City of Lost Souls 漂流街
Takashi Miike 2000
Starts off with a shoot out somewhere in Brazil during a dust storm, then switches to a bus of immigrants in the Japanese (not American) desert. A Chinese girl on the bus named Kei (played by the Macanese Michelle Reis), is saved from deportation by her Japanese Brazilian boyfriend, Mario, who blazes in, jumping out of a hijacked helicopter. Mario is the very same guy who was kicking arse in the shoot up in Brazil. Kei and Mario have their adventures reported to us by a Tokyo based Brazilian TV channel, as they become mixed up in a coke deal with various Japanese Chinese and Brazilian gangsters.
Eventually the couple make it to Okinawa, from where they plan to escape to somewhere-or-other by boat. Unfortunately Mario's ex-girlfriend, Brazilian hooker Lucia (played by Mexican actress Patricia Manterola, she's fucking smoking), kills Mario with a shotgun. Lucia is pissed as Mario didn't help when her blind adopted daughter was kidnapped by yakuza because of something to do with the coke deal? Never mind the plot, here's the trailer.
Snack Bar Budapest
Tinto Brass 1988
With consistent one and two star ratings it's fair to say this a very bad yet entertaining film. I usually dislike kitschy B-grade movies, particularly of the horror variety (which this is not), but this second-rate worn-out titillation fest is right up my alley. The director of Caligula teams up with Italian star Giancarlo Giannini to bring you a tale of a washed up lawyer who collects debts for a adolescent gangster. Naked women of varying degrees of beauty and youth, pad out the scenery of a Italian seaside town in winter. Budapest is only the name of the hotel, run by a man who married a Hungarian, where most of the film's violence takes place. An acquired taste, I will endeavor to upload some of it to youtube.
Once Upon A Time In The West
Sergio Leone 1969
Echos of other famous westerns like Shane and High Noon, wide desolate landscapes and cliched yet unique main characters, all of whom move to their own theme music in Operatic fashion. And what theme music! the score was composed by Enrico Moronconi.
Charles Bronson plays Harmonica, the ultimate strong silent hero; Henry Fonda is Frank the ultimate villain. Leone was given a blank cheque to make this one after the success of the Spaghetti Western Trilogy - "The Good The Bad and the Ugly", A "Fistful of Dollars", and "A Few Dollars" more with Clint Eastwood. Once Upon A Time In The West flopped at the box office - being long and a little slow for some - but is now seen by many as the best western ever made.
Favourite Line:
People like that have something inside, something to do with death.
One Night In Mongkok 旺角黑夜
Dereck Yee 2004
The movie starts with a cartoonish car chase, which has you thinking this is going to be crap. However, after the car chase and subsequent death resulting in a gang-land feud, the movie takes a turn for the better. We follow the fortunes of mainland Chinese hit man Laifu (Daniel Wu) and side-kick mainland prostitute Dandan (Cecelia Cheung) around Hong Kong's teaming Mongkok.
After many ins and outs, Laifu is gunned down leaving Dandan with the cash he had been given for the hit. After getting through customs from HK to the mainland with an expired visa, Dandan decides she will change her life for the better. This final scene is bit like the movie as a whole, one of the best Hong Kong movies I've seen, it veers between fake glamor and gritty reality: Dandan drags a calico checkered bag which is the badge of a poor mainland traveler, but her clothes - the same ones she had on before getting the money are far too fashionable. Although the film points out Mongkok is the most crowded place in the world - the border from HK to the mainland seems oddly quiet - usually it's a chaotic hell.
Favourite Line:
我决定重新做人，再也不过以前的日子
I've decided to start afresh, and not go back to my old ways
Clockers
Spike Lee 1995
Of the many movies about the problems of young Afro-American males living in the projects, this is quite possibly the best. Opens with cops looking over just another murder victim - joking as they go, completely insensitive to something they see every other day: young black men shooting other young black men over drugs. I can have a bit much of Harvey Keital, but he is excellent here as Detective Rocco Kline.
