Filipino Fishermen Save Manatee
A manatee became stranded on a beach in the Phillipines, so some kindly local fisherman hauled it’s wrinkly ass back out to sea, where it gave them a thumbs-up sign and swam off.
I bet now every January the fishermen are going to be woken by a haunting call in the middle of the night…they will leave their house and go to the beach, where they will see a single manatee in the water, waving to them >sniff<
Manatees are pretty sweet. They have some at the Cincinnati Zoo and they look really cool.
Good job, dudes.
DVD Review- Noriko’s Dinner Table
Rating: 
Any j-movie fan who watched Noriko’s Dinner Table will notice numerous references to another iconic Japanese film, Suicide Club. Noriko’s Dinner Table makes note of the mass suicide of fifty-four high school girls who throw themselves in front of a subway train that is depicted in Suicide Club, and its main character is a member of the mysterious website featured in Suicide Club. In fact, Noriko’s Dinner Table and Suicide Club are rather intimately connected; Noriko’s Dinner Table was made as something of a prequel/companion film to Suicide Club, and attempts to fill in some of the (many) gaps in that film’s plot.
Noriko lives in a small town with her parents and younger sister Yuka. She’s seventeen and unhappy with just about everything in her life- she feels stifled in her little hometown and is disconnected from her family. She’s contemptuous of her housewife mother and her father, a reporter for the local paper who’s content to write about crop prices and annual festivals. She wants to attend college in Tokyo and explore the world while her parents want her to stay and attend a community college in town. Noriko feels that no one understands her except for her Internet friends on a forum for teenage girls.
After yet another argument with her father, Noriko takes advantage of a blackout to run away to Tokyo. She arranges to meet one of her online friends, the wise, worldly Ueno_station 54. She’s a bit surprised when Ueno_station 54, aka, Kumiko, shows up with her parents and little brother. They immediately whisk Noriko off to visit a grandmother, then another. Noriko’s confused, but she’s enchanted by Kumiko’s family: they are happy, loving, and connected, everything her own family isn’t. They’re too good to be true.
And of course they are. Kumiko actually runs a business renting families to lonely people. For a fee, her employees will be siblings, spouses, children, parents…anything to anyone. She uses the website to recruit young women for her company, and Noriko becomes her newest employee. She plays the prodigal daughter of a widower, even the granddaughter of an old man who replays his own deathbed scene surrounded by his grieving family.
Meanwhile, Noriko’s own family is searching for clues to her disappearance. Her sister Yuka figures it out first. She understands Noriko’s frustration, and instead of telling her parents she takes off to Tokyo to join her sister and Kumiko. The loss of his other daughter drives their father, Tesuzo, on an obsessive quest to find his girls and bring them home.
This rather simplistic outline doesn’t really do justice to the twisted, dark plot of Noriko’s Dinner Table, but I can’t reveal much more without spoiling things. The characters in the film are masses of psychological insecurities and resentments that combine to create a dense portrait of a modern society in which people are hyper-connected yet increasingly distant from one another. Noriko’s Dinner Table focuses on people and their strained relationships; in his search Tetsuzo learns the (somewhat mundane) truth behind the Suicide Club and Kumiko’s involvement with it, but it’s far removed from the gaudy, shocking depiction in Suicide Club and exists only as a footnote in this compelling movie.
Noriko’s Dinner Table succeeds largely on the strength of its character development; the film rotates points of view from Noriko to Yuka to Kumiko to Tetsuzo. None of the characters are necessarily bad people. In fact, all are sympathetic in their own way- the viewer can see why Tetsuzo moved his family to a small town to protect them, but they can also sympathize with Kumiko, who was abandoned as a baby. The film is nearly three hours long and is slowly paced, but without taking this time the characters wouldn’t be nearly so fully realized. There is one false step near the end of the film that doesn’t fit with the almost ponderous pace up until then, but it’s over quickly and is easy to forget.
The acting is fine all around, but I have to give special kudos to Ken Misuishi (he’s also in the upcoming adaptation of Twentieth Century Boys) as Tetsuzo. His performance is packed with anguish without being over the top, and I found myself sharing his frustration when he finally confronted his daughters, who refused to acknowledge him as their father.
Noriko’s Dinner Table is obviously a smaller budget film than Suicide Club. It is shot in ordinary streets and inside ordinary houses, and often has a cramped, claustrophobic feel. There is nothing particularly notable about the cinematography or the music, but that can be overlooked as the movie has a powerful, engaging story.
You don’t have to have seen Suicide Club to understand Noriko’s Dinner Table, but it may help to clear up a few points. The movie stands alone, however, as a fine examination of the crumbling modern family.
Details
Publisher: Tidepoint
Director: Sion Sono
Stars: 3
Running Time: 159 minutes
MPAA Rating: N/R
MSRP: $24.95
Release Date: 5/27/2008
Buy:
Links
That’s a Big Tuna
A huge-ass tuna fish was sold for $100, 000 in Japan today.
Those guys love their fish but…seriously. I guess $100, 000 compared to the tuna that cost 20 million yen in 2001. I mean, it’s a big tuna and all, and I bet it made great sushi, but how much did the restaurant owners have to charge per roll to recoup their costs?
