Sleepless (2001)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6a/Sleepless_(2001_film).jpeg

Dir. Dario Argento

First of all, after Opera (1987), my viewing of the films of Dario Argento has been spotty with a few gaps. Yet to see Mother of Tears (2007), haven't seen Trauma (1993), The Phantom of the Opera (1998) and Dracula 3D (2012). Aside from this, I've seen all the important films of his. All there is left, beyond those mentioned above, is the obscurer works. If a drop of quality has taken place, it's not the horrible downward spiral that I've heard others describe his career as having become. Instead it's a wider issue, beyond even Italy's genre cinema having declined taking its toll on his aesthetic rigor, but horror cinema in general being underused. This issue is in fact part of cinema in general, regardless of there being a climb or decline within it. If you can make a film fully through how you desired it to be, it'll be a miracle. A director with films under their belt are not safe from outside factors. Less budgets, cheaper camera, popular tastes that'll date films etc. Argento is a working filmmaker, in a profession first, that involves for more production costs than other mediums, and is an auteur secondly through the fans and critics, us, that see his films. And there are also times when the audience may have missed something that wasn't an outside influence or necessarily bad either. Once having found quite a few of his films, on the first viewings, dull, which I openly confess to having thought before rewatching those specific films, I've had a more complicated experience in my admiration for the director's work, able to see his major work at least twice. Argento has always skirted the schlocky and absurd in his prime era of giallos and supernatural horror - hockey plots, out-of-the-blue plot twists, obvious special effects. His films are legitimately great because of his style and that he can take these potential flaws in any other director's work and clearly embrace them in a baroque tone intentionally. And it's clear how deliberate it can be as well.

He would have seen having his protagonists be amateur sleuths in trying to solve murder cases, over the police, as fantastical in nature, but it's clearly done on purpose and I cannot help but think of the suspense of disbelief that exists in genre, especially crime stories. Unfortunately the virtues of suspending disbelief and embracing the clearly unrealistic has been lost on me for some time before now. It's also been lost in a lot of genre cinema. I blame the desire for realism and logic in narratives for having done this, even though both of them are mythical creatures in films purporting to be documents of reality. To embrace suspension of disbelief, which finds its biggest reservoir within the pulpiest of works, knowing flagrant in realism, is to intentionally enjoy films (or books, games etc.) that play within their own made-up realities. Even The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970), Argento's debut and most restrained work, has absurdities within it. Then he eventually went as far as having a monkey welding a razor blade in a film a decade later and likely knew how ridiculous it was. The Bird With The Crystal Plumage and The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971) were films I liked on the first viewing, and the likelihood was that they are the most streamlined and less-tangent filled films by him. After ...the Crystal Plumage, the films became more and more expanded, more tangent filled and clearly breaking to pieces the narratives they had on purpose and probably from the haphazard nature of many Italian genre cinema of the time. The most obvious example of this, was Deep Red (1975) and its extended screwball comedy sequences with David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi; the fact that most of it was removed from the shorter English language release of the film more than likely altering how viewers would react to his film, not seeing how tongue-in-cheek and peculiar he actually was. Plots in his films were lurid and not logically rigorous, more inclined to the spectacle of pulp, Four Flies From Grey Velvet (1971) getting its title from a scientifically impossible concept to catch the killer straight from sci-fi or Victorian gothic literature. If there was a peak for this expanding and divisive excess it was undoubtedly the eighties. Inferno (1980) is the most abstract film of his, Opera pulls the carpet under its viewers' feet, and Phenomena (1985) is clinically insane. And that's not discussing the use of Iron Maiden and Saxon in the mid and late eighties films.

From http://projectdeadpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Sleepless2.png

A film like Giallo (2009) still carries the hallmarks of this auteur. As does The Card Player (2004), The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) and, returning to the film of this review, Sleepless. I don't see a sudden damnation in mediocrity to the pit of the worst of cinema fans have proclaimed it to be with him. Filmmaking, even from an outsider who hasn't picked up a camera, is such a chaotic, arbitrary bastard of a career to be an artisan in when public taste, money and resources are variable and have such a drastic effect on the final product. Those who've been championed in horror cinema especially have been just as effected by this - see John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, George Romero and so forth. Add European directors like Jess Franco, whose career was a roller coaster. Or go further, and beyond just horror films, like with Takashi Miike, a self proclaimed working director who, at one point making five films in a year, is clearly dependant on making films to live and has to do so by following what he will be able to work on, which is something I am having to accept with my disappointment with his later mainstream films. Auteurs or people with unconventional ideas are a pain in the arse for producers to work with, and as new talent exists, older veterans have ended up being ignored. A director who can keep a rich filmography usually works with whatever their budget is, even if its low, and is the equivalent of the mad lord isolated in a tower by themselves, sustained by those who've cared to listen to them. Yes, Argento and many director are countable for some really bad ideas in their weaker films - Adrian Brody's wonky accent(s) in Giallo for starters - but it's probably hell to get these productions off the ground let alone with little compromise. We forget as viewers it's a job, which can be as arbitrary as any other job we have, paid or unpaid.

