Чем мне нравится Polymorphic в отличие от братьев по оружию, так это продуманными, упругими, почти олдскульными бассами. Да немного не хватает разнообразия и индивидуальности трекам, но впереди еще.. Его трек Toxication – один из лучших среди Proxy-style, по моему скромному мнению. На этой неделе Polymorphic выпустил Rock On EP, добротную пластинку, скрежещущие и ухающие треки, стоит обратить внимание. А к выходу этой записи был приурочен следующий микс, который по традиции unmixed.

01. Proxy – Who Are You (Polymorphic Remix) (alt)
02. Boys Noize – Kontact Me (alt)
03. Polymorphic – Rock On (Marseille Remix) (alt)
04. Felix Da Housecat – Plastik Fantastik (alt)
05. Blende – Northern School (alt)
06. Q.G. – Reign in Blood (Suicide Club Remix) (alt)
07. Audiostalkers – Rapidgirl (alt)
08. Blatta & Inesha with Congorock – StepOff! (Sekta Remix) (alt)
09. Costello – Push That System (Lazy Rich Remix) (alt)
10. LFO – Freak (alt)
11. Trash Yourself & The Toxic Avenger – Die (alt)
12. Lock’N'Load – Blow Ya Mind (The Squatters Remix) (alt)

Akira

http://rapidshare.com/files/60254451/Akira_legendado.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60264341/Akira_legendado.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60273612/Akira_legendado.part3.rar

The Machine girl
http://rapidshare.com/files/256324465/Th.Mach.Gir.part1.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/256321547/Th.Mach.Gir.part2.rar

Suicide club

http://rapidshare.com/files/249862958/Clu_do_Suic.part1.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/249858979/Clu_do_Suic.part2.rar

Ne avevo sempre sentito parlare, ma non l’avevo ancora visto. E dal momento che ieri ero raffreddatissima e incapace di fare nulla, ho deciso di cercarlo e di guardarlo in streaming. Parlo di Suicide Club, o Suicide Circle, di Sion Sono. E’ un film del 2002, poi anche romanzo e manga. Mi ha lasciato abbastanza sconvolta.
Ma non per il “gore”. Sì, d’accordo, c’è una marea di sangue e pezzi di carne e pelle a tonnellate, ma non è la macelleria a turbarmi. E’…la limpidezza. E, insieme, l’assoluta ambizione della storia. Che è una storia filosofica, soprattutto.
Allora, c’è questa scena iniziale sconvolgente, dove cinquantaquattro ragazzine in uniforme scolastica arrivano sulla banchina per prendere il treno, e ridono e scherzano e la musica è assolutamente lieta, pop, leggera. Poi le ragazzine si prendono per mano, sempre ridendo, mentre la musica resta identica, e non c’è nessun violino sinistro a mettere sull’avviso chi guarda, e contano uno, due, tre e si gettano tutte insieme sui binari. Segue sangue a fiumi e tutto l’armamentario splatter. Che, assicuro, colpisce molto meno rispetto all’incongruenza fra scena e conclusione della stessa.
Il resto è complicato da raccontare.
C’è un’epidemia di suicidi in Giappone. C’è un team di investigatori che indaga in modo caotico. C’è una misteriosa borsa bianca che appare sui luoghi dei suicidi e contiene un rotolone di pelle umana: vari pezzi di pelle cuciti assieme, anzi. C’è una sorta di hacker che si chiama Il pipistrello e contatta la polizia. E continuano ad esserci morti assurde e soprattutto sorridenti: studenti che si gettano allegrissimi dal tetto della scuola, madri che sorridono estatiche mentre si affettano la mano, ragazze che leggono per ingannare l’attesa mentre il forno dove infileranno la testa si sta scaldando.
Però non è questa la cosa che fa paura. La cosa che fa paura, per esempio,  è il dialogo finale fra una ragazza che sta indagando sulla morte del suo ragazzo e una platea di bambini-filosofi.  Sono le grandi questioni sulla vita e sulla morte che vanno a schiantarsi su quella che è apparentemente una trama horror.
E’ un film strano e anche pieno di difetti. Ma non credo che lo dimenticherò facilmente. E credo che chi scrive horror dovrebbe vederlo, e pensarci un po’ su.

