New Years Eve Killeen Tx

blackout the night (Il blackout notturno)

Tokyo is one of the largest urban agglomerations in the world, and its suburbs, themselves as large as immense metropolis not hard to exceed thirty million inhabitants. The capital of technology, the capital of the oddities, the capital of those "contrasts " so fascinating to a tourism niche, that of the dudes who "go out to eat sushi is cool" and then go to Japan to do more the coolest (and rediscover, unbeknownst to the vast audience of post-holiday lovers who Mc.Donalds forse è linguisticamente meno ostico), oppure quello dei fissati dei fumetti o degli anime Giapponesi, che ne fanno meta di pellegrinaggio. Tokyo (cosiccome d'altronde accade per tutto il Giappone in generale) vista dagli occhi del gaijin superficiale, del giornalista di viaggi o del promotore di viaggi organizzati é la " metropoli dei contrasti ", un luogo dove la tecnologia piú avanzata convive con la piú severa tradizione, un luogo dove quartieri di grattacieli di mirabile altezza sono affiancati da complessi sacri dove regnano il silenzio e il religioso raccoglimento, e da quartieri a luci rosse dove ci si può anche solo idealmente affacciare alle piú depravate pratiche sessuali...

But those "contrasts" so chic and trendy, these are only for those many people who do not know enough Japanese society as a whole and in its complexity: for example, those many people who grew up in that world cattolicizzato that leads us to consider "the diversity "or" alternative "as the usual babble of poor to be pitied and save with armies of evangelization, or the usual crafty so endemic in our country that always pass the post-holiday Japanese to mock those who give their lives for the work or who are loyal to respect the rules even if it would amount to a damn line outside the door of the meter, from the cultured weekly rotogravure pitiful in a pitiable company is now best known for suicide, or a class adolescent beset by enormous problems of life (as if our teenagers were sane ...), or a working class widely seen as enslaved by a morally totalitarian or at least to visit on a nice tour that will not fail to include Tokyo, Kyoto, geisha, sushi and shit to no end.

But why such a controversial preamble to the review of this film? Why
watching this film is highly recommended to begin to wake up to the Japanese company, however, without too involved in psycho-sociological analysis, but starting to learn Japanese not as aliens but as " men, like us, just off the huge glittering electric game that is Tokyo, and see what's inside.

It's Christmas Eve, a businessman in mind his wife to meet his lover in a luxurious hotel in Odaiba, a bartender at his bar in the desert waiting for the passing of the night before the close of 'activities, an ex-convict looking for his ex-girlfriend, a model corniciome sits on a hospital looking for the courage to kill himself, an old man awaiting death in a hospital, a boy fond of satellites observing the sky, an elderly couple living in harmony il focolare domestico. Accade l'incredibile: una specie di meteorite si abbatte su una centrale elettrica e Tokyo si spegne .

Chiunque abbia vissuto Tokyo non potrebbe mai immaginarla senza elettricitá, ma paradossalmente proprio spegnendola é possibile vedere il suo vero cuore. Gli " extraterrestri " si tolgono le maschere da extraterrestri e cominciano a fare gli uomini, i problemi sono sempre gli stessi, come lo sono per noi, e il vederli attraverso degli occhi a mandorla non li rende meno dolorosi da vivere ed affrontare.

Si ama, si odia, si sbaglia, si tradisce, si scappa, si ha paura, si aspetta, si ruba, si gioisce... insomma si vive.

Il buio costringe la pupilla a dilatarsi e alla fine si vede pure meglio. E quella che mi piace definire " la cittá illuminata non da stelle naturali, ma da galassie elettriche ", riesce di nuovo, incredibilmente a liberarsi di quell'aura di inquinamento luminoso e a " riveder le stelle ", quelle vere.

Tralasciando l'ottima valenza didattica per i conoscitori superficiali di Giappone e Giapponesi, il film é un ottimo intreccio comunque giá visto di storie separate tra loro ma connesse indissolubilmente l'una all'altra, peccato per l'eccessiva lunghezza e ridondanza: con qualche limatura and some rethinking on installation is losing the desire to define this film, despite the catwalk star is not negligible and their evidence as always good acting, "a wasted opportunity."

