Apocalypse How?

Browsing through the shelves of our local DVD rental store, I chanced upon a copy of "Apocalypse Now Redux" and had to see for myself why this film had cost $30M to make, Martin Sheen getting a heart attack, Francis Ford Coppola having a "nervous breakdown", Marlon Brando being paid $3M dollars for 3 weeks work, a typhoon destroying the set and importing a whole village of Ifugaos to play the Montagnards in the movie. For one thing, being a "redux", this edition had additional scenes previously cut from the original movie. Like the dreamlike French Plantation sequence, with the river fog (or was it smoke?) providing a surreal atmosphere and the love scene between Willard and the French widow complete with mosquito nets! Now that's romantic. Moving on, as described by Michael Mann ( director of Miami Vice, Heat, The Insider) "Coppola made the ephemeral dynamics of the mass psyche's celebratory nihilism, its self-destructive urges and transience, concrete and operatic. A fabulous picture”.Whatever that meant. I think the dialogue best describes the movie: in the scene where Willard and Kurtz first meet, Kurtz tells him: "You're an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect the bill." Brilliant. Of course what best describes the film are the last words uttered by Kurtz: "The horror.The horror."Was he pertaining to the Vietnam war as a whole or the nightmares Coppola had to endure just to get this film released? If war pictures appeal to you and have a craving for "the smell of napalm in the morning" be sure to rent this one for the weekend.

Summer Bummer

While it is still officially the "rainy" season here in Japan, it has gotten quite hot and humid that it already feels like summer. Having lived most of my life in the tropics, I don't have the right to complain about the heat in a more temperate country like Japan.However, during the height of summer, one yearns for the colder days of December and would constantly pray to keep the electric bills from skyrocketing because of the constant use of the airconditioner. Fireworks season would be upon us, wearing our summer yukatas and getas to watch "hanabi" among the throngs of overzealous citizens of Fukuoka.

P.S. I recently went back to Osaka and re-explored Kyoto. I got to see the Inari Shrine which figured prominently in a recent Hollywood film depicting the life of a japanese woman who entertained for a living...hint..hint.