See the high point on the Golden Gate? Suicide Clubbers climbed that thing. (George Rose/Getty Images)

There was a guy named Gary Warne who, back in 1974, drew an important distinction between humor and sadism: Pranksters can dish it out, sadists don’t laugh when it happens to them. Much like Ken Kesey had a decade or so before him tested the mettle of his own pranksters using Kool-Aid laden with LSD, Warne used whipped cream and pillow fights to sort out exactly who was a real prankster and who was just some jerk looking to smash some other guy in the face with a pillow. Harmless tools, yes, but when you storm out of a room covered in feathers and whipped cream, you’ve just done the leg work of sorting for the guy who’s paying attention.

And much like Kesey and his Merry Pranksters a decade or so earlier, when the feathers were all still on the floor and the whip cream all fully spewed, those who remained — those who were thrilled and high from the experience — boarded a bus to set about pulling pranks. Thus began the Suicide Club, a secret society of San Franciscans (open to anyone who wanted to join, so not so secret — more like word of mouth society).

Warne was a proponent of free higher education and the Suicide Club sprung (that night with the pillow and whipped cream fights) out of a Practical Jokes 101 class held at the Communiversity he helped found. He was also a true fan of freaking out the straights, which arguably led to the conception of flash mobs: One early prank involved assembling 30 pranksters within spitting distance of one another, all panhandling for change, yet pretending they weren’t in any way associated. Today in San Francisco, that’s pretty much par for the course, but one imagines that since Warne took the time to write it down it must have been a pretty good joke in 1974. The Suicide Club also gave rise to the famous Dashiell Hammett Walking Tour, the Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt, and — by way of daughter group the Cacophony Society — Burning Man. Oh yeah, they also infiltrated the American Nazi Party and the Moonies, climbed the Golden Gate Bridge, rode storms out in San Francisco Bay and founded urban exploration. Research into the latter is where I came across Gary Warne and I just thought he deserved mentioning, being such an awesome human being and all.

More on HowStuffWorks.com:
Did the CIA test LSD on unsuspecting Americans?
What are urban explorers?
How LSD Works

MARK SCHILLING – The Japan Times

Japanese filmmakers will almost always tell you that they make films for the domestic market first and foremost. If foreigners happen to like them too, that’s a nice little bonus, like an after-dinner mint.

Yoshihiro Nishimura, a makeup and special effects maestro whose credits include the international cult hits “Suicide Club,” “Meatball Machine” and “L Change the World,” thumbed his nose at this Japan-first orthodoxy with his first theatrical feature as a director, “Tokyo Gore Police” (2008). Made with a C-list cast, this hyperviolent splatter-fest, set in a dystopian future Tokyo, referenced everyone from Paul Verhoeven (“Robocop”) to Takashi Miike (“Dead or Alive” and several dozen more).

Local theatergoers gave it a pass, but abroad “Tokyo Gore Police” found an appreciative fan-boy audience, who lavishly praised it as “crazed” and “depraved,” while hailing Nishimura as the latest Japanese bad-boy cult sensation — a Miike for the noughties.

Yoshihiro Nishimura

His followup, “Kyuketsu Shojo tai Shojo Franken” (international title: “Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl,”), codirected with Naoyuki Tomomatsu, received its world premiere at the New York Asian Film Festival in June and won more foreign fan-boy raves and festival invitations.

At home, however, Nishimura struggled to find theaters for the film, and eventually made a public complaint about the obtuseness of the local industry.

Now, however, “Kyuketsu” is set to open tomorrow in two Tokyo theaters, but I doubt whether ticket sales will be much better than that of “Tokyo Gore Police.”

