Visiting and Revisiting: After Life (1998) Pt. 2

This is the second part of a two-part discussion about Hirokazu Kore-eda's 1998 drama, After Life [Wandâfuru raifu]. To read the first part of this article, visit my pal Aaron Lowe's Working Dead Productions website at http://bit.ly/1OszYhL.

PART II

Rik: I want to go back to that article on The Guardian website about Kore-eda. The interviewer asks him about After Life, and how the interviewer found it hard to think of a memory that would qualify as “heavenly”. Kore-eda’s response was “If you can’t choose, it means that you are still alive. Choose, and you’re dead.”

It rather pissed me off at first when I was watching the film and discovered that there was a character that insisted that he could not choose. I thought the character was just being contrarian or thinking himself a “cool” rebel. I thought, “What a fucking jerk,” from the very first moment I met him in the film. But when it was over, and I seriously considered whether I could choose a single memory, I realized that I would not wish to do so either. The penalty of not choosing means you are stuck in wherever this agency exists to work in what is essentially a form of the film industry. You get to have lunches with cute girls like Shiori and carry on some form of existence, where you can still create and think and dream and ponder existence? Did I mention you still get to have lunch? Seems like heaven to me.

So, I was very pleased to see Kore-eda’s response. And I think reading that response sold the film to me even more, because it wasn’t just a wishy-washy film based ultimately on a theological lesson to be learned or an idealized vision of a heavenly realm, but was really only willing to be held accountable for more existential discussions. But if the viewer still prefers to be sad that so-and-so chose this or that in the film, they can have that emotion as well.

Aaron: Thus far we’ve avoided the actual plot of the movie, but I think it’s time we delve into it a bit. Though the film follows several characters and treats them all as important and meaningful and deserving of our attention, the real backbone of the piece is the relationship between Takashi, one of the workers, and Ichiro, a recently deceased man who shares a surprising connection with Takashi. That relationship is not fully revealed until the end of the movie, although it never feels like it’s being withheld for dramatic purposes. We only see that Ichiro is having trouble choosing a memory, and Takashi seems to be taking a vested interest in helping him, but until the end the audience assumes that this is because the two are from the same generation (though Takashi seems to be decades younger, this is because he died in World War II). In fact, after World War II ended, Ichiro ended up in an arranged marriage with Takashi’s fiancé, who, it turns out, never stopped mourning him. Once again, we see something that could have been treated as emotionally manipulative schmaltz underplayed beautifully.

All three of these characters, Ichiro, Takashi, and the woman they both loved, Kyoko, choose variations of the same memory. Ichiro chooses a quiet moment on a park bench with Kyoko shortly before she died; Kyoko chose a memory of the same park bench, where she sat with Takashi shortly before he shipped off to war. Takashi also sits on the same park bench, but instead turns the camera to those he has spent the last three years with, working and resting and living. It’s a beautiful ending, one that has me smiling once again as I type, but it once again raises the question of what those memories will signify once everything else has been wiped away, and also implies a more troubling line of thought that may actually say more about me personally than it does about the film. But first, lets try to unpack the threads in this.

Does the fact that Ichiro chooses a memory of Kyoko, even though Kyoko’s memory was of a different man, alter what those memories mean? Would Ichiro have chosen differently, or felt differently about his wife if he knew she had chosen to forget about him once she moved on? And what does it say about Takashi that he chooses to forget about life entirely and remember only purgatory? In Kyoko’s memory, as I brought up earlier, will she remember that Takashi died in the war? Will she remember he was her fiancé, or even what his name was? Likewise for Ichiro: will he remember that their marriage was arranged, that she had loved another man, and that she had died before him?

Rik: I think that Ichiro keeping the memory of his wife, even with the further knowledge that she chose a memory with Takashi instead has a lot to do with the times and social setting in which he lived. Arranged marriages might seem horrific to us now, but they would have been more standard in Ichiro’s youth. Emotion was supposed to be held in check and replaced with duty to one’s family, honor, and social standing. Having grown up in this mindset, it would be (at least on the surface) easier for Ichiro to remain committed to the memory of his wife of many years, no matter her ultimate feelings for a past love.

