Batoru Rowairu, Man Vs. Wild, and the Rose Parade.

This year Zentsuji Middle School number 4's Class E was chosen from among 43.000 Ninth grade classes. This year's game, said to be more blistering than the last... Oh look, there! There she is! The winner's a girl! Surviving a fierce battle that raged 2 days, 7 hours and 43 minutes... the winner is a girl! Look, she's smiling! Smiling! The girl definitely just smiled!

So opens Kenji Fukasaku's 2000 Battle Royale, after the novel by Koushun Takami. Now, I'm definitely not an expert on the film - I've only seen it 2.5 times, and I haven't really pored over every detail. Basic premise goes like this (without giving too much away): Highschool class of (typically) ingrateful students is forced into a wickedly twisted game where they placed on an island where they must kill each other until only one remains. Each student is given an item or weapon toward that means. Lots of twists to this: there's a time limit, sections of the island become danger zones where, if anyone lingers too long, they'll die, etc. etc... Although this movie can turn stomachs and has some cringe factor to it, it's not all shock. There's a lot of meat here in terms of social commentary, teenage psychology and the teenage/highschool social behavior, groupthink and the human cattle condition, blahblah. I think the violence is used beautifully here to not only drive the action of the film but also to force the viewer to consider something along the lines of "ok, so what's here beyond the violence?"

I'm a strong proponent of the idea that violence can be used to tell a story with just as much emotional impact and symbolic significance (as well as serve all of the "technical movie things" and storytelling things like character development, cinematography, choreography, etc.) of a song in a musical or a one-liner in a comedy. Or a gratuitous topless shot in a cookie-cutter teenage comedy. Not necessarily condoning violence, but saying that it has a right to be used. RIP Robert Altman, and godspeed, but you were wrong about this, dude.

The pacing of the movie is decent - it's not your average ADD action movie, nor is it some yawn of an arthouse flick - and there are some parts that are downright hilarious. Keep an eye out for Chiaki Kuriyama (aka Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill.

Anyway. I'd love to go into this more, but I don't want to ruin anything. Do check it out. There's a sequel, which I haven't seen yet and have heard is inferior to the original. AND there's an American remake planned for 2008. ick. I won't be surprised if it's reduced to all shock. I pray it's not. BR would make for a pretty sweet multiplayer videogame, I think...

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A quick note about Man Vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel. This is on my current list of favorite TV shows. There's surprisingly little on TV that I'm excited about, but MVW kicks some mayjoor bootay. Show goes like so: Dude [Bear Grylls, former UK Special Forces] is airdropped into an inhospitable environment with little to no provisions, and he has to make it back to civilization. Dude tells you what you need to do to survive. Dude shows you what to eat, how to prepare it. How to keep warm, how to keep cool. How to build shelter. But Dude also tells you WHY. All the while, Dude relates stories about people in similar situations, and what they did right or wrong.

You get the idea. But yeah, amazing stuff. I don't think I could climb a canyon wall to harvest bird eggs (and eat them raw or fry them on a rock) if I had to. Granted, I fucking hate eggs.

Here's a clip of Bear in the Moab Desert of Utah, showing you how to keep cool in the 120 degree heat:



This week, Bear goes to the European Alps. Friday, 9PM, Discovery. Check yo' local listings, fool.

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Lastly, I'll leave you with a bit of aural goodness. Here's a live version of one of my favorite songs, Rose Parade by Elliott Smith. From a 1998 set at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C.
We'll talk about Elliott more later. Much more.


Gnight.
xomatt


Oh yeah, PS: any music I ever link to here will be stuff that's freely available online; i.e. it will always be stuff that you could download from, say, a record label or band's official site for free. no copyright warnings here. word up.