A truly woeful film. As a friend of mine commented, 'yet again George Lucas pisses all over our childhood memories'. But where does it go wrong?
I saw an interview with George Lucas this August when he was over in the UK plugging his new Star Wars cartoon which left the cinema after only three weeks becoming the first Star Wars film that I haven't seen on the big screen. I was in Japan so that's my excuse but I saw Caravan of Courage so I've put myself through the mill in the name of Star Wars and I reckon that it could have been ok. Better than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Blue Screen (IJ4 herein). In the George Lucas interview, which typically I can't find now and quote verbatum from, Lucas said that the direction in the new Indiana Jones was torn in two directions. He said that Spielberg wanted to hark back to the old days and make it like the other films. Well, they were so successful and exactly as the original inspiration denoted, that being the 1930s Flash Gordon serials. George didn't want that though. Oh no, George and his colossal ego wanted to take the film in a new direction, into the future. After all there are new ways of doing things. IJ4 is split into two distinct halves. The first half is evidently Spielberg's. There are some wonderful set pieces laced with that Spielberg touch. Indy's run-in with an Atomic bomb test is especially memorable. Indiana and his protege also have a cracking motorbike chase through Boston or wherever it is his university is based. And then we get to the Lucas half and then film descends into what is essentially an Industrial Light and Magic bucket of shit. That's because the film moves from being on location into a studio, and when I say studio I mean a Green Room where nothing is real. The earlier motorbike chase is so good as not only does it have cracking pace but the attention to detail is all absorbing. Everyone is in period dress (1950s) right down to the cast of thousands of extras in the background. You would have thought that Lucas would have learnt by now that special effects only work when you can't see them. But no, Indiana embarks on what is a pretty boring journey to some jungle being pursued by about 20 Russians in pursuit of this Crystal Skull. I can't remember what it did, probably imbued invincible powers on its holder and I suppose a plot device as simple enough as that could be interwoven quite nicely with the suspicion and paranoia of the Cold War. I digress, but only because the film never did. Highlights of this cinematic shower of shit include a laughably bad ten minute chase through a CG jungle between the Russkies in jeeps and Indy and his gang in an amphibious car. Then the main Russian thug gets eaten by Fire Ants in a scene that is reminiscent of the German bruiser being diced by the propellor in Raiders, except it reminds you that perhaps this format, or at least this format the way Lucas does it, is truly terrible. I'm not asking for some kind of Bergmanesque character introspection but this Russian fella holds no menace and you're just wondering what terrible death he's going to come to, well aware that this is by no means a location shoot and that since we're in CG territory it may well be that the only thing that is real is Harrison Ford, and he looks ancient. Indy escapes, and after more tedious shenanigans involving the dastardly Russians shooting the natives we're all of a sudden in a giant UFO rising out of the jungle. He might even have met some Aliens but my brain has shielded that horror from my memory. It is completely fucking terrible.
IJ 4 had six screenwriters and two massive egos taking the film in two different directions. It has shameless cash-in written all over it and oh, there's a surprise, its scheduled for a DVD release in early November. This film came out in May and its taken me this long to write about it. That's how scarring that experience was.
A friend of mine asked me recently if I'd heard any new music. Since leaving university, actually since I got a real job as opposed to working for that record label I've found it increasingly difficult to find new music. I've ended up like 6 CD man who goes into HMV and buys arm-fulls of any old cack I might have read about or heard something of. Finding good new stuff is all the harder as the magazines I used to read have folded - in particular I really miss Jockey Slut. I don't actually end up in HMV. I'm often to be found rooting through the second hand CDs in the Notting Hill Record Exchange but that place is past its heyday. When ipods really took off there was a firesale as new owners cleared out their physical formats that meant that muggins here made a killing. Normal practice is that you can pick up a good album for £2 and then the ones for £1 are real randomites. I found some really good Layo & Bushwacka stuff there. The alternative is torrenting but I don't really like that for music or, as I said earlier, ending up in HMV. That's how I acquired 'I Created Disco' by Calvin Harris which is pretty cack unless you've never heard electronic music before in which case its new and and exciting and refreshing. Otherwise its pretty much crap. That said his collaboration with Dizzee Rascal is excellent. I bought The Klaxons too. I can't really remember what it was and it sounded pretty shite too. I think it won a Mercury prize or something which is seen as something of a millstone.
