Samurai Spies and A Samouraï
Very pleasant weekend behind me. Yesterday, leftyviolist and I spent the day down in Bloomington to visit M.'s sister and her roommate (and our mutual friend) J. A grand day out was had, many superb games were played, good food was eaten and great and wide-ranging conversation was had. All in a fine, fine day. The one slightly sour note was that the drive home was in absolutely filthy weather. Fortuately we made it in one piece, and no harm was done to anything, save perhaps the points where my fingernails dug into the steering wheel. This was a nice prelude to poor M.'s pending week of orchestral mayhem (which I'll allow her to detail if she so chooses.) My week is altogether more prosaic and more domestic, which is a good thing in my view.
Movies. This weekend, two very different, but oddly similar movies have been jostling for attention in my brain. Samurai Spy and Le Samouraï. Samurai Spy is a labyrinthine, highly stylized Jidai Geki (Japanese Period Film), from 1965. Now, although the most famous period for Samurai films was the late Fifties and early Sixties, as exemplified by the films of Akira Kurosawa, like Seven Samurai, I think that the Late Sixties saw much more interesting and adventurous Japanese movies by directors like Hiroshi Teshigahara and Masahiro Shinoda. Samurai Spy was directed by Shinoda, and it's a maze of narrative. If you watch it, don't expect a conventional film. Approach it like the Big Sleep (the Bogart version). It doesn't always make sense, but it's always engrossing. Le Samouraï, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, is a film that is entirely about texture, color and mood. That sounds horribly boring, except for the fact that these are the hardest things to get exactly right in cinema. Like a Wong Kar-Wai movie, Le Samouraï uses a highly stylized palette of color, but instead of using color strikingly, it uses it to nullify, to reduce and remove. It's a minimalist tone-poem of implied violence. The film feels more violent than it actually is. The characters are ciphers and the plot so simple as to be practically irrelevant, but if you allow the tone of the movie to envelop you, it's completely engrossing.
Hopefully, this week, M's sister K will bring us poinsettias and we will go on a ultra-top secret mission to H&M for ultra-top secret (possibly merino-woolen) presents for ultra-top secret family members (No one will ever know if I post it here).
Supper beckons, more later (or sooner)
Movies. This weekend, two very different, but oddly similar movies have been jostling for attention in my brain. Samurai Spy and Le Samouraï. Samurai Spy is a labyrinthine, highly stylized Jidai Geki (Japanese Period Film), from 1965. Now, although the most famous period for Samurai films was the late Fifties and early Sixties, as exemplified by the films of Akira Kurosawa, like Seven Samurai, I think that the Late Sixties saw much more interesting and adventurous Japanese movies by directors like Hiroshi Teshigahara and Masahiro Shinoda. Samurai Spy was directed by Shinoda, and it's a maze of narrative. If you watch it, don't expect a conventional film. Approach it like the Big Sleep (the Bogart version). It doesn't always make sense, but it's always engrossing. Le Samouraï, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, is a film that is entirely about texture, color and mood. That sounds horribly boring, except for the fact that these are the hardest things to get exactly right in cinema. Like a Wong Kar-Wai movie, Le Samouraï uses a highly stylized palette of color, but instead of using color strikingly, it uses it to nullify, to reduce and remove. It's a minimalist tone-poem of implied violence. The film feels more violent than it actually is. The characters are ciphers and the plot so simple as to be practically irrelevant, but if you allow the tone of the movie to envelop you, it's completely engrossing.
Hopefully, this week, M's sister K will bring us poinsettias and we will go on a ultra-top secret mission to H&M for ultra-top secret (possibly merino-woolen) presents for ultra-top secret family members (No one will ever know if I post it here).
Supper beckons, more later (or sooner)