Favourite Line:
I'm from the lost black tribe of Israel The Yos.
Patton
Franklin J. Schaffner 1970
George C. Scott as General Patton. Greatest biographical Hollywood movie I've seen, and one of the best WW2 movies as well.
Favourite Lines:
It's over there. Turn right, damn it.
It was here.
The battlefield was here.
The Carthaginians
defending the city. . .
. . .were attacked by three
Roman legions.
They were brave, but they
couldn't hold. They were massacred.
Arab women. . .
. . .stripped them of their tunics
and their swords and lances.
The soldiers lay naked in the sun. . .
. . . years ago.
I was here.
You don't believe me.
You know what the poet said:
'Through the travail of ages
It's the pomp and toils of war
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon the star
As if through a glass and darkly
The age-old strife I see
Where I fought in many guises
Many names
But always me.'
You know who the poet was?
Me.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Getting The Drunken Englishman Out of My System
"When I should have been producing obscure volumes of verse entitled the Triumph of Humpty Dumpty or the Nose with the Luminous Dong! Or at best, like Clare, “weaving fearful vision” … A frustrated poet in every man. Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with one’s great work on “Secret Knowledge,” then one can always say when it never comes out that the title explains the deficiency."
Under The Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
Proceed with extreme caution: silly literary references, and attempts to recall drunken philosophical musings - traces of self-pity and immoral conduct also present.
After several people recommended it, including the Pearl Man, earlier this year I finally read Malcolm Lowry's "Under The Volcano". I had just finished "The Master and Margarita", and I must say Lowry's novel paled in comparison. I could see what the hype was about though: "Under The Volcano" certainly is key part in the canon of literature concerning the English drunk abroad. Although I have to go back to a great grandfather for an England born ancestor - I see myself as somehow living a very minor part of this eternal pantomime.
I've been considering getting into High School teaching of late. In actual fact I was a High School teacher in Chile. Teaching Pinochet supporting rich kids. I never really liked going to High School myself, except History class and rugby at lunch time - so I did wonder what the hell I was doing back there? especially as the bilingual kids seemed to see me as an immoral, drunken joke. "Are you with hangover sir?" They loved their school, which catered to ages 5 to 18. Classes in the primary school were conducted entirely in English. In the secondary school the language of instruction depended on whether your teacher was a gringo or a local (and yes they do use the term gringo in Chile) Going to such a school meant you were a class apart, a bitter enemy of those Allende loving layabouts with inferior genes across town. They were bright talented students though, as I think I may have written before!!
The pay was good. Should I have left I wonder? - holidays to Colombia, Argentina and Brazil - a two month summer vacation. I tell myself I did it for politics sake - but I'm sure this is just bullshit. My family wanted to see me, I was drinking too much and I got fat in Chile
I've been thinking of writing a post featuring myself as one of my beloved 'bums' drinking in Santiago's cafes con piernas (you don't have to have coffee), much like Lowry's Geoffrey Fermin did in the cantinas of Quauhnahuac. I could even have myself getting shot and falling into the barranca. But what comes back to me from my time in Chile, is me sitting in front of a computer drinking wine (ahh Chilean wine!) from the bottle. I lived off a diet of bread, meat and mustard. I could get girls' numbers at will - but rarely called them - man do you know how hard it is by comparison to pick up girls in NZ!! Despite the excitement of teaching "Brave New World", "Death of a Salesman" and "The Great Gatsby", I lived an immoral life where my only pleasure was to escape pain through drink, drugs and sex. Part of my problem was an English department full of middle-aged Chilean woman who disproved of me. I remember at the Christmas party one of them giving me a small bottle of vodka with an ironic smile. Plato would have tut-tutted me - I had the chance: money, nice available women, the chance to get good at Spanish, travel etc etc...but I gave in to pointless desire...never reaching the heights of true pleasure...Well, I think it's better to leave off writing this post, maybe a comedy version will come to me at a later date.
"¿Le gusta este jardín, que es suyo? ¡Evite que sus hijos lo destruyan!"