As for Takashi, my take is that he was a very young man when he died during the war, and while he has only been at this facility for the past three years, I assume he has been kicking around doing social work for many, many more, at least 50-plus years (at the time of the making of After Life). He has spent more time in this “afterlife,” as it were, than he has living a corporeal existence. So, why shouldn’t the fact that he prefers to choose a moment in his afterlife to his rather brief existence on the planet be shocking? If he is happy in his work, is good at it, and has made great companions, why shouldn’t he?

I think it has been fairly well proven that our memories, no matter how much we cherish them, are really not to be trusted. We tend to embellish them the longer we hold them, details from other “memories” can drift in to another one, or if it is an event that we don’t recall as well as others, we can often err in the recollection in an effort to keep up a front. And the angle from which we see something, even an emotional angle, can be wildly different for other people within that same memory. I can tell you about the memory of my skipping on the stairs of the 4th Avenue Theatre ready to see Pinocchio at the age of 4, and tell you what a perfect day that was, and my mom might tell you that I was being a little shit all day long and crapped my pants as well.

Aaron: To the film’s credit, that is a concern that Kore-eda brings up in the film itself. There is a character that is caught embellishing her memories, and then another who, once she’s watching the memory being filmed, realizes she got some details wrong and finds the experience quite disturbing. Kore-eda realizes that memory is faulty, and not likely to be a depiction of absolute truth, and I think he’s OK with that. I believe that in this film’s theology, the point isn’t to depict an accurate slice of your life, but to recreate the emotional feeling you’ve carried with you all those years. Perhaps that’s what the memories do; they remind you of the feeling of being alive. But here’s where it troubles me, if I allow myself to think about this too long. Do the dead take that memory as a keepsake, as I brought up earlier, or do they live within that memory? If they live within one memory for eternity, would that begin to feel like hell after awhile, no matter how good the memory? And if all of the memories associated with that one memory are gone, what emotion can possibly remain?

As I said, it’s a can of worms that probably speaks more to my own neuroses, but if I allow myself that’s the hole I start to go down. It’s weird that I suddenly became critical of this, right here at the end, because even with those questions After Life remains a marvelous, beautiful film that fills me with happiness and, yes, a feeling of love for my fellow man. Which, sad to say, is not my default state, as I’m sure you can empathize.

Rik: I suppose it could be considered a hell of your own making in a way, wrapped up in a heavenly disguise. I am assuming that if you can only take a single memory with you – putting aside the consideration of whether you had to live forever within that memory itself -- then yes, it would be a hell, because I would then surmise that your ability to think critically would be severely stunted because you wouldn’t have access to most of your own mind. And even if you could access everything in your brain except the remainder of your memories, wouldn’t it drive you insane as you watched or lived within this memory, over and over and over again, and all the while trying to figure out what it means, and why nothing else ever happens to you? If you could still think, wouldn’t going over a single moment in time repeatedly make you absolutely batty?

The more I think about this, for this to not create such an outcome, the dead in this film – or at least the ones who choose to move forward -- are basically committing themselves to a form of supernatural lobotomy, where they are rendered incapable of grasping the meaning or understanding of something while being trapped with that single memory, drooling like an idiot for eternity.

What is your take on the relationship between Takashi and Shiori, the assistant social worker with whom he shares an unspoken bond? For the entire film, there is obviously something between them, but we don’t really get a clue how deep it might run until Shiori, upset that Takashi has decided to move on fully to the afterlife and choose a memory, throws a conniption fit and kicks and throws snow around. And just as Takashi heads to film his “memory,” she confronts him about her own reluctance to move onward, and says, “If I choose, I’ll have to forget all about this place. So, I won’t choose. I’m going to keep you inside me forever. I can’t bear to be forgotten by any more people.” It’s my favorite line in the movie, and the saddest as far as I am concerned. It also seems to me to be the moment where Takashi really realizes what he must do. Your view?

Aaron: I always felt like the relationship was a little one sided on Shiori’s part. Obviously Takashi is fond of her, and he may have eventually grown to love her, but within the period that we see he is clearly a little ignorant as to Shiori’s feelings. I’m actually at a bit of a loss as to how I would define Takashi’s character overall. He’s not exactly a cipher, he has a personality and inner thoughts, but we’re never really privy to them. We see the stuff about his former fiancé, and we see that it moves him deeply, but he plays everything close to the vest.