So then, Daft Punk.
I was in Japan this summer - more of this later - was in Kyoto escaping the blistering heat outside and ended up in... HMV! But it was a Japanese one and that's ok. Price wise cds are about £10 but DVDs were very pricey especially the Ghibli Studio films. I really wanted to get some good Japanese music but its hard when you can't read the script or speak the language or know anything about it. The 'Lost in Translation' soundtrack has some great Jap-rock (more a ballad) on it.
I ended up in the electronic section looking for a new electro album from former psy-trance egghead Tsuyoshi Suzuki. I'd earlier spent some nights in an out of season ski resort called ZaoOnsen, 40 minutes from Yamagata. Next to the hotel turned out to be a really hip bar with chilled people and using the international language of psy-trance, babelfish, my friend's digital dictionary and beer we talked a bit about, among other things, music. I couldn't find any Suzuki stuff but I did find Alive 2007 by Daft Punk which is a live album recorded last year in Paris. I bought it as I really like Daft Punk, Discovery being one of my favourite albums, and it really is amazingly good.
Electronic albums live are a weird thing. I saw Mylo live in Brixton 2005. My pill was shit so I was more aware of the fact that he had quite limited material but what he had was really good, it was played live, and what wasn't live was mixed in a very clever manner. Now this Daft Punk is live in the sense that they went into a studio, remixed all their music into a tightly wound, very bass heavy set, then dressed up as robots and brought along an amazing light system then spend 70 minutes making the listener wish they'd been there. It helps that you can hear the crowd too. I mean of course its live because like The Chemical Brothers they're tweaking knobs on big mixing desks but essentially there are some massive computers backstage and they are just robots playing the music, but then that's what they've always been.
Highlights for me are Around the World/Harder Better Faster Stronger in which they've unleashed a 303 and put in some epic bass. The production is so great that that stomach quaking bass that you can feel in club loos is carried into your living room or head without your features sliding off your face. It also helps that these are my two favourite songs off Homework and Discovery but then they knew this and that's why they put them together. Face to Face/Short Circuit is a highlight too and later on there is ten minutes of pretty ferocious techno which actually goes somewhere. I wasn't so keen on their new album 'Human After All' but some of the new material live is very good.
All round an excellent purchase.
Its a brilliant album and my best random purchase for quite some time.
Sunset in Kyoto. The hotel may have been expensive but what a view from my room!
A chance reflection of sunset over Kyoto through the glass corridor outside my hotel room.
Interior of Kyoto's magnificent central station. Built in 1997, 8 rail lines merge here. This is the view from the end where our hotel was. The station extends 3 floors underground and 3 million people use it every day.
I spent 20 days in Japan this summer and here's what I wrote:
I’ve been in Japan for just over two weeks now and it is fair to say that I love this country. I’ve always wanted to come here as it to me has always been the capital of Asia. Indeed if I was to think of any kind of Asiatic influence then more or less it would stem from Japan. So much of what we see and do comes from here, nowadays via the factories of China. The Asiatic influence, for me, also comes from films such as Bladerunner and the book Neuromancer by William Gibson which as tediously presumptuous as it sounds, really is visionary. I think I would have died and gone to heaven had I been able to find a clear dome umbrella with a fluorescent stick holding it up. Alas no, I have a clear umbrella but it seems that I will have to wait for the future on that one. Then of course there’s Manga such as Akira and Ghost in the Shell, and the anime from the Ghibli studios. What I’ve attempted to find in Singapore, Shanghai and Bangkok is what ultimately can only be found in Tokyo. I’ve been looking for a mythical future city and whilst I haven’t found that, I found something infinitely better, something that we in Europe will never achieve. I’ve discovered a faultless society, a country where everything works perfectly, where the people are the friendliest and most courteous that I’ve ever met. This is the safest place that I’ve ever been to, and not the safest due to fear of punishment, but safer due to a simple code of honour. Of course I’ve also discovered a land where suddenly Mario and Pokémon make sense. That plinky-plonky music and relentless happiness is in some ways a perfect encapsulation of the craziness of Tokyo, for whilst it is by no way the mentalist cityscape I was expecting and hoping for, it is indeed crazy in a way that Singapore could never be, clean in a way Bangkok could never be, polite in a way that Shanghai is unlikely to ever be again and here’s the surprise, cheap in a way that London could never be.
