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My thoughts go out to the families of those involved in the Russian school tragedy. I cried at the horrible images of depraved slaughter, of the classrooms where the killers executed the defenseless hostages and of the unimaginable grief of those left behind.
This morning, I noticed two letters in the local newspaper that starkly exposes the dichotomy in people responses: One letter, full out outrage, dismisses the perpetrators as animals and “some ancient subspecies of humanity.” The other letter was full of sadness and reflected upon man’s capacity for unspeakable evil. My sympathies lie with the latter; we do not need any more object lessons to remind us that it is homo sapiens alone who is capable of evil. Mankind invented the gas chamber, the killing field, the mass grave. Animals don’t torture, take hostages or enslave. To believe otherwise is to risk placing our own morality beyond criticism and to lose an important moral absolute.
Rather than venting my disgust regarding the now-announced election campaign, let me tell you about the movies that I have seen in the last couple of weeks:
I, Robot. Being a fan of the stories of Asimov, I approached this film with extreme trepidation. Hollywood has destroyed many great science fiction works, sucking any depth and engaging ambiguity away in a high-budget flourish of special effects and soulless team script writing. My fears were partially borne out in this film - there wasn’t a whole lot of sub-plot, despite some absolutely golden opportunities to develop it. To be fair, it was reasonably faithful to Asimov’s style - an enjoyable, if straightforward, detective story with the requisite twist at the end. The special effects were appealing and weren’t overdone, the acting wasn’t terrible and there were a few precious moments where it operated above the literal. 7.5/10
Zatoichi. I missed this at MIFF, but was fortunate enough to get a DVD brought back from overseas by my good brother. Zatoichi was written and directed by Takeshi Kitano, and follows a long series of novels and similarly-named movies produced in the 1960′s. This film is another example of the tangled symbiotism between national film industries - the story of Zatoichi started in Japan, jumped continents to the USA in the form of Blind Fury and has now been reclaimed by Japan. The story is of the blind Samurai / Masseur Zatoichi, who kicks the ass of the oppressive and cruel crime families who rule a town. Pretty standard stuff, but very enjoyable in its deft execution. What really made this film special was the attention to audio cues and gags - the sonic evolution of modern cinema seems to have been focused more on increasing the fidelity of foley sounds, rather than innovations in their use. There are a couple of disappointing aspects to this film: the CG blood effects were a little incongruous and overdone. Also, there was this very strange dancing scene at the end that didn’t work at all. Don’t let that stop you, it is good fun and good cinema. 8/10