I watched this documentary (on Netflix) about how each episode of South Park is made in just six days. Really fascinating, especially for anyone in a creative profession. Also has some great flashbacks to some of the early seasons of South Park, which made a Chicxulub-sized impression on my friend group in 6th grade.

Here’s the trailer for Hana-bi (1997). Written, Directed, Edited and Starring “Beat” Takeshi Kitano. Hana-bi is a bleak movie. Kitano’s Nishi, a brilliant, still-waters-run-deep good-cop detective, is stuck in a sea of grief — his best friend is injured on a case and is paralyzed; a fellow cop is killed and he blames himself; his wife, still reeling from the death of their child, develops leukemia — and unable to move on — his best friend lives a miserable, broken existence; he continues to support his dead co-worker’s family; he visits his wife in the hospital and they both sit, silently, not looking at each other.

In talking to ‘Ili about the film, I feel he cut right to the heart of it when he said that it “looks and feels so empty and bleak, yet he tells a whole story through the editing.” It really is through Kitano’s editing that the film comes alive. As I said earlier, the film is an extended meditation on the nature of grief. The stories of Nishi and his partner, Hirobe, are intercut as they both try to process their grief and move on with their life after some serious, awful traumas. ‘Ili again: “Nishi deals with [grief] by destroying, Horibe deals with it by creating. Kitano deals in really shocking violence, but Hana-bi especially kind of makes me wonder what he actually thinks about it. If any of his films had a ‘this is not the way’ statement, it’s that one.”

I’ll close this out with a quote ‘Ili found from an interview with Kitano:

I think my way of showing violence is different from that of other filmmakers. When I show it, it hurts. I don’t want people to think it’s just a game, because violence is painful. I’m often asked whether I like violence, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. If you compare my films to something like Die Hard, the death toll in my films is pretty low.

Kitano is a personal favorite of both ‘Ili and myself; if you want to see cinema pushed to its absolute limits, you’d be hard pressed to find someone doing that more adroitly than Kitano.

Here’s the trailer for “A Few Dollars More”. I rewatched it recently and was blown away yet again by the amazing photography. I’m still up in the air on the plot. On the one hand, it’s complex and twisty and yet all the characters navigate through it with consistent motivations. On the other hand it may be so complex that it leaves little room for subtext.

In any case, this is a minor quibble. There’s enough interesting going on, visually, to make every subsequent viewing a chance to catch something new. This time around I noticed how smoking is frequently mapped to when a character is lying or otherwise fronting. Not an uncommon cinematic trope but it’s deployed a lot here.

One great scene for that is when Lee Van Cleef’s character and Clint Eastwood’s character are talking for the first time. I won’t spoil anything but just take careful note of when each character is smoking and not smoking.

Definitely one to look for on Blu-Ray.