After being welcomed so dearly by my web host of doom and by my blogging idol I definitely feel the urge to write something. Because I have watched the Japanese arthouse flick “Eureka” yesterday, I naturally am going to write about that one.

The movie begins quite confusingly, with the phrase “A tidal wave is coming.” But shortly after this prologue the most actionful and most exciting scenes of the whole film begin to develop. The daily lifes of the protagonists are destroyed in one day, by something you could symbolically call a “tidal wave”. Almost three extremely slow-paced hours of reconditioning follow. These three hours (which were even longer in my case, since my computer crashed regularly) may become boring after a while, but if they weren’t and if the director Shinji Aoyama hadn’t decided for this length, the film wouldn’t be as impressing as it actually is.

The actors of the children don’t really have the chance to show their talent, because in the first two hours they are nothing but “the apathetic kids” and playing an apathetic person doesn’t really need talent IMO. On the other hand Kôji Yakusho has a role that he plays as good as nobody else could. When he coughs withouth interruption in the last third of the film, I almost wanted to cough myself. His acting is infectious.

The cinematography is probably the most exciting aspect of Eureka. The story may get boring after a while, but if you’re bored with the story, you can simply marvel at the astonishing images, mostly landscapes (*___*). Aoyama’s use of the camera could be compared to Andrei Tarkovsky (”Stalker”), who uses long takes in a similar way. I also liked that the film is kept in sepia colours, which underscores the depressing mood.

In my opinion the end is a bit too optimistic and unrealistic, although you - of course - can’t let a film like this one, which concentrates on the long and hard healing process of traumatised people, end pessimistically.

Writing about Eureka concurs with a certain impossibility of being satisfied with your text, because nobody (except for Aoyama himself) can be able to describe the visual impact and the emotional depth of this movie. The story and the direction are just too bulky. As long as you haven’t been the victim of a really traumatic experience (”really” being the operative word), you can’t understand the actions of this film’s protagonists. They act irrationally. They live isolated lives inmidst of people who can’t understand why they do. And they have the most gruesome nightmares due to feelings of guilt. I don’t know if the director himself actually has experienced a trauma like that, but I read somewhere that he created the story as a result to the bombings of the Aum sect in Tokyo in 1995 - so at least the society he lives in has.

My blog has moved to a new server, which is why I am now part of the unbelievably elitist club of naruhodou websites.

And as you can see, I also have a new design, a pretty minimalistic, but IMO absolutely adorable one. Maybe the new design and the new server force me to write more regularly, haha…

Haruki Murakami is the most famous Japanese author in the Western world these days. It’s obvious why - he writes stories that describe modern (romantic) life of men in big cities. And the love life of a man in Tokyo is probably pretty similar to the one of a man in Berlin or New York. Well, even I could identify with a 15 year old Murakami character, when I was 15, although I was living (and still am…) in the tiniest village you can imagine. *cough*

Murakami has been named a possible future Nobel Prize winner, which, I think, is kind of a strange thought, because Murakami is neither a really revolutionary author nor a political author and he’s not a “my language is so OMFG sophisticatedly artsy” author. He’s an author of personal issues, an author of quiet nostalgia, an author of hinted symbolism, he’s an author who writes several books that are just like his others, but he’s also an author who makes you want to read his novels in one setting. He’s a popular author. And that’s not something that makes you win a Nobel Prize. But, well, we’ll see in the future.

The reason why I am writing a post about him is that I finished his novel “Kokkyô no minami, taiyô no nishi” today. Well, to be exact, I read “Gefährliche Geliebte” (translated as “Dangerous [female] lover”), the German translation of the English translation of the book… And I deeply despise the German title, because it sounds like the title of some cheap trivial piece of women’s porn literature. I like the English title (which is a translation of the original title BTW) “South of the border, West of the sun” much more, because it references to an actual scene in the book. I wonder why the German editors changed the wonderful title into such nonsense?

I’ve already mentioned the “OMG, this book is just porn” first impression you may get, if you just read the title or. You also may, if you don’t read the book carefully, but read it really superficially instead. There _are_ some sex scenes in the book that are described in a pretty vulgar language, but I think it’s intended that they sound as “technical” as they do.
By the way: because of these sex scenes some German literature critics had a dispute on a TV show, because one critic thought they were just stupid and unnecessary, and the others loved them. In my opinion that argument is just hilarious. (It’s so sad, that they all don’t have a clue what the meaning of the “-san” may be, that in the end it’s just funny again, haha… And it’s so geniously great how one of them just sits around and doesn’t say anything at all! Pure comedy! The only thought that I found somewhat interesting was the “Shimamoto stands for a death goddess” one…)

What I really liked about “Kokkyô no minami, taiyô no nishi” are some details (the Histeria Siberiana! the river and the unborn baby!) and especially the end, which, of course, is the highlight. I had the feeling that it’s a “the protagonist you identified with in the whole book has been crazy all the time, HAHA” ending, a mind fuck ending.
My modest interpretation is that Hajime has been paranoid for a long time, because, although he has a gorgeous family and a good job, his life isn’t able to satisfy him due to his past - the past with his first love, Shimamoto, who he just wants back, because the first love was the most intense for him, and the past with Izumi, the one he wants to apologize to. Because those two women are unreachable, because he just doesn’t know where they are today, he goes crazy. And in the end he realizes that all the time with the adult Shimamoto has just been one big hallucination.

