Bill Randall

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Finally watching Ozu’s Equinox Flower reminded me that David Bordwell’s Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema has been reissued as a PDF file. Bordwell has the story on his blog, which bizarrely enough has stills from… Equinox Flower. I feel strangely reflexive.

The book is one of the best pieces of criticism, film or otherwise, that I know; download it and see for yourself. It goes for like 500 bucks on eBay, so help destroy the collector’s market.

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As usual, late to the party:

In Washington, D.C. at the Japan Information and Culture Center at the Japanese Embassy. The road from unruly kids’ stuff to Official Culture, it seems, takes less than 53 years.

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GeGeGe no Kitaro just reminded me of an old GeroGeriGeGeGe 7″ I have lying around. I don’t even own an record player. 45 rpm, 11 incomprehensible bursts of noise. Which reminds me of this photo slide show of Osaka noise band Hanatarashi’s most infamous live gig. “The backhoe show.” Did he hotwire it? Where were the cops? In 1986 Tokyo had no foreigners, and so no need for cops.

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And: my Japanese is eroding quickly. Reading Kamimura Kazuo today, I thought Jiro said to Kyoko, “Kyoko! Give me a toilet! Quickly!” Really, he wants a towel.

I have a deadline coming up, for a long essay on Drawn & Quarterly’s Summer ‘08 release of Seiichi Hayashi’s Red Colored Elegy (”Sekishoku Erejii”), now open for preorder. The book, first serialized in GARO from 1970-71, far outstrips contemporary U.S. undergrounds in narrative sophistication. It focuses on a young couple living in sin, but the action’s all in Hayashi’s oblique storytelling and graphic range. Its appearance in English is some kind of milestone, and D&Q’s edition is a good one. To whet your appetite, links & images:

First, Seiichi’s bio on D&Q’s maddening web page.

Second, YouTube video of the hit song inspired by the comic. I weep nostalgic tears for the Showa Era, thanks to Morio Agata’s haunting melody.

Finaly, a handful of (grayscale, sorry) pages from the Japanese edition, showing Hayashi’s range, storyboard-like layouts, and Tsuge influence:

Apparently comics artist Kazuo Umezu’s house may remain a candy cane.

His neighbors had sued to stop him, but the judge ruled in his favor. Libertarianism might yet take hold in the collectivist isles. Umezu, old enough not to care, has shirts, umbrellas, even a floor totally decked out in stripes. Why? He’d never seen such a thing before. Neither had his neighbors.  Which raises the question: upon what exactly does a Japanese neighborhood association frown? Since bizarre Japanese architecture’s practically a worldwide cliche. It doesn’t take Kisho Kurokawa to turn in the likes of this house of fugu:

But it’s in an entertainment district. Perhaps this typically boxy residential neighborhood’s more to their liking. This from around Mt. Koya, where Umezu & I used to live (not together, or in the same decade). Neither its charming dumpiness, nor the local Shingon Buddhist monks, explain why Umezu turned to candystriping as an affront to the place.

Which raises another question: what did the neighbors do when PL (Perfect Liberty, an Osaka-based new religion) planted their headquarters in sleepy Tondabayashi? When it looks like a spaceship that flew to the earth from a far-off star and promptly melted?

(orig. report seen via Tom Spurgeon; Japanese report & photo from Sponichi Annex; point-n-click snapshots mine)

I am a columnist for The Comics Journal, the oft-cranky, oft-praised magazine of record for comics criticism. My Best of 2007 will appear in an early 2008 issue, thanks to the vagaries of print publishing.

So I figured I’d share my best from the last year, originally published in the March 2007 TCJ.

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