Its been awhile :) I've been caught up with exams and even when exams were over I was busy doing other things. While I didn't actually slack on watching good movies and reading awesome stuff, I did however, slack on blogging about it. So what I had to blog about started to pile up. Hence this post is going to be about 5 things.
1. Parasyte
2. Gantz
3. Trouble Everyday
4. Three Extremes
5. Blood
Parasyte
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| Shinichi & Migi |
This anime is about a sudden invasion of aliens that look like that eye and blade on his hand (Shinichi is the boy and Migi is the alien). Apparently these aliens came down from the sky because humans were polluting the earth too much. The alien's task is to invade and take over the brain, but for Shinichi, the alien failed and took over his hand instead. So while the alien has a mind of its own, Shinichi and the alien had to come to terms. The alien however, is purely functional, based on survival instincts and lack emotion. Other aliens who have successfully taken over the brain of other humans, are programmed to kill any failures of invasion (such as the case of Shinichi). After one incident where Shinichi's heart gets injured (physically), Migi (the name Shinichi gave his alien hand), fused with his heart muscle to repair it, and apparently after that transition, there was a change in both of them. Shinichi became stronger emotionally (as in he kinda lacked compassion), while Migi started to have human emotion. There is a love story parallel to the alien conflict. He and his girlfriend lives happily ever after. However, his female best friend dies in the anime due to an alien attack. The main goal of the plot was humans trying to eliminate all the aliens. The take home message was, just because my brain is different than yours - as in I'm naturally inclined to kill (they were subtly referring to serial killers), am I condemned to death? Humans co-exist with animals that they kill to eat. Serial killers too can co-exist with others and have the right to kill because that is what they do, just as we humans need to slaughter poultry to survive.
Gantz
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| The best Gantz team |
This manga is about aliens too, but in an entirely different perspective. So Kurono and Katou are friends who die in a train accident, and copies of their bodies are sent to the Gantz room for a second chance, but this time to serve Gantz. Gantz is a black ball that gives them orders randomly (each task lasting about an hour) to kill aliens that have invaded the earth. Kurono will have two meaningless flings before he finds the love of his life. I really liked the love story in this manga. It was subtle and very meaningful. The alien battles became more complex as it went on, and the final destination was "Catastrophe", which was referring to the end of the world. They were being trained to save the world from an alien invasion. Basically the aliens were also humans, or more accurately humanoids, who were ten times larger in size, and did I mention they eat humans? (the smaller versions). Hence they invade earth, because their planet got destroyed - much like the story of Superman I guess? Of course Kurono saves the world, and the best part of this manga was the "Truth Room". Basically a third party alien that helped humans by giving them a complex technology to create Gantz, to be able to defeat the Cannibalistic aliens. In this truth room, where they asked the aliens (somewhat a God), the truth about human nature, the answers were that humans meant nothing but flesh - and they enacted the creation of muscle and bone and also destroyed it in an instant to show that we are just walking tissue. When asked about "the human soul" the took the approach of life cycle however truncating the punishment of Karma. They regarded the soul as 21 grams of data that gets transferred into another body in another life of a person around us. Again, almost a similar take home message as Parasyte but through a different approach - We all need to eat to survive, however some of us need different things to eat. Are we monsters then? If you kill us because we eat you, than does that make you a monster too? I loved this manga!
Trouble Everyday
I'm sorry, but due to the graphic content, I don't wanna put any pics here haha. You can go watch it yourself. Its really a conincidence that the first three things - the anime, the manga and this French movie is all talking about cannibalism. Sorry! hahaha. Probably I'm attracted to this conflict, not that I like the human flesh or anything okay! Its just that I like to get different perspective of life, even from humans who think differently from us. Did I mention this is a french movie? I think that already explains a lot. French psychos beat Koreans hands down.
