Sunnys

Foxy got these as a must-have in the searing Tokyo heat and blinding sun. I tried to tell Ali that maybe sunnys for a baby are not such a good thing, but apparently Foxy won't open her eyes outside unless she has her sunglasses.

I'm not so sure it's wise to be filming the baby in Grandpa's overstuffed smoking chair. The thing is probably covered in carcinogens. Yes, I have a fat baby. It's entirely due to the high quality, enriched breast milk that Japan is producing these days. I'm okay with that, and so is Foxy.

Peaches are Sour

Here's a more recent clip of Foxy. As you can see, she has grown a lot since the previous video.

Foxy's Tokyo Debut

I'm so fed up with Blogger's new video upload feature that I've gone ahead and opened a Youtube account to post up a clip I've been waiting two months to do. Blogger and Youtube are owned by the same company. You'd think that Blogger would ask for some help on this instead of dicking around and around. The thing that made me hesitate about Youtube is that I don't want perverts and the like to be embedding my videos on their sites. Oh well, que sera sera.

Any of the more recent videos since I left Japan are on Photobucket, but Blogger in it's infinite wisdom returns an error every time I try to link to the page. Fuckers

Update: It seems that I don't get any more security with Youtube than I had hoped for from Photobucket. The Youtube embedded video stalled or took some ridiculous amount of time to start so I've gone back to the original plan of using Photobucket clips.

Meister Jäger

I don't usually do this, but it was really vivid and kind of funny. I had a really cool dream on Friday night, and I think it had something to do with the fact that I had seven shots of Jägermeister on an empty stomach before going to bed. Or maybe it's got something to do with DMT. I got to pretend to be a potential client and my boss was going to have to get me to sign the contract. I remember quite clearly that I was a tough sell. The best part was that I got to critique her sales pitch. I think that was in the dream because of what happened in the boardroom earlier that day. Not such a crazy dream up to that point, but then it morphed...

Into a street festival, among other things. The Ukrainian Church a few blocks down the street had been overrun and was now a very organized crack dealing operation. But the neighbourhood was actually improved. Just up the street where I saw a corpse shortly after it got hit by a car, a crosswalk was now installed and there was now a pedestrian-only mall with an arcade kinda like they have in Japan. There was a nice glass-fronted drug store on the corner where the hardware store used to be and before that it was a hair salon, except it's never been any of those things in real life - it's always been a pawn shop. And the community police station across the street from the pawn shop was something else in the dream too.

This is how weird my dreams get. Maybe not the fact that they are so intricate, but the fact that I can remember all this stuff even when I'm awake. Back to the street festival. Two hippies from Nascimiento Brazil came up to me and told me that they wanted to write me a poem. Tudo bem was my response, and they asked me how I knew Portuguese. I told them how, and introduced them to Bobby and Sissy. These guys were so impressed that Bobby and I were twins they decided to make the poem very special for the both of us.

Cut to Grandma Tzipi's old condo in Rio de Janeiro. Grandma Tzipi figured Miami was a little too passé, so she went one step better and bought a home away from home in Rio. I still remember it, back when they made condos big enough to live in. There was the telltale sunflower shag carpet, and the tangerine formica countertops in the loo. It was here that the two hippies decided to reveal the poem. Everybody was there, including my new boss. More on her later. The hippies apparently found paper and pen to be rather limiting, so when they brought out a bus tray filled with water and floating blocks nobody was surprised. One hippie held the tray while the other read what was on the blocks and tipped them over as the lines continued to the other side of the dice blocks. I don't remember what the poem said, but I do remember that the hippies had written a symbol on one of the blocks which they said meant lol, and that the audience was supposed to laugh out loud.

My new boss, my dream boss that is, not my real one is quite a bit younger than me and for some reason I had to know her age. In real life, I'm not bothered about having a younger boss but I guess on a subconscious level maybe the opposite is true. Anyway, we played the age game. She guessed mine and got it right. I totally overguessed her age, and then underguessed it. I had lots of questions for my new boss, like why the person I replaced still gets to use a company cell phone, but I don't. Then something weird happened at Grandma Tzipi's condo. I'm not even sure what you call it, but I think it's something that happens at a bachelor party. It wasn't a lap dance, I think those are pretty straightforward, but my new boss was acting totally inappropriate especially since she knew I was married and my wedding band was in plain sight. How did a poetry reading turn into a bachelor party? Why are these things happening in your dead grandmother's beachfront condo? These questions might sound weird, but not necessarily disturbing. But how about that Sissy was there? Why is Sissy in your dreams Dax, watching you do bachelor party type stuff? Why is she constantly telling you about Ali? Because she's my conscience. It took me a few minutes to figure that stuff out after I woke up, but if you think about it, that's pretty cool. Knowing that there's always going to be somebody looking out for you, even though you hate it, it's pretty cool.

There was a bunch more messed up stuff in the dream too like the fact that I had a broken leg and had to drag myself around the neighbourhood on chucks. That might have something to do with the corpse I saw. There was other stuff like the time of day. At some point the street festival turned from day to night. And there was something about latchkey kids too but I can't that stuff into the narrative.

¿Qué?

I have to say that my new job is a welcome change in some respects and a baptism by fire in other respects. I started last Friday, and had a half day so that I could meet the people I'll be working with. That was actually a special request on their part because someone was going on hols starting Saturday. It was pretty much a waste of time. Half the company was already on holidays, and I would have been better off starting on Monday after everyone, except that one person, had come back.

My boss, who was described to me by the recruiter as a dragon lady, is nothing of the sort. I was a little disappointed (because I like dragon ladies so so much!), but she still expects me to work my butt off. She has a tendency to digress, so we spent pretty much all of Friday afternoon talking in her office.

Monday, I met the person I am replacing. She couldn't handle more than two months of the work, so she quit. She spent half of Monday not explaining things to me because she never learned how to do them herself. Tuesday I was all on my own except that I got to spend a little time with my supervisor. Probably too much time by the way he acted. He only works 4 days a week, so I'm pretty much on my own on Fridays. That's bitten me in the ass once already. My supervisor has only been on the job for 3 months, so he's not quite crisp yet but he has a prior history with the boss. They used to work together at another company. My supervisor believes that he has a very strong moral compass, which has forced him to two jobs before ending up with the old boss again. That may have led him to quit one the jobs, but it sounds to me that he quit the second job on account of laziness. With a really thick Hong Kong Cantonese accent, he explained to me that he quit his last job because he didn't want to serve as a payroll back up. He basically told his boss to find someone else. Nice try! He's so hard to understand that we basically take twice as long to get anything done than if I did everything myself.

Wednesday, my boss thought it would be funny to speak to me privately in her office. I fully expected to get the axe, because this was so important that this couldn't be discussed at my cubicle, directly opposite the coffee machine and right next to the photocopier. She wanted to discuss my job scrip. She asked me if I would be willing to do switchboard relief for no rise in pay. The cute little smile on her face was the only thing preventing me from jumping across her desk and ripping out her pixie cut one hair at a time. Why would you take time out of your very important day to arrange a special meeting with the temp just so you can ask him to answer a few phone calls? Aiyah!

Thursday was the day that I caught up on some old billing. I think I did pretty well, except that rather than look over the entire oeuvre my supervisor would only find the first mistake and bring it back to me to do over. See, the English language is a pain in his ass. He'd really rather someone else did the reading for him. I am in fact the only native English speaker in the Finance Department. Which came back quite oddly the next day to bite me in the ass. What's new? But I still haven't finished with Thursday. The point is that rather than correct all the problems at once, I had to do the invoice over like eight times. At the end of the day I figured I'd spend a little overtime to catch up on some of the stuff that had just come across my desk. My boss came by to use the photo copier and said, "You still here? You got to go home. You really got to go!" Some slave driver. Until the HR manager gets back, they can't sign me to a contract so they've got me on an hourly rate. She wants to save a few bucks and keep the overtime until after I sign the contract. We understand each other on that point, and she's very open about the fact that she'll work me like a dog after Labour Day.

Onto Friday. I arrived that morning to a nice little note on my desk from my manager saying that she wanted to speak to me about the invoices I had prepared the day before. Later on, when she had time we talked about the things she didn't like. She mentioned that the invoices are supposed to be very specific about what we are billing, and I knew that. In fact, that's exactly how I had prepared the invoices the first time, but my supervisor had told me specifically NOT to prepare this batch of invoices in that manner. I explained to her what had happened the day before, and then she asked me if I had received an e-mail from my supervisor. I did receive an e-mail about pay stubs from my supervisor. She asked me to read it again. Nothing in the header about revised invoices. Way way down deep somewhere near the bottom of the e-mail was a little note about the invoices. Either my supervisor is a complete idiot, or he did that on purpose. I'm new, so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. That means he's a complete idiot. We'll have something to talk about tomorrow. Then my manager talked about some other bullshit that quite frankly should be the project manager's problem, but apparently I have to check that shit too.

