When NOIR is War, Noir is Hell-Post World War II Japan Noir Film Festival 2014

This is the year of Noir International. Eddie Muller, the producer & curator of this increasingly successful genre film festival, featured two films from Post World War II Japan. Both of them were directed by the legendary Akira Kurosawa. There was no clean-up, no tidying of the Post War mess, no candy-coating. The background of black marketing, dysfunctional public heath issues, and lack of basic supplies to support ordinary day-to-day functions are reflected in a pool of stagnant water that becomes a constant & silent reference point in the film DRUNKEN ANGEL.

Eddie Muller, writer, film curator, producer, lecturer, visionary: the man who put Noir on the preservationists/restorationist map, and now has taken the concept to higher & international levels each year since the Noir Festival started 12 years ago. Castro Theatre, San Francisco, January 2014

Takashi Shimura plays an alcoholic physician, who needs to abide by the ancient Western proverb of “Physician heal thyself.” His bedside manner is as atrocious as the background in which he must do his best to patch together the broken people of his broken country. Despite his appearance & mannerisms, he is the Angel of Life, trying to bring life to those who are pretty, but in worse physical & emotional condition than he is. Toshiro Mifune, is caught up in a chaotic world of crime & avarice, soon to be doomed by his inability to follow doctors orders & treat his tuberculosis appropriately. Instead, he drinks, smokes, and slugs his way through an underground culture in order to ‘save face’ and prove his worth. It was a struggle from which he could not emerge victorious–and we see the loss of potential, the potential that Japan so much-needed, go to waste, as he throws his life way in the sludge that had, at that time, become the world of a defeated nation.

YOU TUBE DOUBLE OF DRUNKEN ANGEL:Film 1948 & Song by Lucinda Williams from Car Wheels On A Gravel Road 1998

Stray Dog, 1949-also directed by Akira Kurosawa & Starring Toshiro Mifune.

This film is more closely associated with & influenced by the American Noir experience. The emphasis is less upon the Post War infrastructure, and more upon a rookie cop who has had his gun pickpocketed while on public transit. In that respect, those from New York & San Francisco can more easily relate to the overcrowded conditions & the ‘cell mates’ with which we must endure in close quarters on a daily basis. In keeping with Noir, the rookie cop goes on a search for the person who lifted his heater, only to unintentionally go deeper & deeper into an underground cesspool of crime, vice, passion, and vengeance. The gun in question has recently begged re-examination of the issue/question of do guns kill people or do people use guns to kill people? It’s clear that our love affair with Noir embraces guns, but do we want guns to embrace us? (Remember: “It’s a bitter, little world.”)!
Let’s ask the National Rifle Association to embrace Columbine & ask the perennial question: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Depart from the Film & Listen to Petula Clark, then continue…

YOU TUBE MONTAGE FROM STRAY DOG-edited for horror mode-1949

SAN FRANCiSCO STREET DRUGS!

The street drug market in San Francisco is upgrading, not to be outdone by gentrification, the branding aspect is being looked at with great enthusiasm by sellers, buyers, and users….High-end rustic is the new red, and beautiful containers for one’s brand of choice make it easy to find your way to better living through chemistry.

Ugly & environmentally harmful plastic bags just won’t suffice to serve your drug needs in upscale better living through chemistry.

A LOAD OF CRAP FROM TOBACCO INDUSTRY: STEALTH, LIES & DEATH!

How many more people have to suffer through the horrors of lung cancer due to tobacco addiction before this is brought to an end?

Every tobacco field should be turned into a forest, for the protection & nurturing of wildlife, not for a new Walmart parking lot.

The tobacco industry should pay for all the medical & funeral expenses for anyone who dies of lung cancer.

The tobacco industry should pay to retrain their employees in wildlife management.

The tobacco industry should voluntarily go out of the business of death, and invest their money in the business of life, becoming stewards of the planet, rather than promoters of its destruction. The growing of tobacco strips the land of precious forests & destroys the lungs of precious people.

Once this is accomplished, then guns & swords can be turned into instruments of healing. These ideas are not new, not original with me–but the obnoxious signs that I saw brought out these thoughts & here they are, in their unvarnished state.

The tobacco industry is right up there with Monsanto–killers, murderers–maybe not in a violent mode, but certainly we all feel the loss that they have inflicted upon us for generations.