Stand by, I think another cycle of naval gazing has come to an end...
Under The Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
Proceed with extreme caution: silly literary references, and attempts to recall drunken philosophical musings - traces of self-pity and immoral conduct also present.
After several people recommended it, including the Pearl Man, earlier this year I finally read Malcolm Lowry's "Under The Volcano". I had just finished "The Master and Margarita", and I must say Lowry's novel paled in comparison. I could see what the hype was about though: "Under The Volcano" certainly is key part in the canon of literature concerning the English drunk abroad. Although I have to go back to a great grandfather for an England born ancestor - I see myself as somehow living a very minor part of this eternal pantomime.
I've been considering getting into High School teaching of late. In actual fact I was a High School teacher in Chile. Teaching Pinochet supporting rich kids. I never really liked going to High School myself, except History class and rugby at lunch time - so I did wonder what the hell I was doing back there? especially as the bilingual kids seemed to see me as an immoral, drunken joke. "Are you with hangover sir?" They loved their school, which catered to ages 5 to 18. Classes in the primary school were conducted entirely in English. In the secondary school the language of instruction depended on whether your teacher was a gringo or a local (and yes they do use the term gringo in Chile) Going to such a school meant you were a class apart, a bitter enemy of those Allende loving layabouts with inferior genes across town. They were bright talented students though, as I think I may have written before!!
The pay was good. Should I have left I wonder? - holidays to Colombia, Argentina and Brazil - a two month summer vacation. I tell myself I did it for politics sake - but I'm sure this is just bullshit. My family wanted to see me, I was drinking too much and I got fat in Chile
I've been thinking of writing a post featuring myself as one of my beloved 'bums' drinking in Santiago's cafes con piernas (you don't have to have coffee), much like Lowry's Geoffrey Fermin did in the cantinas of Quauhnahuac. I could even have myself getting shot and falling into the barranca. But what comes back to me from my time in Chile, is me sitting in front of a computer drinking wine (ahh Chilean wine!) from the bottle. I lived off a diet of bread, meat and mustard. I could get girls' numbers at will - but rarely called them - man do you know how hard it is by comparison to pick up girls in NZ!! Despite the excitement of teaching "Brave New World", "Death of a Salesman" and "The Great Gatsby", I lived an immoral life where my only pleasure was to escape pain through drink, drugs and sex. Part of my problem was an English department full of middle-aged Chilean woman who disproved of me. I remember at the Christmas party one of them giving me a small bottle of vodka with an ironic smile. Plato would have tut-tutted me - I had the chance: money, nice available women, the chance to get good at Spanish, travel etc etc...but I gave in to pointless desire...never reaching the heights of true pleasure...Well, I think it's better to leave off writing this post, maybe a comedy version will come to me at a later date.
"¿Le gusta este jardín, que es suyo? ¡Evite que sus hijos lo destruyan!"
Stand by, I think another cycle of naval gazing has come to an end...
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Bums I Have Known: The Pearl Man
Last year work required me to go repeatedly to two rather deliverancesque cities: Yixing in Jiansu province, a three hour bus ride from Shanghai, and Chuzhou in Anhui, a six hour train trip from the great metropolis.
Man, those two towns! places where it felt like McDonald's or KFC was the best place to be - although this is not in fact true, at least for Chuzhou, which has a nice Buddhist mountain and some good restaurants (and until last year at least, didn't actually have a KFC). The buildings in those cities I found horrible: perhaps designed by somebody who had only ever seen large buildings in a book, Stalinist buildings at that. You also saw a lot of three-wheeled cars and tractors, machines which made Ladas look luxurious.
The vista from my place of work in Chuzhou
The Pearl Man, for curiosity and the lack of having anything better to do, accompanied me to both of these places. After a long day's work in Chuzhou, I arrived back to the hotel room to find the Pearl Man drinking beer. Sharing the twin hotel room with him was a little rough, but he wasn't going to pay for his own. Pearl Man had been out shopping: he had bought a pitch fork and a farmer's sickle. "Wielded by the peasants during the Cultural Revolution." He had also found some place with posters for children featuring inexpertly drawn Disney characters. He hoped the posters would sell in America for their novelty value; he showed me one with a demonic looking Donald Duck holding a lantern inscribed with Chinese characters.