A series of murders from 1983 have seemed to begin again many years later. The killer was said to have been a man with dwarfism, yet the fact that he apparently committed suicide, and the newest killings follow the originals' traits exactly, suggests that this was likely wrong. The son of one of the original victims Giacomo Gallo (Stefano Dionisi) is brought back to Turin, reacquainting himself with a crush of his past and intending to find out who actually killed his mother. Also brought back in is the original detective of the case Ulisse Moretti, played by the legendary Max Von Sydow, long retired but bringing himself into the case again as memories and his desire to close it too returns to him. The film's a throwback to Argento's first giallo films, less about who the killer turns out to be, but the labyrinth of the plotting. Giallo are more inclined to the notion of spectacle - the effect of the plotting, throwing its protagonists in the deep end, the gory deaths. It's a nasty film when it wants to be, a strange balance of cruelty and the absurd. Absurd is the right word. Argento has a clear bombastic ridiculousness to his work, sincere but winking. The same here. The spectacle of the first act, where a prostitute inadvertently gets involved with the killer and an incriminating blue file, shows the director's virtue of the elaborate. A prolonged set piece on a train. Two women involved. An inherent creativity to Argento that, dare say it, was found up to Giallo for all its failings. This is of course the film where Goblin, the Italian progressive rock band that created haunting scores for Argento's most well known films, came back together in some form to create another. The title theme sends shivers up the spine with the guitar lick that carries it, but again it proves great metaphor for an intentional, mischievous pomposity in Dario Argento's work. Music to shake the ground with but embracing excess like a starving man to food.

From http://www.mondo-digital.com/sleepless2big.jpg

The problem with Sleepless, if any, is not to do with the film's story or structure. His best work, including Suspiria (1977) and Inferno, is full of lengthy dialogue scenes and expedition. Odd tangents with no connection to the main plot. My original boredom with a lot of his films was because he got more excessive with this sort of thing, which I didn't go in expecting when I wanted lean, taught thrillers. The implausible nature, the lashings of said exposition, all the tangents, and it's clear, especially here, that Argento is in adoration of this as much as making the most stylish or tense work possible. I cannot but suspect, as we have scenes of Sydow by himself and his pet tropical bird figuring out old information on the murder case, explaining it to himself and us the viewers implausibly, that the director adores and fetishes the junky, over explained tones of a pulp paperback as much as their heightened tones and the mystery. Once you jettison the conventions of "good" narrative writing, it's obvious Argento loves the clearly implausible, the pointless, the all-the-sudden, the inane, and far from a detraction, it actually here is shown to be one of his best auteurist traits once you embrace it.

The real problem with this film is seeing how it occasionally looks daub visually. Thankfully this film has the style of the older films. But I have to get through the obvious flaw that, from around this point, and The Stendhal Syndrome, something was clearly an obsacle he put up as a director or outside groups forced upon him where his films lost their lustre from the past films. Not surprisingly it mirrors how  horror cinema became more and more obviously treated like the fast food of the medium, which effected many of the old auteurs' films. Yes, films were churned out in the days before I was born, but its feels even more obvious within the last few decades when directors known for distinct personalities in their work are minimal. Moments in this film, there are the troubling signs of how cheaper his films were becoming at least in look if not budget, clearly a compromise from the films of decades before. When you're a director known for style and elaborate camera movements, a restriction in making the films is not a good thing. The good news is that, while it would unfortunately begin to really undermine his films from The Card Player*, the style of the earlier films is still here, such as a lengthy tracking shot following along a carpet to an event that is magnificent. What has to bared in mind is that, when he started, Argento was working with Vittorio Storaro as his cinematographer, who the same year as The Bird With The Crystal Plumage did the same task with Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist. This is the same in other areas of the film's production, with Ennio Morricone as the composer. The older eras of horror cinema had a fluidity between actors to technicians switching between art and pulp cinema, particularly with Italy and Japan, without bias against either. Unfortunately Argento has to work with what he has now. With this film though he was still able to make material that shines. Considering the cinematographer for this film, Ronnie Taylor, shot his film Opera, it makes sense for the style to be there still. And of course, speaking of acting, there's Von Sydow. Sydow can leave any film with his stoic dignity shining through, as a great actor able to be good in even an awful film, as can be proved in seeing him in Judge Dread (1995) with Sylvester Stallone. The transition from Ingmar Bergman to his later films is surprising, but to bring his gravitas to this film was inspired, and in seeing him add conviction to the sillier aspects, proves why he's such a good actor. In fact no one is bad in the film in a jarring way to be honest. The cheesy English dubbing is far from the worst I've seen and still adds a lot; I'm endured much, much worse.