I set about correcting the invoices, when my boss came to be about ten minutes later in a panic. Why she came to me I'll never know. As I said, there are quite a few different languages spoken in my department. At any given point on Friday there were two native Spanish speakers, plus a guy who had spent several years in Latin America and spoke Spanish pretty well. She could have gone to them, and they had even offered to help, but instead she requested my assistance with a conference call. I had no background on the situation, and my boss clearly had no idea what the difference between translating and interpreting is, nor an understanding of what was required to handle an interpretation by conference call. We got through it, and it was brutal, but then she decided to rip me a new one. Maybe she smelled blood, because she only did so after someone else tried to get their pound of flesh. I really didn't appreciate the way she acted. After we left the boardroom, she apologized for putting me on the spot like that and admitted that the guy who tried to make me cry had no business doing that. The rest of the day went pretty well, but I didn't get anything done.

Superbad

If you haven't seen this movie yet, wait for the DVD. Don't get me wrong, it's not one of those movies where you wish you could have 2 hours of your life back. It was funny, I personally guffawed at several points in the film, but there was much repetition. If you like hearing words like cock and pussy needlessly over and over again, then this is a movie for you. Starring Michael Cera and Jonah Hill as Evan and Seth, the two attempt to bootleg alcohol for a party that night. They recruit their friend Fogel, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse and his fake ID for the task.

Seth and Evan are separated from Fogel and the adventure begins. Seth and Evan take a journey that I can honestly say represents the average teenager's party experience. I myself, not really a party person in highschool, did everything that Seth and Evan did at some point in school, including getting hit by a car. The thing is, they do it all in one night. Fogel's journey is less than realistic, and surely was written as such to add humour to the film. Without it, the film would be just a high-school level Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Interestingly enough, David Krumholz makes guest appearances in both movies, each time getting high. Writer Seth Rogen guests in the movie as an idiot rookie cop, and Rogen's dad (I think) makes a quick appearance as an irate parent.

Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg claim that they wrote this movie because they felt they could write a better movie than an unnamed movie they watched as teens. I strongly believe that movie to be American Pie. Neither film is a particular standout in terms of originality, but I would say that American Pie was better. If Rogen had said something like "My friend and I were watching a movie and we said to ourselves that we could write a movie like that one, but based on personal experience", I don't think expectations would be so high. Taking one look at Jonah Hill, I forgot that he was supposed to portray Rogen. Instead, I was reminded of Avi, a kid I used to spend summers with in grade school. He was pretty straight laced and he used to cry a lot. Imagining him in the movie having grown up a little during high school to be a tough-acting fake Seth made it even funnier on a personal level.

Interview in My Underwear

It's been so up and down these last few weeks, really the worst roller coaster ride I've ever been on. Had to cancel a trip to an unfriendly nation because I'm not sure I can attend a friend's wedding with my wife when it actually goes down. Last thing I need is for my daughter and me to be detained because we carry the wrong passport. But really, Cuba doesn't care anymore. I know that, but nobody told the State Department. Maybe there was a fair amount of melodrama connected to that. After all, I am meant to be Randy's best man or something, and had left large amounts of blood spatter around the flat the night before. The blood was much darker and stickier than usual. Must be the oranges. Pain is the cleanser! No matter, all my tea towels are red for a reason. Tomorrow, Randy and I are going to see Superbad so maybe we'll be able to discuss a trip to Havana.

The anger is all because of a temp job I started last Tuesday. I really hit it off with my supervisor. My totally hot supervisor, but that's a totally different problem altogether. She worked me like a dog nosebleeds and all, and I did everything she asked me to do and more. Everybody liked me, at least that's what they told my recruiter which is why I was really confused when my supervisor told me to pack my shit on Friday afternoon. She didn't seem too happy about it, and my recruiters were caught totally off guard, but they've been working hard for me. Sometimes you have to smack them around a bit, but they eventually remember that they're supposed to recruit, and find something for me. I know who they work for, but I'm not afraid to push my weight around a bit (all 11 stone of chiseled sun kissed goodness) and make them think they work for me.

You can't help who your parents are, and that might have had something to do with it. There are hundreds of thousands of Hallmans, possibly millions around the world but I guess it is a small world. A certain relative has a reputation in the mining industry, and depending on whom you ask, it's good or bad. To his credit, he told me to quit as soon as he heard where I was rocking the payroll. By the second day, people were nosing around asking if I'm related to so and so. I played coy because that information can be prejudicial. The job was crap anyway, but it threw me for a loop because I did nothing wrong. In fact, I did everything right. Oh well, I'm pretty sure my supervisor was fired shortly after I left.

Which brings me to the interview in my underwear part. Friday afternoon, I ripped my recruiter a new one and happened to stop by his office for an explanation. The slack-jawed gay porn top reject stared vacantly into the distance as his supervisor went into damage control mode and fobbed me off onto another recruiter. The new guy had the perfect job just for me. Because of the client's time constraints, they did not have time to meet in person. This afternoon(!) as I was jumping out of the shower, the phone rang. It was the recruiter:

Recruiter: Dax! Ted! I've been trying to reach you all morning. Do you have a hand phone or something? Where you been man? Partying all night probably, right?

Me: Ummm... Actually...

Ted: Hey listen! Would you be open to a phone interview with the client? They want to wrap this up as soon as they can.

Me: Sure. I've done phone interviews befo...

Ted: Okay! Okay, just a sec. Let me put you on hold and we can conference with the client.

At this point I was still wrapped in a towel, but as the phone played Queens of the Stone Age I threw on some boxers and a form fitting t-shirt my mother-in-law gave me, and wrapped my bloody knuckles in an old Marks and Spencer tea towel. The client threw me some soft ball questions and asked me about my language skills. What that all has to do with payroll is a mystery, but I guess she was just trying to size me up. I was all like, "Hai! It's sooo great to talk with you finally!" Totally fake, or at least that's how I felt. But you want to make the client feel at ease, that way they feel better about eventually paying you a very large sum of money and making your life shit. She was impressed, and if everything works out I'll be back at it again next week. In the meantime, I'll be shifting sheetrock and granite countertops for Enzo and hammering a few nails. It's better than detailing Bobby's Maserati, and Sissy says this is better than bloodletting.

Cops vs. Thugs - Is There a Difference?

I had to watch this one twice and make a chart the second time just to keep up with what was going on. Kinji Fukasaku directs Kenkei tai soshiki boryoku or Cops vs. Thugs in English starring Bunta Sugawara as Detective Kuno and Tatsuo Umemiya as his nemesis Inspector Kaida. Umemiya also starred in Yakuza Graveyard as the yakuza underboss blood brother of the main character. There's a few other characters in the film, but their credits aren't indexed to the characters so it's hard to identify them.

Apparently, this film is based on actual events and that is prehaps the only reason why this film has to be so complicated. It involves three crime organizations: the Ohara organization, the Hirotani organization and the Kawade organization. A city official is tied to the Ohara organization, but while Ohara is in prison the official is making deals with the Kawade organization to help them fix an auction. Tomoyasu the city councilman is not making many friends. The Kawade organization steals some of the club girls who used to work for Hirotani, which starts a bit of a turf war. Det. Kuno is closely tied to Hirotani, a killer who Kuno helped escape several years earlier. The cops in the town generally leave the yakuza alone and focus their efforts on the communists.

After the auction is revealed to have been fixed, the results are overturned and Hirotani is appointed as the trustee of the land. He tries to sell the land for its proper market value, but that doesn't go down well. A new police inspector rides into town and decides that the friendly treatment of the yakuza isn't going to help anyone. He arrests old Ohara and squeezes him to hand over his affairs to the Kawade group. Inspector Kaida decides to vet his squad of any friendlies and an older officer, Yoshiura resigns from the force. He goes to work as a consultant for the city official and pretty much gives away all the Hirotani family secrets. Detective Kuno is a known associate of Hirotani and is scorned by Kaida. When Kaida leads a raid on Hirotani's offices, the friendship between Hirotani and Kuno is ended. Hirotani's men take the consultant Yoshiura hostage and bring the police into a standoff. Kuno goes in and negotiates a deal for the release of Yoshiura and the safe passage of Hirotani's men. As Hirotani is led outside, he pulls a gun on his former friend who trusted him one last time. During a scuffle, Hirotani is shot and killed. Inspector Kaida resigns and gets a job with the company that had the successful bid on the land. Det. Kuno is transferred to a small town and is mysteriously killed while investigating an accident.

The film is a lot more complicated than that, but I can barely keep abreast of what I've written even with an org chart. I take back what I said about the Toei strip logo. I thought the music was part of the strip, but that apparently changes with each film. The visual still kicks ass though. The music in this film was typical, and still nice to listen to. No mouth organ though.

Hot Fuzz and Cheesecake

I think I have a problem with food. I guess the popular term is binging. Two days ago, I ate nothing and exercised like crazy. Gotta be careful about that, I am plagued by nosebleeds when I do stuff like that. As soon as I jump in the shower, the blood flows like the Hudson River. Then yesterday I ate nothing until 7:00 pm when I had a footlong double stacker BBQ rib patty at a well-known sandwich franchise. Today, still looking fit from all the training, I went out and bought a cheesecake. A little perspective on the above photo - it's only 4 inches across, and it was good. It wasn't the brick cheesecake that so many restaurants are guilty of serving, rather it was lighter than I expected. I deserved it I guess, after the day I've had. I was hit with a huge trigger today. My new recruiter is a bit thick. When I first visited her, she had me sign a lot of paperwork. A few weeks later, she called and told me that I hadn't signed the paperwork. I asked her to check again, because I knew that I had because I remember putting the wrong date on the forms. She called back and said that indeed, she had located the missing paperwork but that she had more paperwork for me to fill out. I shlepped across town to sign the papers, and when I get there she acts like she's never met me before and the paperwork turns out to be the exact forms that she said she had found afterall. What could I do? I signed the papers and held my tongue. I will say though,that this type of document management makes a global recruiting firm like Robert Half look very, very bad. Not on the surface of course, but something like that is only indicative of larger, more serious problems.