In Yixing he had pursued flower pots. Yixing is known for its pottery, especially teapots. It also is the greatest distribution spot for stone in Eastern China; if you want to buy stone lions for the entrance to your Chinese restaurant Yixing is the place to go.
I had met the Pearl man some five years earlier.
I was wasting another day of my youth standing behind the bar, taking my liquid wages. The barmaid working with me was slumped asleep in a chair. She was a nice intelligent Shanghainese girl, with the usual mercenary streak. Last time I saw her, she was heading to Austria to meet her boyfriend's family. On this last meeting, a dinner which she paid for, she told me not to hang out in the bar so much and looked at my paunch with disdain - she had once quite liked me - but our insistence on each speaking the others language stopped it ever developing into anything...I need not elaborate here for my fellow Anglophones.
That night, a Monday, was not a waste however, as in fact a customer did wander in, that super-bum, whom I came to know as the Pearl Man. Leaning tiredly on the bar, he immediately claimed some kind of friendship with Uncle Stan and asked for a free beer - as it was in my power, I obliged. Pearl Man was a little surly, and in one of his early utterances declared his love for President Bush (a little more forgivable back in late 2002). From a staunch Republican family, and hugely anti-Clinton, it seemed his whole soul was revolted by hypocritical left wing democrats; the most cruel immoral people in the world. Since that night I've always found Pearl Man a bit of pain to talk politics with, but his pro-Bushness was consistent for a man who always takes the most controversial view.
His politics did not fit in with his lifestyle however. He had never held a real job: kicked out of Franco's Spain for smoking pot in the late sixties he then studied anthropology at an American University in Mexico City. A man with varied interests, he once left the US for Mexico via Puerto Rico with a kitten, he then returned with a young Ocelot (using the certificate he had for the kitten, no I don't know the original kitten's fate) - the grown Ocelot later escaped from his garage. He was also a frequent visitor to the Dominican Republic, where his father, a pharmacist, had once thought of setting up a business. Eventually he moved away from his family in Connecticut and became an art trader in Santa Babara.
That night he also went into his various Beat Generation experiences - he was evidently drunk, because sober he would have detested himself for such name dropping. Apparently he was friends with a certain Harry Smith, who was some kind of mescalinite gay anthropologist of the Beat Generation. He also told a few fetid stories about meeting Burroughs and Corso. On the topic of woman, he was a jilted cynic "I have nothing to say to women - so I might as well just go down to the local hairdresser/brothel." He was still hung up about some coke head Brazilian chick in Santa Barbara it later came out.
What was fascinating about this fifty year old was what he did for a living. He had a sister in New York, he seemed to detest, who held jewelry parties - kinda like Tupperware parties. At these parties she sold pearl necklaces to the well-to-do. These necklaces were also advertised in (amazingly) Teen Vogue, and a few websites. The necklaces were the love child of the Pearl Man. He frequently travelled to some small city in China to buy cheap pearls, then cleaned and dyed them himself. He got them stringed by a guy in one of those buildings which is an endless maze of people and knickknacks. He used this particular person as he was the only Pearl Stringer in the building - he didn't want his designs to be stolen - in fact, he was paranoid about this. He went back to the US once or twice a year to deliver his Pearl Jewelry and this kept him in beer and girls in China.
His brother was a famous cancer doctor in the US. Through this connection Pearl Man knew an Australian cancer doctor in China; a good connection for Pearl Man's fragile health. He was quite often convincing himself he had cancer. He was also chummy with an Italian sculpture and a Japanese real estate agent, but mainly shunned human company, and so I was happy to be his friend. I even saw him in America once, where he felt it his duty to take me to a gun shop and a strip bar.
