I'm becoming addicted to netflix, but aside from Scrubs and 30 Rock early seasons, I've also gotten interested in Kurosawa lately. I've never seen anything of his before, so I thought it might be fun to set down all of my impressions on my viewings of a few of his films. Supposedly, he was very influential on Martin Scorcese (who is good), Steven Spielberg (who is overrated), and George Lucas (who sucks but used to be good).

Yojimbo begins with a dramatic shot in which the camera focuses on a far off range of mountains. A figure steps into the frame with his back to the camera, sword and kimono pointing out the obvious- he is a samurai. A heavy string and percussion set adds to the mood, yet it is suddenly undermined. He shrugs unevenly and then scratches his head and then wanders across the frame.

These oppositions are common over the course of the film. The officer is a sycophantic coward. The coffin maker is giddy. The innkeeper is unwelcoming. The biggest villain looks like a Japanese Ken doll and can't stop smiling. And the unkempt vagabond is the graceful hero.

A town is in the throes of gang warfare as the aging leader of a gambling house seeks to consolidate his territory before his son takes the reins. His lieutenant makes a power grab in the meantime and the violence escalates quickly. The samurai is a masterless wanderer who happens upon the town and Kurosawa allows the exposition to take place as the innkeeper describes the events to the newcomer. It's quickly apparent that no one can touch the samurai in a fight. He kills three men as a show of his talents and wins a job with one of the factions.


He urges them to strike the other faction quickly and abandons them at the last moment to watch as the two gangs confront one another. Instead of a choreographed bloodbath, the mercenaries engage in a ridiculous series of charges and retreats. Soldiers are quaking and falling over one another but inching closer until, in a well-placed shot that has the samurai watching from above, the swords of each side inch in from the sides of the frame and then soldiers slowly enter, closing the distance until, at the last moment, a messenger arrives to break the fight up.

Two other memorable scenes occur later in the film, after the samurai has been beaten and captured. He is badly hurt but he manages to crawl to the door of his cell to fight to try to open it to no avail. He slumps over and a sliver of light falls over his right eye. He stares ahead and the sliver is his realization of his escape plan.

After his escape and despite his incredible fighting prowess, he must crawl painstakingly out of the hostile compound and across the street to the innkeeper's hut. There are a few tense shots as he hides from guards. Then, Kurosawa sets a static shot of the street and the samurai slowly crawls across the frame, digging his hands into the dirt road for traction and building an impressive amount of tension.

Another really excellent scene comes much later with the samurai hidden in a barrel and being carried across the street while the gangs fight deep in the background. His carriers pause and a deeply-focused shot of the far off gangsters allows him to overhear and see their searching.

Finally, the concluding battle of the film sets the samurai against several gangsters including the Ken-doll who wields a pistol. Kurosawa takes this opportunity for an iconic shot of the samurai in a showdown with the gangsters on a windswept dirt road.


While I think the major point of interest in this film is the visual elements, the acting also ranges from quite good to phenomenal. Films of this era tend to be filled with actors who cop bad mid-atlantic accents, lack timing, have a distinctly wooden physicality, and just generally over-emote. Toshiro Mifune especially impressed me with his body- not by showing off a six-pack or a backflip, but in his subtle portrayal of dominance. He walks slowly, keeps his arms crossed inside his kimono, and seems to be reacting to different events or moving at a slower pace than the other characters of the film. Bad news arrives and everyone around him jumps to their feet while he remains seated. "Little boys shouldn't play with swords," he growls at a surviving gangster after cutting his way through several of his employers, and he means it. The gangsters are constantly popping off, wandering around with swords drawn or catcalling passers-by. The samurai never draws except to quick and deadly effect. The influence on later characters, from Jedis to gunslingers to dozens of anti-heroes and anime characters is obvious. Mifune is participating in the creation of an archetype.

Other actors also commendably avoid overacting, although their portrayals are less modern. Daisuke Kato plays a pudgy, cackling, sadistic and strong gangster, and his character is also pretty recognizable, although he is mostly referenced in Japanese animation rather than American filmmaking.

With an invincible main character and a pulpy plot about gangsters and a ghost town, Kurosawa is still able to avoid any loss of tension by introducing a strong, handsome, and obviously criminally insane villain at the start of the film's last act. The opposition is obvious, and a later Kurosawa film, Sanjuro, also makes use of an ugly hero and a handsome villain, so this could be something to explore later if I decide to write about overarching themes.

In all, I really enjoyed this movie, and although I was a bit self-conscious about the plot (samurais vs gangsters!11), it's simply too tightly constructed to be nitpicked. The visuals and fighting scenes (and acting) are all surprisingly modern and the resulting package is excellent. I'm afraid Kurosawa may overdo his samurai shtick (apparently he has something like eight or more films about similar subjects), but for now I am simply impressed.

Budgets, defecits, and Fender Jaguars

At Swing City Music in Edwardsville, they're selling a mexican-made strat and a jag (both used) for something like $350 each. The reason people say they would kill for money, is because killing seems like it would be pretty easy, pragmatically speaking, to do. Getting away with it, sleeping at night, living with yourself, those are all the punishments after the fact. The deferred costs.

People who know me know that I pay attention to politics. People who know me on facebook know that commenting on political articles is as irresistible as crack to a fiend or free food to me.