To make shlepping across town more worthwhile, I loaded some photos onto a disc and popped by a print shop to get some prints made up for my luddite friends who don't have computers. By the bye, when is Blogger going to get it's video feature out of beta? My kid is gonna be like 7 or 8 you know, the ugly stage, by the time that happens and then there won't be any videos worth watching.

Anyway, I'm used to triggers hitting my inebriated brain when I'm in the theatre, but I got hit by a huge one today at the print shop while I was quite sober. I'm going to go on record as saying that Asian girls with freckles drive me crazy. The clerk in the shop looked exactly like an ex-girlfriend except that she had freckles and a better hair stylist, oh and a nicer bum. I was dumbfounded, floating between the past and present. I didn't know what to say when she told me that the disc only showed 4 prints when in fact I had loaded several more. I didn't know how to answer when she asked me what size prints I wanted. As the queue grew longer, she grew more impatient. I just told her to do the standard prints and that I would be back tomorrow to collect the photos. I couldn't see straight at that point, and I stumbled up the escalator holding my ticket stubs, she made me order the prints in separate orders, in a ball and shoved them in my front pocket.

I got to the outside of the mall and waded through a crowd of punks handing out flyers. The only thing that shocked me back to the present was the memory that I had seen my ex-girlfriend at the grocery store a few years ago, and that she could not possibly be the same person in the photo shop. Besides, the clerk wore a name tag that was simply not my ex-girlfriend's name. What made all of this more embarrassing from a personal point of view is the fact that I'm married now, and I probably shouldn't be looking at other women. Who knows what kinds of things are in my head? I don't. Because of a curious incident in the hospital nursery when I was born, my brain hides a whole lot of not-necessarily-fucked-up shit in there and then brings it all back like a flood when I least expect it. For legal reasons, I can't exactly say that I was dropped on my head but something similar did take place. Sweating, and suffering from cotton mouth, I grabbed a bottled water from a street-teamer and decided, perhaps wrongly that I needed more sugar. I walked home and waited for traffic to die down and then made my way to the cheesecake shop. I'll be better prepared when I pick up my photos tomorrow.

Hot Fuzz is a movie that I have been looking very much forward to, and I regret not seeing it in first run. When I was in Japan, I would ask for it every time we went to the video store:

"Nani ga? Hatto Fudge? No, we don't have. Sorry, my English is not so good. Edward Wright? So sorry, no listings for that actor. Director? Still nothing. Ahhhh, Furosto? Yes, we have Nick Furosto but not that movie".

"Edgar! E-D-G-A-R you silly bastard". Of course the real reason they couldn't find it was because it didn't exist on DVD yet.

I got to watch it tonight, and it stars the abovementioned Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Timothy Dalton. There are guest spots by Bill Nighy and an amazingly well disguised Rafe Spall both of Shaun of the Dead. I had thought that this would be one of those films where you see all the funny bits in the adverts, but it wasn't. There were plenty of other funny bits thrown in. There were promos for Balls of Fury starring Chistopher Walken, Patton Oswalt and James Hong, the crusty old Chinese guy you see in so many movies playing the role of the wise master. He was in one of those Revenge of the Nerds films playing pretty much the same role as the one I saw in the Balls of Fury promo. As I watched the trailer, I thought "This is just another Dodgeball, but with ping pong". That was enough reason for me. I'll have to watch it at some point. The second trailer was for Rush Hour 3 starring Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. Chan was on David Letterman last week and he was quite candid about the fact that he doesn't like making the Rush Hour films. Okay, when the lead bad mouths the film, should anyone go see it? Interesting question. Somebody will.

As the film opens, we see a very gaunt Simon Pegg in the role of Nick Angel, the Metropolitan police officer who is married to the job. At this point, I am struck by Angel's resemblance to my former supervisor at the brokerage. How things change! I won't say that we're friends, but we get along a lot better now that we don't work together. Angel is promoted to sergeant and is transferred against his wishes to the country where he is partnered with Danny Butterman, played by Nick Frost. The villagers are very conscious of the fact that they have won the Best Village Award several times and they have no intention of giving it up. At first, it seems that nothing happens in this little town, but Angel is not convinced. Something is always going on. Despite assurances from the squad, Angel discovers that all the accidents in the town might be related. He investigates a little further and determines that the grocer played by Timothy Dalton has killed several people to stop competition coming to the village. Rafe Spall plays one of two slacker investigators who spend the entire film making jokes at Angel's and Butterman's expense. Oh yeah, Butterman's dad, played by Jim Broadbent is the police chief of the village. Throughout the film, there are numerous references to Point Break and Bad Boys 2, two films I have never seen but I did catch a dubbed version of Bad Boys in Japan. Angel's theory about the murders is dismissed. After being attacked in his hotel room, Angel gets on the right track, and discovers that the accidents were actually murders carried out by a group of people, and that they had the blessing of the police chief. Angel is taken out of town by Danny Butterman and is encouraged to go back to London. Angel gets a bee in his bonnet and goes back to the village and clears out the evidence locker, which looks more like Enzo's gun armoury. He decides to take on the Neighbourhood Association, the real killers, on his own. You would think it ends there, after he tears apart the Association. That is why I have to say that the movie was humourous, but then gets really stupid for a bit and then gets funny again overall. There are three false endings to the killers and the fourth one finally puts a rest to it all.

There is a lot about this movie that the writers put in there for their own satisfaction, and that probably stopped the film from being better. For instance, when Angel first arrives in the town, he meets the Neighbourhood Association members at various locations. When he comes back to the town at the end of the film, he meets the members at the same locations. This type of in-joke is only for the benefit of the writers, and actually makes a mess of the shootout. Contrived. The music that plays in Skinner's car as he drives past the accident scenes might be funny once, but twice? Come on Edgar. I also did not like the latex dummies used for the decapitation scenes and the explosion. Very cheap. A cop would never believe that these castings were real, and so I had a hard time believing that a fake cop could act as though they were real.

There are a lot of bits in this film which are nods to other films, perhaps suggesting that Edgar Wright does nothing original, or that he's just a big geek. Many scenes in the film were done in the town where Wright went to school. I don't know what you call that, but I found that to be really soft. Kind of a 'Look at me, everyone! This is where I went to school. See this person? He's my acting teacher'. Geez, if Wright wanted so much attention, why didn't he become an actor?

The things I found most interesting about this film were all the things that the set dressors had to deal with, and the stuff done in post. All the CCTV footage had to be added in later, and a lot of the sound effects were very original. Set dressors are very creative people. Maybe they have some guidance from the script, but a lot of what makes the final cut is based on their own ideas. I was also quite impressed by Robert Rodriguez who wrote some of the score for this film, and only got a thankyou in the credits. Oops, nosebleed.

I Don't Remember What Happened

I saw a couple of movies last week and they were pretty good. I remember what I meant to write because I wrote down the details on some vanity post-it notes that my aunt brought back from Hawaii. Sorry, but I'm running out of photos to add to my posts. I've asked that Foxy take less Jabba-the-Huttish photos in the future. Ali is quick to defend the photos, pointing out that the growth charts provided by Kyoto First Red Cross indicate that Foxy's size is only average. Skype Video stills function rocks, but Skype VOIP sucks.

After I watched the films, I went out with Orange Peel and J for an evening of consumption. Stupidly high levels of consumption. After leaving the greek restaurant, we went across the street. I was thinking that we were going to head up Christopher Street to catch the train back to Newark, but I must have been wrong. I stopped to pet these two wolf-cross pups that I recognized from Ali's shop and then quickly realized that I had been separated from OP and J. I panicked. I don't know how far up Chris I got, but I remember losing my footing and going down hard. I scuffed up my wedding band pretty bad, ruined my favourite pair of Mavi's, and took a nasty case of road rash. I remember sitting up and refusing assistance. I didn't want to go to the hospital because I still haven't got insurance.

The next thing I remember is singing a nasty song about security guards in the lift in my building. As I sit here listening to Frank Black's selection on BBC 6 Music's 6 Mix and balancing my chequebook, the paper trail shows quite clearly that I paid for a train ticket. That makes me wonder how gooned I really was. I couldn't have been that far gone because I would have had to remember a PIN and manage to punch it into the keypad without fatfingering it, and then recognize the correct station to get off at. That nasty encounter with the tarmac must have caused temporary memory loss, because there is about an hour's gap that I don't remember. If it was the result of intoxication, then how could I have functioned so well and managed not to get mugged, or worse?

I spent the next few days nursing various scrapes and bruises, feeling a bit like Colin from The Brittas Empire, who by the way had the best Welsh accent going on TV. I will say though, that the best Welsh speaker on the BBC in my opinion is Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals. Not that I listen to Radio Cymru or anything. As for OP and J, they left me at the wolf-cross pups, and went into the bar.

