- SodaStream fizzy water maker.
- Crime novels by Jonathan Valin, Stephen Greenleaf, John D. Macdonald.
- Tyvek, Nothing Fits.
- 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. He’s 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 it’s easy to praise the film as surreal, weird, etc., and leave it at that, but it’s a very carefully crafted work, and reveals a new layer with each viewing.