So, to repost:
From the Christian Science Monitor:
"Bending to party conservatives – notably tea partiers – House GOP leaders propose steep cuts in many popular programs for the rest of the fiscal year. Will it lead to a government shut-down?"
And, from Brian Woodrum:
"While I know that budget cuts are needed, way to be idiots Republicans and propose cuts to those things that will just put us further behind all the other developed countries. America is quickly racing to the bottom."
And, from myself:

‎100 billion dollars is nothing. The Federal government spent 3500 billion dollars and took in 2100 billion in 2010, a 1400 billion dollar deficit, meaning republicans' "deep cuts" fail to even close 10% of the gap and are mostly targeted at things republicans don't like but that are shown to be good investments (family planning, education, etc). Also, loans and aid to other countries is less than one percent of the government's spending. The budget cuts need to look something like: 1-300 billion in military spending cuts. 2-500 billion in cuts to Medicare and social security and maybe 50 billion in cuts in discretionary spending. Restarting of the estate tax, expiration of bush tax cuts, reinstatement of Clinton-era income and capital gains taxes and an additional $1m+ tax bracket. That series of cuts and tax increases would be enough to balance the budget eventually. No one is proposing anything like that and no one will.

Just to source a bit more rigorously, all of this information can be easily accessed (including useful lists of just which programs you'd really like to see chopped) at wikipedia. Moreover, the CBO tables 01-09 (in PDF form) are available. In all, I'm sympathetic to the position that much of the deficit can be blamed on the 01-09 congress's inability to say no to George Bush's hyperinflative agenda. Meanwhile, the financial crisis of 2007 to the present has really made it basically impossible to realistically make the deficit a priority because deficit reduction cannot really be accomplished through spending cuts and spending cuts combined with tax increases is deflationary and counteractive to economic growth. It's my opinion that the actions of the federal reserve (all that money printing that people got so angry about) and the stimulative acts of the congress were enough to keep a serious depression at bay, but I don't believe the economy is strong enough at this point to withstand serious deflationary pressure from the government (to the tune of the $1,000,000,000,000 that would be necessary to make substantial, immediate progress against the deficit), and while you can make really scary drawings like, this one if you just extrapolate a yearly trend out to infinity, you can't extrapolate a yearly trend out to infinity, and once the unemployment rate and continuing banking problems have been dealt with, government should be able to be deflated without catastrophic effects to the economy.

We can't kill anyone to just make this go away. The short term solution is that there is no short term solution.

goodbye

I've done a bit of this before, African American Studies. I feel like these classes always end on a sort of humanistic high. At the end we all feel like things are going to be different- this time we're going to fix it all. Let's just stay like this. High on the ending feeling, the beginning feeling. Let's all love each other. Let's all love everything.

hm

The clouds were this patchwork canopy, low, and moving quickly southeast, covering the entire sky and all light blue under the blazing moonlight. And when the moon was between clouds, it was this solid white beaming down, and when the clouds passed over it, it would dim a bit and there would be this prismatic halo all around with red on the outside, brightening to white on the inside.

The clouds and the air were moving all around, and the way the clouds were, it seemed like the entire sky was moving, and the motion of the earth under my feet was something to feel instead of imagine. There were these bare black trees behind me, swaying in the wind, branches rubbing and slapping against eachother like toneless wind chimes.

For a while after that I just kind of leaned and stared up and blinked very slowly, and felt like there was this ineffable romance in me and that I had all these intimacies to share but that noone in the world could understand.

The Cosby Show

In some ways, I think the Cosby Show definitely ignored the racism that existed at the time, somewhat playing into the hands of racists whose ideas of blacks are that they should simply "get over it" and "work hard" and all of their problems will be solved. On the other hand, this positive, almost utopian image seems to have been necessary for the eventual rise of other, more realistic portrayals of African Americans within our society. The Fresh Prince and eventually The Wire are definitely a departure from the premise of the original show, but if the progression is stereotype -> unrealistic idealized version -> eventual adoption of realistic portrayals, then I think the goal has nearly been achieved.

Like I said

I've done a bit of this before, African American Studies. I feel like these classes always end on a sort of humanistic high. At the end we all feel like things are going to be different- this time we're going to fix it all. Let's just stay like this. High on the ending feeling, the beginning feeling. Let's all love each other. Let's all love everything.

The scope of my ambitions can never be contained with words. Nor can my actions ever catch it.

Thinking of all the time I wasted, I go crazy. I've only got forward to look. Backwards is always just so.

Time passed is opportunity wasted. Every decision is the denial of choice. Every action is the annhilation of the freedom to act. Ticking clocks chase tapping shoes along the path toward the future where something looms, and despite all my ambitions it seems far far away.

So far away.

 

Sometimes I wish I could thrust myself forward in time. Fast forward, or rewind. Undo and do everything. Live a perfect life. What does that mean? Didn't it take every action and inaction to make me into myself? Do I prefer it this way? Who would survive the rearranging of my life; it would not be me.

I had a friend request. It was from someone named Deirdre. It wasn't anyone I ever knew and I denied it. But it made me laugh or just smile. Some sick joke or coincidence. Just like everything it's a roll of the dice every moment. You can only position your chips. Sometimes you are only the spectator. Sometimes you can't even see the whole game. Are we pressing for knowledge? Are we just trying to get to the other end of the craps table? It's all the same random chance there as it is here.

Hah. Screw the cynicism and the obtuse conjectural bullcrap. What I mean is this: I want everything in the world, and now I have to go get it.