This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
As previously mentioned on this blog, High and Low is probably my favourite Kurosawa film, in fact one of my favourite ever films, so I come at Spike Lee's interpretation with some biased baggage, I admit.
It's different enough to be interesting in its own right. I liked the set up of King being a record company executive rather than for a shoe company, and I liked the whole cultural shift into the area of US black music. As you might expect, the soundtrack is rather good though it dominates the film, sometimes a little too much. Denzel Washington is great to watch, as he so often is, and his performance marks a lot of the movie's high points.
Some of the story changes didn't work so well for me. Making King and his chauffeur close buddies makes it less of a sacrifice when King finally decides to give up a large part of his fortune to save his friend's mistakenly kidnapped son. I also felt that decision came too easily - at first he's totally against it, which seems out of character for someone who appears to have such strict family values, then he relents and ... that's it, unlike Mifune who seems to carry some agony at the cost throughout much of the rest of the film.
With Kurosawa, the kidnapper's associates are explained and dealt with, but with this modern telling the associates are useful for one scene - the moped chase - and then they disappear for good. Related to this, King's dropping of the bag of money from the train is slightly ridiculous as it's dropped by accident right into the arms of one of the associates - was that the plan? And the police accompanying King on the train are very obvious - maybe they're not even trying to be undercover, but that does tone down the tension somewhat.
As for the kidnapper, Yung Felon, the motivation is interesting and I didn't mind it - in fact it's more specific than the more general hatred of Takeuchi. But that hatred seems more real in the earlier film, more visceral - the kidnapper is tortured by it. I didn't get the feeling of Felon coming from the absolute depths of society as in High and Low - he's in a relationship, he's talented, he has a nice recording studio. He didn't appear to be hiding away much after the successful kidnap.
And then it's an American film so, of course, the hero has to be the one to save the day, as King goes in himself (with his trusty chauffeur sidekick) to confront the kidnapper where, rather ludicrously, they engage in a kind of rap battle. It's true that in the original Ed McBain story, King fights the kidnapper, but he's accompanied by the police and his violence is a result of anger at them trying to steal his fortune.
Most of my criticisms are plot-related and comparing it to Kurosawa. Taken as it's own thing, it's a decent enough film with solid performances, stylistic and entertaining.
I write this as news came yesterday of the death of Tatsuya Nakadai on 8th November, at age 92. He was the Chief Detective in High and Low, but is more famous as the samurai villain in both Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Other major films include Kobayashi's The Human Condition trilogy, Kwaidan, and Harakiri, as well as Kurosawa's Kagemusha and Ran. This is just a tiny part of his film output - a real giant of Japanese cinema.
There is a playlist for each (War and Adventure) and there is a playlist for all of them together. Of course the old blog still exists and they're also up on Apple Podcasts, but it seems that YouTube is the most accessible.
I don't know how the algorithm works on YouTube, but somehow the Golden Voyage of Sinbad episode has eleven-thousand views, with most of the others having a more-expected few hundred each.
I really enjoyed discussing these films with my brother, Murray, and I think they turned out to be pretty decent podcasts in the end. Give them a listen if you have a moment!
But then a second run was announced, so last April (2023) I gritted my teeth (tickets shouldn't be this expensive), booked tickets for March 2024, and, at last, we all went up to the Barbican last week, two days before the end of the second run.
And I'm so glad I did - my wife and I loved it, the children loved it, it was a wonderful production. The staging was incredible, the acting was spot-on, the music was enchanting - it was all the things the film is - funny, heartwarming, moving and uplifting. Huge congratulations to the performers and creative team.
It's a long time since I visited the Barbican - in fact the last time was September 2008 ... on the eve of a hospital visit for an operation I had to have, we went up to see Osamu Tezuki's Bagi, introduced with a talk by the always marvellous Helen McCarthy. There was a splendid exhibition of Tezuka's art as well (prints mostly) which was astonishingly good - all part of the Barbican's Tezuka Season.
Hopefully Totoro will warrant a third run at some point, maybe a touring production, in which case I heartily recommend you get along and see it.
The following is an article I wrote on High and Low last October and included in my 50'zine - copies still available.
Akira Kurosawa is my favourite director, but which is his best film? I vacillate between Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress, Ikiru and High & Low, but High & Low might just edge it. Released in 1963, it is, for me, almost perfect cinema. The story is an adaptation of Ed McBain's King's Ransom (1959), the story of a shoe company executive who at first believes his son has been kidnapped and is willing to lose his hard-won fortune to save him, until he learns that it's his chauffeur's son who has been kidnapped by mistake - and he refuses to pay.