I think I have a new favourite director, at least for 1970s Japanese cinema. Kinji Fukasaku directed Batoru rowaiaru and is probably best known to Western audiences for that. He came from the same city, and was born at about the same time as one of Ali's grandfathers, so he can't have been all that bad. I saw Yakuza no hakaba: Kuchinashi no hana or Yakuza Graveyard. I know, the translation makes no sense, but this is only one of the English titles they used. The film stars my favourite Japanese actress Meiko Kaji as a half-Korean wife of a Yakuza leader. While her husband is in prison, possibly getting pearls buried in his bellend, she is in charge of the organization. There has been a recent rise in yakuza activity in the city, which has embarrassed officials so they have decided to crack down on gambling. They recruit Kuroiwa, played by Tetsuya Watari to broker a peace between the rival gangs. Kuroiwa is the clichéd "tough as nails" cop who has been transferred back into his unit after being cleared by internal affairs. He quickly makes friends with Keiko, played by Kaji and starts an affair with her. She doesn't mind, her husband thinks she's a whore already. She gets no respect from the organization because she is not full Japanese, but finds an unexpected ally in one of the underbosses who, although he has lived his entire life in Japan, is full Korean. The underboss makes a pact with Kuroiwa, who is now too far into the organization that he risks dismissal. The underboss is killed, and Kuroiwa feels that he has lost a brother. The cop goes through a series of internal conflicts, but eventually Kuroiwa decides that the yakuza are his real friends and resigns from his job, but not before he wastes two of his superiors who are corrupt. As he walks out of police headquarters, he is gunned down in front of Keiko. I grew up in the 1970s and this is exactly the kind of stuff they used to show on television in shows like Kojak and others. I was right at home watching this and wanted to watch more. Luckily for me, the video shop has plenty of Fukasaku's work for rent.

Now to the post-it notes: I rented Joshuu sasori: Dai-41 zakkyo-bô or Female Convict Scorpion Jailhouse 41, the sequel to Joshuu 701-gô: Sasori. Of course, this stars Meiko Kaji who curiously says nothing until the penultimate scene of the movie. Kaji plays Matsu, the incorrigible prisoner who is chained in a pit in the basement of the prison. She is released into the general population while a dignitary visits. She refuses to bend and during the confusion, her fellow inmates who hate her decide to riot. The riot is quelled, and the inmates are punished. The warden decides that he has to teach a lesson to the inmates so he tries to make an example of Matsu. He sends a group of officers to gang rape her while she is working in a prison quarry. During the ride back to the prison, the other female prisoners attack her, I guess because they hate themselves that much or something. One of the prisoners is convinced that Matsu is dead and persuades the guards to stop the van. As they open the back of the van, the females overpower the males and pretty much flee. One guy is shot to death or choked out and the other bleeds out after the inmates use his crotch as a posthole. Prolific but very unconvincing use of tomato sauce in this scene.

The group of seven inmates manage to find refuge in a shack at a coal mine. There they discover a mysterious old woman who feels that she is cause of the evil things that these inmates have done. A note on the continuity here: They find the woman in a shack that collapses in a windstorm. The next time we see the old lady, the shack has been rebuilt around her. I forget what happens to the old lady, but a police dog flushes out the inmates. They manage to flee to a town where they hide in a workshed. There's a lot of lesbian wrestling in the background in this scene, and they somehow take a hostage. When the police come looking for the hostage, one of the inmates gets shot and bleeds out later under a waterfall as they run from the police. Symbolically, the waterfall turns red. The remaining six inmates encounter a busload of tourists, some of whom chase down one of the girls and gang rape her and accidentally drown her. They toss her over the falls. When the remaining inmates discover her body, the river turns red. They manage to hijack the tour bus and take their inadequate revenge on the three guys who killed their friend. A disagreement occurs between the leader and Matsu, and they toss her out of the bus. They use the bus to negotiate police roadblocks, kinda like that Clint Eastwood movie, but eventually high-centre on the verge. The police send Matsu in to try and convince the inmates to surrender. She goes in, but promises the leader that she's as good as dead. She goes back to the police and tells them that she could do nothing. The chick with the rifle runs out of ammunition and the police take the four remaining inmates into custody.

Somehow, Matsu escapes and hunts down the warden who is preparing to retire in order to exact her revenge. She appears in her trademark black hat, and I totally forget what happened. I think she tries to blind the warden's other eye, or she kills him. Maybe she gets caught, I don't know. As the closing credits roll, the theme song plays, the very same song, and version even that Quentin Tarantino "borrowed" for Kill Bill. Another musical mention: Shunsuke Kikuchi scored original music for this film. He is apparently very adept at using the mouth organ. The film was released through Toei Company, the company with perhaps the best strip logo in the business. Best ever.

A Wasted Trip

I suppose it had to happen eventually. I ended up with two really bad movies last week. I thought I would be cheeky and get some rentals on Wednesday, when the rates are cheap. Well, I probably should have stayed home and saved a couple bucks. The first one was Archangel starring Daniel Craig. The box cover said this was going to be an intriguing spy mystery with shocking results. Well, I found out later that it was a made-for-television two part miniseries and that probably explains the absolute lack of intrigue and cliff hangers. Briefly, the film follows the story of a Danish historian who is an expert on Stalinist Soviet Union. He hears about a diary that promises to reveal a side of Stalin that not many people knew before. So far, so good. The story continues to lead the professor, the daughter of his initial contact, and a plucky reporter on a journey to Archangel where they would find the son of Stalin. This is all intermixed with a political understory which claims that Russia is waiting for the return of Communism, in particular the return of Stalin or his son. Pretty weak. Maybe it's because I like car chases or whatever, because there were none in this movie. Anyway, the daughter and the professor know that Stalin cannot return to power. They are taken to a rally where supporters of the new Stalin are waiting. The daughter is able to move around the rally unnoticed and climbs a staircase where she can get a clear shot at Stalin with her dad's Makarov. I guess a headshot would have been too graphic for British television. Stalin takes one to the chest and the rise of Communism is finished before it starts again. I forget exactly how long this film was, but it sure took a long time to work up to such a quick, neat ending. Weak.

The next film I watched was Kaidan nobori ryu. One of it's many English titles is The Blind Woman's Curse. I'm not going to hide it, I fell asleep during this movie. The original draw to this film was Meiko Kaji, who would go on a few years later to film Joshuu 701-gô: Sasori or Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion. She also lost a lot of weight because it wasn't until after the film that I could figure out which character she was. Probably the only other notable bit is the appearance of Yoshi Kato. He plays Jutaro Mitsui, a noodle shop owner and I think a former member of the Tachibana clan. Many years later, Kato would play the noodle-making master in Juzo Itami's Tampopo. In Kaidan nobori ryu, Kaji plays Akemi Tachibana the new leader of the Tachibana clan. Some years before she tried to avenge the death of her father and probably did. It's hard to follow the sword play, that's one of the things that makes this movie so bad. She ends up cutting a young woman across the face and blinds her. A black cat laps the blood from the girl's face and haunts Akemi for the rest of it's life. There's a secondary story line where one of the Tachibana clan makes a deal with a new clan to use a third gang to defeat the Tachibana clan and destroy itself in the process. A kind stranger comes to the aid of the hapless Tachibana gang and ends up foiling the plan. The blinded woman has sworn to find Akemi and kill her. She has a hunchback who follows her around and helps her, but one day he goes a little to far and is banished by the blind woman. She meets up with Akemi and the stage is set for a duel. The black cat distracts Akemi and the blind woman cuts her, right across the eyes of the dragon in the tattoo on her back. Symbolism. Weak. Akemi asks the blind woman to finish her, but the blind woman takes pity. I think that's the end. It ended abruptly anyway. Apparently, there is quite a bit of humour in this film, but I didn't see any. All I remember is the really bad sword play, and the stupid cat which is hilariously fake in many shots. Hmmm, I guess there was some humour after all. This film was good for a nap and that's about it. I'm still a fan of Meiko Kaji, just like my mother-in-law who knows Kaji as an Enka singer. She's more famous that way.

Introducing Pepper and Saying Goodbye to the Neighbours

As first hinted in my last post, I was getting rid of Baby in favour of something more practical. This is Pepper, the German model I mentioned. I actually choked up a little when I had one last look through the Jeep. I had made that purchase with the full intention of putting a million miles on the legendary straight six design that Jeep brought back for that year. Well, only Cherokees and Libertys are suitable for families with infants. Any other Jeep is considered a soft top and I can't legally anchor a baby seat in my old Wrangler. I try to think about the other side of the issue and then I don't feel so stupid. Foxy's safety is paramount. So on top of getting a vehicle with a roof, I got one that Ali could drive when she so fancies, and I got one that is technically better on fuel. And there were at least three occasions where I could have driven away without paying the difference for Pepper. I had the pink slip, I had the insurance transferred and I had the keys. I really wanted to see what would happen, but my sense of honesty got the better of me. I waited until the salesman walked away, and then called him back to tell him I still hadn't paid. We both went upstairs to the business manager and I cut a cheque for them. I was really impressed with Volkswagen up to that point and I didn't want it to sour.

