Tokyo Blog

My friend Trent McBride sent me a link to this new animation by Japanese Motion Graphics Company, Wow. It’s an exploration of typography and the Japanese art of Ikebana, or flower arranging. For me, it’s a load of really nice zenned-out visual effects set to a soothing backing track. I’m a sucker for such things, and definitely a new fan of Wow.

There’s been some new output from Tokyo Plastic recently, in the form of two short animations. I wasn’t keen on The Electric Koi, but there was something satisfyingly 90’s about their other offering The Praying Machine. It’s a piece of animation set to decidedly Photek-inspired music. There isn’t much meat to the plot, but it’s good visual nourishment in the Tokyo Plastic style rendered in a mix of cell-shaded 3D and illustrations. Have a look.

It’s been out since July 22nd on DVD, but I still haven’t seen it, and yes, it’s yet another film about Tokyo! I have no idea how good the film is, but it seems to have received a few positive reviews and the clips I’ve seen look promising. Now I’m living in Tokyo, I have less of an urge to watch films about the city. Before, I used to scour the TV guide in the UK for anything relating to Tokyo, Japanese design, etc., and I’d always enjoy watching movies featuring Tokyo. Lost in Translation is the obvious example, but I love watching Kitano or Miike flicks too, because they were often set in Tokyo.

UPDATE: As andersdu points out below, this film is not set in Tokyo at all, but set in Japantown in San Jose! Still wanna watch it though.

Tokyo! is a new film recently released about, well, Tokyo.

I don’t know why I didn’t post about it before. I’ve known about it for a while, forgotten about it, and was reminded of it when it launched in cinemas across Japan recently. A friend of mine went to see it, but struggled with the fact that there were no English subs. Our Japanese is OK, but not good enough to understand dialogue in a Japanese film. I’ve yet to see it. I might wait until it comes to DVD so I can get the English subs.

To whet your interest though: the film consists of 3, half-hour segments, each one directed by a different director. The three being Bong Joon-Ho, Michel Gondry and Leos Carax. I won’t go into the individual storylines. Instead, I will direct you to PingMag’s excellent article on the film.

I watched Sukiyaki Western by Takashi Miike the other day. It was typically Miike in that the film was highly original, really well shot, and charismatic, but there was something about the plot line that didn’t quite work. Also, Tarantino was pretty awful in his side-role. Despite the film’s weaknesses, I was totally engrossed. This always happens when I watch Miike films. One of his previous films called ‘Gozu’ was really good too.

I found my favourite TV programme of the 90’s on YouTube. I used to watch Mirrorball religiously at Uni because it was about some of the best promo film directors of the time. The focus was on music videos, but back then there were many collaborations taking part between Chris Cunningham and a few leftfield artists, most notably Aphex Twin. Well, it’s all on there, the whole series, each one focussing on a different director. Quality isn’t great because they’ve been lifted from VHS!

Before I entered the corrugated iron construction in the sinister bric-a-brac section of an old shopping mall in Odaiba, I didn’t know about the legend of Kuchisake Onna (Slit-Mouth Woman). The legend is of a woman a long time ago, who was the wife or lover of a Samurai. She was very beautiful, but also very vain. Her Samurai husband suspected her of cheating, so slit the corners of her mouth from ear to ear, screaming “Who will think you are beautiful now?!”

Urban legend has it that a woman roams around at night, especially on foggy evenings (Odaiba was fogged-out today), with her face covered by a surgical mask, her weapon of choice: a pair of blunt scissors. If she comes across somebody, she will ask them “Am I beautiful?”, before stabbing them to death.

So the man handed me a torch with a red gel over the lens and an amber coloured children’s lollipop, and I opened the sliding door into a pitch black corridor. Mutilated bodies and human hair hung from ropes and children’s toys could be found slumped in the corners of the passageways through which I was cautiously moving. I had already been warned “If you see the woman with the scissors - run”, and yet the sign on the outside had clearly said “Don’t run”! I had also been told to place the candy on a table where a pair of scissors could be found.

So I was trying to stay smug as I walked further into the maze of the building, having previously seen schoolgirls coming out of the exit of the structure screaming in terror, some crawling, some crying. I turned a corner and pointed my torch. There were sheets of black rubber hanging from the ceiling, partially blocking the way ahead. I could see there were more further down, staggered so that the gap between the wall and the sheet was on a different side of the corridor each time, creating large blind spots my feeble torchlight couldn’t penetrate. I prepared myself for something and nonchalantly swept aside the first sheet so I could pass, but recoiled involuntarily. I can’t properly remember what I saw but I think it was a large doll’s head, detached from the body, dirtied and with a missing eye, at my eye level. I was back a little from the sheet which was rippling from my initial attempt to pass, and had not controlled the aim of my torch, so bought it back down to point towards the corridor, and the sheet.