At the same time, the film shows why Nishimura has crossed borders so successfully, containing as it does all the elements — wacky genre spoofery, sexy short-skirted girls and enough fake blood to fill Korakuen Stadium — that foreign fans demand in Asian Extreme entertainment.

Nishimura, though, isn’t like some makers of for-export cult pics, who are constantly winking at the audience about the cheesiness of what they’re seeing. Instead he and his team have been too busy having fun creating shocks and gags — the more outrageous the better — and that sense of enjoyment comes across on the screen. At certain moments the revelry in blood sprays and flying body parts crosses over to self-intoxication, but all in all the film is a romp.

Complaining that the effects aren’t up to the standards of Hollywood is like complaining that a Prius doesn’t accelerate as fast as a Porsche — rather beside the point. Nishimura knows what many Hollywood makers of technically accomplished, but emotionally null eye candy don’t: Imagination — and the freedom to use it — trumps pixels.

His story, based on a manga by Shungiku Uchida, is hardly original, though.

A handsome high-school boy, Mizushima (Takumi Saitoh), becomes an object of romantic rivalry between two classmates: Keiko (Elly Otoguro), the snarling leader of a “Gothic Lolita” girl gang, and Monami (Yukie Kawamura), a shy, sweet transfer student. Keiko initially takes the lead, cornering Mizushima with her crew and demanding that he become her boyfriend — or else.

Mizushima, a go-along-to-get-along sort, reluctantly agrees, but when Monami offers him a chocolate for Valentine’s Day, he accepts it, though he barely knows who she is.

After Mizushima starts seeing strange visions and experiencing strange cravings, Monami tells him her secret: She is a vampire and her gift chocolate contained blood that has brought him half way to vampirehood. All he needs to complete the process is a slightly bloody kiss — and they can live happily forever after. Naturally, Mizushima hesitates.

Meanwhile, Keiko susses Monami’s interest in her man and bullies her mercilessly. When she catches Monami and Mizushima kissing — he has decided to accept Monami’s offer (which he can’t refuse), she goes berserk and ends up dead. Finis? Not quite, since Keiko’s creepazoid dad (Kanji Tsuda), the school’s biology teacher, has the mad dream of creating monstrous new life from the dead. With the aid of the slinky school nurse (Sayaka Kametani), he uses Keiko’s corpse as the base for a most ghastly experiment. Vampire Girl is about to meet Frankenstein Girl.

There is plenty of action of a by-now familiar sort. The body parts of both heroines morph into bizarre weaponry and, before their final showdown, they both wreak bloody havoc, with their victims spewing the red stuff like a geyser. Nishimura, however, takes it to another level, with sharper comic timing, cooler effects and a blithe willingness to shock and offend that occasionally outdoes even Miike.

The King of Cult never came up with anything quite like a slo-mo scene in which Monami celebrates sensuously in a victim’s blood shower, while a corny pop tune plays. Also, the film’s gang of ganguro — girls who dress, make themselves up and act like cartoonish versions of African-Americans — embody the sort of gross racial stereotypes that, in Hollywood, went out with blackface and Stepin Fetchit (though Asian stereotypes still flourish there). I know the ganguro are caricatures of a domestic teenage fad that mixes admiration for and ignorance of its models, but they still make for queasy viewing.

Which is part of the point, isn’t it? Even so, for most of its running time, “Kyuketsu” is good, raucous fun of the sort that inspires hoots and cheers abroad, not angry or nauseous walk outs. In Japan, though, Nishimura had better not give up his day job — making effects for movies with a bigger audience than his foreign fans who, as enthusiastic as they are, wouldn’t nearly fill Korakuen, even with prop blood to swim in.

So I’m really into two kinds of music lately: Remixed folk jams and catchy post-electro pop (or any music that fits with the scene of a sleek post-hipster dude on the run from a mob of new wave hipster killers through post-Williamsburg.  Gross!)