大 停電 の 夜 に ( Daiteiden No Yoru Ni - The blackout at night), the English title "Until the Lights Come Back "

Japan, 2005 - director Takashi Minamoto

Electro Schock Masterbation

Tokyo!

A multinational production for a film by Japanese actors recited in size (almost always) set in Japan and Japanese: a very special film divided into three independent episodes are not related to each other, three passionate declarations of love / hate relationship for most cities around the world immeasurable work of three influential film directors of that unconventional I so adore.

Interior Design

The French visionary Michael Gondry form this first episode. Akira Hiroki and move for a few days at home with Akemi, a friend of her. Akira is an aspiring filmmaker in town to present his latest work: a film will be hard to host the screening of his film, however, that will be several days after their temporary transfer to Akemi's house for its small size is not suitable to accommodate more than two people at a time. The couple shows at all now able to find a solution to this problem: the search for a job and an apartment for rent are constantly empty, and just Akira, the only two to have some of the project in life, can almost by chance to find work as a packer in pottery shop. As the days passed and the atmosphere between the two Akemi is getting heavier and sitaizone is complicated by the arrival of her boyfriend: what's more the relationship between them is deteriorating Hiroko and Akira because of many difficulties. The discouragement of Hiroko is transformed into something strange, very strange.

Merde

Another Frenchman, Leos Carax, he directed the second episode. A Western man dirty and lame, with a strange beard and strange clothes, makes brief raid on the streets of Tokyo, emerging from the sewers and returned shortly after. He soon became known to the public for its mocking violence against passers-by. The discovery of grenades in an underground storage leads him to cause a massacre in Shibuya. The man was arrested and the world learns to know him as "Merde" (which has the same meaning as the Italian word). His language is incomprehensible, but comes forward a bizarre French lawyer who has the facial features very similar to those of the tramp who will act as a translator for the interrogators.

Shaking Tokyo

The most beautiful, in my opinion, operadel Korean director Bong Joon-Ho. A man in his forties now 11 years living quietly at home and is a ひきこもり ( Hikikomori), one of those people in Japan spend their lives in isolation from the outside world. La sua vita è perfetta, estremamente scandita da rituali precisi. Ma un terremoto e l'arrivo di una ragazza porta-pizze cambieranno la sua vita, per sempre...

Nonostante la diversità dei tre episodi ho trovato un interessante filo conduttore che li unisce in maniera indissolubile: tutti e tre i registi esprimono la difficoltà di "vivere" una città come Tokyo e un paese come il Giappone: per qualunque appassionato e sognatore sfegatato del Giappone, la visione di questo film è un delicato ridimensionamento di una infinita Disneyland marziana a semplice luogo di questo pianeta terra, abitato da gente normale alla quale non basta il denaro per vivere, gente normale che very common and has serious problems, people sucube of intolerance and persecution, people who love and people who hate, people who are frightened, people who suffer. Especially Gondry and to a lesser extent the other two, imbue their films with the "difficulty" of everyday life like a stain that creeps between the lives of their characters, ruining them. Speaking of Gondry episode in particular, only a visionary genius like his can bring together a very sad with the magic realism of the dream, or nightmare if we both always metaphorical. Ayako Fujitani, already seen in the Ritual Year and Hideaki Kase Ryo, the main character of それでも ボク は やっ てない ( Anyway, I did not ) the actors are really good and the episode draws huge benefit and credibility.

Carax, in my opinion, the history of the persecution of Merde is always metaphorically a very topical issue in Japan: the distrust and fear of foreigners. Merde speaks an incomprehensible language, is filthy and smelly, rude and behaves light years away from the common label. Well any stranger, when Tokyo was refused by a taxi driver because "Japanese", or when he sees the neighbors away by subway to his approach, or if you have a dealing with the police, he feels like shit, which becomes almost a messiah of a longed-for relaxation by the Japanese company as a whole, against gaijin.

Bong, also thanks to the beautiful and talented Yuu Aoi wins the race for absolute separation of millet episode: a masterpiece of delicacy and poetry, which are very difficult to describe, and show its great sensitivity and passion for the Japanese. The cameo by Naoko Takenaka is a must!

A really good film.

Tokyo!

Giappone, Francia, Germania, Corea del Sud, 2008 - regia di Michael Gondry, Leos Carax e Joon-Ho Bong