For those of you who have read Judge Dredd and 2000AD, I’ve also discovered Mega City One, but unlike that warped view of an anarchic future ruled by Fascists, this is a surprisingly quiet affair, not the hectic bustling freneticism that I was expecting. That Mega City 1 is the prefecture of Tokyo. The Tokyo prefecture has a population of over 36 million. It is a massive, vast city. When I arrived in Tokyo I went to the viewing deck of a skyscraper up in a development called Roppongi Hills. From there one can look down on the TokyoTower, a strange red and white piece of ironwork reminiscent of the EiffelTower, nine metres taller but not as elegant. I was up there on a clear night on the 80th floor and in every direction, as far as the eye could see it was city. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It was quite extraordinary. Hundreds of red lights blinking, an aeroplane landing at the airport, the bright orange neon of the docks, and then across the harbour yet more lights on the horizon.
Japan is twice the size of the UK with a population roughly twice that of the UK at 120 million, and yet this population is crammed into a quarter of the area due to the mountainous topography. This means that all the plains are intensively farmed and densely populated. One never sees empty fields as one does in the UK. There are always houses, and rice paddies, and hundreds of pylons and honestly I’ve lost count of the number of times my train has passed through another colossus of a city. Yes its not like China where 5 million population cities are ten a penny, but here these cities are so concentrated. The region encompassing Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe is one of the most the most densely populated regions on the planet.
There are so many great things about this country that its taken me two weeks just to get my head around the beauty of the place. I should start somewhere and what better place than from a Shinkansen bullet train whistling from Kyoto to Tokyo. I see that we’re cruising at 147mph. Fairly pedestrian I’d say but for the fact that these things are, on average six seconds late in a year. Think about that. The Japanese have a rail system where the trains arrive and leave on time. They’ve invented a bus network which is as accurate as their train network and that is honestly something to be really impressed by. I took a bus from a very out of season ski resort called Zao Onsen to the northern city of Yamagata. The bus was scheduled to take forty minutes, and forty minutes it did take. It left as the buzzer sounded in the bus station, wended its way down the hairpins of the mountain road, made its way through the suburbs and then through downtown and as the clock flicked to 14.40 so we pulled up at the bus stand. Astonishing.
Back to the trains. I have a GPS tracker on the window sill which is telling me I’m going at 166mph, and oh look, I’m still in this massive city, essentially the same city and of the same density of buildings as of Kyoto which I left two hours ago. The trains are brilliant, but then train travel has always been my favourite way to travel. I’m listening to the soundtrack of Lost in Translation and I’m very, very happy. Trains are cheap as chips as I bought something called a Japan Rail Travel Pass. For £270 this is giving me unlimited access to the JR network hence I have experienced to the fullest the perfection of the Japanese rail network. I say unlimited. I have to pay full price to go on a Nozomi Shinkansen, the 200 mph non-stop trains. The JR Rail Pass is pure genius.
That’s trains covered then, and roads too but I haven’t been on them too much except in taxis. Taxis are great with excellent air-conditioning which is pretty much essential. They’re very quiet as they run on LPG and the rear doors open and close at the touch of a button. What a great idea. All cabbies wear a shirt and tie, and all the cabs are some kind of specialist Toyota. There are far less scooters and motorbikes than I was expecting, and loads of groovy little superminis and miniature van things made by the likes of Toyota and Honda. I’ve seen a few Mercedes and BMWs but mostly in Tokyo, two Audis, loads of Nissan Skylines but as a rule very few sports cars apart from Subarus aplenty up in the mountains. I’ve seen a few of the new Beetles but what I’ve many of are the original Minis and quite a few of new ones too. The Japanese are after all Anglophiles and what better car for them than a Mini.