I was laughing to myself. I was trying my hardest not to get shaken at any point, reminding myself that it was like a fairground attraction. So I moved the black sheet again, but there was nothing this time, so I knew that there was at least one person who was inside with me, waiting for me up ahead. I pressed on through the ‘house’, sometimes entering small rooms, often getting hit in the face by objects that had been strung up but got missed by the torchlight as they were too high. Many more tricks were carried out, and noises were activated, whereby turning in the direction of the source would result in pointing your torch into the bloodstained faces of past ‘victims’, scissors protruding from eye sockets. I was looking for a table. A surface where there was a pair of scissors maybe. So I’d slowed down even more when the corridor opened out again. I’d seen what I thought to be a table, the only one so far that looked like it might be the right place to put the lollipop. I headed over and was almost at the table when I heard a movement to my right. I already knew what to expect, but still managed to forget to properly inspect the table before I turned my torch in the direction of the noise. I didn’t hit anything with the beam of my torch and was about to pan when a girl, tall by Japanese standards, wearing a surgical mask and brandishing a long pair of scissors lurched into the red light of the torch. I knew I was supposed to run, so I did! I slammed the lolly down on the table and pegged it!

I went around some piled up wood and course canvas material and tried to look where I was going assisted by the torch. For the first time there was another light source apart from mine in this room, on a table. Next to the naked bulb there was a pair of scissors plunged into the felting on top of the table with congealed blood heaped around the base. I stopped and thought about my lollipop, misplaced further back. I didn’t know what you got if you put it in the right place, and was feeling slightly embarrassed that I’d put it down on the wrong table, so I turned back to see if there was a way for me to go back without bumping into Kuchisake Onna again. I hadn’t even taken more than two steps when I found myself running towards a light at the end of a corridor pursued by two guys in leather masks and Kuchisake Onna dragging one foot behind her and pointing forward with the shears. One final eardrum-bursting hiss of air hit me in the face as I came out of the doorway and back into a shopping centre in Odaiba. I stopped as soon as I got outside and tried to appear more composed. And then thought that if I hadn’t watched Japanese horror films like ‘The Grudge’ and ‘ The Ring’ before, I might have got the lolly correctly placed and won a prize.

As I was leaving a guy handed me a flyer for the new movie coming out soon: Kuchisake Onna 2. Cool marketting ploy, I thought.

There are so many films out in Japan right now. Many that will never get a UK or a US release, so I felt privileged to be able to go and see one of these films at the cinema, in Tokyo! However, this is a Japanese film being shown in Japan, so there were no subtitles. I was certain that I was not going to be able to understand anything that was going on in the film, but actually, I totally grasped the plot, and I even understood some of the dialogue! I’ve found that if you listen for key words in a sentence, and then think of them in context, you can guess what it is they are most likely to be saying. There are times when really simple speech is used, and that’s no problem to understand. The thing that made this film so good though, is that it was set in Tokyo, and some of the typical kinds of people found in the city were in the film. You had the young no-hoper addicted to Pachinko, the salaryman, the yakuza gangsters, the homeless guys you see in the many parks of the city (noted for their ingenious cardboard bivouacs and distinctive blue tarpaulin tents), the traditional Japanese comedian, the Akihabara otaku J-pop fanboys, and of course their pop idol, a cutesy female singer having not very much success. When you blend all of this with the famous Tokyo locations, some great cinematography, and a good story, you get just what was needed to further increase your enthusiasm for Tokyo.

This is bound to be a total disappointment when it finally comes out in 2009, but Warner Brothers have made it official; They will make a live action version of Akira, and they’re going to adapt it from the original manga graphic novel, not from the anime. Actually they’re going to span the story over two films, but production starts right away. The reason I’m not as positive as I could be about this news is the appointment of a fledgeling filmmaker and a debuting screenwriter. The director will be Ruairi Robinson who’s most recent short film you can watch on YouTube or on his website. Personally, I wasn’t keen on the short film. I’m measuring it by the Chris Cunningham yardstick, so this may be a harsh review, but see for yourself. The other very worrying rumour that’s flying about, is that the film might be set in America in a so-called ‘New Manhattan’ instead of the infinitely cooler ‘Neo-Tokyo’. Say it aint so! I hope the film proves me wrong because it would be a great thing to see at the cinema in 2009.

Still exploring what’s coming up in terms of Tokyo cinema in the near future, I discovered that 1st March is ‘almost half price cinema day’! The usual ¥1800 entry fee comes down to ¥1000 only (about 5 quid), for a short time (maybe that day only), so I’m hitting Yurakucho to see a movie or two. The problem still remains that the movie will be in Japanese and will have no English subs, unlike the blockbusters shown at Roppongi Hills. I was there the other day for American Gangster. I really wanted to see Sweeney Todd, but majority rules. I’m definately going back to Roppongi Hills in the near future. I also need to tell you about the automated car-parking facilities there, but I still haven’t figured out how they do it yet. Plus I took no pictures last time. I’ve learned my lesson though; I always carry my camera with me from now on. Roll on March 1st!

I love Japanese films, so I was having a look at what was on at the numerous art house cinemas around Tokyo. One I found that looked good was Cinema Artone (which used to be called Cinema Kitazawa, after its location). So I was perusing the listings waiting for something to jump out at me - and everything did! Have a look at a selection of stills from the movies currently on show there (above)!