Shiori is a bit more of an open book, probably owing to their generational differences (though they appear roughly the same age, Takashi is around 50 years her senior). Shiori wears her emotions openly, and I believe the line you quote is probably the heart of this entire movie, and gets to the fears and concerns we have about death. Not just that we’ll be gone, not just that the Earth continues without us, but that our emotions, our love, will disappear as well. That would make Takashi’s choice at the end of the film, to remember his time in purgatory, a powerful symbol of love and caring. He’s given this group of people the highest honor you could imagine in this theological system; they will never be forgotten. When they’ve all moved on and possibly forgotten each other, Takashi will still remember them, and the emotions he felt, and the help they gave him.

Look at me… I’m all over the map with this one. Feeling unease at the system on display in one paragraph, and then arguing the opposite just a few moments later. That, I think, explains its endurance with me. Though I find myself happy after each viewing, I still find myself puzzling it over in my mind for weeks, months, or years afterwards.

Rik: There is a shot early on where we see a doorway in a darkened entrance, and the doorway is lit from the outside, but we cannot see anything clearly out there because there is a mist or fog obscuring it. We then see that week’s arrivals make their way one by one through the door. To me, the building (and the city, if indeed there is a city, in which it is located) exists out of time; perhaps in another dimension. The workers in the building arrive each morning, and we see their apartments, so we know they carry on an existence, just perhaps on another plane unearthly. They eat lunch, make small talk, and have repressed feelings for one another, in the case of Shiori and Takashi. It is not unreasonable to expect there are numerous other agencies like this, because more than twenty people die each week in Japan, and this facility seems to average about twenty entrants per week. So, it is also not unreasonable to assume there is a functioning city built around this afterlife industry, and thus.

The question is: is it an otherworldly city built on top of the city we would know on Earth? I am not really surprised by the scene where we see cars and people walking around, but the question is if they are in our world or theirs. The only other explanation that I can reason out is that the workers of the waystation and the applicants for the afterlife are ghosts and are occupying buildings that exist in our dimension but go unseen by the regular populace. It doesn’t explain how they are able to have possessions, eat, and move things around without scaring the crap out of earthly inhabitants, and since we never see any evidence of such behavior, I prefer to accept that the entire city and the movements of its occupants exists outside of our own dimension, but is an exact replica so that the workers of the agency can go out and study locations for film shoots.

Aaron: As much as my mind constantly goes to this sort of pragmatic detail, I have to remind myself that this film is an allegory and not meant to be taken literally. As much as I may want to know how something works, or if the people who pass by Shiori in the outside world can see her, I realize it’s beside the point. We know that other waystations exist, because Takashi says he worked at one until three years prior to the movie’s opening. I think it stands to reason that there are several in each major city, at least one in every small town. Probably they exist like FBI field offices, dotting the world in a frequency that matches the local population.

We could also ponder what those stations would look like in other countries, or to other religions. No one we see questions the theological implications of the film, which is of course to the film’s credit. No one seems surprised to not see St. Peter, or clouds or pearly gates. Everyone, in fact, seems to be almost expecting what he or she finds, which looks like nothing they have been prepared for by any religion. But as you mentioned earlier, the film’s lack of theological specificity is one of its greatest aspects, and gives After Life the universality that the real afterlife would hopefully have.

Rik: Here is a stray thought that I had while watching this film. All of the applicants are Japanese, but I wonder what would happen to someone not of Japanese descent if they were to die in Japan. Would they automatically go to a different way-station run by others of their ancestry? Are the Japanese waystations only for the Japanese, and so on? It might have been cool to have an American of non-Asian descent who perhaps had a heart attack on a plane at the airport end up in the waystation and not be able to comprehend most or all of what was being asked of them.

Aaron: Now that you’ve put that idea in my head I find myself excited about the possibilities of it, but I also think it would have been a bit out of place in this film. It would have pulled focus from the already large cast and possibly veered too far into comedy or tragedy. But, of course, that could just be my own love of the film balking at the idea of tampering with it.

