I'll Have a Green Salad with my Crow, Please

I woke up with the faint taste of blood in the back of my throat this morning, which usually means a bloody nose. I thought Alison had done it, but realized that she hadn't hit me in the face for some time. I spent the weekend having a panic attack. I couldn't find my iPod Shuffle. Don't laugh, it was free with every test drive of a Jeep Cherokee, and I like it. I ripped the flat apart twice looking for the iPod. You'd think that at some point during the 48 hour panic, I'd tidy the place, but no. I just shifted the mess from one spot to another, and took a break last night to watch a movie...

A while back, I commented on a movie expressing disappointment that it was animated. I guess what I really wanted to say was that it wasn't what I expected. That's because it was a completely different film. Ichi the Killer is a live action film based on a comic. Ichi 0 is an animated version of Ichi the Killer, and Ichi 1 (or 1-Ichi) is the film I expected to see that night. I saw it tonight and this time it was what I expected.

I went to the video shop and walked into a conversation between the clerk and a guy looking for a movie about missing Argentinian children. Naturally I said "Los desaperecidos", though it had occurred to me that perhaps that was not the correct title. I thumbed through the Argentinian section and came back with The Official Story, but that turned out not to be the one I was looking for, nor the one I had seen 14 years ago as part of a Latin American Studies Department field trip. I really wish I could remember the name of that film, both for the guy who probably went home empty handed, and for myself because I want to see that again one day soon.

Back to Ichi 1 - There was a lot of leeway given to this film, given that it was based purely on fiction. Thirtysomethings playing highschool students, a school with no teachers, its all plausible if you account for creative licence. The movie gives the back story of Ichi the Killer, but not all of it. Ichi was just a normal teenager except that he was sexually aroused by extreme violence. The thing is that he didn't like violence. He would cry if anyone tried to pick a fight with him. In a school rivalry, Ichi is targeted because he is mistakenly believed to be a close friend of his school's fighting champion. After being used as a human catching mitt, Ichi goes nuts and decimates the rival group - no witnesses except one. That witness transfers to Ichi's school and establishes a name for himself: Onizame - a wicked little fucker, played convincingly by Koji Chihara. I wonder if he'd be interested in doing some work in a little independent film I've been working on. The film also sees the return of Nao Omori as Ichi, and a one-named star named Teah as Dai, the school champion. I'm guessing this guy isn't Japanese because in the director's interview he explains that Teah can't read Kanji. I'd sure like to see more of his movies. Pity there aren't too many. There are also a couple of girls in the movie who play the love interests of Dai and his buddies. I couldn't help but hope that Alison wasn't vacant like that in school.

Dai and his buddies add a little comic relief as they debate the importance of trilogies. Dai loves the third part of any series because it is self-explanatory, but one of his cronies says that it is essential to watch parts one and two as well. Of course, I'm laughing my ass off because the joke is that there is no part 3 to the Ichi series. In director Masato Tanno's interview alongside Taskashi Miike, it is explained that Ichi creator Hideo Yamamoto had abandoned the project, so I'm guessing that's it for Ichi - the story has been told. In the end, after getting his cranium crushed by Ichi, Onizame is killed and Dai witnesses the whole thing and begs Ichi to also kill his broken body. It's like sex for Ichi, so of course...

I liked this film a bit more than Ichi the Killer I guess because the shock value had been diminished, but it really does fill in some of the mystery of Ichi the Killer. I feel that there is still room for a fourth film detailing the rest of the back story before high school, but I guess Miike figured that stuff wasn't worth putting in the film.