Pepper's got quite a lot of room, another bonus over the Wrangler. I can fit myself, Ali, Foxy, the stroller, the megapack of disposable diapers from Costco and the hypothetical dog all in. There won't be a dog, for as long as I have my very acute sense of smell. Here's a look from the left, and then the right.


























I took Pepper (oooh, I nearly typed Baby) out to see Bobby and his boss. "What's the difference between a cactus and a Volkswagen, Dax?" I've come to expect jokes from Bobby's boss, and considering he runs a Maserati shop, the jokes will be on me or my car until I buy one from him. I didn't know the answer. "A cactus has pricks on the OUTside. You bought yourself a Jokes-wagen, kid". He calls me kid, even though he's probably less than ten years older than me. "But it's a good car, and you got the baby now".

I drove out to visit Sissy and Enzo J for a little bit and snap some more photos. Enzo J is getting pretty big now, and he's quite a social lad. Here's Pepper during a visit to Enzo J's house:



















The dealership just called to advise that they overcharged me on the purchase. Sweet! That's why you should always be honest in matters financial. I'm richer than I expected to be.

Imagine shlepping halfway around the world with everything you own, oh and a toddler and a three-month old because your husband got a new job in the colonies. A bit of a shakeup I guess, but then imagine having to truck it all back plus two kids and a looming divorce all because the guy you followed dutifully around the world couldn't keep it in his pants. On the way to the dealership this morning, I noticed my very nice neighbour moving house. I got the story and I felt really, really angry. I had hoped that Foxy would be able to make friends with two very adorable Japanese kids in the same block of flats. I was mostly angry though because of what my good friend was being forced to do by no fault of her own. Her daughters are very disappointed in their father, and I hope he pays for it the rest of his life. I'm a little sensitive to these things. I have a great wife, he has a great wife. I have a young daughter, he has two. Why would a guy whose got a great family smash it like that?

What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

I was hoping that this post would be a little more sentimental, but that's life in Jersey. A few months ago, I was informed that child car seats are not permitted in Jeep Wranglers, and to make sure that somebody like me doesn't put one in anyway, Chrysler doesn't put the seat anchors in, as permitted by the NTSB. So, I've had to buy a new car.

I took Baby out this evening to break the news. I felt a little bit like the time we had to take Duke to the vet one last time. I used the "It's not you, it's me" speech, but it wasn't too bad. Baby had noticed my wandering eye, and knew it was only a matter of time. I had brought my new camera to take some last photos of Baby before I sent her off to the knackers.

Baby wanted to know about the other car, but I refused to discuss Pepper, the sleek German model I was about to make it official with. Nothing positive would come from that conversation. We laughed, and we cried, and then it was time to take the photos.
Here's where it all became a little surreal: I got one shot off, when a rather irate individual came up and asked what I was taking photos of. I told him, and then he told me I should have asked his permission first and demanded to see the photo. I showed him -
As you can see, he is nowhere in the photo. He was clearly agitated about something, and accused me of trying to take his photo for a website he called "Babyfuckers of Czechoslovakia". I could have been an asshole and asked him if he was indeed a babyfucker, but the situation was escalating well enough on its own, so I went the other way with the more intelligent "That's unusual, you don't sound Czech". I reminded him that I was in a public place and that I was entitled to take photos of anything I could see. Quizzically, he told me that we were not in Russia, and that he had the right to walk in the street without his photograph being taken. At this point, it occurred to me that he was a pedophile, because obviously only a person who is a babyfucker would think that that is what the general public thought of them. In any event, he was definitely somebody who had been to prison. A police car drove by and rather than flag it down and tell them that his rights were being violated, he turned away so they wouldn't see his face. He continued to goad me until I finally told him that if he had a problem, he should speak to Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson. I reached in through the passenger window and opened my glovebox. A bluff, of course. He didn't know what to do with himself so he threatened to take down my plate. I welcomed his enthusiasm. He did nothing in the end, but as he walked off I snapped a photo of his out of state plate. In Jersey, you never know.

Bye Bye Baby.

Free Movie Time

I won a double pass to a preview screening of Sicko by Michael Moore last week, but of course it wasn't really a sneak preview. I asked Bobby if he wanted to come, he had to work of course. So I asked Randy. He's usually good for a few free beers and a movie, but not this time. He had already seen the movie a few days before on youtube. So I went by myself, and I got there late so it was a good thing because finding two seats together was impossible. I ended up sitting next to a gay couple who were quite friendly, well at least the one closest to me was. The opening scene of the movie is perhaps the most graphic, and the old queen sitting next to me almost fainted. I advised him that this was only the beginning of the film and that he should think about watching the rest of it. He stayed for the whole thing and touched my knee gently at the closing credits. I'm pretty sure it was an accident, so I didn't say anything plus his boyfriend looked to be a very jealous type. It was an honest mistake - my stylist gave me a free haircut because of all the free goodies I brought her from Japan, but she gave me the "extra gay" cut. I didn't tip. Twenty-five percent of zero is still zero.

I'm not going to critique the film because it is a documentary. It's done in the usual Michael Moore style and has a few funny moments, but I just want to say that he does skew the facts a little bit in his favour. I happen to know, thanks to our fair brethren to the north that the Canadian health system is not as good as Mr. Moore paints it. The truth is, he covered the health system in the province of Ontario which just so happens to be the best in that country. My friends on the west coast and on the Canadian prairies tell me that even though Moore says that health care is totally free (it may be in Ontario), it is not the case in Vancouver. Each taxpayer is required to pay a monthly fee for basic coverage, and in one of the prairie provinces (I forget which), a for-profit health care system is already available for those who can afford it. I'm also pretty sure that he simplifies the French case. So you see, while the health care systems in Canada, Great Britain, France and Cuba may be better than the systems in the States, they are not necessarily free. I still believe that the point Moore is trying to make comes across loud and clear, despite a few inaccuracies and am amused that the anti-Moore camp focuses the majority of it's attention on the coverage of the Cuban health care system. They can't argue with the NHS, and ignore the French and the Canadians. For good reason I say, generally. Fucking Socialists. I never really thought about it, but I guess my own little example of free health care never would have been possible had she been born in New Jersey. Technically, Japan does not have a free health care system - it's very much like the States, but at least in Japan infants get a free pass. Foxy has changed so much since the above photo. That was taken when she was a week old. Now she's looking more and more like Jabba the Hut with a toupée, little by little each day.

I sent some Vermont chocolates back to Japan for my mother-in-law because she got some as a gift when she came to the wedding and wanted more. How could I deny? The package was opened by Customs officials because they suspected an explosive device. Apparently, they did not sample any of the fine chocolate from the Green Mountain State. It may have been a good thing, because when my father-in-law sampled a piece, he lost a dental filling. It's a good thing he's got insurance.

I spent the weekend before the Fourth camping with Bobby, his boss' family and some important clients in Vermont. Fifteen people in all. It was the first time I'd been camping in many years and it was the first time that I was able to use my tent, the five-year service gift I received from a certain employer. It was actually quite large and I fancied taking Foxy and Ali camping next time around. How young is too young to go camping?

Actually I Would Like to Eat My Cake and Have It Too.

It's been a while since I've seen any movies, and I'll be pulling it all from memory but I saw some really, really good ones on the weekend. It all started with wanting to see Hot Fuzz starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, both of Shaun of the Dead. Again, Edgar Wright directs. This was a film that I looked for while I was in Japan, and couldn't find it obviously because it hasn't been released on video yet. I found that out at the video shop on Friday. I thought I'd go for Kaidan nobori ryu, aka The Blind Woman's Curse starring Meiko Kaji who would later star in Joshuu 701-gô: Sasori. No luck, someone had already rented it. There was a new guy working the counter, so I thought I'd let him choose. I asked for anything by Park Chan-uk. He listed off the usual films, and then added Saam gaang yi or Three... Extremes.

"I'll take it!" Now I should have been tipped off by the behaviour of the new clerk, but I guess he wasn't having a good day. He sent me home with Saam gaang, the "sequel" to the movie I had asked for. I also went home with JSA: Joint Security Area. I got through two of the short films in Saam gaang before I realized that I had the wrong video. The shorts on this disc were entertaining, especially the third. The first one is called Memories, a Korean film directed by Kim Ji-woon starring Jeong Bo-seok, and Kim Hye-su as a married couple. I have to say that I couldn't tell what was going on in these short films, so I'll just kind of relate my interpretations. In this one, the wife has gone missing and is seen in a series of flashbacks, which may or may not be contemporary. The husband does not recollect what has happened to his wife, but she is a ghost. She is trying to rejoin her family in their new home, but cannot reach them. You know, ghosts can't use the telephone. The movie goes along with the husband denying that he killed his wife, but that he really wants to remember what happened to her. He then sees a duffel bag (why is it always a duffel bag?) in his living room, and opens it to find the body of his wife. The rest of the film depicts the woman realizing that she is a ghost and the husband perhaps remembering that he killed her in the first place. Nothing really new here.

The second film is a Thai film called The Wheel directed by Nonzee Nimibutr. I have no idea why this film is called The Wheel, because there isn't a single wheel in it anywhere. It's about a group of performers who fight over the puppets they use in their shows. Apparently, these puppets control the performers and cause bad things to happen. Not a lot going on here.