Rik: And one more thing I have been pondering --and I am sorry to take this into the realm of comedy, when this film, while lightly humorous in moments, is not a comedy – the use of technology in the film. Ichiro is made to go through piles and piles of videotapes in trying to select one of his memories. Given that the film came out to theatres in 1998, when DVDs were really just taking hold of the film industry, was this a comment on Kore-eda’s part upon governmental facilities and how behind the times they often are in regards to keeping up with technology? I figure that whatever administration (read: supreme being) is behind the curtain, as it were, would have the capabilities of having the most up-to-date means of processing the millions of people that die each year.

And Ichiro and Takashi’s memories extend to World War II, when videotape was not yet invented. When the deceased arrived at the facility in those days, did they have to go through old newsreels of their memories? Was it silent films and then picture books before that, and matted prints and scrolls before that?

Aaron: I think you may be onto something there. I always felt the VHS tapes were just a sign of the times, and honestly I think that might still be the real reason behind things; it was probably just what came to mind when it came to filming that scene. But then, it also fits the somewhat ramshackle nature of this whole department. Everything looks a little handmade; the workers begin each day by communally cleaning their offices. They live in little dorm rooms and brew their own tea and grow their own plants and make their own music. It doesn’t seem like they have the largest or most opulent budget imaginable, and so it would make sense for them to be slightly behind the times. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were still using VHS today. 

Rik: Well, I think it is pretty obvious that I really liked this film and you are trapped in slavish devotion to it. But I also feel that as much as I enjoyed it (and have now seen it three times in the past month, though it is finally time to return it to Netflix), I will probably not revisit After Life for a good while, because I have lived in it a little too long. I find pondering such affairs somewhat uncomfortable, especially at length. However, given how much After Life and Hana resonated with me (Hana even more so), I am likely to give more of Kore-eda’s films a shot in the future, as long as I can find them. But I will add that if I can find a decently priced copy of After Life anywhere (it seems to be out of print in North America and prices currently start around $90 for a copy), then I am going to grab it. Because you never know when I, like you, are going to need to see this again. Any last thoughts?

Aaron: I think calling my love of After Life ‘slavish devotion’ might be exaggerating things slightly (though only slightly). Clearly, even after all these years and all this discussion, I’m still unsure about several things within the film, and haven’t completely made up my mind about everything. However, this is a film that always fills me with a sense of enormous well-being, of joy and warmth and love. Hirokazu Kore-eda became a name to watch for me after this film, and I’ve been following him ever since, eagerly tracking down his newest releases (several of which remain unavailable in North America). A couple months ago I was lucky enough to see the North American premiere of his newest film, Our Little Sister (Umimachi Diary in Japan), after which he gave a short Q&A. He came across exactly as you would expect him to, based on his films. He was thoughtful, generous in his answers and time, and funny in a subdued manner.

I have no advice of where to go next in pursuing his filmography; I tend to think they are all worth at least one viewing. Through his filmography ‘humane’ does seem to be the most apt word to describe him, as his affection for his characters works to leaven even the most depressing aspects of his films. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed this film, and even more glad that you’ve enjoyed at least one of Kore-eda’s other works. I look forward to discussing them all with you in the future, even though we may not document those discussions for posterity.

Rik: And we shall leave you with that. Check back with us in the near future for a Visiting & Revisiting discussion of the super-schlocky 1978 Italian sci-fi "masterpiece," Starcrash aka The Adventures of Stella Star!

No Shelving Left: Demeking (2009) and Giants & Toys (1958)

Every once in a while, you have to take a chance. (I'd use the phrase "leap of faith," but that just gets you holy wars.) I get restless and impatient when I hear about a film and know that it is available on DVD (and sometimes has been out for a good while in that format), but cannot find it on Netflix. Actually, you can usually find it on Netflix, but it comes with one of those annoying green "Save" rectangles, the result of which is very little information as to when Netflix might be getting that title.

And so I hit Amazon. If that is a bust, then it becomes a search for the movie company's website or even eBay, though I cannot stand that site. But I can generally find that for which I am searching on Amazon.

