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How I feel every day knowing I've never had chopped cheese

Great day to be a chopped cheese in my fridge

I ain't gonna touch you

You ain't even THERE, big guy

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Great day to be a chopped cheese in my fridge

I ain't gonna touch you

You ain't even THERE, big guy

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Tokyo Drifter (1966, Japan)

Before watching Tokyo Drifter for the first time, I had rewatched the Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall picture The Big Sleep and again was confounded by the latter’s plot (but who doesn’t enjoy the dialogue to it)? And just like The Big Sleep, the plot is secondary, style is most important. Seijun Suzuki’s film is the antithesis of subtlety and his film - which continues to divide audiences - has become, at least, a cult classic. From the dapper suits, the colorful art direction that seems to have been airlifted from one of the more abstract scenes in a Gene Kelly musical, a brief Kurosawa-like jidaigeki scene, fragmented editing, and the Western-inspired shootouts that almost play as parody,Tokyo Drifter is one of the bizarrest films I’ve ever witnessed. And I’m not sure what to make of it.

In brief, Tetsuya Watari plays Tetsu, a reformed yakuza hitman who is distant and relatively from all others as he is being targeted by rival gangs. Because of that targeting and his old boss’s (Ryuji Kita) refusal to succumb to old ways, he becomes a drifter from Tokyo as new gangs are on the rise. He conducts himself with an outdated code of ethics - an offshoot of Sam Peckinpah’s examination of cowboys in a more industrialized West around this time in film history. To ask me to explain the plot from here on out would be useless because - on my first viewing - I was never exactly sure what was going on.

Again, plot is unimportant and one should concentrate on the film’s unforgettable aesthetic. The film begins with an overexposed black-and-white depicting a vicious beating on the Tokyo waterfront. Then boom - Technicolor seeps onto the screen (reportedly, signifying the aftermath of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo).

The film is filled to the brim with fisticuffs and gunplay and if the artistic style was played straight, Tokyo Drifter would just be another Japanese B-movie. The fights are physically improbable and there is a truly bad case of the Stormtrooper Effect for the bad guys. It’s absurd. Case in point: one firefight that results in a standoff between Tetsu and another yakuza. His enemy tells him to surrender the gun, but you know what Tetsu does instead? He flips the gun over his head, confusing his would-be killer, catches it a few feet before it hits the ground, and fires it the moment the gun is back in his hands. I just wonder if The Man with No Name could pull off a stunt like that!

 There is almost no blood and gore in the film - one major exception is when a mobster’s manga-reading girlfriend is killed by a stray bullet in a firefight early on (pictured). How that scene is shot is remarkable and the cinematography endows the moment with the poignancy needed to lead Tetsuya to drift around Japan.

After this moment, the colors become garish and distracting, as if Suzuki has pillaged the storage facilities of MGM to infuse his yakuza film with a sense of a Golden Age musical. Speaking of which, there’s a theme song to the Tokyo Drifter that Watari sings before and in the middle of the film. For those with an affinity for Andy Warhol-like pop art, Tokyo Drifter is highly recommended for its electric yellows, its brooding reds, and one special case of the blues. I would be insulting art lovers with my ignorance if I were to write any more on the art direction. Lastly, there are some lighting changes mid-scene during battles as Tetsuya enters the frame of the shot which makes everything obvious. But again, this gives Tokyo Drifter its unique visual style - one that would be emulated many years later in Kill Bill. 

Tokyo Drifter is, in a sense, a part autobiographical film on the part of director Seijun Suzuki. Suzuki was considered a maverick film director at Nikkatsu (the oldest and one of the major film studios in Japan) after leaving Shochiku (the home of Mizoguchi and Ozu). Nikkatsu at this time was struggling financially and Suzuki was put to work on an astounding twenty-five films in seven years in order to make up the difference. However, he was increasingly frustrated by Nikkatsu’s prescribed assembly line-like production towards their films and wanted to create something completely on his own artistic vision and volition. That desire was channeled into Tokyo Drifter - now hailed as a radical departure from the hordes of yakuza films being released by Japanese film studios at this time.

The film would prove to be too radical for Nikkatsu, Japanese film critics, and general audiences alike and Suzuki was let go by the studio - its executives too humiliated to even be associated with him. Decades on, Tokyo Drifter is now being acknowledged as being a stylistic triumph for Suzuki and for embodying Cool - even if we don’t fully understand the plot behind this Cool. It is an acid trip worthy of the 1960s - political incorrectness, filmic corniness, and jarring art direction and colors are all present.