It is time for this insanity to stop. It is time for mending to start.

A sunflower on a box of poison? Isn’t it supposed to be a skull & crossbones? What lies these rotten corporations put forth! If a corporation is the same as a person, then they are guilty of libel, false information, intentionally misleading people. People go to jail for this, why not the managers of these corporations?

If you want to get clarification about your murderers, contact them! If you want them to go away, tell them! They have provided the information, use it wisely…

Let’s add insult to injury–E cigarettes?

There are thousands of amoral people who are investing money in this industry which will end up killing countless numbers of people. Your lungs were not intended to be chimneys. They were intended to bring you the breath of life, to sustain you, to enable you to thrive. Any product like this causes biological compromise & will eventually ruin your health.

Who Ho? Ho Who? Wendy Ho! HOw Things Just Go Wrong!

Last night was not for the faint of heart, or the art of paint. It was for the part all of us that needs a clean dirty laugh. Mae West once said, “It’s hard to be funny if you gotta’ be clean.” We got sort of low down & went straight to the filth & rolled in it! It was huge fun–made turning 38 seem pointless, so I added a few more years for extra credit, sort of like how you’d do a school audit back in Indiana. That Tony Bennett (not the same one) did not leave any heart in this city. Why Indiana people like to go to Florida & do the same stuff they do in Indiana always was beyond me.

But back to Wendy Ho. I tried to tell her that I am her mother, had her on an airplane over Detroit airspace & I have just transitioned a whole lot since then. They took her away from me, being that I was clearly an unfit parent, and she was adopted by the hamburger Wendy’s man, and he named them after her. She just won’t believe me when I tell her all about her past. It’s a good thing, because I only tell her the nice stuff. I left out about the parts about being a drug addicted infant, did not want to cause any further trauma. But she got really good at the purse thing & is making a living. That’s good, Wendy! We got a public toilet that is supposed to have a Grand Opening–I hope you can make it when I cut the ribbon. But they still don’t have electricity. We know you don’t have to have PG&E for that, but it helps to be able to see who you are trying to get away from…

SING IT WENDY!

Delighted & surprised to see my other daughter, Wendy. I haven’t had the nerve to tell her about this yet.

SHE LIKES TO SING ABOUT HER WORK…& HER COLLECTIONS

You can’t go around with junky looking purses. They have to look good!

If there are electronic cigarettes…There will be lung damage

Then is there electronic cancer & electronic addiction & electronic emphysema? There must also be electronic bowel movements for every bit of profit these damned things generate. I would use a few swear words, but I don’t know any electronic ones.

This whole concept is just wired for stupidity, it shocks me, gives me a jolt, so to speak, that there is a fancy-assed company trying to make an electronic buck out of people’s weaknesses. It just makes me want to take a non-electronic dump on whatever American Greed entity who has used such methods of madness in order to tap into the wallets of the poor. These rotten asses even go so far as to make it appear that they are doing something good for the air. Look at their manipulative branding? aer, now, who’d a thought of this? And the pretty clouds, pale blue, pristine air, or aer, er, ah, ugh! How cynical can you get? Doubtless their marketers cleverly use every bit of Social Media @ their disposal. Well, to them, a human life is disposable, anyway, if you follow this type of marketing logic. No collateral damage, no profit, right?

There can’t be laws for everything, but give me some ethics, and please don’t make them electronic.

My dear friend, Princess Melita Bonaparte, wants every acre of land devoted to growing tobacco to be turned into sustainable forests. She thinks it would improve the quality of the air we breath, and might make a dent into some of these dreadful tornadoes that seem to be taking such a huge toll on the Middle West. I haven’t got the heart to tell her that some big corporation is probably working at developing an electronic forest. I just can’t stand to spoil her illusions. If she keeps at it, she might win a Nobel Peace Prize, but would it be an electronic one?

Best thing to do is just skip cigarettes, electric or otherwise. Give yourself credit, you don’t need this product. You need a forest, in fact, you need as many forests as we can get. So, don’t give your money over to this horrible idea, this dreadful product.

If you buy this, you will buy anything. Please don’t buy this. Support forests, even if you can’t tell a tree from a forest, that’s fine. At least your confusion will be healthy for all living things!