Tesla Boy is fitting the latter bill for me – so catchy and involving that it’s hard to focus on simple tasks. I may get tired of this EP before summer really gets going because I can’t stop playing it on repeat, but until then it is my official soundtrack.

Don’t even need to mention the stellar mustache and good hair all around, right? You guys already know. Moscow Represent.

Hear their music @ their MySpace page, and show them some love. Download my favorite track off the EP by clicking here – and omg, can’t resist, click here for the other fav. ★

Spänande kuriosa: Tarō Asō, som knegar som Japans premiärminister, är självtitulerad manga-fantast. I dagarna cementerade han hanami-traditionen – att bevittna sakura-blommans rosafärgade framfart – i propert sällskap av i otaku-kretsar välkända idolgruppen AKB48 och andra häpnadsväckande japanska rikskändisar. Förutom de perverst lolita-influerade medlemmarna i AKB48 hängde han med anime-pionjären Leiji Matsumoto – som vi känner från Battleship Yamato, Space Pirate Captain Harlock och Galaxy Express 999, och den skrattretande komikern Gekidan Hitori.

Inte färre än 11 000 japaner deltog vid Sakura o Miru Kai vid Tokyos Shinjuku Gyôn National Garden. Japanska nyhetsblaskan Sankei newspaper var på plats och fotograferade den politiska maktpampen med AKB48, man även Suicide Club-skådespelerskan Tamao Satou (även känd från Pikachu’s Rescue Adventure och Choriki Sentai Ohranger) samt Maju Ozawa (Kamen Rider Agito: Project G4, Itazura na Kiss). Dessa, plus kompletterande information på japanska, hittar ni här. Sankei Shimbun förevigade Tarô poserandes med Keiko Takeshita (Hi no Tori, Swan Lake och Phoenix 2772 – Space Firebird), dessa finns här.

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

This is part 3 in a 5 part series. Follow this link for part 1 and this link for part 2.

Hola hombres. It’s been a long weekend which started with a trip to “detox” which is like the drunk tank but you don’t get charged with public intoxication. When I get done with these controversial movies, I’ll give me two cents on the experience but until then, I want to keep the focus on cinema. For today’s movie, we are going to travel East instead of West to the land of Japan.

The Japanese are well known for having some pretty fucked up movies, especially for anyone who has watched anime beyond what is played on Adult Swim. But, as stated earlier in part 1, I’m going to leave anime out of this. Looking at other Japanese films, we have a couple genres which we see a lot of. First, we have the generic violence tweaked in a manner to mess with our heads. In this category, we have movies like Battle Royal in which around 30 teenagers are put on an island and have to kill each other until one is left. In 72 hours. Or they all die. No one said high school was going to be fair. I think a fat kid gets his first. On a side note, we Westerners invented that originally. It was called Lord of the Flies. And we killed the fat kid too because dead fat kids are make-you-shit-yourself hilarious. But I digress.

The other well known genre for Japanese cinema is gore flicks like Suicide Club which is made just to shock the hell out of you. How? Well, imagine 50 high school girls holding hands, singing a song in unison and being generally cute. Now, imagine that same group of girls jumping in front of a moving subway and spraying a blood wave 20 feet in the air. Shocked? Probably not, so here’s the clip!

If you drop your homework on the subway tracks, just let it go; cuz man, it's gone

Now that we have proven that Japanese movie makers are certifiably psychotic, you are wondering why I’m bringing up these movies. Well, it is to better understand the controversial movie I’m about to go over. It is a mix of that goofy over the top violent action combined with shit that just makes you wish you never got out of bed when you were 10 years old so the horrors of the world would have never entered your precious head.

Ichi the Killer

Woof, that creepy guy in the poster sort of scares me, but if you haven’t seen the movie, get a summary here.