Thus it went for two titles I came across about a week ago whilst flitting about the 'nets, both of of which were Japanese releases about which I had previously heard nada. This is not unusual. I am not a haunter of other film or DVD sites (except those which see fit to return the favor), and so new releases or film trends tend to only hit me in a glancing way. I am rushing past everything in my world these days -- where time has increasingly become a premium -- and so I only pick up on things in the periphery.

However, I am very good at following up if something even catches my interest slightly, and so it was that I ended up ordering, sight unseen, two Japanese films whose premises intrigued me enough to warrant a swift purchase from Amazon, once I surmised that Netflix was going to fail me utterly once again. Luckily, I was able to grab them for less than $30 total (always check the alternate new and used versions underneath the retail price area, where I always shoot for "new" if I can help it), and since I have Amazon Prime shipping set up, I already have them in my possession.

It's true. I will never truly grow up, and I will certainly never grow out of daikaiju films. For the uninitiated, that means Japanese giant monster movies. No matter what strides I have made in my overall taste for quality filmmaking, I still need to see some stunt guy mucking about in a rubber costume every once in while, knocking down cardboard buildings and making a general wreck of everything in sight. It's some form of therapy, I suppose, and it represents a large portion of my internal happy place. But while I revel in the simplicity of the form, I am always open to filmmakers attempting to take the basic kaiju formula and expounding upon it, bringing some new elements into the mix or attempting to take it to a more exalted level. Such was my delight, whatever demerits others might give them, in Cloverfield and The Host, two recent exercises in doing just what I described.

When I ran across the title Demeking the Sea Monster [Demekingu], I thought "Oh, it looks like just another kaiju film," which translates in Rik speak to "I've got to see this right away!" Even warnings that the titular monster only appears late into the film and only sparingly at that did not sway me. The premise was interesting enough -- a man in 1969 uncovers a prophecy relating to the attack of a creature from the stars which won't occur for another 50 years, and begins preparations to do battle with the creature -- and the few images I could find of the creature seemed fun enough to warrant spending 11 bucks (since Netflix was an epic fail in this department) on getting the Cinema Epoch DVD release via a seller on Amazon.

Having now watched the film, there was so much more to it than expected. There is a vibe not unlike Stand By Me (perhaps intentional, though still very different in execution) to the proceedings, and seems to make darkly satirical comments on the nature of "the hero's journey." I quite enjoyed the film, though yes, the comments about the length and attention actually paid to Demeking are accurate, though she has a pretty goofy but cool design to her. (I am guessing her since she lays eggs everywhere, but then you know how twitchy those space monsters that land on earth via asteroid can be sexually.) I am not regretting my purchase in the least, but it does make me wonder if there is a sequel in the works out there of which I am unaware. The story comes from a popular manga, and you know how long some of those things can be. That things are left relatively up in the air is pretty definitely laid out, so maybe there is potential for more?

The second film is a Japanese mass media satire from 1958 called Giants & Toys [Kyojin to gangu], directed by Yasuzo Masumura. I had honestly never heard of the film before last weekend, though I had seen two of Masumura's films previously, both of them far more sexually oriented in nature: the absolutely crazy, psychosexual horror epic, Blind Beast [Môjû] from 1969, and the middle segment of the Hanzo the Razor films, Razor 2: The Snare [Goyôkiba: Kamisori Hanzô jigoku zeme] from 1973.

I won't get around to watching Giants & Toys until this weekend, but the basic setup is that a trio of candy companies are doing battle over the selling of caramel, and one of them introduces a new "fugly" spokesperson for their candies. The tomboy with hideous teeth becomes an overnight sensation via some campaign which seems to involve spacesuits, ray guns and squirrels, but things apparently begin to go awry from there. The film is said to satirize just about everything in sight: business ethics, media culture, commercial advertising. Perhaps to push this point, the Fantoma DVD box not only goes so far as to compare it to Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, but also name-drops its director, Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin (the former Warner Bros. cartoon director), as well as Billy Wilder and Dr. Strangelove.

Hard to say if any of this holds up with my eventual viewing, and I could be out 15 bucks if it ends sucking, but its certainly a lot more promising than waiting around for Netflix to start carrying the film. As I said, sometimes you have to take a chance. I blew $16 four weeks ago to watch what turned out to be a crappy, mostly-2D but supposedly 3D Wes Craven film in the theatre, so sometimes these chances backfire. But that whole "cracking eggs and omelet" thing holds up pretty well over time, so the only thing to do now is watch the movie and see.

