adrian

Unsympathetic, Jun 25 2003

I didn't care for this book all that much. First, her adolescent experience as an immigrant to Canada seems heavily covered over by later-acquired learning in the philosphy of structuralism, semiotics, etc, all very fashionable nowdays. The book has more the feel of a post-mortem analysis than a personal memoir, and in trying to be both it fails on both levels.

Second, I didn't find her a sympathetic character, because she herself seemed to have so little sympathy for others: Canadians were boring, dull, undemonstrative; North-American teenage life superficial; the local Jewish community obsessed with status and the notion of 'better' or 'worse' people. etc. I got the feeling of her… Read more

The Bullring of Love, May 27 2003

By now everyone knows this film is about a sexually-obsessed woman who strangles and then cuts off her lover's willie (the extent to which her lover shared in the extremety of her obsession is somewhat debatable...). That notwithstanding, the film is well-acted, visually stylish, and manages to convey a genuine feeling for the passion which drove the characters. It's also succinct (at 96 minutes) and has some fabulous sex scenes.

The real-life case of 'Abe Sada' (Abe is the family name) was very well known in Japan, occurring almost 40 years before Oshima made this film. There are at least two other cinematic versions of the events. If anything, reality was even a bit stranger than… Read more

The Carpenters on depressants, with a canadian accent, Mar 13 2003

The Poppy Family's stock-in-trade was the wistful ballad sung by a female vocalist -- you could think of them as a sort of Carpenters on depressants.

Being Canadian, they were perhaps not as well known Stateside as they were north of the border (where they received endless airplay due to 'CRTC' rules stipulating that a certain percentage of songs played on the radio must be by Canadian artists, of whatever quality). I remember moving to the US in around 1972 to find that almost no American had ever heard of them -- I had just assumed that US stations were playing them about 15 times a day too.

In any case, The Poppy Family were (and remain) a refreshing change from the insipid,… Read more