The next day, I called the video shop and told them what had happened and they offered to exchange this disc for the right one. Well, not before I watched the rest of it. I'm glad I did. The third was the best of the three I thought. Written by Teddy Chan, the same guy who directed Wan 9 zhao 5, this movie stars Eric Tsang, yes executive producer Eric Tsang, and follows the story of a single father trying to find his missing son. He suspects his neighbour, a guy who pushes his wife around in a wheelchair because she is dead. But you aren't supposed to know that yet. Anyway, the neighbour had strangled his sick wife and bathes her daily in a mixture of chinese herbs to keep her refreshed. He also talks to her so that her spirit knows that it has not been forgotten. Peter Ho-sun Chan does a great job directing the story. Tsang's character is held captive by the neighbour because he doesn't want anyone to find out about his dead wife, but eventually they do and he gets arrested. By this time, the wife is beginning to return to a healthy life after three years of being looked after daily by her husband when he is suddenly killed in a car accident. The wife does not receive the final care she needs and dies for good in the police morgue. Tsang later reviews video cassettes found in the neighbour's flat only to find that the guy was not crazy, that he himself was brought back to life by his wife several years before. It had been his turn to care for his wife by doing the same thing she had done to him. Now that the husband and wife were permanently dead, their unborn daughter could now join them in the afterlife. I don't remember if Tsang's son is ever found, but it was the ghost of the daughter that lured him away to begin with. This was the best of the three films.

I went back to the video store and exchanged the disc for the one I wanted originally, and came home with three more shorts. Director Fruit Chan was first up. Dumplings stars Miriam Yeung Chin Wah as an aging wife who wants to retain her youth, attract more attention from her husband and have a child. The film also stars Bai Ling. She's famous, I guess. Anyway, the squeamish should read no further. I figured out the plot to this film at about the same time that Bai Ling says she is her own best advertisement. Bai cooks dumplings which have a reputation of helping people stay young. What's the special ingredient? Babies. Yup, babies. How does she get these babies? You don't think she cooks all day, do you? Nope, she finds wayward girls who are in a situation and helps them out. See, she helps them and they help her. Everybody wins. Of course, Bai is no professional and she ends up killing one of the girls I think. She disappears after it is discovered that one of the babies was the product of incest and has created nasty dumplings. Yeung's character is sickened to learn what she has become part of and after discovering that she is now pregnant, she aborts the pregnancy. Now the really fucked up shit happens right here. She continues to eat the dumplings. What? I thought she no longer wanted to have a baby. I might have missed something here because the subtitling was white on white a lot of the time, but it seemed to me that she really didn't care about having a kid and just wanted to stay looking young to satisfy her vanity. Good film, easy plot but it's put me off dumplings for a long time.

The second film is Cut by Park chan-uk, starring Lee Byung-hun, Lim Won-hie, and Kang Hye-jeong. I found this film to be a lot like Takashi Miike's Bijitâ Q, in that it involves a stranger who manipulates a family. In the film, a director is subdued in his own home by an extra who appeared in all of the director's films. The extra has a bit of a problem because he is jealous of the wealthy, virtuous, well-liked director who is a contrast to his own life. The extra somehow feels that the director should be punished for his goodness and has wrangled the director's wife to a piano and has ordered the director to sin by killing a girl who happens to be tied up on the sofa. If he doesn't do it, the extra will cut off the fingers of the piano-playing wife. Eventually, the director attempts to kill the girl and discovers that it is in fact the son of the extra, whom the extra could not kill himself that morning. The wife manages to bite a chunk out of the extra's jugular, only to witness the son swear revenge as his father bleeds out. Again, I missed a lot because of the white on white thing, but it was pretty fucked up. But in Park's style, the viewer is challenged to determine what is right and wrong.

And for a little treat, the third film was directed by none other than Takashi Miike and was called Box. This is the story of a young woman who is haunted by the ghost of her sister, whom she accidentally killed as a child in a circus fire. The twin sisters are contortionists who work in a magic act, but as the magician favours one sister, the other becomes jealous. She locks her sister in a box and unfortunately causes a fire before her sister can be released. The magician reunites with the woman, and tells her that he wanted to do them both and that he liked them equally. At about that time, he grabs a sheet of polyurethane and pulls it over the girl's head. A lot of this is dream sequence and flashbacks and I'm not sure what really happens in the end, but I think the older sister gets buried alive. Some people have suggested that the two sisters are actually siamese twins who dream of being separated, but I'm the type of person to watch a film over and over again to try and analyze everything, or count legs.

JSA: Joint Security Area stars Lee Byung-hun of Cut, Lee Yeong-ae of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, and Song Kang-ho also from Lady Vengeance, but perhaps better known for his role in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Lee Yeong-ae, who is allegedly fluent in English, plays a Swiss soldier sent to investigate a double homicide on the Korean border and locate the missing bullet. She's not fluent in English, and it really messed up the flow of the film. Lee Byung-hun plays a South Korean soldier who is saved on a reconnaissance mission by a pair of North Korean soldiers, one of them played by Song Kang-ho. Lee is thankful to the North Koreans and sends them gifts. He develops a friendship with his enemies and establishes a routine of crossing the border and fraternizing. He ropes his new partner into the friendship and the four men carry on like there is no such thing as the DMZ. At some point, the four are discovered by a North Korean officer who has a bit of a Mexican standoff with the southerners. He gets distracted by a stereo, and takes one in the head. The two South Korean soldiers and escape while the second North Korean is also left dead. The film dissects the murder scene from different points of view. The junior South Korean soldier tries to commit suicide, forcing Lee Yeong-ae to decide who tells the better story, Lee Byung-hun or Song Kang-ho. This is part of Park's greatness, he can tell the story like no one else. In the end, Lee Yeong-ae is removed from the case because she is trying to uncover the truth, rather than reinforce the official view. The two former friends turn on each other and Lee Byung-hun is eventually implicated in the death of the North Korean officer and junior soldier. He manages to wrangle the side arm from a South Korean MP and commits suicide in front of Lee Yeong-ae, who has just learned the truth of that night but has promised to deliver a report clearing the South Korean of any wrongdoing. The only soldier to survive the investigation is Song Kang-ho who continues to serve the Republic as a guard in the DMZ. Seven movies for the price of two. Not bad.

Just a Little Something

It's been bugging me ever since Foxy came home from the hospital. I even tried to catch the look a few times, but what infant holds a pose? But she looks like one of my favourite actors, Oliver Platt. Although, with that face, Foxy reminds me of this guy. I couldn't find the right photo, but I'm sure I've seen this look before. Maybe this one is better.

If you think comparing the cutest baby west of the international dateline to photos of old(er) men is a mean thing to do, at least I'm not dressing my daughter in ridiculous outfits, or amusing myself by feeding her pickled onions. Ali does that sort of thing. Like mum used to say, it's cheaper than movies, and in some cases funnier. Ice cream when she's older. It would be just cruel at this age. Actually, all of our friends and family have been blessed with an acute sense of baby fashion. My fave is the handknit hand-me-down pantsuit she received from her cousin. Oh, and the cape... What baby needs a cape? Don't say Superbaby.

A Reason to Crack Open a Can of Iced Coffee

I had a whole bunch of stuff I wanted to write about on here, but it's been so long now that I only remember Tommy Lee Jones and some stuff about kosher meals on my flight. We all know that Hollywood stars come to Japan to film endorsements that never get seen back in the States. A very famous example is Sean Connery's ads for Suntory whiskey, and another is Cameron Diaz' multimedia campaign for a cell phone company. You pretty much see cutouts of her in every mall you might visit. I'll bet you didn't know this, or perhaps Tommy Lee Jones doesn't want you to know but in his spare time he is a champion race horse trainer and relaxes after every win with a can(!) of Boss' Rainbow Mountain Blend iced coffee. There's no better way to celebrate for Tommy - at least that's what the commercials want you to think. I liked that commercial because at least the ad tried to tell a story. Others are just straight plugs.

I have now seen the complete filmography of Wes Anderson and I hope to see The Darjeeling Limited with Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody when it finally comes out. I saw The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou starring Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum and Michael Gambon of Layer Cake. Also very briefly Seymour Cassels. For kicks, I asked my wife to check the video store for Bottle Rocket, but in her typical style she guessed what the clerk would say and told me they don't have it. This is the biggest problem I have with Ali - if I ask her to do something, she'll come up with a reason not to do it, or sometimes no reason at all. This is of course a small problem in the grand scheme so I don't let it bother me. too much. So we spent forty-five minutes in the place looking for Bottle Rocket because they sort it by genre. Well, what if the renter has never seen the fucking movie, dumbass? Or what if it spans several genres? How do you catalogue it then, Dewey? After some prompting at the counter, the clerk told us that Bottle Rocket wasn't in their system. I asked for Wes Anderson and she listed off everything she had. One I had never heard of before, so I asked her to get it for me. She brought back Andy's Happy Motel aka Bottle Rocket. See? We wasted forty minutes all because Ali didn't want to ask a question. We also rented Enquete Corse because it looked interesting and had Jean Reno on the cover.

