Samurai on Pluto
Jan. 9th, 2006 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicI've been looking for a reason to bring up the anime series "Samurai Champloo" and now also to discuss the movie "Breakfast on Pluto," which I finally saw tonight. So the contrived theme is Sirius Black Appears In Non-Potter Media.
Briefly, then:
"Samurai Champloo" follows three protagonists in pseudo-medieval Japan as they journey in search of The Samurai Who Smells of Sunflowers and get into some spectacular fights along the way: there is Jin ("Jeen"), a brilliant samurai who left his dojo for reasons unknown; Mugen, a rebel and Jin's match in a fight; and Fuu, a flighty girl who roped them both into helping her find Sunflower Boy when she saved their lives in the first episode. Jin and Mugen have vowed to kill each other upon completing their mission, and neither of them have much patience with their companion. But really they are one big happy family.
We like the show. It has a quirky sense of humor (gay jokes abound, the three make fun of each other, and on one of the show's back-from-commercial-break screens it once had a calligraphed (?) phrase subtitled as "Hilarious Anime") and it's gorgeous to look at. In particular, we like Jin. He is Byronic. He is pretty. He wears glasses. His fights look like ballets. To describe more would be to repeat the first adjective. He has raised his voice exactly one time in the 15 episodes I've seen so far, and when he did it looked like this:
In Episode 8, "The Art of Altercation," we find out that former schoolmates of Jin's are hunting him down for having killed his dojo teacher. It seems the master was betrayed and murdered and all fingers are pointing to Jin. When one of the vengeance seekers confronts him, Jin says calmly: "It wasn't I who did the betraying. But I won't make excuses. It's true; I killed my master." It reminded me of Sirius when he admits to having killed James and Lily, when what he means is not that he raised his wand but rather that he allowed -- indeed, made it possible for -- someone else to fatally betray them. Jin's story may turn out to be similar.
And tonight.
D'you know, I think I liked "Breakfast on Pluto" more than "Brokeback Mountain" and "Match Point," Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' latest which we saw on Saturday. "Breakfast" really was a great movie (if one can take "great" to mean two solid hours of cheeky young Irish transvestite charming his way through two countries and an impossible series of adventures in the '60s/'70s in search of his mother while dodging [or not] IRA attacks and leaving a trail of wrecked men behind him). I readily admit to dragging my sister to one of the most run-down theaters around here, the only place screening the film, only for Neil Jordan's name and the teaser shots of Cillian Murphy in makeup -- it's not Cillian himself that attracted me so much as the idea of it -- but we were both duly impressed, delighted, frightened, sad, thoughtful. Mostly delighted. What a romp. The whole thing is broken into thirty-something-odd chapters, forcing Jordan to shoot a tight film like frequent subheaders force you to write a tight paper. Acting was superb. Plot was engaging and you didn't mind it being faintly ridiculous and occasionally whimsical (e.g. subtitles for whistling birds). Highly recommended to you all.
Right, our theme. Cillian's character, Patrick, or Kitten as you prefer, channeled fanon!Sirius in his school days, both in looks (sharp cheekbones, pout, bright eyes, his hair curled and longer than in his sharpish bespectacled "Batman Begins" getup) and attitude (self-assured, effortlessly charming [later seductive], unapologetically non-conformist; gets into trouble at school, runs out on his family). He had some fanon!Siriuses' fondness for glam rock, mascara and gender-bending; and of course he was gay. It didn't help that several times he rolled his eyes and muttered, "Serious, serious, serious, everyone keeps saying life is serious."
P.S. Brendan Gleeson played a man in a Womble suit and Ian Hart was a police officer. Brendan Gleeson is Brendan Gleeson despite playing Moody in GoF but Ian Hart will always be Quirrell to me, and seeing him bald with a moustache beating someone up and flirting with exotic dancers was just disturbing.
Briefly, then:
"Samurai Champloo" follows three protagonists in pseudo-medieval Japan as they journey in search of The Samurai Who Smells of Sunflowers and get into some spectacular fights along the way: there is Jin ("Jeen"), a brilliant samurai who left his dojo for reasons unknown; Mugen, a rebel and Jin's match in a fight; and Fuu, a flighty girl who roped them both into helping her find Sunflower Boy when she saved their lives in the first episode. Jin and Mugen have vowed to kill each other upon completing their mission, and neither of them have much patience with their companion. But really they are one big happy family.
