Filling Up the Hollow World

[areea_chan]

It's Homecoming once again, and everyone's outside playing cornhole--it's a game where you throw corn-filled bags at boards with holes in them...yeah, I have no idea why, either--so I'm inside hanging out watching iCarly.  I still haven't seen that episode where Carly dances with Freddie.  I'm attempting to post more often in shorter posts so they don't kill everyone's flist.

Speaking of Nickelodeon, have you guys seen the previews for that new show about the boyband called "Big Time Rush"?  Is this actually an attempt at bringing back boybands?  Is it weird that I imagine Johnny's boys doing this kind of stuff?  There's a video on YouTube with them doing a photoshoot.  Nice.  They're already doing a bit of fanservice.  Good luck and godspeed to ya, boys.  Let's see how you fare against the ASIAN BOYBANDS OF DOOM.

I gotta pimp this video again.  I know I posted it in my last entry, but I JUST REALLY LOVE THIS SONG.

Click to view

It's from the movie Jyuryoku Pierrot.  The band is S.R.S, which stands for "Sleeping Raq Sheep."  Why?  I dunno.  What's a sleeping raq?  What does it have to do with sheep?  Who cares?  They're pretty darn awesome.  The movie itself is also really good, as I mentioned before.  Okada Masaki is pretty darn cute.  He's 20 already, so it's okay to think he's cute.  He seems so much older, too.

Along the road in Music Land, this live version of TOKIO's "Cadence" is so great.  It's one of my all-time favorite TOKIO songs.  It's weird, but I never really knew what the words meant until I saw the subs.  The lyrics are brilliant.  "Don't ask me why/For some reason you are dear to me today."  Oh, wow.  I wish they'd release an acoustic version of this song.  It'd be so beautiful in a film.


Last night I finished  Homeless Chuugakusei and Su-ki-da, both of which were good films.  Homeless Chuugakusei stars Koike as a middle school student--this came out just last year, so Koike would have been 21-22 during filming--whose family gets kicked out of their house for unknown reasons, but it appears their father wasn't paying bills.  His older brother and sister come home and his father tells them they just have to keep living.  Then he leaves.  Hiroshi (Koike) decides to go off on his own and ends up living in a nearby playground.  The whole film is about these three siblings trying to just get by and how their mother's death affected them.  I mainly watched it for Koike, but it really made me think about how much I take for granted.  When you don't have something, it makes you appreciate it that much more when you do get it.


Su-ki-da stars Miyazaki Aoi (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite actresses) and Eita as two high school students who are sort of friends.  Eita plays Yosuke, who suddenly quits the baseball team and takes up playing the guitar.  He always plays the same tune by the river after school.  Aoi plays Yuu, a quiet girl who listens to him every day.  At first, they're awkward around each other, but as they spend more time together, they get friendlier.  It's implied that Yosuke is in love with Yuu's older sister, who lost her love some time ago.  The thing about this film is a lot of things are implied and never said.  It's a very quiet film, and there's very little dialogue and lots of long shots and takes.  It's really rather brilliant.  There's an 8-minute long scene comprised of several shorter long takes with Yosuke and Yuu down by the river.  Yosuke asked Yuu to come out there to ask her something, but he loses his nerve, and they just sit there, not saying anything.  It's not boring at all, either.  You're completely drawn in by the silence and wondering what's going to happen because the characters never reveal what they feel or think.  It's as if you're standing there or sitting there with them, watching it all unfold.  I thought the film would end tragically, but it surprisingly didn't.  It's very deliberately paced, but if you don't like slow films, this may not be for you.

Lately, I've just been going through asian_doramas and picking out random movies to watch.  I've really been on a film kick lately.  A lot of people recommended Okuribito, which I have yet to watch, but does anyone else have suggestions?  Old or new, doesn't matter.

Ja ne!