Last movie you watched

[rikkikow]

^ A couple months ago I saw eighth graders do the play. In two weeks they learned the old English lines and performed the play. This past year they did a few others of Shakespeare's plays too. I couldn't understand a damn thing they said. Might as well been Japanese. Lol. If I hadn't read internet synopsis of the plays I wouldn't of known what was going on.

Will check this film out for comparison. Looks like fun.

[erilaz]

This Is the End. Jay Baruchel comes to L.A. to hang with his bud, Seth Rogen. After an afternoon of getting high and goofing around, they go to James Franco's star-studded housewarming party. And then the Apocalypse happens.

I laughed a lot. Emma Watson was especially awesome.

[erilaz]

The Sword of Swords (神刀), a 1968 Shaw Brothers wuxia film, directed by Cheng Kang and starring Jimmy Wang Yu.

The name of one of the characters had the unfortunate romanization of Wang Puke.

[erilaz]

The Kids Are Alright — The great 1979 "rockumentary" about one of the best bands of the British Invasion, The Who. It had been many years since I'd seen it, and revisiting certain classic scenes was like seeing old friends: the goofy promotional film for "Happy Jack", John Entwistle skeet shooting with his gold records, Keith Moon blowing up his drum kit on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour....

[erilaz]

Adrift in Tokyo (転々) (2007) — Odagiri Jō plays a down-on-his-luck law student who owes money to a loan shark. A debt collector comes to his apartment with an ultimatum, but the next day he offers him a way out: if he goes on walks around Tokyo with the debt collector for an indeterminate amount of time, he'll get ¥1,000,000 and be able to erase his debt.

It's a quirky, low-key comedy, and very Japanese. I loved it. It made me want to go on random, aimless walks around Tokyo again. I did that a few times on my first trip there, but on subsequent visits I didn't really allow myself the time to do that. I need to do that again.

[erilaz]

At the Silent Film Festival in San Francisco:

Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) -- Filmed in Bali with an all-native cast, this was one of the last features to be filmed in two-color Technicolor and one of the last silent films to be released commercially. It's a tale of an ill-fated love triangle, combined with many wonderful scenes of traditional Balinese culture. The restored print was assembled from heavily cut versions from different countries: the Brits had cut out anything that suggested violence and the Americans had predictably removed the nudity (which begs the question of how short and incoherent the American version was, since there are a LOT of bare breasts in this film). It was shown with live musical accompaniment by the Club Foot Orchestra and Gamelan Sekar Jaya.

The House on Trubnaya Square (1928) -- A Soviet comedy (yes, such things do exist) about a peasant woman who goes to Moscow in search of her uncle. With her pet duck in tow, she gets into a series of wacky adventures.

The Joyless Street (1925) -- 19-year-old Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen star in G.W. Pabst's grim drama set in inflation-ridden Vienna. This frank story of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer was savagely cut by the censors, and even though this restoration has a running time of 150 minutes, some 30 minutes of the original film are still lost.

[erilaz]

The Baron of Arizona (1950) — Vincent Price plays James Reavis, a 19th-century con-man and forger, who falsified old Spanish land grants, manufactured a phony female heir to a fictitious Spanish baron, and married her in an elaborate plan to gain ownership of a huge tract of land in the Arizona and New Mexico Territories.

[erilaz]

This weekend at the Japan Film Festival of San Francisco:

Library Wars — It's 2019 in an alternate Japan where the Betterment Squad is busily confiscating and burning objectionable media. It's not quite 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, though, since libraries are still permitted to exist and preserve banned books. Our protagonist is a young woman (Eikawa Nana) who has joined the Library Defense, an armed force that protects libraries from those who would exercise the will of the Media Betterment Committee.

The director, Satō Shinsuke, was there for Q&A. I made him laugh after the film when I told him that I wanted one of the Library Defense uniforms. But really, at the very least I'd like to get their uniform insignia, so I could put it on my backpack.

Bonus points for Kuriyama Chiaki as a uniformed librarian. RAWR! She can collect overdue book fines from me any day!


Helter Skelter — Sawajiri Erika plays fashion icon Lilico, an evil, manipulative bitch at the height of her popularity. There's nowhere to go from there but down.

Bonus points for having "Naturträne" by Nina Hagen as the music in the opening sequence!

[Mirai]

Ooo I want to see the Library Wars movie, I loved the anime! and I've cosplayed from it so I have the uniforms, the anime ones anyway rofl

[erilaz]

^ Sweet! Do you know where I can buy the insignia, or did you have to make them yourself?

Another film at the JFFSF today:

Wolf Children (おおかみこどもの雨と雪) — A charming and often very funny anime from the director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, about a young woman (voiced by Miyazaki Aoi ) who is left to raise her two little werewolf children alone after her werewolf husband is killed.