Nikkatsu, Barricade, and Mas School

So, today after class Audrey and I went up into the East side of Midtown to Japan Society. It was the opening of a film series, "No Borders, No Limits: 1960's Nikkatsu Action Cinema," that's looking at the old Nikkatsu action films from the 1960's (tad redundant taint we?). This being during the Japanese New Wave period in cinema. I personally love the films from this period, with films such as "Branded to Kill" and "The Pornographers" (a must see if you haven't seen it go watch it now, now I say, you can finish reading about what's going on in my daily possibly not so interesting life later. Don't forget to come back and comment mind ye).

So, the first in this series was "A Colt is My Passport." It was awesome, it had the lead actor from "Branded to Kill" as well as it is directed by the same director, Seijun Suzuki. There is a lot of reflexivity in the film upon its own events. Like there is one scene that has the main character trying to figure out what weapon to use in a confrontation, then we see the opposition pondering what weapon he might use, that is then being watched by the main character by some binoculars. Oh, and don't forget awesome timing with music cues that are trumpet heavy, so heavy and melo-dramatic at times that you half expect a trumpet player to come marching in the room. Also, the end awesome, some McGuyver stuff goes down and the main character essentially sticks a time bomb on the bottom of a car as it is attempting to run him down, which then explodes.

They had a reception after the film, the food was so good, we didn't have to get any dinner. Two words, beef rolls. They were so good. Oh and guess what, they got student rates as well, oh yah!

In other news I got books in the mail and my so-called gift to myself for my b-day, the Deluxe Transformers Barricade. That thing was nigh on impossible to find. I never saw it in a store, Amazon is trying to sell this 10 dollar toy for 60 bucks. Insane hey? Ya, I was able to get it much cheaper which was good, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten it. It's really nice and looks wicked as you can see.



School has been marching on and with it so has my life and my time, oi. I've been forced to cut back my hours at Tekserve, two days a week now, we'll see how that works out. The globalization/hybridization class continues to get better and more interesting along with fun digressions like the movie Red Dawn, GO WOLVERINES SAVE OUR MCDONALDS FROM THE COMMIES! Last week in Media Change I presented on a chapter from Flusser about looking at the camera as an apparatus, made me think about Web 2.0 and issues of power, who really has it, (hint it's not the users). That assertion heated up the discussion, and lately I've become the real Web 2.0 basher. It's become my deal almost that and issues of power, the real and post-modernity all of which came up within the mapping class. I feel with that class, it could be a lot more interesting or could become it if people wanted to engage more thoroughly the issue of power in relation to the practice of mapping or its inherent presence. Oh well, I get my presentation in two weeks on the manipulative aspects of mapping, exactly what I'm interested and doing. That brings me to the NNW, I have now integrated the FBI's to wanted terrorists and domestic terrorists into the word list. There's so many aliases for everyone, it's insane, not to mention what people are wanted for.

Anyways I need to get up tomorrow to go to work, oi. So, laters.