If this was the first Murakami book I read I would probably adore it, but since it’s been my fifth one, I already know the Murakami world, which consists of the same characters and settings in almost every book (exception: “Kafka on the Shore”, my favorite), and after the fifth read it becomes somewhat unspectacular. So it resulted in me liking it, but definitely not adoring it.
Nevertheless: I still want to read “Hard-boiled Wonderland”, because one of my favorite anime, Haibane Renmei, is said to have some references to it and because it has a different setting (science-fiction?) - and I guess I also want to read some of the other novels, because they’re quickly read and because in every Murakami there are some amazing details that are worth the read.

Normally I hate dancing - I’m just bad at it -, but after watching My Summer of Love once again I would love to dance to that song.

What are my favorite Radiohead songs? I like almost every work done by this band to a huge extent…

1. Everything In Its Right Place
- The beginning with the flowing pieces of a robot-like, electronic voice, the oppressive mood, the confusing and mad lyrics (”Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon” anyone?), this feeling of enlightenment that I get everytime that I listen to this song. Listen and experience it yourself.

2. Videotape
- Emotional impact. Hope. Sadness. Lying on your desk with headphones, listening to this song in infinite loop.

3. No Surprises
- *This* satisfying melody concurring with *those* lyrics. ” I’ll take the quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide”

4. Idioteque
- An anti-war-dance-song.

5. Street Spirit (Fade Out)
- Just look at the somewhat esoteric video! Timeless.

6. Paranoid Android
- The one that got me into Radiohead. A classic, a “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxis”-Marvin-like classic.

7. Where I End and You Begin
- The sky is falling in. And the amazing shiver I get while listening to it too.

8. Exit Music
- Suicidal. Suicidal and depressing. Depressing and erupting.

9. There There
- Walking through a dark, mysterious, surreal forest.

Recently I discovered an interview with Mohiro Kitoh, in which he cites his favorite movie - a pretty obscure Spanish movie from the 1970s called “El espíritu de la colmena” (The Spirit of the Beehive). Of course I had to see it immediately and I truly didn’t regret watching it for one second.

The pace of this film is very quiet - it could be compared to the first half of “Paris, Texas” and especially to “Stalker”. With the latter it shares a mysteriously complex and disturbing atmosphere that doesn’t answer all the mysteries that are introduced. (For example: What’s the relationship between the mother and the father, why do they never talk to each other? To whom does the mother write? Who is the fugitive who jumps off the train?)

And it also reminded me of Mohiro Kitoh, especially because of the cruelty the two child protagonists display and because of some turns in the plot (the fugitive commits suicide right after he is helped by Ana). This cruelty of Isabel is just extremely gruesome and the most fascinating part of the movie. In my opinion the most disturbing scenes are the one in which Isabel tries to kill the cat without any reason and the one in which Isabel plays dead in front of Ana. In those scenes I somehow saw the character of Brenda of the TV series “Six Feet Under” in front of me, who is a hyper-intelligent but pretty cruel and manipulating personality, even as a child.

Another reason this movie is so fascinating are the pictures and the landscapes that are shown. At first I couldn’t decide for one screenshot for this post, because there are so many scenes and takes that cry for being put in this blog. It’s a pity Víctor Erice has just done three feature movies (and one short that is part of the short film collection “Ten Minutes Older”).

“People can’t see him.
He only comes out at night.”
“Is he a ghost?”
“No, he’s a spirit.”

…how long I will keep this blog. I have always loved interesting blogs and everytime there’s a new post in one of my favorite blogs I just get this indescribable feeling of joy. But a blog for myself? Am I really capable of writing interesting rant? I don’t think so, it’s just that recently I had this urge to write about movies and comics and music like one would do in a blog. Cough. Well, we will see.

I am going to write my blog posts in English, because I want to improve my skills in that language (ugh, it’s really urgent - I guess I make lots and lots of mistakes and my language is just infantile?).

And haha… the title for my blog is French. I had some titles in mind, but in the end I chose this one, because it sounded like the most beautiful one.