Onna Jigoku Mori Wa Nureta
Instead of the usual tightening of the screw as we move towards Christmas Eve, my new job brings quite the reverse: a slackening of tension (not that there ever was any tension). People are abandoning the office in droves (not that there ever were any droves). I am left to tinker with my staff profile on the intranet. It's all true (except for the bit about teaching fish to sing) and finishes up resoundingly with the words: 'I live in a bungalow'.
It seems as good a note as any to end on.
So here I am, winding down for Christmas instead of working all night, as the Daily Mail tells us is currently common practice in retail ('Land of the Midnight Shops'). Time to seek out presents, to drink, to watch Japanese pornography... Now I know how normal people live.
Japanese pornography? No, not really! Oh well, yes then: really. But at the BFI, and that makes it culture. The advance information combined the phrases 'rare chance to see' and 'jaw-droppingly extreme'. How could I resist?
Not that my jaw actually dropped, but then it never does when you're expecting it to. The director, Tatsumi Kumashiro, has apparently made quite a few films, 'many of which featured the word "wet" somewhere in the title'. Translated here as Woods Are Wet, this is no exception. It's a version of de Sade's Justine, but it's more than just an orgy of flagellation. Though not much more.
Hovering black shapes eclipsed the characters' private parts, which was not censorship, as a guy speaking beforehand explained, but a kind of parody of censorship on the part of the director. A couple behind me, whose main interest in the film seemed to centre around the question of whether it would prevent them from catching 'the 10:48', muttered impatiently throughout. It was like they were somehow obliged to be there, like Prince Charles at a Royal Variety Performance. Their own performance climaxed during a sequence when the crack of the whip was the only thing on the soundtrack, at which point one of them blew their nose loudly. It was unmistakably pointed (not the nose), virtually a review in fact.
Though not a just one.
I was reminded of when I saw British horror film The Children recently. I have to say I found this frightening, but maybe that's because I'm not so keen on children. In fact, there's a scene in the trailer for Four Christmases in which Reece Witherspoon is trapped in a mini-bouncy castle with some hyperactive toddlers which scared the shit out of me. Anyway the whole schtick with The Children, obviously, is that kids turn evil and have to be killed, which is a difficult thing to do, especially if they are your kids. This ambiguity did not trouble one member of the audience who, as one character was hesitating over whether to stab an apparently sweet little four-year old girl to death, suddenly shouted - and bear in mind that this was in an almost-deserted cinema - 'Do 'er!' A parent?, I wondered.
By the way, I am not going to recommend The Children to Mat.
It seems as good a note as any to end on.
So here I am, winding down for Christmas instead of working all night, as the Daily Mail tells us is currently common practice in retail ('Land of the Midnight Shops'). Time to seek out presents, to drink, to watch Japanese pornography... Now I know how normal people live.
Japanese pornography? No, not really! Oh well, yes then: really. But at the BFI, and that makes it culture. The advance information combined the phrases 'rare chance to see' and 'jaw-droppingly extreme'. How could I resist?
Not that my jaw actually dropped, but then it never does when you're expecting it to. The director, Tatsumi Kumashiro, has apparently made quite a few films, 'many of which featured the word "wet" somewhere in the title'. Translated here as Woods Are Wet, this is no exception. It's a version of de Sade's Justine, but it's more than just an orgy of flagellation. Though not much more.
Hovering black shapes eclipsed the characters' private parts, which was not censorship, as a guy speaking beforehand explained, but a kind of parody of censorship on the part of the director. A couple behind me, whose main interest in the film seemed to centre around the question of whether it would prevent them from catching 'the 10:48', muttered impatiently throughout. It was like they were somehow obliged to be there, like Prince Charles at a Royal Variety Performance. Their own performance climaxed during a sequence when the crack of the whip was the only thing on the soundtrack, at which point one of them blew their nose loudly. It was unmistakably pointed (not the nose), virtually a review in fact.
Though not a just one.
I was reminded of when I saw British horror film The Children recently. I have to say I found this frightening, but maybe that's because I'm not so keen on children. In fact, there's a scene in the trailer for Four Christmases in which Reece Witherspoon is trapped in a mini-bouncy castle with some hyperactive toddlers which scared the shit out of me. Anyway the whole schtick with The Children, obviously, is that kids turn evil and have to be killed, which is a difficult thing to do, especially if they are your kids. This ambiguity did not trouble one member of the audience who, as one character was hesitating over whether to stab an apparently sweet little four-year old girl to death, suddenly shouted - and bear in mind that this was in an almost-deserted cinema - 'Do 'er!' A parent?, I wondered.
By the way, I am not going to recommend The Children to Mat.