Well, this movie is about sexual cannibalism, as in after they have sex, they kill and eat them. Like literally. Its like the real version of vampires, but less of the blood drinking and more of blood bath and more focused on the kill. The lead actress' acting was really really really good. It almost seemed like she was a real psychiatric patient. So in this story there were two couples. In the first couple, the wife is the cannibal, the husband is a doctor-researcher who tries to find a cure for her psychological disease. In couple number two, the husband is the cannibal, but he is too egoistic to let the wife know about it (duhh). But in both cases, the cannibals do not harm the person they love the most. During some camp or something, guy cannibal meets girl cannibal and they sorta fall for each other due to the similarities of sickness. Eventually however, the mind of the female cannibal deteriorated faster than expected and she is killed. She has totally given in to the canniballistic side of her. Her very loving husband (but arrogant because he thinks he can find a cure) always cleans her up and helps her with the body dumping. I think that part was kinda touching that he never gave up on her. He basically keeps her locked up at home while he works in the lab, but she always finds a way out. When he comes home and finds her not there, he knows where to find her - because she kills at the same location every time.
She is a total psychiatric (deserving to be hospitalized for life) patient who is unable to take care of herself. So after every bloodshed her husband will clean her up :( In couple number two, the wife is miserable because she can never satisfy him sexually. Her husband (the guy cannibal) is afraid, as he gets aroused he might want to kill her, so every time she makes a move, he refrains. He then goes out for a kill, to let off the steam. In both cases, the movie only shows us one pure kill bloodshed scene (one for each couple). The movie ends with the wife finding blood drops in the shower (as in she finds out he killed someone). While the take home message isn't exactly similar although its talking about cannibalism too, this movie was slightly bent towards focusing of the extent of love. What would you do, if you husband/wife was really sick? Not terminally ill. This is worse. Terminally ill is terminal - the end is near. Will you give up on them? or will you hospitalize them if the can be hospitalized? What will you do, when you find out your husband has sex and kills them after - on top of that, he needs a taste of flesh from them every now and then - throughout your marriage life? Do you run or do you try to save them? What about if you were the cannibal, would you have the guts to confess? Very thought provoking movie. I loved it!
Three Extremes
This is made up of three short films. The first was directed by someone I have never heard before this - Fruit Chan (a Hong Kong director). The second was directed by the one and only (My favorite Korean director), Park Chan-Wook. The third was a director of which I've watched plenty of movies from, but just could never totally get a grasp of his POV - Takashi Miike.
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| Dumpling - the first short film |
This was basically a very miserable wife trying to impress her husband because the husband is getting "love" elsewhere. She somehow thinks its because of her looks. Hence she seeks out someone who guarantees her that her secret recipe Dumplings can do the trick. At first this wife doesn't know, but eventually finds out that the secret ingredient were miscarried fetuses. When she found out, she gagged a little, but then made her way back to eating it. I guess the take home message is simple, the fact that humans can go down low to get what they want - even when it doesn't make sense. This short film was rather disappointing because the supposedly shock factor (fetus) was revealed to us at the very beginning. Sigh.
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| Cut - the second short film |
This was my favorite - probably because I'm already biased towards Park Chan-Wook. The main actor, acted in I saw the Devil, A Bittersweet Life, G.I Joe, Red 2, and more but I only watched these of his movies he acted in. Well, I really need to know his name. I keep calling him the bittersweet guy hahaha! His name is Lee Byung-Hun. This is about a director, who is in conflict with himself. All his life, he was a good guy - or at least he felt he was compelled to be so. Apparently both of them (he and his wife) cheated on each other. At one point in life, which is that scene in the movie, he snaps because he is tired of being the good guy and tries to be bad instead, and kills his wife and child. However, this entire short film was directed through the projection of his alter ego doing the killing, and the good part of himself, being tied down by a metaphorical red cloth. Before the kills, his ego and alter-ego converse deeply about whether he has actually did anything bad in his life. Even his affair with another woman seemed to be a reciprocation due to his wife's affair. I guess the take home message here is pretty straightforward too. We exist both as good and bad. Suppressing either one of them too much, leads to the "withdrawal" of some sort. If you try to be too good, one day you will snap and do something so scary; something you yourself could have never imagined.
