff.  Booker gets captured by Quynh/Noriko.  Apparently the dreaming thing works differently because you only dream of a person if you're older than them.

issue 2: Quynh/Noriko tortures Booker a bit.  The team tries to take out a human trafficking ring and finds Quynh/Noriko instead.

issue 3: back story about Quynh/Noriko that we already know.  Some punching happens but nothing serious.  Andy goes to find Quynh/Noriko. Next up are some detailed stuff for issues 4 and 5. 

issue 4: Moment where Copley shows Nicky/Joe all the good they've done.   Quynh/Noriko and Andy have a conversation, which was a pleasant surprise for me -- I'm glad that their love for each other built over a millenia was not erased by 400 years of pain. You can see that they have ideological differences, but they still love each other:

Speaking of ideological differences, though ... um... somehow Quynh/Noriko decided that her suffering was some sort of punishment for trying to help humanity and that the destiny of the immortals was to hurt humanity?  Something about humans being vermin and them being the exterminators ... but then she's been hurting people by... running international criminal rings and human trafficking???

I... I don't see how this logic works. Anyways, then Quynh/Noriko decides to show Andy what suffering is like, and (a) traps Andy in a car underwater, and (b) prompts Nile to ask Andy about a law issue 5: Andy gets out of the car, they go find Quynh/Noriko, who doesn't put up a fight and instead kisses Andy.  Later, Nile asks Andy about the law, and it turns out that Andy owned slaves way back in 2000BC or 4000BC.  Nile is pissed. Andy's like "yes everyone knew it was wrong but we did it anyway, because humans are vermin, myself included."  And Nile is like: 

So basically Andy's like "I don't want to do this anymore" and Nile pulls the "you're with us or you're against us" sort of thing, and takes everyone else with her, leaving Andy alone. And then Quynh/Noriko shows up and Andy joins them. And it's like ... yay: - Andy and Quynh/Noriko aren't really pitted against each other, and there's a clear acknowledgement of their love for each other - I didn't see the last twist coming, so that's at least novel nay: All these logical leaps: - Quynh/Noriko deciding that she was being punished for not being evil and that it's Destiny and Purpose and all that - Nile deciding that Andy being too tired to fight means that she's part of the problem and just ... abandoning her - Andy deciding that humans always doing shitty things means that she should ... embrace her war-like roots and her Destiny????   I mean, I'm sure the threads will tie together better by the time the next movie happens, and there's one last series in this trilogy that is forthcoming (Old Guard: Fade Away).  For one, Quynh's hatred of humanity makes more sense given how much she's explicitly suffered at their hands.  And the author is clearly (a) very pro relationships, and (b) pretty good at threading the themes together (you see some great visual hints of the issue 5 climax in issues 1 and 2.)   So it'll probably turn out okay.  I hope Andy and Quynh/Noriko get the retirement that they deserve, and humanity is reaffirmed.