He was in the habit of ringing me up when drunk to talk about obscure (to me at least) furniture designers and New York notables, but this has ceased, I think he got pissed off the last time I left Shanghai, apparently I didn't tell him I was leaving. He was on the knife's edge as far as the pearl business was concerned at the time, and maybe needed to borrow some cash...?
The last time I saw him we roamed Shanghai, drinking beer, taking taxis and buses, I think we were trying to sell something to an antique shop, me acting as a not very good interpreter. We passed an old British built fire station, "you know that fire station tower used to be the tallest building in Shanghai in the 1920s" he commented. That's Pearl Man, wandering round from antique shop to brothel, lonely and full of knowledge...
Hamilton House, built around 1930, if memory serves. New York style modernism, with concave frontage - this style being unique to Shanghai according to Pearl Man. This building is on the intersection of Fuzhou and Jiangxi Roads. Diagonally opposite and also across from Hamilton House are similar buildings, but the forth corner lets the side down. However, it's still the most architecturally stunning corner in all of Shanghai for mine, and a favourite haunt of the Pearl Man. He was always off looking to buy ancient laboratory equipment on Fuzhou Road. Don't walk too far away from The Bund up Fuzhou Road though, it becomes unspeakably crowded on the stretch with all the bookshops..
Man, those two towns! places where it felt like McDonald's or KFC was the best place to be - although this is not in fact true, at least for Chuzhou, which has a nice Buddhist mountain and some good restaurants (and until last year at least, didn't actually have a KFC). The buildings in those cities I found horrible: perhaps designed by somebody who had only ever seen large buildings in a book, Stalinist buildings at that. You also saw a lot of three-wheeled cars and tractors, machines which made Ladas look luxurious.
The vista from my place of work in Chuzhou
The Pearl Man, for curiosity and the lack of having anything better to do, accompanied me to both of these places. After a long day's work in Chuzhou, I arrived back to the hotel room to find the Pearl Man drinking beer. Sharing the twin hotel room with him was a little rough, but he wasn't going to pay for his own. Pearl Man had been out shopping: he had bought a pitch fork and a farmer's sickle. "Wielded by the peasants during the Cultural Revolution." He had also found some place with posters for children featuring inexpertly drawn Disney characters. He hoped the posters would sell in America for their novelty value; he showed me one with a demonic looking Donald Duck holding a lantern inscribed with Chinese characters.
In Yixing he had pursued flower pots. Yixing is known for its pottery, especially teapots. It also is the greatest distribution spot for stone in Eastern China; if you want to buy stone lions for the entrance to your Chinese restaurant Yixing is the place to go.
I had met the Pearl man some five years earlier.
I was wasting another day of my youth standing behind the bar, taking my liquid wages. The barmaid working with me was slumped asleep in a chair. She was a nice intelligent Shanghainese girl, with the usual mercenary streak. Last time I saw her, she was heading to Austria to meet her boyfriend's family. On this last meeting, a dinner which she paid for, she told me not to hang out in the bar so much and looked at my paunch with disdain - she had once quite liked me - but our insistence on each speaking the others language stopped it ever developing into anything...I need not elaborate here for my fellow Anglophones.
That night, a Monday, was not a waste however, as in fact a customer did wander in, that super-bum, whom I came to know as the Pearl Man. Leaning tiredly on the bar, he immediately claimed some kind of friendship with Uncle Stan and asked for a free beer - as it was in my power, I obliged. Pearl Man was a little surly, and in one of his early utterances declared his love for President Bush (a little more forgivable back in late 2002). From a staunch Republican family, and hugely anti-Clinton, it seemed his whole soul was revolted by hypocritical left wing democrats; the most cruel immoral people in the world. Since that night I've always found Pearl Man a bit of pain to talk politics with, but his pro-Bushness was consistent for a man who always takes the most controversial view.