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| Box - the third short film |
To be honest, I didn't get this story at all at first. But after my very passionate housemate tried reading up the reviews and interpretation of this movie I sort of got it? I usually don't blog if I don't get it, because I don't want to re-blog other people's reviews. That's why I don't read movie/book reviews before I make my own so that it doesn't influence me. However since I have begun talking about Three Extremes, I shan't leave this one out. Takashi Miike successfully made my brain miserable again. Hahaha. Sorry to compare, but Park Chan-Wook makes is it complex, just enough to be able to enjoy it. Takashi takes it a little bit further, off my level of comprehension. Perhaps when I have different life experiences, and as I age more I'll be able to see clearer. Basically its about the difficulties faced by conjoined twins, or Siamese twins. It never really occurred to us how two very different individuals with different brains while sharing a same body, have to suffer living their lives. Especially when it comes to love. At times, one wishes the other to be dead, but the matter of fact is, one cannot exist without the other - literally. The way it was directed was dream and reality sequences, and the final part of the movie was the reality. If I'm not mistaken it was three levels deep. Pardon my memory, I was freeing up space for exams, hahahaha! Inception had five, but Nolan had the courtesy to inform us we were getting into dreams and then confused us later. Takashi, he kinda just slept off first and woke up later :( If you are going to watch this although you have read my spoilers, look out for the colour indicators (clothes), it differentiates the different dream levels!
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| Blood |
Finally, yesterday I finished watching Blood. This drama, is the first drama where I actually started watching when it started, and went along with the weekly release. The last few episodes I didn't watch, so I just recently caught up with them. Vampirism is a genre that I really love. I think if you know me well, you would know that by now. Usually there are three approaches to Vampirism. One, the sexual cannibals - like Being Human series, where they literally have some sort of a prostitution center for vampires, where they come to have sex and drink blood, and the prostitutes that offer themselves there, kinda enjoys self-harm. See the win-win situation there? Omg. Hahaha! Second approach, is from the view of addiction - like Vampire Diaries, and most of the vampire shows out there. Most directors wouldn't dare take the first approach, unless you're French. The need for something so bad, that you need to kill. The third being the futuristic approach where the idea is that Vampires are some sort of viral infection. This can be seen in movies like Thirst (2009) and this drama, Blood. Most of the vampires here were infected by a virus VBT-01, and vampires cannot procreate. However, the main character was the first pure breed. His mother came up with a drug called Atisan, which could suppress the cravings for blood. The villain's intent in this movie is to find a universal cure however his methods are unconventional, i.e disposing his test subject (humans) when his vaccines fail. This is eventually found out by the main character Park Ji-Sang. They all work in the same place, Taemin Cancer Hospital. The villain is convinced in his pursue to find the universal cure from the blood of vampires. For him, its okay to kill 100 to save millions. Sometimes, when you think about it, it may be true (hahahaha! Don't kill me). In the end of course, Ji-Sang kills the villain, and his (the villain) final words were :
"Angels make the world a beautiful place. But, changing the world is the work of the devil.
People speak of changing the world. I didn't want to become a hypocrite who speaks of change, but end up changing myself instead.
So I gave up on being human, and I became the devil.
This was my very best, I have no regrets or second thoughts."
There were plenty off eye-rolling moments for the love story - but I enjoy it anyway hahaha! Kinda fun sometimes :) Of course this drama had some tragic deaths, not that I wasn't anticipating any, but it was still sad when it happened. Overall this drama was okayy. Just fun. Not too deep, but still slightly thought provoking. If I really had the knowledge and ability, and I had to sacrifice a bunch for the greater good, would I do it? Is there a right way to do things? Is there a more appropriate channel for me to conduct my research? At one point, drug testing has to be tried on humans, what happens then? Will I become a hypocrite if I save the 100, but subconsciously truly know that this research could have been a success and we could have achieved immortality here and now?
That's it for today!! I'm tired of typing, trust me, hahaha! See you guys real soon :))
