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And no nonsense about angels and being good
My poem "The Chymical Marriage" has been accepted by Strange Horizons. It was written for Elsa Lanchester, Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teenybuffalo, and I like to think it qualifies as one of my rare science fiction poems, even if the science is mostly Kenneth Strickfaden and alchemy.
Zatoichi (2003) is not science fiction, but I think some of its strangeness would have been appreciated by James Whale. A blind masseur who is also a supernally talented swordsman and cheats a lot at dice is a terrific leading man even before he's played by Takeshi Kitano, who also directs this latest take on the iconic character. I can't speak for the rest of the tradition, which I am told encompasses novels, television series, and something like twenty-seven movies, but I loved this particular entry.
The plot is classical: Zatoichi arrives in a small village where two rival gangs are fighting out a turf war, demanding ever more protection money from the farmers and killing one another in the middle of their fields. He is taken in by one of the farmers, an older woman with whom he gravely and slyly flirts, and presently her shiftless nephew; he meets a pair of vengeful geisha; he crosses paths more than once with the "bodyguard" of the more powerful gang, a skilled ronin who has taken a thug's job for the sake of his seriously ill wife. You can predict how much of this will turn out. But getting there? The story has something for everyone—the kind of past that feels lived in, tragic strands and comedic ones and the random bits that are just people's lives, deadpan and offbeat humor, and stylization that Brecht would be proud of. The fight scenes are brutal and efficient, but the blood is computer-generated, flowering and patently unreal, as if to jolt the audience back onto its own side of the screen. Everyday noises like hoes or rainfall or carpentry accumulate into syncopation, their own percussive melodies; it is not wholly a shock when the harvest festival of the finale bursts into gloriously anachronistic tap-dance, like Bollywood slid up and over a few Mercator degrees. And Kitano's Zatoichi is not your average wandering antihero, either: white-headed, not young and not tall, with one of those snub knockabout faces; with his odd chuckles and grimaces, he seems to be listening to a different world than the other characters inhabit, a playful trickster from the next folktale over, until the blades come out and then he's sure, swift, dispassionate: the film still has the last laugh on him. I shouldn't have to mention the nonlinear and unreliable aspects of the narrative, should I?
In short, a good transition from Avatar back into Movie Night; and not much like anything except itself, which always makes me happy. I would like to see more films by Takeshi Kitano, or at least hear recommendations. I might even be curious to see some of the original Zatoichi movies with Shintaro Katsu, just for comparison—I have the impression Kitano is to Zatoichi as Daniel Craig is to Bond, in revision if not franchise. (Also that I should have seen more jidaigeki, because I'm sure there were conventions being pretzeled that I couldn't even recognize.) But mostly I'm sorry I can't hear how dice fall, odd or even. Toph would approve.
teenybuffalo, and I like to think it qualifies as one of my rare science fiction poems, even if the science is mostly Kenneth Strickfaden and alchemy. Zatoichi (2003) is not science fiction, but I think some of its strangeness would have been appreciated by James Whale. A blind masseur who is also a supernally talented swordsman and cheats a lot at dice is a terrific leading man even before he's played by Takeshi Kitano, who also directs this latest take on the iconic character. I can't speak for the rest of the tradition, which I am told encompasses novels, television series, and something like twenty-seven movies, but I loved this particular entry.