The book and the film part ways in a number of places. Kurosawa takes McBain's interesting moral dilemma, but rather forced set-up, and gives it a humanist spin, making it more exciting, logical, dynamic and overall more satisfying. Where McBain's Doug King refuses to pay and takes fake money to get the boy back, Kurosawa's Kingo Gondo (fantastically portrayed by Toshiro Mifune) finally relents and sacrifices almost everything he has to save another man's child. The roller-coaster of emotions is palpable through a number of starkly memorable scenes - the subdued chauffeur clutching his only child's jumper, Gondo sitting down to work with his old tool bag as the police rise from their seats with dawning respect, the discovery of the pink smoke over the city, and the shocking seediness of Yokohama's ghetto and underbelly.
The first half of the film is entirely set in the high-up house of Gondo, almost like a theatrical production - but the scene setting, composition and tension are masterfully presented. The action cuts suddenly to a speeding express train - a car in the book - after being still for so long (not that we realised) the jolting movement of camera and transport is exhilarating. Then the second half of the film commences - a solid police procedural set against the backdrop of Gondo, the destroyed but now revered man, and Takeuchi, the kidnapper, already in hell and pursued further and further into it. The Japanese title, Tengoku to Jigoku, translates more accurately as Heaven & Hell.
The film included four of Kurosawa's leading men - the unparalleled Mifune as Gondo, Nakadai as the lead investigator, with smaller roles for the great Shimura as the Section Chief, and Fujita, Kurosawa's first star, as the Police manager.
The book has King chase and fight the kidnapper, not to save the boy, but more out of anger at his own near-ruin. In Kurosawa's intense ending, the reflected faces of hero and villain merge, separated by fortune perhaps, but more - the film suggests - by the choices they made, the choice to do good or to do evil. High & Low is cinema storytelling at its finest.
Mahito is a young boy whose mother is killed in a hospital fire during WWII, after which his father evacuates him to the countryside where he is to live with his father's new wife - his mother's sister, the pregnant Natsuko. In the lush grounds of the old family estate Mahito discovers a mysterious ruined tower, said to have been built by a recent ancestor, and is harried by a grey heron who tells him his mother is alive and can be found.
All this leads to Mahito entering a dream-like world of shifting realities and weird creatures - swarms of aggressive pelicans, the cute, inflating Warawara, the militaristic and culinary parakeets, and the mysterious fire-girl, Lady Himi.
For much of the time the purpose of the characters and the world is unclear, leading to quite a bit of plot disorientation which probably reflects Mahito's state of mind quite well. There are no rules in this fantasy realm, and as soon as you think you've found your feet and direction, the floor falls away and a new scene takes its place.
It's incredibly rich, both visually and in ideas. Sometimes these will recall previous Miyazaki works - the tower with the bath house of Spirited Away, the little paper cut-outs from the same film, the Warawara beings with Princess Mononoke's Kodama spirits, the partnership of Mahito and Kimi with that of Pazu and Sheeta from Castle in the Sky, the depressed, melting Howl with the fake mother apparition, to name a few. But it doesn't rest on past glories, it's a unique, beautiful and very personal piece of work.
The animation, as you'd expect, is masterful. It's the time taken with the little details - the way a character balances before moving, the way a texture reacts to touch, a billowing in the wind. The sounds too add a whole dimension to the film - footsteps on a polished wooden floor, the age-old click of a door handle, the whiz of an arrow. Alongside Joe Haishi's wonderful score, it all builds up to a veritable feast for the senses.
Where does The Boy and the Heron sit alongside Miyazaki's classics? It's hard to tell at the moment and I definitely need to give it another watch to take more in. I immediately enjoyed it more than his previous film, The Wind Rises, but it's hard to dislodge long-time favourites such as Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc, even if it's just on grounds of accessibility (I saw it with my two children, 12 and 10, and they enjoyed it but were, I think, somewhat bemused).
Spirited Away remains, for me, Miyazaki's masterpiece, and while Heron doesn't touch that, it has Miyazaki's quality, his heart, his magic, and comfortably sits alongside his other greats, which pretty much every one of his films has been.
While the film is not based on a Tardi album, his work is the inspiration for it, and he laid the visual groundwork, characters and look and feel that the producers and animators followed (much of which can be seen in L'histoire d'un Monde Truqué, Casterman, 2015). Its origin lies in a proposed WWI film writer Benjamin Legrand and Tardi planned to make but which never got off the ground. The two had worked together before, on the strip Tuer de Cafards (Cockroach Killer, 1984) and now Legrand wanted to come up with a scenario full of the things Tardi loved to draw, to wash away his sour experience from the WWI project.
Legrand created a uchronic adventure story with a nod to the Paris of the Belle Epoch, with a large dash of Adel Blanc-Sec (the film's heroine, April, is a little like her, but not as stony) and Le Démon des Glaces (The Arctic Marauder, 1974). The initial idea was for a TV series, but when it happened to come before Franck Ekinci, who had just made Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2007), he insisted it should be a feature film. Although Tardi did again experience the frustration and dashed hopes of delayed production, the film eventually got made and saw its premiere at Annecy in June 2015.