[Editor's Note: When Giants & Toys was first looked up on Netflix over a week ago by yours truly, I did indeed get one of those annoying green Save boxes. However, it now has Add instead. I don't know if something occurred where it went down briefly and long enough for me to go hellfire crazy and order it, but I have found other reviews since where the writer had rented it via Netflix. So, no one's bad, but confusion all around. And by "all around," I mean just me...]

Does Fry's Come with That Flying Turtle?

In the past few months, Raw Meat and I have instituted a semi-regular special holiday at work. It only happens on the last day of the work week, and it usually coincides with a paycheck upon which the immediate rendering of the rent money for that month is not a major issue, i.e. it happens in the middle of the month.

We call these days "Fry's Days," because we take off for a slightly elongated lunchtime and go to Fry's Electronics down the road a piece.

I am going to avoid any controversial issues regarding their business practices, and just say this: if you are unlucky enough to not have a Fry's Electronics in your neck of the woods, I feel sorry for you. Fry's can be best described as a sloppier, less corporate-looking version of Best Buy. The place is not what you would call "well-scrubbed," many of the fixtures need serious repair, and the owners are prone to placing some ridiculously out-of-date promotional materials out on the floor, most likely just because they can. Also, if you are looking for a particular new title or even a regularly stocked one, good luck. Things are placed as haphazardly upon the shelves as possible, and even if they are in the right place at one point, it won't be for long.

But beyond that, Fry's is gorgeous. It's a geek paradise, especially for geeks who are constantly looking for out-of-the-blue deals on computer and audio/video software and hardware. And the place is constantly busy, almost a mini-city of its own right here in Anaheim. It's no wonder the place has its own deli right smack in the middle of its massive structure, and also no wonder the place is stocked to the brim with about a half-mile of refrigerated soda and energy drinks. And there are so many bags and packages of high-carb snacks, Fry's may actually have to create their own zombies to mine the extra salt. There is also an area with massage chairs, which is usually laden with at least a dozen customers at any given time. If you think the people checking them out are seriously considering purchasing one of those chairs, then there's a refurbished Commodore 64 in Aisle 12 I think you should slap some money down. It's the coming thing...

Me? I come for the video. Not the hardcore porno variety, which they do carry. The amazing thing is that the section is right next to the regular video software, each row shrouded by black cards, but still readily available for perusing. Fry's has a massive amount of videos, possibly tripling Best Buy's output (don't quote me on it; it's just a guess). Raw Meat and I show up, and he takes off for the computer peripherals and perhaps a demo game of Guitar Hero or this and that. Me? I hit the DVD racks.

For several months now, I have been eyeing on the shelves at Fry's, with the view of trying to slowly complete my kaiju collection, the box set of late '90s Gamera films. This set -- containing Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995), Gamera: Attack of Legion (1996) and Gamera: Revenge of Iris (1999) -- has constantly been hidden behind a copy of what I call the "fake "Gamera box set. This particular box set is the same case for the full set, but with only a copy of Guardian of the Universe inside, along with a chunk of styrofoam holding the place where the purchaser would eventually place the other two movies once they were bought. I don't know how long Fry's has had this particular "fake" set, since the other two movies came out long, long ago on DVD, but there it is.

Once upon a time -- and here's the twist, and the set-up for what some kaiju fan somewhere might call a miracle -- these two box sets did not sit, one in front of the other. Once, they sat slightly apart from each other, with a couple of public domain copies of other older Gamera films betwixt them. And then one day, a fair-haired former Alaskan blundered into the place and saw the full Gamera box set, and not having the means to purchase it at exactly that moment, hid the full Gamera box set behind the "fake" one. The Alaskan had seen the haphazard manner in which the movies where kept, and realized that, with just a wee bit of luck, he could possibly come back in the near future and still manage to get this item.

That "near future" time was supposed to be two weeks. It turned into three months. Other trips were taken to Fry's in that span, and though the Alaskan checked to make sure the full Gamera box set was still there on each trip, he somehow always managed to have his attention (and his pocket money) diverted by some other cause. Not the hardcore porno videos, but some other cause.