That picture to the right is actually kind of pissing me off right now, because I am under a sushi moratorium for the next 7 months or so. And no tuna, even if it’s cooked! Something about mercury levels in tuna being higher than other fish. Swordfish and shark is also out for the same reason, but I can’t afford that stuff anyway. But tuna…I’m dying here, kid. You better appreciate this!
(Has anyone else noticed that tuna always look belligerent? The ones at the aquarium do, anyway.)
Ghibli Museum Pays for Your Animation Research
The Tokuma Memorial Cultural Foundation for Animation is offering two scholarships of about $3000 apiece for researchers who want to study animation!
Unfortunately, they want you submit proposals and actually do research on animation, instead of, you know, just watch anime all the time. If you didn’t have to do any of the writing stuff, I would totally apply!
You have until January 31st, so get cracking!
Surprise Party!
So Musashi’s leaving tomorrow for a week. This means I am the new dictator benevolent ruler of Yellow Menace, at least temporarily. I think we should throw Musashi a suprise party when he returns. Like this one!
Only with fewer transvestites and no mayonnaise.
Oh, Youtube. How you have twisted my brain with the fucking disturbing shit people post on you. It’s like John Waters with less taste and less plot and no Divine.
Ponyo Update
So the new Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea will be out in America. I know, I know, Time magazine already revealed that it will be thearically released in the U.S. in 2009. But the update says…it will be released in the U.S. in 2009…in the summer.
It seems kind of kiddie to me (more My Neighbor Totoro than Princess Mononoke, which by the way is Miyazaki’s best movie if you didn’t know) but I will probably go see it anyway, just to support anime in America. Hopefully by ’summer’ they mean ‘June’ or ‘early July’ because by August I will be busy having my own kid.
Ponyo is about a little goldfish-person who falls in love with a five-year-old boy. I hope this is not as creepy as it sounds.
Musashi is on vacation - again…
Okay, as mentioned I’ll be out of town for a week visiting my family in L.A. starting tomorrow. I should have lots of stuff to report when I get back, as there’s a badass Japanese fish market not far from my grandmother’s place and I’ll probably swing by Chinatown as well. At any rate, I don’t know how good my internet access will be out there so I’m going to have to play it by ear, in terms of posting to the site. AnaKhouri will probably be in and out a bit, and I’ll try my damndest to get stuff posted while I’m out, so hopefully the lights won’t be totally out.
In any case, I’ll be back full-time on January 13th. Keep it real, peeps.
Olivia Munn shut out of Wired’s ‘Sexiest Geeks of 2008′ Top Ten
Injustice? I think so...
I remember the moment when I finally decided, once and for all, that the Academy Awards were a Total Sham. It was during the 2000 awards ceremony when Ridley Scott’s Gladiator won Best Picture over Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Scott’s half-baked three-hour paean of lame homoeroticism had me cringing in the theater, and when it toppled Ang Lee’s masterpiece - well, I damn near threw my television out the window in disgust.
I am now feeling similar pangs of loathing as I learn that my personal Muse of Inappropriate Objectification, Ms. Olivia Munn, didn’t make the Top Ten on Wired’s ‘Sexiest Geeks of 2008′. For shame, Wired readers. For SHAME. Wired’s pathetic compilation of so-called ‘Sexiest Geeks’ is a complete farce. I expected better, Wired. This is the kind of list I would expect to find in the pages of Maxim, not the presumed market-leader in cutting edge tech reporting. You digust me, Wired.
I will forthwith cancel my Wired subscribtion, accompanied by a terse letter to Wired’s Editor-In-Chief. Well, actually I don’t have a Wired subscription, so I’ll have to sign up for one and then cancel at the end of the first term. But cancelled it shall be (once I fulfill the Terms of Subscription)…and upon cancelling my subscription, I will orchestrate a massive PR campaign on Ms. Munn’s behalf to ensure her reinstatement as the #1 Sexiest Geek in Human History. Olivia, feel free to call me to discuss strategy. I posted my cell phone number in the shoutout section of your Myspace page.
Oh, and I’m not too happy with the new Dr. Who, either - but that’s not Wired’s fault.
Dead Rising + Japanese punk = all kinds of awesome
…although according to most videogame news outlets I turn to, Dead Rising + Wii = suck. Which is too bad. But the video is still cool.
For the curious, here’s the band, Gagaga SP (or ガガガSP if you prefer) sans zombification…
Cambodian monks cry foul on Buddhist rock-opera
A Cambodian television network which broadcast a performance of the rock opera Where Elephants Weep was forced to abandon a repeat after monks in Phnom Penh complained about the content, claiming that they were ‘oppressed’. Oppressed? Really? By a rock opera ? Man, when did Cambodian monks become such pussies? Look, say what you want about Where Elephants Weep - at least they didn’t have to sit through Cop Rock. That almost made me set myself on fire.
“Where Elephants Weep”, a modern take on a traditional Cambodian love story that merges pop and rock music with more traditional and historical Cambodian tunes, played in Phnom Penh from late November through early December.
It tells the story a Cambodian-American man who returns after the demise of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime to reconnect with his roots. While he is a monk, he falls into a doomed love affair with a pop singer.
The last straw came when the show was aired by a local television station last week, prompting the monks’ council to write to complain.
Cambodia is predominantly Buddhist and monks are expected to be austere and eschew worldly pleasures such as entertainment.