I don’t know what is more shocking about this movie; the strong sexual overtones or the violence. To be honest, the violence in this movie is pretty campy. I mean, it’s gory and violent and people get hacked up worse than Kill Bill but honestly, it is so over the top and at times so poorly done, it is hard to be “traumatized” or at least turned off by the movie. One scene in particular when he cuts a prostitute(?) in half symmetrically, it looks like she’s glowing pink inside. The effect is terrible. I’ll bring up Cannibal Holocaust again because in that film, the cannibals chop a dude into pieces with stone axes and it looks sickeningly realistic and it was done with an 8mm camera and ~20 years prior to this film. For all the awesome CG work the Japanese do, it just boggles the mind why they would be so damn lazy on this effect. If you are going to chop a guy (and especially a woman) in half, then at least try to make it look good. It is the psychotic’s mantra: “you only go to hell once, so make it count.” (Editor’s Note: there is no psychotic’s mantra, only “Mike’s daily speech to himself in the mirror”.) Okay, so what else makes this movie “controversial” then?

Well, remember when I said “turned off by the movie” above? If not, then re-read it and start paying attention because there is one guy who is definitely getting turned on by this movie. Ichi, our main character, it seems has a little sexual problem. He can’t get off unless he’s murdering people. Imagine, gentlemen reading this, that you are 19 years old and unable to ejaculate unless you disembowel a room full of 30 year old men. Yeah, you’d be a world of hurt. And how do we know he has this odd sexual blockage? Ichi talks about it but the kicker is when blood sprays on the wall and it is shortly followed by a stream of ejaculate. Yep, he comes on the walls. Skeet, skeet, skeet! (Actually, that was supposed to be a caption for a image of the main title which is made out of Ichi’s semen but while looking for an image I ran into some disgusting shit that would probably get me arrested in most countries so I aborted).

Ichi’s odd fetish notwithstanding, there is also a good amount of rape in this film. A re-occurring theme of the movie is that Ichi was brought into his career of killing evil men because when he was younger he watched a girl he liked get raped and didn’t do anything to stop it (I won’t bring this up anymore to avoid plot spoilers). So, since that was his first “sexual experience” it is used to explain his violent ejaculation and I’m not talking about Scary Movie. Their handling of rape is pretty terrible because they always present the victim of the act as someone other than the actual victim of the rape. I could spend another couple of paragraphs going into what is wrong with this but it should speak for itself.

Probably the “funniest” scene is when Ichi is talking to a prostitute and she pretends to be this girl he saw get raped and did nothing to help and that she was turned on by the act and that she desires him and want to feel pain (for some Japanese reason). He gets overly excited about this and chops off half of her leg. She hops around on her non-stumpy leg, screaming and spraying blood until he finishes her off in the middle of a hallway. Is it actually funny? No but try to imagine the ridiculousness of the scene and you may chuckle. For those who have actually seen the movie, then maybe you laughed. I can’t be the only person.

Conclusion: This movie is pretty messed up. The violence isn’t realistic but the context in which it takes place most of the time is pretty random, relatively meaningless and over the top to the point where when they shipped the film to the censorship board, they must have included a picture of the director giving the bird. Combined with the sexual oddities of Ichi and the rampant prostitution and rape and you have a full fledged WTF movie. Fine, but is it art?

Well, this one is difficult. Yes, when it came to Caligula, I was pretty forward with my hatred for the lack of effort in making the violence realistic and contextually meaningful. With Ichi the Killer, it is pulling from the influence of anime and the original comic where this kind of crap is tolerated and in mimicking the source material, it does well. And even though it’s treatment of rape slightly pisses me off, I can’t fault Ichi the Killer with at least trying to do something different and within the grand scheme of things, it gives the movie an unique angle in which to view the protagonist. And also, like most Japanese films, there are some interesting themes and views on honor, society and modern life. That said, none of it really applies to a normal person and when you finish the film, those scenes seem generic within the realm of Japanese films and appear to be present for the sole purposes of giving transition between the action scenes. Even the scenes that try to be artistic come off as superficial and any true originality is kind of lost because of this. It definitely isn’t the worse movie you could watch on a Saturday afternoon but to reach a conclusion, I’m going to go with trash.

