moves

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i watched battle royale last night. mostly cuz chrispy mentioned it in his top ten list(an honorable mention or something). seeing as i'd watched a ton of random korean and japanese movies last year in french once i bought a tv, i figured i'd like it even if it was bad. i loved the movies when they were in french and i was clueless, something about the crazy characterizations and amazing sci-fi nerdiness even in non sci-fi movies. as well as the use of the oftentimes absurd to more clearly expose the issues at heart.

it took me a while to sync the subtitles, which i downloaded separately, to the movie. i can't wait to buy the dvd, this thing is a must have. the whole movie my jaw must have been hanging open, and not from the blood — i was actually surprised at how low the gore level was, although i read somewhere that the special edition released abroad was toned down somewhat. despite that, they said it would never be played in an american theater cuz it couldn't get past our censors; i dunno about that after having seen kill bill vol. 1.

anyhow, this movie… one word. poignant. the social, psychological, and political issues it was addressing just floored me. thanks, pags, for droppin this one on us.

a day or two before that i watched natural city. this i think is a year or two old, a korean movie as opposed to battle royale which is japanese. the korean films i saw back in morocco were insane, and this one was pretty good too. it was a lot of fun, mostly. i almost got a sense of the feeling i got when i first saw bladerunner — i love it when a sci-fi flick can do this for me.

so tonight, continuing my crazy eastern movie week, i'm gonna watch battle royale 2. i have no idea what to expect. and after that, casshern, another japanese sci-fi flick. should be fun. oh, and i can drive again. if there were more of me in the room i'd start a holy shit chant for me. since there aren't, i'll settle for teens being forced to kill each other by the government in an effort to reinstill a sense of morals in society.

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ok, so a couple hours or so later and battle royale 2 is done. it was interesting, but i felt like it went on a completely different tangent from the first film. it seemed to sacrifice a lot of the emotional tension for action; it was trying to be inspirational at the same time, but the nobility issue pushed in the second wasn't really a key feature of the first film, and i feel like there wasn't enough steam behind it in the second one to hold its weight. i feel like the first one was incredible, the second just fun.

peace