I first watched The Life Aquatic which is about a whacky marine biologist whose time is torn between searching the ocean for the shark that killed his best friend and self-promotion. He makes films to show his colleagues and benefactors, and gives interviews for a cover story, and has a press agent to handle all this stuff, and runs a fan club. I found that part of the movie very intriguing. What I really liked about the film was Anderson's make believe. I don't know the actual term for it, suspension of disbelief or something, but he exaggerated the backstory to make it believable, but improbable. It wasn't a total fiction, but everything was pushed to the limit to appear as though it could have been true somewhere, but it wasn't. For example, it is possible to have a steam room designed by a scientist from the Chinese space program, but it is improbable that anyone actually does. Anderson does this in all of his movies, though not as much in his first film. Rushmore had it, The Royal Tennenbaums had a pantload of it.

In The Life Aquatic, Steve Zissou is also approached by a man who claims to be his son. Throughout most of the film, the pair spend time together and work to discover if Ned, played by Wilson is his son. Both claim that they don't know, but both do know and they know that the other knows. Neither wants to call the other a liar, so they carry on the innocent bit. Zissou tries to have an affair with an already pregnant journalist (Blanchett) who is really interested in Ned, while trying to mend things up with his wife, played by Huston. There is also a bit of a rivalry between Ned and Klaus, played by Dafoe, the first mate on the ship who has always looked up to Steve like a father.

While hunting for the shark, the boat is hijacked by pirates and an underwriter is kidnapped from the ship. Zissou searches high and low for the underwriter, whom he doesn't really like anyway, and finally finds him at a deserted resort, held captive alongside Zissou's rival and fellow researcher played by Goldblum. Klaus dynamites the hotel, finally stepping up and becoming his own man. I don't remember exactly why, but Steve and Ned, a pilot by profession, decide to take up the rickety helicopter that accompanies the Belafonte. The engine fails and the chopper crashes into the ocean. Ned bleeds out and Steve is rescued. Steve finds the shark, and does not kill it as per his contract, and manages to get another movie completed.

Before I forget, I want to mention the cutaway of the Belafonte. Apparently, this was a massive undertaking, but just by watching the film, you can already see that. There are two scenes in which the cutaway is used, the first and most artistic in my opinion is the part where Steve describes his boat. It's very well done in Anderson's way, with stage displays and music like a little vignette. Anyway, there's a reason you don't see this in a lot of Hollywood movies, and that is that it takes time and effort to put something like this together. I'm glad Anderson did it.

Although the closing credits thank but deny any association to Jacques Cousteau, it is obvious that the whole movie is heavily based on him. I guess that's part of the reason why I was drawn to this film in the first place. Being the son of a whacky marine biologist, and being well, I won't say forced... allowed to watch Cousteau's material on the telly when I was little probably helped create a personal interest in this film.

Alright, next up is Enquete Corse, or the somewhat more promising title The Corsican File starring Jean Reno, Christian Clavier, and Caterina Murino who also appeared in Casino Royale which starred Daniel Craig from a great movie called Layer Cake. Ahem, anyway I nearly shut this one off because of the cheesy music at the opening. It was clear that this was not a cloak and dagger type film as the box cover photo had insinuated. That's all I had to go on. Everything was written in Japanese. So the opening credits mentioned that the film was based on a comic book. As I reached for the eject button on the remote, I remembered that actually some of my preferred films are based on comic books. For instance, Ichii the Killer. I'd give Jean Reno another chance. The movie was essentially a live action retelling of the comic book, and though I applaud the fact that they stayed true to the original I also feel that this was their Achilles' heel. The movie was basically flat, telling the story of a private detective (Clavier) who is sent to deliver a letter to someone in Corsica. The private detective believes that the person he is looking for has inherited some money, but eventually discovers that his target is a fugitive and that he has been sent to Corsica to flush out the criminal.

So like I said, the movie is flat and fairly predictable if you are familiar with stereotypical French humour. They spend about half the movie playing cat and mouse, about twenty minutes cracking jokes about the differences between Islanders and Continentals, and the rest of the movie trying to sort the whole mess out - which it is, in the end. There's not much else worth mentioning about this film except that there was a character named Figoli, played by a dude named Pido. He bears a strong resemblance attitudinally to Bruno Lucia who played a character named Wayne Lovett in an Australian television show called All Together Now.

And now we come to Andy's Happy Motel, Wes Anderson's first film which was later made into a feature length film starring co-writer Owen Wilson, his brothers Luke and Andrew Wilson, James Caan, Robert Musgrave and Lumi Cavazos. So why is it called Andy's Happy Motel? Because Andy (Luke Wilson) meets Inez (Cavazos) at the motel and falls in love with her. Andy has just been "busted out" of a mental hospital by his friend Dignan, played by Owen Wilson who has also planned a crime spree to impress his former employer Mr. Henry (Caan). It appears that Dignan is a failure so far in his young life, and hopes to turn things around with this new venture. They recruit their friend Bob (Musgrave) as the wheelman and convince Mr. Henry to let them do a job. Mr. Henry is more than happy to let them handle a heist at a refrigerated warehouse, and very soon it is understood why. Bob comes from a wealthy family, and any reason to get Bob and his friends out of the house is a good reason because while Dignan and Bob and Andy are trying to rob the refrigerated warehouse, Mr. Henry is robbing Bob. Simple. Of course, Dignan loses control of the robbery at the warehouse and one of his crew is shot. While the rest of the crew scatter, Dignan goes back into the warehouse to get Applejack, played by Jim Ponds. He believes he won't get caught because he is "fuckin' innocent". He gets caught and serves twenty-four months in jail, while everyone else gets away with it. Dignan has a fascination with bottle rockets, and I guess that's why the film is called Bottle Rocket, but it could also be used as a metaphor for Dignan's life. Quick, fast, brilliant and then suddenly, nothing. He serves time in jail believing that he will be able to continue this criminal enterprise upon release and shows that he doesn't quite learn from his mistakes. We never really find out because the movie ends right there. I liked this movie, but it was easy to see why the initial cut received poor ratings from the focus groups. The story is hardly original, but it is told in a very simple way and it is clear why Wes Anderson has become a much sought-after Hollywood director.

Kibbutzing in Kyoto

And now that we have that little surprise out of the way, I can get on with Dax Watches Movies. This all happened before I watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but I wanted to put it after (above) the post about the film because I did say that my next post, that one, would be about a movie.

By the way, her name is Foxy Cleopatra. Because I was watching Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold like an idiot, instead of going to the hospital to be near my wife while Foxy was born. Oh, and Foxy because of Pam Grier, but I didn't really have to type that out, did I?

I was never promised a rose garden, and I am not the type of person to expect one but I was promised a wedding party. I won't say by whom, but a wedding party was promised. For such purpose, I shlepped my tuxedo (not the rental in the wedding photos, but my actual tux), and two of my best suits and all the extra bits to Tokyo. Well, it turns out that I brought an extra bag because there was/will be no wedding party. Instead, Kohei-san had planned a tidy little three day trip to Kyoto for Ali and me. Kohei and Genya Number Two would shadow. Separate hotels and trains and such, but they were never not there. That turned out to be a good thing.

On the second day Ali and her father were feeling a little under the weather. I put that down to the deep-fried fish bones they ate the night before at the sexiest restaurant I've ever been to. Ali was not doing well for a completely different reason, and slowly got worse as the day progressed. In the early hours of the third day, Ali conked my forehead with a hotel tumbler and rather loudly said, "Hello Fuckface. Get up and ring [Genya Number Two]. You stupid fuckface, get up!" I still can't pronounce the guy's name, but whatever. I dialed the number, so many numbers, and before I could even get my trousers on the night manager was there with two really big dudes and a stretcher. Moments later, GNT and Kohei arrived and rang for an ambulance. The two big dudes went away with the stretcher, and three dudes with a stretcher replaced them. These guys looked official, they had white helmets and first aid kits and all that. We went downstairs to the ambulance and while Ali, Kohei and I waited in the back of the van, GNT and the driver spoke in hushed tones about which hospital to take us to. The driver got a little excited and at that point GNT had to speak over him. I'm guessing GNT doesn't like to raise his voice because that was the last thing said by anybody apart from radio chatter until we arrived at Kyoto First Red Cross Hospital.

It's at this point that I should mention that Japanese hospitals are weird. I've never been in a hospital where everything except the emerg is shut between 8:00 pm and 8:00 am. Ali was in labour, so the doctor admitted her and gave her some muscle relaxants to delay contractions and antibiotics for nothing. She was four and a half weeks early, so the doctor didn't want things to escalate. Because we had some very expensive non-refundable shinkansen tickets and I had an assignment due, we swapped out. Ali's mum came down to Kyoto and Kohei, GNT and I all went back to Tokyo. I buried my nose in the books and had the assignment done in record time - all for nought, but I didn't know that then.

Two days pass, and we wait. We got the call while watching Cleopatra Jones, at about 10:00 that Ali was going into the delivery room. We were standing on the platform at Tokyo Station waiting for our train to Kyoto when we got another call. The baby was born. I had to wait for a third call before I could know the gender. Mr. and Mrs. K don't say a lot when they talk to each other. Which is why we didn't know sooner that Ali was in labour and why several calls are needed sometimes. Speaking later with the doctor, the only person in Kyoto besides the overworked hotel clerk who actually tried to speak English, I was informed that Foxy came out so fast there was an audible "pa-shoon" sound in the delivery room.