Part 4 will be coming soon (2/9 or 2/10) and prepare thyself for part 5 no later than 2/11. Although I said I wasn’t doing this in any order, I am saving my favorite controversial film for last.

What I Was Doing Whilst Typing: Listening to Man Of War. Remember kids, other bands play… Man Of War Kills!

Suicide Club is an amazing horror /thriller movie from Japan dealing with problems in Japan with mass amounts of suicide. Apperantly there were cults involved with many of the suicides. Many would say that these cults gave the teens something to believe in, there being a lack of a real major religion in japan some people feel like they need something to belong to or to believe in.

About the movie:

• The Japanese Title is Jisatsu Circle
• you can view the cast on IMDB (internet movie database)
• Movie Description:
  • After 54 schoolgirls simultaniously jump in front of a train at Shinjuku station in Tokyo, the city becomes plagued with “suicide clubs” — Grops of teens who get together and make plans to kill themselves. The police have little luck in deciphering the motivation of the youngsters, but they do keep finding a ribbon composed of bits of skin from all the previous suicides at each new death scene. Whoah!

The 54 girls in Shinjuku Station

one of the Skin Ribbons

• Features song “Mail Me” by jpop artist Halko Momoi, only in the movie it is song by a fake pop group that is part of the movie called Desaato (Dessert).
  • in my personal oppinion it sound better when sung by the 12 year olds in the movie. Which you can listen to here. (if anything it’s cuter)

I’ve watched this movie on youtube before but I have netflix now and I am definitely taking advantage of it’s foreign movie selection.  Suicide Club arrived just the other day and I’m gonna watch it on my big huge television that is like 8 times that size of my laptop screen. . . lol

so yeah, watch this movie!

WHATCH IT!

hehe ^^

Kazkokia crazy busy savaite sita.. Bet nieko, savaitgalis arteja, laikas issijundinti:) Siandien klausyk britu Shadow Dancer, kurie dabar yra labai ant bangos visur. Man sitas gabalas tikrai patinka, nors kiti tai tokie siaip sau. Piktas kaip sitas suo:)

Suicide Club – Sous Acides Club(Shadow Dancer Remix)

Jei patinka, ka girdi siame bloge, pirk muzika cia ar kur kitur.

Dolls
I was recommended Dolls by my film studies teacher, and he leant me his (Korean) copy of the DVD. When we watched parts of it in class, it looked good – clean lighting, interesting plot, and a nice overlapping of past and present to explain the plot without narration. But once I started watching it at home, all the flaws of the film suddenly jumped out at me.

For one thing, following the main characters, there’s no talking. For another, it’s long. By the end, with the sudden appearance of matching dress robes (with a blatant fade-in-fade-out wink towards the first scene with puppets), and the magical half-recovery of the brain damaged heroine, I really just didn’t care anymore.

The shots are nice. The sounds are okay. The stretches the director (BEAT TAKESHI, YEAAAAH) makes to fit the film into the “tragic lovers” setting makes me grin nervously – if you want to make a movie about yakuza, just make a movie about yakuza.

Interestingly, the costumes were all done by Yohji Yamamoto. That was one aspect of the film that I enjoyed, but it also tended to make the visuals slightly distracting. Were this film a play, the costumes would be awesome. As it is, it’ll just gain mild cult status.

THREE EXTREMES

Box
God, this movie scared me so bad. I can’t really talk about it because I don’t want to ruin anything – but the visual style is very striking, and I appreciated almost every single theme Takashi Miike threw in there.

Dumplings
I did not enjoy this film. At times sensual, it was mainly cringe-worthy. Why did it deserve a full length adaptation? Did we need an extended bath/abortion scene? Or maybe a real ending – that I’d like to see.

