Assorted Recs, 3/29/08
Saturday, March 29th, 2008 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoLots of recs in this entry...
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yebisu9 and I just finished watching Satoshi Kon's anime "Paranoia Agent", which, despite one episode we skipped entirely, turned out to be one of the most engrossing anime series I've seen in a long time. The premise of this story is relatively simple: a shy, expressionless toy designer is attacked one night in Tokyo; she doesn't see her assailant, exactly, but describes him as an elementary school boy, wearing golden in-line skates and wielding a golden baseball bat. The news media gets ahold of the story and "Shounen Bat" (translated as "Lil' Slugger", a translation that undoubtedly gave the writers some trouble) becomes a city-wide sensation, as he appears and attacks those who are backed into emotional corners. But is Shounen Bat real at all? Or is he just an urban legend come to life? Told from multiple points of view, the story unfolds from attack to attack, never answering the questions definitively or simply.
The strongest thing about this series was the invention behind the narrative. I love the fact that one episode about 2/3 of the way through was told entirely through whispered gossip between four housewives, all of whom would chorus "iwanai, iwanai!" (I won't tell, I won't tell!) as the stories got told. I also adored the fact that the series borrowed liberally from the formats for Japanese dramas, news hours, and seinen crime comics, exposing each genre's strong and weak points through satire. Each episode could potentially stand alone, although the last three episodes are very closely tied together as they resolve the overarching story. Also fascinating is the number of faces in the background and introductions that aren't related to the main characters, but who simply provide voices that feed into the story. The series (and this isn't giving too much away, really) opens and closes with shots of downtown Tokyo during rush hour and the cacophony of lies, small talk, and excuses becomes a white noise that permeates the entire narrative.
I should say that the one episode that was skipped turned me off for two reasons: one, I have a lot of trouble laughing at suicide and suicide attempts; and two, it seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the main story at all.
The final conclusion of the series is a bit hard to pin down, but it has to do, I think, with the way lies choke a person's life. There's also a lot of looking back at a society that passively consumes cute (and just for double irony, I am wearing my Totoro t-shirt as I type these words) and fails to look below its surface. Shounen Bat is the flip side of cute and the price he exacts from those he attacks may liberate them, but it also kills. The entire series is highly worth watching, especially if you like Kon's other works, or if you're interested in Japanese society/culture.
We also attended a screening of the breakdancing movie, "Planet B-Boy", at the Ken. The unhippest person in the audience was the middle-aged man on our left who was wearing a necklace that appeared to be a turtle made out of bread dough.
However, that is beside the point.
I had seen the preview for "Planet B-Boy" on the apple website (it's here, if you're interested) and I'm a sucker for dance movies, so I thought it would be pretty cool by itself. Add to this the fact that last night's performance was held in conjunction with the San Diego Asian Film Festival and there were going to be live performances by two local dance crews and I was sold. The two local crews were great, but watching breakdancing in a movie theater with no stage is like watching synchronized swimming at the poolside level: all you see are occasional legs.
The movie itself was quite good, too. I had no idea how much work went into breakdancing, or how much athletic ability was required. Obviously, the best dancers are the ones who make it look easy, but even as they made it look easy, I didn't quite understand how I would get my body to do that. I mean, how do you bounce off your shoulder if you're lying on the floor? Where does that come from? The winning dances were simply astounding in terms of moves like that and artistry. I was reminded of Douglas Adams' quote that flying is "the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." All the dancers, at one point or another, threw themselves at the ground and while none of them missed it, exactly, many of them came close to flight.
But it was a bit hard to get into the movie entirely because it was 99% male, and incredibly macho, world. There was one female dancer profiled in the film, but when her team came to the competition, she was nowhere to be seen. (There was the break-dancing "Crazy Grandma", who was simply adorable.) Also, during the trailers prior to the film, the mostly male audience around us got all freaked out at the trailer for a movie where two men were kissing. Afterwards, I wanted to say, "Oh, so it's not OK to hear the racist statements in the film, but it's OK for you to embrace homophobia?" It seems like a very rarified world these men live in, one where women, and any man who deviates from the macho definition of a man, were really not allowed. This is not to say I didn't enjoy the movie. The Japanese and Korean crews that one the competition were truly spectacular to watch, and the background stories involving their families (mostly relationships with their fathers) were touching and well-told. All in all, a worthwhile film--just with a tinge of distasteful hypocrisy.
Reading-wise, I have just finished Douglas Rushkoff's phenomenonal book Coercion: Why We Listen to What They Say. Rushkoff has been one of my favorite non-fiction writers since I picked up a used copy of his previous work, Media Virus, in a Tokyo used book store. Coercion is a sequel, of sorts, to that previous work, mostly a reaction to the fact that the work he intended as a critique of corporate culture and a celebration of counter-culture resistance became a tool of major corporate entities. By of apology, and resistance to this, Rushkoff offers Coercion, which investigates sales techniques in just about every discipline, from advertising to shopping mall design, to pyramid schemes and the corporatization of the internet. There are some funny and sad sides to what he's writing about, but he never gets too caught up in these and sticks to his main thesis that in order to survive in the 21st century, we must be aware of and resist coercion as best as we can. A wonderful work, and a thought-provoking one.