And it's a fantastic piece of work, up there with the best of Miyazaki. From the wonderful detail of the title credits that settle you firmly into time and place, to the cast of well-rounded characters (including Darwin, the talking cat), to the constantly driving pace from frying-pan to fire and back again.
The world's chronology splits from our own when the 1870 Franco-Prussian war is averted with the unexpected death of Napoleon III. Connected with this, the world's top scientists start to disappear, leaving a sooty world bereft of technological advancement except for its reliance on coal and steam, leading to the great Canadian Charcoal War. The setting is fantastic - the double Eiffel Tower, the international cable transports, the pedal-powered air balloons, and a house that springs legs, somewhat reminiscent of Ghibli's (and Wynne Jones') Moving Castle (2004) or a Baba Yaga's hut.
The French title, Avril et le Monde Truqué, translates more correctly to April and the Fake World, but it untwists itself and reconciles with our own timeline again by the end, with the destruction of one of the Eiffel Towers, the (perhaps questionable) benefits of electricity unleashed, and something a little odd going on with the moon.
The film has just the right balance of character, action and tension, all with an ending that gives a little emotional jolt. It survives repeated, even regular, viewings, and for fans of Tardi, I don't think it could be more perfect. Perhaps the only reason it's not on more people's radars is the French language (though it doesn't suffer at all in its English dub) - but for me that just adds even more atmosphere to an extraordinary world I'd love to keep exploring.
On my own for New Year's Eve I watched Riders of Justice, an excellent Danish revenge comedy (if there wasn't such a genre, there is now). The action is the stuff we've all seen before, but the characters and comedy are of that delightful Nordic quality and, in conjunction with the overarching theme, sets the film apart.
The previous evening I got round to watching the new Bond film, No Time to Die. As usual it's a slick production with another superb Bond performance from Daniel Craig. It didn't quite hammer in all the nails for me: a series of impressive and thrilling set-pieces, yet lacking some kind of core. Good overall, especially some of the supporting characters, but even so, I don't think Casino Royale has been beaten in Craig's run.
I also finally got to see the documentary, Mifune: The Last Samurai. If you like Mifune or Kurosawa (they are inseparable) then you'll love it. To get critical, Mifune's early films are glossed over, missing out on a chance to examine his development as an actor, and the majority of the content focuses on his samurai roles (thus also leaving out one of my favourites, High and Low), but these are minor quibbles. It's great for a short section on early silent Chanbara films, and also its interviews with some of the now elderly people who worked with Mifune.
Possibly the best thing I saw this year, watching it with my wife over Christmas, was Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back - quite an astonishing look at the band's development and recording of what would eventually become the Let It Be album. The original director of the footage, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, had initially edited it into a piece that highlighted the difficult moments in The Beatles' relationship, giving birth to the idea that the whole studio experience was strained and negative. Jackson has brought it into its full context and the strength of their bond is re-established, along with the joy they evidently had in creating. McCartney is particularly impressive. Great stuff.
Not so good was a TV adaptation of Stephen King's 11/22/63 - a book I really like and have listened to more than once on audiobook while working at the drawing board. I couldn't finish this as I found the changes to the book too overwhelming and to the detriment of the story as a whole. I know screen adaptations have to change, but this seemed to make all the wrong choices. The cast and production were decent though, and maybe if you don't know the book it'll be fine.
Contrasting nicely with that has been the BBC's terrific Around the World in Eighty Days - not yet completed as I write this, but so far every episode has been excellent (edit: up to the penultimate episode now, and one of my favourite watches of the year).
I can't recall much else of what I've watched this year ... many children's films (some excellent - I hugely enjoyed Cruella with its fantastic soundtrack; many CG animations with the same characters and moral of the story that all blend into one), Jojo Rabbit was a stand-out film, Free Guy was on the entertaining side of 'meh', and Don't Look Up, which I watched just a couple of nights ago, was great, if depressingly close to the bone.
Murray and I started the War Films series back in 2014 - seven years ago ... and it's only ten podcasts! Well, we did say we wouldn't keep to a regular schedule.
Before that we'd recorded ten podcasts for the Adventure Films Podcast. Those went up much more quickly - ten films from May to December 2011.
Kurosawa is my favourite director and this is the second of his films that Murray and I have looked at, the first being part of the Adventure Films Podcast series, The Hidden Fortress.
A little while later we decided to continue the series, but this time we chose ten war films to discuss - and we've just recorded and published episode 8, looking at the 2004 film Downfall.
More at The Adventure Films Podcast (and on iTunes here).