I guess the bottom line is that I’ve known about this film for far too long – YES, she eats dumplings made of babies to stay beautiful – and unless the director wants us to want to do the same with no consequences, something bad will either happen to her, or to the people around her. Or it wouldn’t be a horror film by normal standards.

Cut
I couldn’t tell if Park Chan Wook was getting his directorial rocks off on making a film about revenge, or on the lavish visuals. As I got to the midway point in the film without feeling a single ounce of tension, I started to suspect that it was the latter option – and the the film’s fright factor suffered because of it. Rather than staying in relatively normal territory (for him) by making the revenge be from an innocent onto a successfully portrayed moral-less retch, it was just a crazy underdog.. of a bad guy, lashing out at what he thinks is his direct opposite.

Maybe the film just doesn’t get enough time to simmer – 45 minutes is hardly time enough to get me to care about his characters, at the pace he sets. But Three Extremes is supposed to be an exercise in control, and mastery – shouldn’t he be able to make something better than this, given his directorial status and past?

(just so you know, my favorite part was at the end when his wife throws up all the blood )

Noriko’s Dinner Table
The Suicide Club Franchise can’t seem to remember what its plot basis is. I’ve now watched both films, AND read the manga – and the differences are far too striking to not mention. The first film has a general underlying theme of subliminal messaging, which interested me when I saw it, but the overall shock factor elements (THOUSANDS of suicides, going relatively unexplained) made me hate it in the end. Noriko’s Dinner Table was supposed to clear up all the plotholes, as well as give more background in general.

It failed. It ended up creating more plot problems than it fixed. It was a better film in that it made more sense, but it was horrible to look at – trying to integrate clips from the original film, the juxtaposition was striking in the worst way. So it was better, and worse – but it still felt like it was completely disconnected from the original film.

I mean, I can write about this another time, I guess – mostly what I wanted to say about Noriko’s Dinner Table in particular is how it’s a sort of inverse religion. It’s purporting this weird anti-atonement movement – that’s it’s your duty to FULFILL an ego (specifically, a “role”) rather than the opposite – loss of self (identity) for the sake of religion. They’re almost claiming that our default as people is a blank, rather than blankness being some pious ideal to strive for.

It is amazing how people, who have finished work or finished having drinks after-work in the evening, fill up the station and line up to wait 10-20 minutes for the arriving train to come. It is hard to take a shot that truely represents the look of the masses at the edge of the tracks. Suicide Club, anybody?

Photoshop: B&W & Levels & Contrast

Yours,

Manuel Mousiol

Now, despite previous claims about how Dattebayo hate MKV and will not release in it, just this recent friday they decided to use it for their fresh sub of Naruto Shitpooden: Suicide Bonds.

Now I have one criticism there, that being the intro was at surprisingly low quality, I had difficulty following the lyrics.

Other than that, a top notch product, and I hope you continue to bring such marvelous gems to my eyes, I was quite captivated by it and watched it twice just to try and make sense of it all.

Please continue to do so in future, and don’t mind the squeamish, I don’t.

So for those who like quality japanese material with a dash of mind-fuck, go and download Suicide Bonds, just don’t blame me if it hurts your poor little stomachs or heads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Circle

this is a independent movie made by Sion Sono, a very popular independent director in japan. he’s the icon which americans look for when you think j-horror films. it’s in japanese, subtitles of course for the japanese-imparied (like myself XD)

for those who read the link first, will know of the introduction of the movie. but to say, it’s one of the most gory and controversial intros to a movie you will ever see. i was surprised myself. in a nutshell, for those who wish not to read a lot, 54 Japanese schoolgirls line up on a train platform may 26th. while the train is arriving, on the count of three, they all throw themselves into the train, and the conductor could not stop. thus, rolling over all the girls in whatever position they lied in as they hit the tracks. blood splattered all over the train station, under the train, on it, and on bystanders waiting for other trains.