From http://hotdogcinema.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/sleepless-backstage.jpg

The modus operandi of the story is how a pretty nasty nursery rhyme penned for the film by Asia Argento, the director's daughter and actor/director in her own right, and from the very Grimm end of children's literature, infects someone enough to carry out a series of murders inspired by it against women. It's bizarre, but Argento has revealed in the bizarre plot ideas for four decades or so now. Taken seriously, as a director criticised for his violence, the notion of a work corrupting someone both returns back to the plot of Tenebrae (1982), and the result here becoming a playful nod to the more exaggerated of stories that does nonetheless reflects on this issue even for a lurid plot thread. Argento did consider the notion of the dangers of a piece of creative art at least with his work. The dwarf character blamed for the original murders becomes more of a tragic figure, ostracised for what he looked like when, frankly, the killers with the exception of Phenomena have been normal people hiding corrupted minds. And, without spoiling Phenomena, even that film is a lot more complicated, for an intentionally silly film, on that matter too. It says a lot of where the director/co-writer's heart lies in his preferred stories when this character is said to have been a pulp thriller writer who read aloud his latest creations gladly to the neighbouring children, the mix of the sick and the fun apparent especially here in Sleepless. Length and structure wise, the film does feel stretched, but it escalates quickly and, surprisingly, closes out its epilogue with end credits playing over the footage. Abrupt defiantly, but at the same time, it befits the material as much that it ends with the macabre jolt and soon after finishes so that it stays in mind.

It's unfortunate Dario Argento's work has dropped in quality over the years, but it's somewhat of a parody that, the further a director's career is, the more divisive and in danger of compromise it is. Its less that directors loss their creativity, too variable in individual cases for me, and I'd argue that with Argento, though he may be guilty in his compromise, that clearly the effect of less resources have plagued these films too. The circumstances to get these films made were likely to have had a drastic effect on what we would see. It's clear here as well that the intentionally silly and fun side of the man, even for the sadistic violence, was made more pronounced in a film like this. Maybe Giallo, with Adrian Brody sucking a whipped cream can nozzle at one point within it, was actually meant to be a comedy, and Argento wasn't covering his tracks? I'll see Dracula 3D when it's possible to acquire it, and be baffled by why a giant CGI mantis was included, but unless he has completely gone mad, I can't help but think he must have found that mantis people were able to see in a leaked production trailer to be funny as well as what he wanted for the scene. It comes apparent that, as well as the potential problems in making these films that is inherent in the industry, the knowing absurd of the man's work that has always been there has made itself more obvious as the films continue. As fans we've probably taken Argento's work too seriously in tone when they may have been ultraviolent romps in plot twists and abrupt surprises as Sleepless is. It makes complete sense of great moments from his first films that were nonetheless strange. He started with an extended dialogue scene whose punch line was that someone was sustaining themselves by raising cats to eat, and that should remind us of this side of the director that we've ignored, and realise its been in all the films he made afterwards.

Note: * Which makes no sense since Benoît Debie, of Spring Breakers (2013) and Enter the Void (2009), was the cinematographer. I'm baffled by this despite actually liking the film.

From http://www.dvdactive.com/images/reviews/screenshot/2009/7/sl2.jpg

A VIdeotape Swapshop Triple Bill: Ninja The Protector (1986)/Robo Vampire (1988)/Beauty and Warrior (2002)

From http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/z0FOVncOdJs/hqdefault.jpg

Dirs. Godfrey Ho/Joe Livingstone/Sukma Romadhon

The following three have a connective tissue to each other. An infamous director and two producers from Hong Kong that have all contributed to taking old films, adding ninjas to them and selling them to Western viewers. The first film is such a work, from Godfrey Ho, who has been covered on this blog before. Here one can find out what happens when a melodrama is mixed with an improvised action film. The next is miscredited to Ho, but can be fully confirmed to have the influence of producer Tomas Tang somewhere within it, who would work with Joseph Lai and Ho at times or at least share a credit on their work. Robocop (1987) as envisioned as the Tin Man fighting hopping vampires used by a drug cartel's guard dogs. As you'd usually expect from cinema. The final review is for what Lai's been doing long past the cut-and-paste ninja films; whether its based on true mythology or not I cannot tell, but its an excursion in the obscurest areas of animation that you can find produced. All together they are a testament to how unpredictable films can be regardless if they were made merely as product.