And then the Alaskan checked on Amazon a couple of weeks ago, thinking perhaps he would purchase the full Gamera box set that way, and discovered to his immediate shock that the full Gamera box set was now out-of-print. Even recently, it was still considered a "new" item on Amazon, but there it was, with the usual horde of out-of-print specialists offering up even the cheapest copies at a mere $49.99, where once it sold new at $35. Sensing that soon this price would go up ever higher to a point where it would be Bedlam-worthy ridiculous to pay $200 for a set of three great-to-OK films about a giant flying turtle, the Alaskan knew what he had to do: make one more attempt at a trip to Fry's, and see if the full Gamera box set was still hidden behind the "fake" one.

And thus came last "Fry's Day," where the attempt for what could perhaps be the final ascent was made, and caught between the burning hot sunlight of the day and the tempestuous moods of his fellows, the Alaskan managed to traverse the vast expanses of the Fry's show floor, clawed his way through hordes of incidental shoppers and brain-dead teenagers, and reach the "Science Fiction G" rack in the DVD section. The Alaskan reached out and struggled to move the "fake" Gamera set forward with a strenuous but simple flick of his forefinger. With a mighty crash, the imposter set fell slightly towards him, and there it was -- still shining slightly in the place where it was abandoned formerly, lo those many moons ago -- the full Gamera box set!

And now it is in the Alaskan's pale, sunlight-sensitive hands. He has defied the odds -- that someone would come along in those three months and simply move or buy the DVD set -- and he has at last completed his epic quest. [It is also possible that he vastly overrated the needs of the Anaheim public to purchase cheesy flying turtle videos.]

And now, at last, the Alaskan finally has time to peruse the hardcore porno videos at Fry's. No raincoat required, except possibly the customers surrounding him might be warned to wear theirs. Methinks there's a storm on the horizon...

Post-Xmas Toy Hangover Blues...

So, you've built a 1,045 piece Batmobile out of Legos. Now, what are you going to do for Christmas?

Luckily for me, I've got an awesome girlfriend like Jen, so if I chose to, I could've watched my new three-disc Criterion Collection version of Kurosawa's Shichinin no samurai (The Seven Samurai to those of us who speak a more barbaric tongue). I already had the original Criterion release of this film from several years before, and had watched it numerous times, so I wrestled originally with even placing this title on my Christmas list. After all, lately I have been an advocate of not repurchasing titles that I already own, no matter what extra bonus features were crammed on the new version. In fact, I have gotten away from watching bonus features at all -- most commentaries are boring affairs for films not really worth commenting on in the first place -- and I have taken to weighing a film's price against the film only to judge whether I wish to own it. The bonus features have become gravy to me, and if I choose to watch them later, that's fine, but I will no longer purchase something just because there are ""4 deleted scenes!" on it. (Don't even get me started on the "alternate ending" crap...) It is the film that matters.

But what happens when a company goes over and above the call of duty and sends out the massive tsunami of info that comes with the 3-disc Samurai set? The original release was practically a bare-bones situation, with a rather dry (though richly informative) commentary by film historian Michael Jeck. Add the original U.S. trailer in, and that's it! The new version still includes that material, but adds a second commentary with a quintet of film scholars, a gallery of production stills and posters, more trailers and teasers, and well over THREE hours of documentary footage on the making of the film, the samurai tradition in Japanese film, and an intimate (and lengthy) conversation with Kurosawa-san himself. Oh, yes... there is also a gorgeous 58-page booklet included in the package with essays by top film historians about the master and his masterpiece, which also includes a piece by Toshiro Mifune, the star of the film.

So, yeah, I really had no choice but to include this on my Christmas list blog entry over a week ago. That Jen actually used the list was sweet, and that she got me one of the movies on my list is even sweeter, but her trip to the Pylon also represents the first time that she has actually read anything on this site. (I told her "You really should. You are the female lead character in it.") And the list also came in handy for my Secret Santa at work, who took the cue and slid a copy of Elf my way at the office party last week. Thanks, Secret Santa. Without this disc, I would feel like a cotton-headed ninny-muggins!

