Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Prisonship-ish, imp-ish inventory.


  1. SodaStream fizzy water maker.
  2. Crime novels by Jonathan Valin, Stephen Greenleaf, John D. Macdonald.
  3. Tyvek, Nothing Fits.
  4. Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House

Many viewers here—even cinephiles—will not have heard of director Nobuhiko Obayashi. Is he well-known in Japan?

Obayashi was already famous in Japan as a director of commercials before House, and its trailer even uses this as a selling point. And check out this Mandom ad—one of his nuttiest. Hes since directed almost forty films in many different genres, and is also a well-known television personality.

House is basically indescribable. But if you had to, how would you describe it?

An exhilarating grab bag of visual tricks, a disturbing satire that turns the giddy sheen of pop culture against itself, and an oddly moving coming-of-age allegory. I think its easy to praise the film as surreal, weird, etc., and leave it at that, but its a very carefully crafted work, and reveals a new layer with each viewing.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011