From http://www.hairballmedia.com/robo_vampire_4.jpg

Ninja The Protector Review - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19759/ninja-the-protector-1986-dir-godfrey-ho/

Robo Vampire Review - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19816/robo-vampire-1988-directed-by-godfrey-ho/

Beauty and Warrior Review - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19936/celluloid-wunderkammer-beauty-and-warrior-2002-director-sukma-romadhon/

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Tokyo Psycho (2004)

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Dir. Atara Oikawa

Strangely, as a bona fide cult film fan at this point, I'm not necessarily going to cheer on the low budget, straight-to-video and/or digitally shot genre movies. The simple reason is that I cannot stand the expected, that I desire great craftsmanship, inspiration, trappings of interest, something that makes a film distinct rather than another generic "crowd favourite". I will go as far as admire a mishap filmed on camera if it's different. Unfortunately this is rare in films regardless of their budget or what they're shot on, but low budget films have a terrible tendency to stay with the conventions, repeat a popular film again (from Halloween (1978) to Dawn of the Dead (1978)) in shoddy ways. Excluding my bias for Japanese cinema, of those low budget films from their country which are of interest, even the lowest budget and erratic ones have something of curiosity. First its clear that they look distinct from their Western counterparts - either the environments or even what cameras are used. Secondly, it's to the point I can differentiate between different strands in Japanese low budget cinema - those that encouraged experimental and personal filmmaking, the nineties video boom that helped bring the likes of Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa to the wide world, the Sushi Typhoon and splatter film from the late 2000s on that have been directed to Western cult film fans, and the uber-low budget works like the one I'm covering. And I've probably forgotten a few other key sub categories too. Thirdly, in general, there has always been a fluidity in Japanese genre films that allow them to stand out greater. A willingness to wander off from conventions and to do the unexpected even if they stay within the narrative structure. You can cross genres, the serious with the silly, the perverse with the normal, the technologically advanced with ancient customs. As I've dug deep into cinema from certain countries long enough, I've hit closer to a distinct tone to them unless they've been over influenced by the Hollywood aesthetics of now, even in the shambolic examples. Like with any other case it causes even a zombie film to be of potential interest when it's a Japanese film because it's the work of people with different outlooks to others bringing their own thoughts to it. I liked Tokyo Psycho knowing full well its drastically flawed and found wanting in places, for the fact of when its good and because of the above reasons.

While the cover itself is great in an unsettling way, the image and the tone its presenting doesn't really match to the actual film. It's suggests a splatter or extreme horror, especially with that title. ("Enjoy your Japanese splatter film..." was close to what the cashier said to me buying a second hand DVD, leading to a brief conversation about Miike and how he could stand everything except Visitor Q (2001)). Instead the film's more of a drama with a horror tone that grows as the plot moves along. It's a very dialogue heavy work despite still qualifying for its horror tag. Contrary to the unexplained opening sequence where a crazed woman wearing a surgical eye patch terrorises the protagonist through the post box slot of her apartment door, a lot of the film is horror in a dramatic sense that has the few moments of nastiness. A career woman is sent a sinister letter - chewed up, soiled, piano wire weaved into the paper - saying that she's only to marry the sender of it. The likelihood is that the sender was a mentally disturbed transfer student from her high school days who she brushed off, but unfortunately, while trying to juggle her everyday life to, it's becoming clear more than a single letter being sent is going to happen. The film could actually be taken up as a skewered take on the concept of marriage. The protagonist has no desire to marry, while her friend and co-worker reveals she's engaged. The stalker's desire to have the protagonist marry him is spurn from unenclosed desires, and there's a wraparound piece of a mother and daughter where all is not what it seems.  