Toilets. There’s a kind of technology not oft spoken about mostly because its Victorian technology and its never changed. I have had, prior to coming to Japan, the odd pub conversation along the lines that, “In Japan they have electric loos” which normally leads to discussions on how that would really work but nobody knows and we all move on. I can report with great pleasure that the Japanese do indeed have electric loos and that they are indeed pretty cool. They have a little control pad on the right, numerous warning signs and instructions, nozzles and speed controls. It’s a real smorgasbord of anonymous buttons. The best thing is working out how to flush the thing and conveniently forgetting that one is sitting on an electric device which contains a lot of water. There are an assortment of flushers. There are physical plungers that you have touch. My God the ignominy! Why push plungers when I could be pressing a button. And why should that button be on the loo when it could be on the wall. And why have the button near the loo when it could be near the door. There have been moments when I’ve been puzzled as to how to actually flush the damn thing, and mild concern at the warnings about suffering of light burns if something in Engrish goes wrong. But it’s alright, this is Japan and if something does go wrong then the helmeted and face masked emergency services will get away from their cat rescuing from trees and actually have a real emergency. You see, apart from the volcanoes and earthquakes and typhoons there isn’t any crime and people don’t seem to set themselves on fire. You see I’m segueing quite carefully into the… Emergency Services!
This country appears to be essentially free from the scourge of petty crime. Sure there’s organised crime here in the form of the Yakuza, the Chinese and Russian mafias, and all manner of corporate crimes such as bribery but to the man on the street there is nothing, and I mean nothing. I went to China in 2005 and whilst that was safe it seemed fairly apparent that crimes against foreigners would be dealt with harshly. Though I was never attacked I was ripped off on the odd occasion. Pretty tame stuff but something that I have not only never seen in Japanbut also would never expect to see, and not due to a fear of punishment but an innate sense of honour and manners the Japanese hold and value. There’s no need to check your change as it is always correct. It would be a great dishonour to give the wrong change. There’s no tipping which proves that Mr Brown’s argument in Reservoir Dogs was indeed correct. Why do we tip waiters 12.5% for doing their jobs? Taxi drivers will suggest shorter routes and will never overcharge. That’s petty cash dealt with and brought down to such a level that one forgets to think about money which is a relief.
Japanese love to bow more than they handshake. This can be a little strange at first but one soon gets used to it. The only confusion is when to stop bowing and this comes from learning who is more important. Being British I naturally assume that its all my fault and that I should apologise for everything and that therefore if I get a pre-emptive bow in then that will level everything. A waiter will then bow back at which point I bow again and then we get stuck into repeat bowing until I have to walk away. Bowing is endemic in society but it provides another level of courtesy beyond that of mere good manners. Train conductors having checked a carriage will turn to face the carriage and bow as they leave. When department stores are closing the staff line the exit points and bow. Bowing is a wonderful thing not only as it is fun but it engenders a level of respect to a society which is by no means rigid but simply has better manners than those in Western countries.
That’s crime or lack thereof, the emergency services, transport and manners dealt with so what more can I say. I’m now back in England but having read through the first half of this document I so enjoyed it that I realised that I must finish it. The first half was written on a Shinkansen which I was rather frustrated to leave as I was really in mid-flow with this whole writing thing and I knew that once I returned to Tokyo I would have precious little time to sit down and do a bit more writing. The Crime section took a quick half hour and now its two weeks since I got back and Japan is still pretty fresh in the memory.
On my return I stayed in the Ginza area which is like Bond Street and CanaryWharf rolled into one. It’s the most expensive shopping district and there are all sorts of big offices and its about ten minutes away from Tokyo station, the main station in town which itself is a five minute walk from the Imperial Palace…
And here’s where it tails off, and the reason is tails off is that I did try to do some writing there but there were only two occasions when I could actually be bothered to do any, or felt like it. Partly this was because I needed to switch off and have a holiday, and partly because big foreign cities are frenetic exciting places and I need to time to digest what I’m seeing and feeling before I can put them down on paper. Arriving on Tokyo I knew that I would never finish this piece in exactly the manner I wanted to, as there was so much more that I wanted to say about Japan and the little peculiarities that one finds everyday and yet are so specific to a feeling that though they are easily remembered it is very difficult to write about them a month later with the same verve and passion than if they had happened ten minutes ago.
