Zatôichi

Went to see the film Zatôichi today on the insistence of one of my friends. I'd never heard of it before, but it appears to have won several major awards - Best Film at Sundance this year. The film is about the Masseur Zatôichi who wanders the Japan of old, avenging the oppressed. He's blind (of course!) and yet manages prevent all types of attack. It deserves the 18 rating as there is a lot of gruesome violence, especially noticeable is the quantity of blood continually spurting out of the victims. I think at some point someone was a bit overzealous with the CGI perhaps. The best thing for me though was the music; I can't wait for the soundtrack. The movie sounds like a fusion of 19th Century traditional Japanese music with some New York hip-hop of the 1990's. Throughout the majority of the film I could have just imagined some DJ slapping a thumping bass line under whatever plucking treble was on at that time to create a 'phat' dance tune. If you see it, best of all is the amazing tap dance esque final sequence where most of the cast dances along.
It's violent, but also funny. It' clearly funny in a Japanese way - there are no verbal jokes, the humour being much more of a take it or leave it style. You may get what they're doing - though some may not even realise that something was supposed to be funny.

And I only got to see half the movie - I'd been caught in a 'Security Alert' that closed down the whole of the city centre. Literally - wherever you were, it must have been at least a square mile area locked down. I still loved the film.