The plot is classical: Zatoichi arrives in a small village where two rival gangs are fighting out a turf war, demanding ever more protection money from the farmers and killing one another in the middle of their fields. He is taken in by one of the farmers, an older woman with whom he gravely and slyly flirts, and presently her shiftless nephew; he meets a pair of vengeful geisha; he crosses paths more than once with the "bodyguard" of the more powerful gang, a skilled ronin who has taken a thug's job for the sake of his seriously ill wife. You can predict how much of this will turn out. But getting there? The story has something for everyone—the kind of past that feels lived in, tragic strands and comedic ones and the random bits that are just people's lives, deadpan and offbeat humor, and stylization that Brecht would be proud of. The fight scenes are brutal and efficient, but the blood is computer-generated, flowering and patently unreal, as if to jolt the audience back onto its own side of the screen. Everyday noises like hoes or rainfall or carpentry accumulate into syncopation, their own percussive melodies; it is not wholly a shock when the harvest festival of the finale bursts into gloriously anachronistic tap-dance, like Bollywood slid up and over a few Mercator degrees. And Kitano's Zatoichi is not your average wandering antihero, either: white-headed, not young and not tall, with one of those snub knockabout faces; with his odd chuckles and grimaces, he seems to be listening to a different world than the other characters inhabit, a playful trickster from the next folktale over, until the blades come out and then he's sure, swift, dispassionate: the film still has the last laugh on him. I shouldn't have to mention the nonlinear and unreliable aspects of the narrative, should I?
In short, a good transition from Avatar back into Movie Night; and not much like anything except itself, which always makes me happy. I would like to see more films by Takeshi Kitano, or at least hear recommendations. I might even be curious to see some of the original Zatoichi movies with Shintaro Katsu, just for comparison—I have the impression Kitano is to Zatoichi as Daniel Craig is to Bond, in revision if not franchise. (Also that I should have seen more jidaigeki, because I'm sure there were conventions being pretzeled that I couldn't even recognize.) But mostly I'm sorry I can't hear how dice fall, odd or even. Toph would approve.
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Thank you!
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And I love your description of Zatoichi. Another for the long list of films I should see.
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Thank you!
And I love your description of Zatoichi.
It's even better than my description.
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You're welcome!
It's even better than my description.
That would take doing, but I have no choice but to accept your assessment.
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Love the dance number at the end!
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You don't recommend them, then?
Love the dance number at the end!
Oh, yeah. I always appreciate curtain calls, even by the dead.
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Have you ever read Usagi Yojimbo? It has a Zatoichi character in it. Congratulations on the poem--I saw
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The ones that really raise my skin are "Black Soul Choir" and "Horse Head Fiddle (Lament of the Igil)," although altogether they are one of the most haunted bands I have ever heard.
The song I got is called "Neck on the New Blade."
"There's a ghost bound in my soul . . ."
Have you ever read Usagi Yojimbo? It has a Zatoichi character in it.
Never; tell me about it?
Congratulations on the poem
Thank you!
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Anyway, the Zatoichi character was a boar who had lost the ability to smell--the equivalent, for a boar, of being blind.
Thanks for the songs! I especially love the first.
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I've only managed to catch one or two others. I can recommend Kikujirô no natsu, a really gentle and offbeat comedy/road movie about a washed-up gangster who gets roped into taking a young boy up north to see his mother. It's sad, strange, slow-moving, hilarious, highly unlikely, and totally Takeshi. His sense of humor and directorial choices are utter unique.
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It sounds fantastic!
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Must proofread more closely :/
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Oh, adverbs, adjectives, they all look the same at thirty thousand volts . . .
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Hmm. That one's on the same DVD as Zatoichi, so maybe we will give it a try.
and Fireworks, which is almost indescribable.
You know that makes me really want to see it now . . .
(He also hosted the slapstick TV show Takeshi's Castle, surreally redubbed as MXE: Most Extreme Elimination, and recently remade as Wipeout.)
. . . I saw about five minutes of that at a friend's house in college. I thought I was experiencing hallucinations.
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I dimly remember watching "Zatoichi" a few years ago, when I was mildly ill and in a strange mood anyway. It was rambling and went off in odd directions, but I liked the directions. The old lady's lout of a nephew was pretty funny, at that. This is the one, isn't it, which has him sitting in a hot tub asking one of the geisha's family for life advice... that was priceless.
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Hee. You're very welcome. And thank you! I am particularly happy that this one has found a home.
This is the one, isn't it, which has him sitting in a hot tub asking one of the geisha's family for life advice... that was priceless.
Yep. They also talk about makeup. I'd recommend rewatching it without a fever, although it's possible that wouldn't make any difference at all.