I, for one, don’t believe it to be the minor masterpiece many say it is. Perhaps on a second viewing I will be more appreciative of its homages and camp value. Nevertheless, Tokyo Drifter is a triumph just for revelling in its difference, if you get my drift.

My rating: 6.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down.

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I FINALLY FINISHED IT

…is Dark Souls even relevant anymore?

This is my personal farewell to a game series that has managed to captivate and move me like no other. Perhaps you will find a few of your own experiences reflected within it, too. If you’ve found this comic, I’m glad we could undertake a small part of this journey together. Enjoy!

(I would have liked to include so many more things but ajksdkflkanc I’m just glad it is done)

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THE BIG LEBOWSKI

TWENTY YEARS LATER

Sophistication does not exist.

We're all struggling

to portray our archetypes

with the limited information we have

and to fit our feelings inside them.

My father showed me this film in elementary school,

while my mother ate salted marinara.

I was ignorant of sex

and believed the Little Lebowski

to be a sequel left unmade.

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why do you still do yugioh things. The world is over and people like us are probably weeks from being in concentration camps

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I can't draw but doodled a lot when I started my job. Really looking forward to when things settle down again and I have more time to mess around on scraps.

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Here (1989) by Richard mcguire (raw magazine)

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The Homescapes ads have gone full Cronenberg

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I'm reblogging this because I discovered there's a non-zero chance David Lowery, director of The Green Knight, checked out my popcorn when I saw this

I never perceived him

Does that make him more real?

Or me just classist?

I.

You're seven. It's Christmas. Polar Express is about to rock the whole fucking town of Dallas Texas. You don't live there. It's just where you see it.

Tom Hanks plays the train pope. He looks like this:

You recently came out as a superpowered human to your second grade class. You told them all you have an army of the anime characters you see on the TeeVee and they help you fight Narakucon, an evil cat man OC you won't admit isn't real. The other children think you're a creek full of shithole. They slap you with ham at lunch. There's another post about that.

Someday you'll show them all when the school gets jumped by the baddies, you think. You'll show them your light powers and how you can speak cat but in a cool way that's kosher with modern morals.

II.

There's a Rail Rider on top of the Railcar. He looks like this:

A brave boy in the Railcar follows him like John the Baptist across the Railcar in the snow and really just everyone is shitting their pants. This train isn't safe and everyone is fucked. If you don't get off the roof you will never make it back to polite society but if you stay in the car there's a little fucker down there who keeps spoiling the ride.

He looks like this

You look like this

The brave kid makes it off the Roof Ride with Rail Ronny. Train pope says this about Rail Ronny who might be Santa's holy ghost or something it really loses the plot on the theme:

This quote hits you so hard because it feels like it confirms your whole 7-year-old with super powers thing. You feel like train pope was really out there just repping your shit up and the anime characters finally will show up to school after Christmas break.

III.

You're nine. You've got a teacher who is much more receptive to your weird needs and you've got friends who also play Kingdom Hearts so that's nice. You've gone light on the superhero thing. It's still there but it's more of a thing that gives you a universe to make fic in. Your "fic" is dissociating in the shower every night for an hour while you think about the cool guns you'd fight Organization XIII with. Your bathroom doesn't have a fan and you run it hot so there's a mold problem that develops.

They play Polar Express in the practice gym at 6pm on a Friday. You're next to the projector. You lean against the projector because you're tired and comfy and the projector slides two inches to the right. Your parents bring it up on the ride home. One of the bridesmaids brings it up at your wedding.

Your wedding photos look like this:

You're extremely lucky, especially considering the superpowers thing.

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What if he was Jesus in the next Good Omens thing

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Every time the bear adds a new guest star it's like that episode of Rick and Morty where they keep adding new characters

Like oh hey Mackelmore is back in from his gig at Ball State, he's the eighteenth Fack who is really good at foundation repair, he's gonna come in and smoke three rocks while Carm cries in dry storage and the fire alarm goes off

He's been there the whole time

He's YOUR family

You will address him as such

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Do you think Eric Adams has an account here?

I want to send him this:

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Was there ever a point in the Osmosis Jones script where it said Interior: Dad?

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Mother snuck in to my room, put her hand on my little baby shoulder.

I was crying. I didn't stop her.

"What's wrong, little boy?" she asked.

"Our country used to make things, mother..."

She cried too.

She thought I meant airplanes.

I wept for Dolly Parton's staggering, steamboat jugs.

There were supposed to be millions.

We only got two.

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