now that i’ve mentally disturbed you, i suggest you take a breather for a moment, and wipe the vomit off the side of ur face before i continue.  3 cops get down to the bottom on the case, and the mystery unravels. for those who wish to download it, i downloaded it off dattebayo (anime translator) because they didn’t have an episode dat week so they made a troll. for the anime-illiterate, a troll is a fake episode.

this movie, is entirely and purely fiction. based off of no actual event. anything related or close to related to this movie is purely coincidental.  although, this movie is based off the fact that japan’s suicide rates are beyond anywhere else in the world. reasons unknown to me, but i assume overworked, too much school pressure, stressed beyond the term stress can explain, etc. besides the fact that this movie is disturbing, for a independent film and low-budget movie, it is extremely well made. the children (bit of a spoiler) in this movie are almost if not all of them are first time actors/actresses. the plot, even if disturbing intrigues you into the movie as the suicides increase and the mystery continues. based outta 5 stars i’d give an honest 4, if not a 4.5 for some of the horror that did scare me.

The Morning After

Japanese director Sion Sono needs to be given a strong infusion of capital and immediately isolated from any contact with Hollywood. Not only has the man successfully merged the art house flick with extreme horror, he has done more to pinpoint the plight of the modern middle class in two films than the world’s philosophers have managed to do in the last 50 years.

Together with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sono has spearheaded a subgenre this Handbook’s dubbed existential horror, starting with his 2002 cult hit Suicide Club. In this breed of chiller, serial killers and supernatural entities take a backseat to ennui, social disintegration and alienation — the depiction of which Sono all but mastered in Suicide Club.

Though dubbed a prequel to that film (and marketed as Suicide Club 0 in the French market), Noriko’s Dinner Table is more of a “lateral” work than a prequel or a sequel, despite a timeline that embraces both what came before and after events in that film. (Though a 2005 film, it didn’t get a proper North American DVD release until this year’s Tidepoint edition.)

While it will further irritate fans of that earlier work by never quite answering the core questions it poses, it also will intrigue just about anyone willing to give it a chance. For those who complain about being bombarded by “dumb” cinema, be careful what you wish for.

Feeling trapped by parents who fail to see her and her sister as anything but two member of a happy family, teenager Noriko strikes up a friendship with a Tokyo girl online, and flees to that metropolis to find a more meaningful life. Her friend turns out to be Kumiko, the young ringleader of a bizarre group that hires itself out by the hour as a proxy family for lonely people. Seeing it as an opportunity to reinvent herself, Noriko joins the madness.

However odd the premise sounds, it is that much more poignant when seen on screen. A neglectful father like Noriko’s own hires her and Kumiko to play out an emotional reunion. Later, the pair joins three other “players” — two “parents” and their young “son” — to enact a tearful deathbed farewell for an old man who is clearly fine, but only wanted that catharsis, with the players presumably standing in for family members who couldn’t be bothered to show him that kind of love.

And before you ask, the answer is yes — all of this joins the original plot threads of Suicide Club at some point in the film. To reveal anymore here would be criminal so soon after its May 2008 release in the States. Suffice it to say that Noriko’s Dinner Table is well worth the $22 Amazon is asking for the disc, or at the very least, a rental. (Surprisingly, Netflix already has it.)

The only gripe I have with this film is the packaging, which features a blood-spattered Kumiko. While it’s a move one would expect when catering to horror fans, this movie would be even more rewarding for viewers who have no experience with Sono’s back catalog and simply watch it with no preconceived notions of what is to come. Like Miike’s Audition, the dramatic structure is such that nothing particularly horrific happens until you’re a good way through the film. It’s a small gripe to be sure.

While nowhere near as frenetic as its precursor, Noriko nevertheless pulls back the curtain a bit more on the former’s philosophy and, like that movie, offers up puzzles nearly as confounding. In an age where film plots have gone from being spoon fed to audiences to flat out mainlined, this quality makes this particular cinematic experience all the more precious.