His politics did not fit in with his lifestyle however. He had never held a real job: kicked out of Franco's Spain for smoking pot in the late sixties he then studied anthropology at an American University in Mexico City. A man with varied interests, he once left the US for Mexico via Puerto Rico with a kitten, he then returned with a young Ocelot (using the certificate he had for the kitten, no I don't know the original kitten's fate) - the grown Ocelot later escaped from his garage. He was also a frequent visitor to the Dominican Republic, where his father, a pharmacist, had once thought of setting up a business. Eventually he moved away from his family in Connecticut and became an art trader in Santa Babara.
That night he also went into his various Beat Generation experiences - he was evidently drunk, because sober he would have detested himself for such name dropping. Apparently he was friends with a certain Harry Smith, who was some kind of mescalinite gay anthropologist of the Beat Generation. He also told a few fetid stories about meeting Burroughs and Corso. On the topic of woman, he was a jilted cynic "I have nothing to say to women - so I might as well just go down to the local hairdresser/brothel." He was still hung up about some coke head Brazilian chick in Santa Barbara it later came out.
What was fascinating about this fifty year old was what he did for a living. He had a sister in New York, he seemed to detest, who held jewelry parties - kinda like Tupperware parties. At these parties she sold pearl necklaces to the well-to-do. These necklaces were also advertised in (amazingly) Teen Vogue, and a few websites. The necklaces were the love child of the Pearl Man. He frequently travelled to some small city in China to buy cheap pearls, then cleaned and dyed them himself. He got them stringed by a guy in one of those buildings which is an endless maze of people and knickknacks. He used this particular person as he was the only Pearl Stringer in the building - he didn't want his designs to be stolen - in fact, he was paranoid about this. He went back to the US once or twice a year to deliver his Pearl Jewelry and this kept him in beer and girls in China.
His brother was a famous cancer doctor in the US. Through this connection Pearl Man knew an Australian cancer doctor in China; a good connection for Pearl Man's fragile health. He was quite often convincing himself he had cancer. He was also chummy with an Italian sculpture and a Japanese real estate agent, but mainly shunned human company, and so I was happy to be his friend. I even saw him in America once, where he felt it his duty to take me to a gun shop and a strip bar.
He was in the habit of ringing me up when drunk to talk about obscure (to me at least) furniture designers and New York notables, but this has ceased, I think he got pissed off the last time I left Shanghai, apparently I didn't tell him I was leaving. He was on the knife's edge as far as the pearl business was concerned at the time, and maybe needed to borrow some cash...?
The last time I saw him we roamed Shanghai, drinking beer, taking taxis and buses, I think we were trying to sell something to an antique shop, me acting as a not very good interpreter. We passed an old British built fire station, "you know that fire station tower used to be the tallest building in Shanghai in the 1920s" he commented. That's Pearl Man, wandering round from antique shop to brothel, lonely and full of knowledge...
Hamilton House, built around 1930, if memory serves. New York style modernism, with concave frontage - this style being unique to Shanghai according to Pearl Man. This building is on the intersection of Fuzhou and Jiangxi Roads. Diagonally opposite and also across from Hamilton House are similar buildings, but the forth corner lets the side down. However, it's still the most architecturally stunning corner in all of Shanghai for mine, and a favourite haunt of the Pearl Man. He was always off looking to buy ancient laboratory equipment on Fuzhou Road. Don't walk too far away from The Bund up Fuzhou Road though, it becomes unspeakably crowded on the stretch with all the bookshops..
Monday, August 11, 2008
Fixed but not Neutered
Brewman your computer's been down.
I read on the weekend by the national library, across from the ugliest cathedral in the world. It's pink concrete - the first stone cast by Lizzy back in 195?. But if you want urban architecture, the national library and the cathedral opposite - up from the parliament buildings, only place to go round here.
Lizzy you never had any taste.
I don't remember which Brit laid the first stone at Station C. I walked in high ceilings, marveling such great interior space.
Station C is splendid, but in this part of town, the people are like fat death; it's a mansion of tramps - dolts! no idea where we are, all part of that blind man's dream.
Brewman will be back momentarily, as the Americans say...
By the way Special Brew is now profiled on uncyclopedia
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