Wings of Desire-and GIP!

Remember when I said there was a post I'd done the other day that I wound up not posting? The first part of it was kind of important because it said, HAPPY BIRTHDAY reenka. Thought I put it in the replacement post and...yeah.

Last night I watched Kwaidan, a Japanese film from 1965 that's pretty damn interesting. It's 4 basic scary folktales that are totally familiar despite being Japanese. It also had the original trailer which talked about how the movie was a statement against modern society. Knowing where it was going wasn't a problem, though, because the tales are so primal. Black Hair is about a samurai who leaves his loving wife for a richer one, lives to regret it and tries to make amends. The Snow Woman is that old story of a young man saved by a demon woman under the condition she never tell anyone about the encounter. The man gets married and has children and.... Hoichi the Earless is about a blind Biwa player summoned by the spirits of the dead for entertainment-that's almost a double story because the spirits all died in a great battle between clans. Are there really crabs in Japan called Heike crabs after a lost clan? That's pretty cool. Also the Biwa playing and chanting was excellent--this may be politically incorrect, but it's like the sort of thing you'd parody if you were making fun of Eastern music. Then there's A Cup of Tea, which is an unfinished story--hmmm. That's kind of weird in a movie about classic folktales. Anyway, if you look into your cup of tea and there's a man's face looking out at you from it, for god's sake don't drink the tea!

On Friday night I saw just the movie I needed given out I was feeling about N_A. The Film Society had a screening of Wings of Desire. ( Best. Angel. Movie. Ever. )

Also, icon courtesy of la_pensee. It's Pansy's magpie. <3 Pansy.