Here’s an interesting little short from Takena on Youtube. It’s kind of like Wallace & Grommit, but a little more beastial, sexy, and violent. Like, really violent. I should warn you that although it’s just clay, I would recommend this only for mature audiences. Read the rest of this entry »
Eating on the street without paying -
the artistry of the tachigui people.
So much is in the dark and left unsaid.
Following 2004’s Innocence, Tachiguishi Retsuden,Mamoru Oshii’s next film might let a couple of us puzzled.
Oshii is famous for being able to cram his metaphysical reflexions in all his movies, whatever the original setting might be.
Howewer in his next one it’s going to be tough.
Judge for yoursleves, here’s Tachiguishi Retsuden’s synopsis :
Immediately following the end of the World War II in 1945, or the 20th year of the Showa era, Tokyo was trying to emerge from the rubble. In a black market in one corner of Tokyo stood a flimsy tachigui soba (buckwheat noodle) place.
It was a funny time just before the closing. A man appeared at the threshold. “One Tsukimi (raw egg). With soba”. This was none other than the legendary Fast Food Grifter, “Tsukimi” Ginji. His relentless “foul play” quietly initiates.
The time changes. In the midst of the first anti Japan-US Security Treaty movement (1960), the streets rumoured about “Ketsune Croquette” O-Gin, a beautiful Fast Food Grifter lady, who disappeared all of a sudden. Wandering the alleys in the years of skyrocketing economic growth was Crying Inumaru. Then came “Cold Tanuki” Masa, whose scandalous death made people aware of the presence of Fast Food Grifters within the Japanese society. “Gyudon” Ushigoro put an end to a major gyudon (beef and rice bowl) restaurant chain. And it is not possible not to mention “Hamburger” Tetsu, who shocked the entire American fast food industry.
Fast Food Grifters are the phantoms that rise and fall with the shifting diet-styles. They are the dissenting heroes that left their names on the dark side of dietary culture with their glare. Now their legend revives, strong as ever…
There a couple of exemples of director losing it but, most of the time it’s just a single movie before they get their shit together. We can really treasure those fucked-up flicks as a bowl of fresh air in sometimes predictable filmos. Soderberg’s Schizopolis is a prominent exemple of that. Remember, right after this self-starring psychotic dv movie he went on and made Out of Sight, probably his most “hollywood” effort to date.
In the case of Tachiguishi Retsuden though Oshii’s comments are kind of scary. Acoording to the press release of Production I.G “Director Mamoru Oshii does not hesitate to declare that portraying the world of tachigui is his lifework.”
Well, there clearly is no bad subject when you tell a story. The most trivial context can be set for very ambitious reflexions on our societies.
Oshii, as previously stated, is used to that kind of acrobatics. Most of his characters would not be out of place in a brainless b-movie. Still, they are tangled in a metaphysical web and questions themselves about Nietzsche’s utter interogations while offing armies of deadly naked female androids.
Now, can we expect the “food grifters” of Tachiguishi Retsuden questioning their place in the universe, and quoting Wittgenstein while eating a good old beef bowl at yoshinoya ?
Well, that’s the thing, with Oshii you never know, and it might be ten times more mind blowing than the end of 2001: a space odyssey.
Yes, i’m a fan.
Anyway here’s production I.G press release for the movie(in english please), the official site, and the trailer embeded in fresh flash mud.
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