This time, I brought my books with me. GNT set me up in a business hotel, not the nice hotel I was in the first time I was in Kyoto. I don't know where he stayed and I don't want to know, but he wore the same clothes and they never got dirty. Mr. and Mrs. K stayed somewhere downtown close to Kyoto Tower. On the second day, Foxy had to be transferred to the NICU and be held for observation. She did well, and was released earlier than expected but after a reasonably safe time in the hospital. In perhaps a surreal way, we did some more sightseeing in Kyoto while Ali and Foxy were in the hospital.

It was starting to get to me. My hotel included Viking, which is what many Japanese people say to refer to a buffet meal. They know they are the only ones who say it, so when a gaijin like myself walks into the restaurant, they also say buffet but in the French way not the American way with the short u. It always makes me laugh to hear it that way because it reminds me every time of a line in La Reine Margot when Daniel Auteuil as Henri says he wants to get down and dirty with the Queen. All the chicks in my French class cringed. Back to the point - it was getting to me. Every morning I was reminded of Randy at the deli (or delica as they say in Japan) in Patterson:

"Who do I have to blow to get some decent pumpernickel in this place?" Spoons dropped, and chatter stopped but somebody quickly ushered Randy's less than acceptable Reuben away.

"You know they're gonna spit in the new one, dude".

"I don't care. If it's quality bread I'll take my chances". Not for a second did I think he was serious, and he wasn't. He checked.

I couldn't get any milk for my tea. I was getting rather frustrated because they always gave me cream as if it's the same thing. It's not, it cannot be. Even after painstakingly using words that I know they use in Japanese, the staff still couldn't understand. I guess because even if I say it perfectly, I'm still a gaijin so I can't possibly be saying something Japanese. The only thing that prevented me from getting angry was a little perspective. I thought back to Donny K., and the hissy he threw because he couldn't get a proper cuppa in the Andes. At the time I thought he was being ridiculous. I felt like offering to go outside and milk the nearest llama, but Don was serious so I thought I shouldn't make light. In my situation, it would have seemed even more ridiculous to have a hissy because I wasn't sitting in a shack at a multinational goldmine in Peru. I was in Kyoto, and if I swung a cat I'd hit at least one mini-mart, and a pachinko parlour. So instead, I told myself it could be worse and sipped my tea, ate my scrambled eggs wih chopsticks and listened to Bryan Adams muzak. So perfectly Japanese.

On my last night in Kyoto Mr. K decided it was time to eat. He often thinks of food, in fact he never stops thinking of food. We had to find a place to eat. We roamed the back streets of Kyoto and I spied a sign for Red Stripe. I said we should eat there because they have Red Stripe. Boy, was I wrong. After being mocked by the waitress, I went to the barman and led him outside to the poster of Red Stripe. He apologized and said that the poster was actually for a promo and handed me a flyer for a Jamaican dancehall gig that was happening up the street every Saturday. Like many people, I can't turn down Jamaican dancehall but there was Perspective again, encouraging me to think about my wife and newly arrived daughter. I just shook my head and asked for two large Asahi. It was during this meal that I witnessed the near collapse of a marriage and the birth of a new plan. Flowcharts and timelines determined what was in the best interests of everyone involved. Mr. K, myself and GNT would again return to Tokyo and Mrs. K would stay there to help Ali with anything.

Ali and Foxy and Mrs. K came home when Foxy was a week old, and I met them at Tokyo Station. Foxy is a good baby. She doesn't cry and she sleeps most of the time. I almost want to say that Enzo J didn't get enough sleep when he was that age because I remember that he was up a lot. Sissy was fixing bottles too often it seemed. That's a step Ali has managed to avoid, but it just feels like this baby is too easy.

Northern Monkies and Southern Fairies

So it was pretty shitty here in Tokyo for the last week or so. I did mention in one of my videos that I hate Tokyo. That is not entirely correct. I like Tokyo, but I don't like some things about Tokyo. I may have mentioned in an earlier post that I can be a nightmare house guest, and that almost happened last week. I'm trying to remain positive, so I won't dwell but I am starting to feel a little like Bob Harris. Not the guy who used to do The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC, but the guy in Lost in Translation. As it turns out, that is exactly the problem.

My wife recommended that we rent a few videos, and so we went to Tsutaya and got three. I always have to be pushed to watch a Wes Anderson film, but I did in this case as it seemed the shop had way too many copies available. We also rented Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a film I'd always meant to see but which was marketed in very strange way. Which is the secondary reason why I still haven't seen Snatch, the primary reason being Brad Pitt. We got a third film starring Jean Reno which I know nothing about. I got around to watching Lock, Stock and Two Barrels today, and it was really nice. A little violent and very similar graphically to another Mathew Vaughn film, Layer Cake. You may have heard of it. Oh, did I mention? I watched Casino Royale before I left Newark. Very good work from Daniel Craig albeit in the ironclad James Bond format, but I like his work in Layer Cake better. Layer Cake. Dexter Fletcher of Layer Cake and also of Press Gang co-stars as Soap alongside Jason Statham as Bacon and Nick Moran as Eddie, investors in a card game. Moran is the card player and is warned by his father played by Sting to not play cards. Where does Sting find the time? Anyway, Eddie goes to the game which is fixed and loses his shirt - and 500,000 pounds.

He finds a way to steal the money back, by ripping of his neighbours who are in turn planning to do what we like to call a grow rip. That is, they plan to rob a marijuana growing/selling operation run by as it seems Steven Mackintosh aka Winston who also played Nigel, the best friend in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. It's only tended by Winston, and is run by Rory Breaker who also happens to be the proposed client of the grow rip proceeds. Only because the rippers don't really know the rippees, or that Breaker runs the show. The sale is brokered by Nick the Greek, a bumbling fence who only knows half the story, as does anyone else.

All the while, the guy who set up the crooked card game also really, really, pretty please wants two rifles that are up for auction. Only he doesn't want them to go to auction. He wants them to be stolen so he asks his Genya to arrange the acquisition. Barry "the Baptist" played by Lenny McLean recruits two "Northern Monkeys", Gary and Dean played by Victor McGuire and Jake Abraham respectively. There's also a collector who plays a part in all of this, but he stays on the periphery with Sting until the very end.

So Gary and Dean retrieve the rifles as requested, but because they are not in the gun cabinet, they claim them as their own and sell them to Nick the Greek, who sells them to his associate Tom, Jason Flemyng who needs some firepower for the rip. The first group of thieves go to the grow op and make a complete cock up of the whole thing, but get away with the money and as much weed as they can carry. Eddie, Soap, Bacon and Tom are all waiting back at the neighbours' ready to take the money. For some stupid reason, they only take the money next door to Eddie's flat. The neighbours find it, and when Rory Breaker comes calling he catches the first group rather than the group that has been ratted out by Nick the Greek. Rory's group and the first group pretty much finish each other off, meanwhile Gary and Dean have been warned that they must locate the two missing rifles. Unknowingly, the two attempt to get the rifles back from the guy who wanted them in the first place. Gary and Dean don't last long against the two rifles, but end up eliminating Barry and his boss in the process. The collector, who works for the boss too, had delivered the 500,000 pound account moments before, only to be told to retrieve it by one of the original thieves whom he stole it from in the first place, and who was now holding the collector's son hostage. After being summoned, Eddie and Tom go back to the boss' office only to find Gary, Dean, Barry and the boss all dead. Eddie takes the money, and Tom stays behind to collect the rifles. He really likes them for some reason. In a panic, on the way back to the office to get the money, the collector rams Eddie's car and manages to wrangle the money back. Eddie, Tom, Soap and Bacon are all sent down for the crime, but are released because they are not part of the original group and the only witness cannot identify them. The four decide that they don't need the money because the debt is no longer collectible, at which time the collector comes in with the money bag. He hands it to them with a fair warning that if they ever try to find him, he will kill them. He leaves Sting's bar and rides off into the sunset with his son. The group open the bag only to find that it is empty save for an auction catalogue. Tom has been sent off to destroy the rifles because these are the only things that connect them to the crime. While he is away, the three remaining thieves discover that the rifles are worth upwards of 250,000 pounds each. They frantically try to ring him as the movie ends with Tom trying to answer his phone and grab the rifles as he hangs precariously off the rail of a bridge.

The ending leaves it open for interpretation. Did Tom fetch his beloved guns and race off into the night to profit at auction? Or did he take them back to the bar so that each could gain equally? Or did he let the guns fall into the river? I hate these endings. All that work to tie everything together and Guy Ritchie leaves one little thread hanging. Silly. Apart from the ending, a very good movie. I would like to see more work from Nick Moran. Maybe when I get back to Newark.

I don't hate Tokyo anymore. I hate the fact that my credit cards work at half a dozen cash machines in the city, and that Visa in particular employs staff to lie to me about it even after I have been put on record as having told them so. I hate that people don't listen to me and assume they know what I want more than I do. I got together with Yumi yesterday, an old acquaintance and she showed me around. It was quite nice. We found a Tully's, and hid in there for awhile. That is the first time I've ever had to wait to be seated at a coffee shop - and that is exactly what Yumi hates about Tokyo. Later we went for Indian food. Very nice. I came home and watched the Monte Carlo Grand Prix in Japanese. It was a good day.