I'm also halfway through China Mieville's UnLunDun and loving every minute of it. This is a steampunk update of The Phantom Tollbooth and Alice in Wonderland with a soupcon of John Bellairs and a few pages of the old Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful collections as added spice to the main plot. I recommend this to anyone and everyone; although it's written for children, it is by no means childish. I may never think of giraffes as cute ever again.
yebisu9 and I just finished watching Satoshi Kon's anime "Paranoia Agent", which, despite one episode we skipped entirely, turned out to be one of the most engrossing anime series I've seen in a long time. The premise of this story is relatively simple: a shy, expressionless toy designer is attacked one night in Tokyo; she doesn't see her assailant, exactly, but describes him as an elementary school boy, wearing golden in-line skates and wielding a golden baseball bat. The news media gets ahold of the story and "Shounen Bat" (translated as "Lil' Slugger", a translation that undoubtedly gave the writers some trouble) becomes a city-wide sensation, as he appears and attacks those who are backed into emotional corners. But is Shounen Bat real at all? Or is he just an urban legend come to life? Told from multiple points of view, the story unfolds from attack to attack, never answering the questions definitively or simply.The strongest thing about this series was the invention behind the narrative. I love the fact that one episode about 2/3 of the way through was told entirely through whispered gossip between four housewives, all of whom would chorus "iwanai, iwanai!" (I won't tell, I won't tell!) as the stories got told. I also adored the fact that the series borrowed liberally from the formats for Japanese dramas, news hours, and seinen crime comics, exposing each genre's strong and weak points through satire. Each episode could potentially stand alone, although the last three episodes are very closely tied together as they resolve the overarching story. Also fascinating is the number of faces in the background and introductions that aren't related to the main characters, but who simply provide voices that feed into the story. The series (and this isn't giving too much away, really) opens and closes with shots of downtown Tokyo during rush hour and the cacophony of lies, small talk, and excuses becomes a white noise that permeates the entire narrative.
I should say that the one episode that was skipped turned me off for two reasons: one, I have a lot of trouble laughing at suicide and suicide attempts; and two, it seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the main story at all.
The final conclusion of the series is a bit hard to pin down, but it has to do, I think, with the way lies choke a person's life. There's also a lot of looking back at a society that passively consumes cute (and just for double irony, I am wearing my Totoro t-shirt as I type these words) and fails to look below its surface. Shounen Bat is the flip side of cute and the price he exacts from those he attacks may liberate them, but it also kills. The entire series is highly worth watching, especially if you like Kon's other works, or if you're interested in Japanese society/culture.
We also attended a screening of the breakdancing movie, "Planet B-Boy", at the Ken. The unhippest person in the audience was the middle-aged man on our left who was wearing a necklace that appeared to be a turtle made out of bread dough.
However, that is beside the point.
I had seen the preview for "Planet B-Boy" on the apple website (it's here, if you're interested) and I'm a sucker for dance movies, so I thought it would be pretty cool by itself. Add to this the fact that last night's performance was held in conjunction with the San Diego Asian Film Festival and there were going to be live performances by two local dance crews and I was sold. The two local crews were great, but watching breakdancing in a movie theater with no stage is like watching synchronized swimming at the poolside level: all you see are occasional legs.
The movie itself was quite good, too. I had no idea how much work went into breakdancing, or how much athletic ability was required. Obviously, the best dancers are the ones who make it look easy, but even as they made it look easy, I didn't quite understand how I would get my body to do that. I mean, how do you bounce off your shoulder if you're lying on the floor? Where does that come from? The winning dances were simply astounding in terms of moves like that and artistry. I was reminded of Douglas Adams' quote that flying is "the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." All the dancers, at one point or another, threw themselves at the ground and while none of them missed it, exactly, many of them came close to flight.
But it was a bit hard to get into the movie entirely because it was 99% male, and incredibly macho, world. There was one female dancer profiled in the film, but when her team came to the competition, she was nowhere to be seen. (There was the break-dancing "Crazy Grandma", who was simply adorable.) Also, during the trailers prior to the film, the mostly male audience around us got all freaked out at the trailer for a movie where two men were kissing. Afterwards, I wanted to say, "Oh, so it's not OK to hear the racist statements in the film, but it's OK for you to embrace homophobia?" It seems like a very rarified world these men live in, one where women, and any man who deviates from the macho definition of a man, were really not allowed. This is not to say I didn't enjoy the movie. The Japanese and Korean crews that one the competition were truly spectacular to watch, and the background stories involving their families (mostly relationships with their fathers) were touching and well-told. All in all, a worthwhile film--just with a tinge of distasteful hypocrisy.
Reading-wise, I have just finished Douglas Rushkoff's phenomenonal book Coercion: Why We Listen to What They Say. Rushkoff has been one of my favorite non-fiction writers since I picked up a used copy of his previous work, Media Virus, in a Tokyo used book store. Coercion is a sequel, of sorts, to that previous work, mostly a reaction to the fact that the work he intended as a critique of corporate culture and a celebration of counter-culture resistance became a tool of major corporate entities. By of apology, and resistance to this, Rushkoff offers Coercion, which investigates sales techniques in just about every discipline, from advertising to shopping mall design, to pyramid schemes and the corporatization of the internet. There are some funny and sad sides to what he's writing about, but he never gets too caught up in these and sticks to his main thesis that in order to survive in the 21st century, we must be aware of and resist coercion as best as we can. A wonderful work, and a thought-provoking one.
I'm also halfway through China Mieville's UnLunDun and loving every minute of it. This is a steampunk update of The Phantom Tollbooth and Alice in Wonderland with a soupcon of John Bellairs and a few pages of the old Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful collections as added spice to the main plot. I recommend this to anyone and everyone; although it's written for children, it is by no means childish. I may never think of giraffes as cute ever again.