The other reason that I did less writing than usual is something of a paradox. I normally write lots because I'm by myself and therefore can not really share my thoughts with anyone about what I'm seeing. I mean of course I meet other people but I don't really know them and therefore they may not get my idiosyncratic take on life. As my friend Mairtin commented, it was so good to be travelling with someone who related to the absurdity of the cartoon characters in Tokyo to the same extent as he did. Take Suica for example. I haven't mentioned him yet but Suica rules Japan. Suica is the public transport penguin whose image is everywhere in the expansive Tokyo train system. Suica is a card system just like the Oyster card but whereas we have a dull London Underground logo, Tokyo has this penguin who is everywhere. He's got tv adverts and a mobile phone network. Kyoto meanwhile has Atom Boy, a robot child with rockets for feet. Other characters of note are clean-up Racoon that can be found on the floor polishers, bus frog, a frog who is the bus company's mascot and who is also on the seat covers, laughing baseball mouth aerial head... that's an incomprehensible baseball with a mouth and an aerial who for reasons best known to the Japanese represents the taxis in Tokyo. Then there was the Safety Station elephant to be found in Seven Elevens and Family Marts, ably assisted by the ubiquitous Hello Kitty and Thomas the Tank Engine at railway stations. The unceasing cheerfulness and plinky-plonky music of Mario now makes perfect sense.
I admit readily that I am an oriental junkie. It runs in the family. My brother has lived in Shanghai for the last five years, and my great uncle lived in Shanghai during the 1930s. He saw the bad side of the Japanese being, as he was, interned by them during the Second Word War. And yet there has been a sea change since the end of that war. Japan was destroyed by the fire bombing and two atom bombs. If you need to see the human cost, then watch ‘The Fog of War’ which illustrates just what the firestorms entailed. Yet Japan has risen to become this extraordinary society with this perfect, effortless fusion of good old-fashioned manners and technology.
I asked my friend Mairtin if he could, in one sentence, say what the best thing about Japan is and it is impossible to. So here’s a list:
Its faultless. I saw three things wrong:
1) There was a sign in Zao Onsen with a fluorescent tube in it that was flickering.
2) A close-door button on a lift in Nagano needed pressing twice.
3) There was a rusty lampost in Kyoto.
And the things that are good about the place:
The people are astonishingly friendly and generous, civil and polite.
The food is delicious and fresh that day.
The whole country is tidy and clean and filled with absorbing architecture.
The transport system is effortless and huge fun – those bullet trains are astonishing, and not just the sheer quantity of them but their evil, evil designs.
The countryside is beautiful.
Japan was the absolute pinnacle of all things Oriental. I love that country and it is the best place that I’ve ever been to.
In my last post I mentioned how bass sounds in club loos. Let me elaborate. If you're in a club and the loos are vibrating then chances are you're pilled up otherwise you would have left a long time ago. If you can remember that everything in the loos is physically vibrating then you're probably mashed but not so much that you too have become something else shaking in the corner, but then maybe not. I remember being in cubicles when I can't see because I'm rushing so hard and yet still being conscious enough to realise that the loo seat is shaking as is the loo paper holder, indeed everything is 'brrrrrring' in time to the thunderous bass shaking through the walls. Your eyeballs are shaking, flicker-vision as I used to call it. The question is this:
a) Are your eyes actually flickering from side to side so quickly that nobody else can see them move? After all to everybody else you just have giant saucer eyes.
OR
b) Is there some receptor in your brain having a spasm with your optic nerve or the actual vision cluster in the brain shaking your sight or something like that?
Back to the bass. Everything is shaking and so are you. That's what I mean by face sliding bass. Its not an unpleasant feeling but sometimes it was inescapable.
Urban legend: I went to the Orange Club in Birmingham once. We were advised not sit over there, there being next to these speakers two storeys high. If we sat there we would 'shit ourselves'. Sonic cannons exist to deter pirates but can the frequencies in a club go so low and loud so as to shake your bowels into submission?Answers on a postcard please...
