Tuesday, January 4, 2011

LAID UP


Branded to Kill (1967)
dir: Seijun Suzuki

I am currently pretty laid up with some serious flu-like symptoms, including but not limited to: my entire body feeling like i just got soap-socked by a roided-out battalion of drunken Chetnik soldiers, the inability to spend less than 2o minutes on the toilet at a time (usually with 3 to 5 minutes between trips) and the dried-out corn husk sensation of having spent the entirety of what should have been my always appreciated beauty slumber clutching onto sweaty pillows (and my REM-ed out, oblivious girlfriend) while desperately trying to keep tabs on the many ridiculous mental conversations that I was having with nonexistent characters from multiple fever dreams. Ironic, then, that my last act as a well man was to immerse my then-reasonable brain into the cinematic fever dream that is Seijin Suzuki's Branded to Kill. If you've ever read Chris D.'s "Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film" then you are already aware that Suzuki is an outlaw master of japanese film. But if you've never had the pleasure of checking out this film then you may not be aware that it features: a man urinating unbelievably casually onto a woman's face, the same man constantly demanding a fresh pot of boiling rice to smell, and poisonous butterfly slaves. To say much more would be to rob you of your own journey of cinematic discovery, and that's what SPOILERS are for. Just know that you are in for a treat, unlike myself as I valiantly struggle to type out the final few words of this paragraph with sweating fingers, nothing other than a mucus membrane of questionable authority preventing my bed from receiving a drastic and tragic change of color scheme.

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