Critical credibility has a fag break

OK, here's a meme. The thing is, you must only post half of it. All will become clear. Tag-ees at the bottom. What, in your opinion, are the 10 best movies of all time? Do a list. Great. You know the drill. Good, yes, gotta have a Scorsese. And a silent, or at least a black and white. And something foreign. Italian neo-realists? Hmm, bit passé. Wim Wenders? Fab. That one with Columbo in. And, gosh, which of the Three Colours should I pick? I'll say White. Bit perverse, most people ignore that one. And Citizen Kane. It's compulsory, you know. Haven't seen it? It's the sled, stupid. Stick it in. Excellent. Now, chuck that list away. And now list your 10 favourite films, which (and this is exceedingly important) MUST NOT INCLUDE ANY TITLE ON YOUR '10 BEST' LIST. Go on. Even if - especially if - you know they're really not very good by conventional critical standards. 1. The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960) Before the days of VCRs, my dad taped the soundtrack off the telly on his big old open-reel machine, and we'd sit and listen and act it out. I was usually Robert Vaughn, who doesn't do much, but does it exceedingly coolly. Oh, and it's considerably less looooong than Seven Samurai. 2. Big (Penny Marshall, 1988) The best thing Tom Hanks has ever done, and ever will do. 3. Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963) Everyone thinks this is a Hitchcock film, because it's got Cary Grant in, looking urbane under pressure. Truth is, it's more fun than most of the fat freak's stuff. 4. Hellzapoppin (H.C. Potter, 1941) I laughed so much at this film when I was about eight that I peed on my grandma's living-room carpet. I accidentally-on-purpose spilled some orange squash on it to disguise the fact. 5. Grosse Point Blank (George Armitage, 1997) Assassins have therapists? And unions? Wa-hey!!! Where do I sign? 6. Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987) Mickey Rourke before he went mental, De Niro as Satan, and Lisa Bonet does naked. What more on God's Earth could you desire? Oh, and voodoo. And chickens. 7. Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986) I had my high school prom the same year, only in Canada we called it a 'formal'. Guess who I identified with (and it wasn't James Spader). 8. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Steve Box & Nick Park, 2005) I agree with the critical consensus that Crash was an undeserving recipient of the Best Picture Oscar. However, I think this was the gay love story that should have got it. 9. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon/Wo hu cang long (Ang Lee, 2000) What you're supposed to say: "It's Chinese cinema made digestible for Western audiences." What I say: a) Ziyi Zhang is very pretty, and; b) "I would rather be a ghost drifting by your side as a condemned soul than enter heaven without you. Because of your love, I will never be a lonely spirit." ...sob... 10. Trading Places (John Landis, 1984) If only for the 'BLT' scene, when Eddie Murphy looks at the camera. You know the one. Patroclus, Slaminsky, Curve. You be tagged. Scoop up this wad of cinematic Play-Do and mould it into something fine.

See that bit of text under the blog title

New Murakami collection due in UK in July. Reminds me, must get that Pinball 1973 review up soon.

And, of course, there's the small matter of a new Morrissey album next week. So I should either post a picture of Murakami with flowers cascading from his back pocket... or...

Gas and air

Of course, when one is considering great art, questions of authenticity and verisimilitude can be set to one side.

But when one is discussing fucking hideous tat like Daniel Edwards's 'controversial' (ho-hum) Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston...


...then maybe it's appropriate to point out that back in the real world, if such a concept is useful in the Spears sphere, Britney had a Caesarean.

Colour me beautiful

Tokyo Drifter/
Tokyo nagaremono
(Dir: Seijun Suzuki, 1966)

I wrote before about Suzuki's last movie for Nikkatsu, Branded To Kill, and how the restrictions under which the studio made him work were the direct result of the lunatic excess he'd brought to his previous offerings. It makes sense to work backwards, Memento-style, and find out what it was that got his bosses choking on their tempura.

Tokyo Drifter is a yakuza (gangster) movie, but it's got the sort of set-up that could just as easily have come out of a Warner gangster flick from 30 years before. It's the story of Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari), who wants to turn his back on his hoodlum past, but finds the ties of loyalty are too great.

That much I got. But once this fairly run-of-the-mill concept is in place, the viewer is cut adrift. Wild and crazy jump cuts take you from the city to the snowy north; from a funky nightclub to the inside of an incinerator; from an identikit apartment to some kind of massive, sweeping performance space occupied by a singer, a pianist, and too many men with guns. Characters appear through circular portholes or from behind pillars, and disappear through gaps where the floor should be. Each scene is colour-coded, in intense, brash hues: the kids frug groovily on a purple floor; their more sedate elders sip martinis amidst Van Gogh yellow. Anarchy is signalled by a multicoloured, cowboy-style saloon, heralding choreographed mob violence against a bunch of innocent gaijin extras that Suzuki appears to have picked up off the street. The climactic shoot-out, meanwhile, is all in white. Cleanse. Purge. Redemption.