We like the show. It has a quirky sense of humor (gay jokes abound, the three make fun of each other, and on one of the show's back-from-commercial-break screens it once had a calligraphed (?) phrase subtitled as "Hilarious Anime") and it's gorgeous to look at. In particular, we like Jin. He is Byronic. He is pretty. He wears glasses. His fights look like ballets. To describe more would be to repeat the first adjective. He has raised his voice exactly one time in the 15 episodes I've seen so far, and when he did it looked like this:
In Episode 8, "The Art of Altercation," we find out that former schoolmates of Jin's are hunting him down for having killed his dojo teacher. It seems the master was betrayed and murdered and all fingers are pointing to Jin. When one of the vengeance seekers confronts him, Jin says calmly: "It wasn't I who did the betraying. But I won't make excuses. It's true; I killed my master." It reminded me of Sirius when he admits to having killed James and Lily, when what he means is not that he raised his wand but rather that he allowed -- indeed, made it possible for -- someone else to fatally betray them. Jin's story may turn out to be similar.
And tonight.
D'you know, I think I liked "Breakfast on Pluto" more than "Brokeback Mountain" and "Match Point," Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' latest which we saw on Saturday. "Breakfast" really was a great movie (if one can take "great" to mean two solid hours of cheeky young Irish transvestite charming his way through two countries and an impossible series of adventures in the '60s/'70s in search of his mother while dodging [or not] IRA attacks and leaving a trail of wrecked men behind him). I readily admit to dragging my sister to one of the most run-down theaters around here, the only place screening the film, only for Neil Jordan's name and the teaser shots of Cillian Murphy in makeup -- it's not Cillian himself that attracted me so much as the idea of it -- but we were both duly impressed, delighted, frightened, sad, thoughtful. Mostly delighted. What a romp. The whole thing is broken into thirty-something-odd chapters, forcing Jordan to shoot a tight film like frequent subheaders force you to write a tight paper. Acting was superb. Plot was engaging and you didn't mind it being faintly ridiculous and occasionally whimsical (e.g. subtitles for whistling birds). Highly recommended to you all.
Right, our theme. Cillian's character, Patrick, or Kitten as you prefer, channeled fanon!Sirius in his school days, both in looks (sharp cheekbones, pout, bright eyes, his hair curled and longer than in his sharpish bespectacled "Batman Begins" getup) and attitude (self-assured, effortlessly charming [later seductive], unapologetically non-conformist; gets into trouble at school, runs out on his family). He had some fanon!Siriuses' fondness for glam rock, mascara and gender-bending; and of course he was gay. It didn't help that several times he rolled his eyes and muttered, "Serious, serious, serious, everyone keeps saying life is serious."
P.S. Brendan Gleeson played a man in a Womble suit and Ian Hart was a police officer. Brendan Gleeson is Brendan Gleeson despite playing Moody in GoF but Ian Hart will always be Quirrell to me, and seeing him bald with a moustache beating someone up and flirting with exotic dancers was just disturbing.
no subject
Date: Jan. 10th, 2006 10:04 pm (UTC)Samurai Champloo is interesting, but I felt the ending petered out. I'm only warning you so that you don't expect something amazing and then get disappointed. I'd heard it was an awesome series so I probably felt more disappointment than was warranted. I think it was an intentional petering out too--it was supposed to be the point or something, but as it didn't come as a surprise to me [I knew something was rotten with that whole "samurai who smells like sunflowers" becasue sunflowers don't *have* a fragrance], it didn't even have the merit of being unpredictable. Although perhaps I know too much about Japanese history/culture from the Ainu to those crazy secret Christians, which also made it perdictable for me.
Now I sound all negative, but I really did enjoy the series--the wonderful art and the bizzare clash of historical and hiphop Japan. And I absoultely loved some of the episodes like the one about Mugen and graffiti.
no subject
Date: Jan. 10th, 2006 10:13 pm (UTC)Am looking forward to the graffiti one now. I think it's on the next DVD.