Hal went through the trouble of making me a soup - pea soup with the ham bone left over from New Year's dinner. Pea soup's one of my favorites, so it broke my heart to not be able to taste what I think must be a wonderful first attempt. Though he doesn't relish the process as I do (often jokes about eating spaghetti-os in a can standing over the sink "to save time"), I do believe that he is a better cook than I am, so I like to be supportive of his efforts.
Tasteless soups, boxes of wasted tissues and menthol drops aside, it wasn't too terrible a weekend. I managed to weave in the ends of a mohair/pearl cotton scarf I knitted up during the car trip. Lots of cat naps were taken, plenty of films were watched. Hal indulged me with some chambara (Had to get my Nakadai itch scratched, this time with the delightfully named Kill!, a surprisingly not-nihilist and funny film about a yakuza working off some karma.)
Nakadai (right) as the former Samurai teams up with Etsushi Takahashi (left), a farmer who aspires to becoming a Samurai in Kill!: an unlikely pair in a surprisingly feel-good film with a Spaghetti-western soundtrack.
A more angelic-looking Nakadai in Kobayashi's Kwaidan, where he plays a young woodcutter whose beauty causes even a spirit to take flesh to be near him.
We also watched the opening credits and final fight scene in Samurai Spy, Shinoda's way-twisty (and slightly farfelu) ninja story set towards the end of the period between Sekigahara and the Toyotomi clan's final stand against the Tokugawa. There's plenty of samurai eye-candy, however, between Tetsuro Tamba(*sigh* as a leper in a silly white outfit he still rings my bell) and Eiji Okada (who became a sex symbol in France for his roll in Hiroshima, Mon Amour), not to mention a delicious, Cuban-inspired soundtrack by Takemitsu.
No comments:
Post a Comment