The colour-coding extends to the main characters; Tetsu's sky-blue suit echoes the shades of the living room, and the suburban normality to which he really yearns to return. But, as the theme song puts it, he's doomed to be "a drifter, the man from Tokyo". And I want a Charm Lady hairdryer like she's got and I want one now.

Imagine if John Woo made a movie, and asked Jean-Luc Godard to edit it (while listening to Ornette Coleman on an anachronistic iPod) and Peter Greenaway to design it, using a few leftover sets from the Dali dream sequence in Hitchcock's Spellbound. It's cartoonish, in the best sense of the word; a genre possibly flagged up by the manga comic read by the woman with the annoying laugh. Christ knows what she was doing there, but I was glad when she got shot. Oops. I mean *SPOILER ALERT*. Not that it matters, of course. Just forget the plot, because it looks as if Suzuki did. Inhale deeply and damn the suits of Nikkatsu for hobbling this deranged genius.


P.S. I've just discovered that, earlier in his career, Suzuki directed a B-movie called Young Breasts. I want to see this film more than I want Pompey to avoid relegation.

Update, 1.15 pm: P.P.S. For more considered perspectives on Suzuki, go here and here, at Matthew Dessem's excellent Criterion Contraption.

Update, 11.43 am, 30 March: P.P.P.S. And if you want to read about a movie that makes Suzuki's oeuvre look restrained to the point of timidity, go here. I've changed my mind. I want to see this more than I want to see Young Breasts.

Word for the day

yomitachi (Japanese): The act of reading books in bookshops for hours on end, with no intention of buying anything.

Update, 6 April: Some people, it seems, hold this practice to be a constitutional right.

Piss artist

From a piece in The Guardian about the endearingly abysmal artist Thomas Kinkade: "Two former employees, Terry Sheppard and John Dandois, told the panel of further examples of Kinkade's unpredictable behaviour: bringing disorder to a Las Vegas performance by the illusionists Siegfried and Roy by repeatedly yelling the word 'codpiece' from his audience seat, and urinating in public - in an elevator and on a model of Winnie the Pooh at a Disneyland hotel. 'This one's for you, Walt,' Mr Sheppard claimed the artist said as he did so."

The time space (bar) continuum

This is quite fun, if a little frustrating. If you've got a song buzzing around your head, but can't think what it's called, go to Song Tapper. The idea is, you tap the rhythm on the space bar, and the title of your song pops up. Older readers might remember a batty man (as in eccentric, not a Jamaican homosexualist) called Joseph Cooper, who had a similar trick on the poncy, olden-days BBC2 quiz show Face The Music. He would play some ditty by Chopin or Liszt on a piano that had had its hammers removed (ouch) and the likes of Joyce Grenfell and Richard Baker would have to guess what he was playing. Seat-of-your-pants entertainment, eh? I believe the show is being revived, with the late Mr Cooper replaced by the lovely, albeit subnormal Myleene Klass. She's a concert pianist, you know.

Well, um, yeah, OK. The first tune I committed to the mercies of Song Tapper ('Big Spender') came up OK, but then things started to go awry. Beethoven's 5th did make a showing, but the software thought it might just as easily have been 'I Was Born A Unicorn' by The Unicorns, whatever the hell that might be when it's at home. Or, of course 'Danny Boy'. 'Satisfaction' is confidently identified as 'Killing Me Softly'. 'Don't Play That Song' is supposedly that well known Bob Marley/doughnut punchline 'Jammin'', if it isn't 'Yellow Submarine'. In fact, everything seems to be bloody 'Yellow Submarine'; 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' gets the nod as well. Then I tried out 'White Room' by Cream, because I think it sounds a bit like 'Teen Spirit' - and got 'Satisfaction'. 'More Than A Feeling' (which is the song that Cobain was allegedly ripping off) is either 'Too Much Too Young' or 'Hit Me Baby One More Time'. Oh well. Whatever. Never...

Sorry. It's a fab idea, but I think the problem is that the database is user-driven. If the program can't identify your song, it asks you to identify it. So you've got the problem of thousands of users who haven't got a bloody clue what they're babbling about (the Wikipedia effect) coupled with the high proportion who have no sense of rhythm. And an entire generation grows up thinking that 'Hound Dog' and 'Hurt' are the same song.

Try it out. And let me know how wrong things can get.

That's the way to do it

Patroclus at Quinquireme has some damn sound advice on how to blog. I find myself nervously ticking the metaphorical boxes, as if I'm filling in one of those pop self-analysis questionnaires. (All A's? You are a sad fuck with no social skills and should jump off the Millennium Wheel yesterday.)