Kurosawa and Will Ferrell... who knew those two were connected?

Psychotronic Ketchup: Matango [aka Attack of the Mushroom People] (1963)

Part of my purpose in relating to you my identification with It Came From Hollywood the other day (click here to read that post), was to set up exactly why I had not seen the Japanese horror film Matango until a couple of weeks ago. Truthfully, the introduction of both It Came From Hollywood and the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film pretty much go hand in hand, and in trying to explain one, I felt the need to break down my history with the other. But with Matango, which appears in the PEofF under the American release title of Attack of the Mushroom People, my only connection came from a scene which appears in Hollywood.

That the scene is taken completely out of context from its place in Matango is not a surprise if you have seen the whole of Hollywood. The scene appears in a section about musical sequences, and portrays a Japanese group on a yacht who are engaged in a little sailing and a little bad music-making. A nightclub strumpet strums a ukelele, and then dances about the deck teasingly and suggestively singing a "la-la-la" series of nonsense, while the men on the yacht leer at her with seeming lust. A pair of shots of the ship's captain, resplendent in official captain's hat, pipe and cravat are the real gutbusters in the scene, and the mood left is one of "Look how cheesy those Japanese movies are!" Sure, it might be, but a glance at the film proper reveals a mood of grandly atmospheric creepiness that quashes any "cheesy" notions that may be lurking in your head after seeing its treatment in Hollywood. Even after the Mushroom People show up (who are admittedly rather cheesy-looking, though still creepy...)

What is cheesy anyway? Is Matango given this rough handling because it is a Japanese movie, or because it was made in the 1960s, or because the characters are dressed in horrid fashions, or because the song is a silly trifle, or is it all of these elements? Aren't American films of the same period guilty of some of the same crimes against fashion and music, even some rather highly acclaimed films of that time? Doesn't everything viewed from 15-20-44 years distance take on a certain cheesy air, whether nostalgically recalled or not? The laughs from viewing Matango's shipboard scene don't really manifest themselves when you watch the actual film, for that scene is sandwiched by a grim, well-designed opening scene (of the sort that Tarantino loves to pay tribute in his own films) where our narrator stares with his face (unseen by the audience, so you know there might eventually be some sort of payoff) out of a window while he begins his strange tale, and then after the aforementioned musical sequence, some awful savaging of the other female character's ego via some sharply barbed insults tossed off by the ship deck singer, who in addition to her nightclub career is also a prostitute. Outside of the music break, there is little joy on this supposedly fun trip to sea; other people have mentioned the Matango cast's similarity to Gilligan's crew, which appeared on television at the same time as this film's production, and there might be something to it, as the occupations of the two groups of people are remarkably similar. But there is very little humor involved in Matango, and most of the film involves brushfire disputes between various contingents within the survivors of the ship's eventual grounding on a forbidden-seeming deserted island.

I will not detail much of the film's plot beyond this -- for there are eerie surprises in store -- except to say that the television show of which I am immediately reminded is Lost. The battles between the survivors, the lengths to which they must go to survive, the supernatural unease in the air (and the plot), and even a couple of character flashbacks all lead me to wonder whether J.J. Abrams grew up watching this movie, and was perhaps inspired in some small way on his journey to creating Lost, if only superficially. There is a marvelous shot of a ship which is found wrecked on the island, and its shredded and cobwebbed masts could easily be the ghost ship of anyone's nightmares. And gosh, the ship just happens to be a lost scientific research vessel loaded with possible answers to the island's many mysteries -- could this be the precursor to The Hatch?

For me, the trip to the island is strange and compelling enough to warrant my eventual purchase of the film. Honestly, I had no idea that the yacht-singing scene was from this movie -- as I had not seen it before, I had never connected one to the other. When it showed up, I was both elated because I had stumbled onto another missing piece on my Hollywood list, and afraid, because my assumptions from the scene were that the film from which it was derived just had to be cheesy. Cheesy or not (truly, the feeling is subjective), that this was the first film on my Psychotronic list left me feeling thrilled about entering into this venture.

This feeling would go away with the next film. How time flies when you are having fun...

Matango (1963) Director: Ishirô Honda
Cinema 4 Rating: 6