The film, for all its potential flaws, was actually entertaining. I see it as an interesting blend of dramatics with schlocky horror which, with low, low expectations going into, only seeing it as someone who likes to search for obscure Japanese genre films, actually stood out. I cared for the characters and plot, and even now I remember aspects of it clearly more than films I tried to drill into my mind as being good which have fallen by the wayside badly. A film like this also emphasises the fact that, early on, I was taught that films, with exceptions, were all constructions and not reality. Actors performing on sets than leaving for the day. The danger that a day's shooting could be ruined if something gets in the way, and that during takes on intense scenes, the actress might be sat off-set talking on her Blackberry or drinking coffee as the killer eats a sandwich nearby. Lower budget works with less than perfect production value would be more rewarding for me, no matter how schlocky and tacky they are, because I would view them as much as the creations of people with little resources and find something enrapturing in them. My only issue with this, talked about in the first paragraph, is that a lot of these productions chose the least interesting routes for what to put onscreen. Dull, monotonous repetition of what has been done before, not very well usually either, made worse when some of these sorts of films are celebrated. (Which is also way I don't like slasher films either, but that's another day's story). Not true with Tokyo Psycho. It may be predictable in plot, but not in presentation or structure. The stalker, when revealed, is maniac and chewing up the scenery, but I like this hyperactive performance as it shows a commitment to going as far as possible, especially as few A-list actors would willingly have a form of real tape worm in their mouth like he does at one point. The characters are very much fantasy constructs, but inherently most films, not really changing from the first ever ones made with their small entertainments at all the last century or so, have characters who are exaggerations and archetypes, and the ones in this work perfectly. Of fascination, there's little of the extreme content you'd expect from a title like this film has, no nudity or sex, only some violence and extreme threat, and possible no blood at all. The threat when it comes about, against some moments of lurid horror, are actually played starkly and with a less-is-more tone, which actually turns out to be a lot more affecting and distressing than other films that take it further.

A lot of the film could be set in another country, although significantly you would lose the distinct look of the original locations - small, clinical white walled apartments, neutral clean colours, sparse city streets, the Japanese coastline. One advantage the Japanese low budget works have is that, somehow, even on such low budgets, the urban and rural landscapes, the former usually closed in over actors heads, the later dwarfing them, are incredibly distinct and inherently add character to the films. I would wonder too if the interesting idiosyncrasies of this film would be continued in, say, an American interpretation either. A lot of our English language films at this budget still keep to a rigid plotting that is a detriment, with the exception of those one-off oddities that appear occasionally over the decades. What's interesting with these Japanese films like Tokyo Psycho, entertainingly, is the small details including the flaws that you don't get in English language films. The lengthy scene at a school reunion, a small group of actors in a room, that both had a logic breaking moment that actually adds to the film's weird charm and that it takes it time with characters you will never see again, including a true-or-dare game with raunchy confessions and everyone looking at an old school photo. The boss at the protagonist's workplace who takes pleasure from being insulted and called monstrous in an odd friendly interactivity. How casually the stalker plot is depicted amongst the other drama, never heightened except when the music peaks up, including a piano literally being punched repeatedly at one point. That mysterious woman with the eye patch never seen again or made part of the actual narrative. Scrappy, messy genre films like this exist in other countries, and I prefer them to the "better" made ones usually because they probably say more about the people who made them then a serious document could. What an ordinary person would put onscreen if given the chance to make movies but with a few significant handicaps to work around. And I realise I take more entertainment legitimately from films like this, even with flaws the size of canyons, because they don't pretend to be more than what they are and succeed further because of this. Any clichés this film has are at least done in a interesting way for once.

Videotape Swapshop Review: Anatomy of Hell (2004)

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Dir. Catherine Breillat

If there ever was a divisive film, this one is such an example. In fact for the most part Anatomy of Hell is viewed as awful and going too far. There is the thought though for me that this violent hatred for the content of this film that I've read justifies the existence of it. Sometimes a bluntness this strong is needed, and while there are aspects of the characters' dialogue that I disagree with on a philosophical level, it still causes me to think hard about why it was included in the film. It is better to try to grasp what the film is trying to do than to merely dismiss it as garbage, and as this review below attests to, revisiting this film, which I have not done since film studies at college over six years ago, had an immense effect on the material I saw again.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19694/anatomy-of-hell-2004-director-catherine-breillat/

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Videotape Swapshop Review: Tears of the Black Tiger (2000)

From http://d.ratingmovies.com/servlet/Main/CoverDisplay/Tears_Of_The_Black_Tiger_(2000).jpg?film_rn=9587

Dir. Wisit Sasanatieng

Whether the review is positive or not, to watch a film like this that attempts to be something different and unique is of some interest. Particularly when its using a genre with as wide a scale like the western. Existing from as far back as the beginning of cinema, the western, despite being an inherently American concept, has transferred globally, the films made outside the USA distinct in what is done different in them, what is done to same and what the tone is for them. I intend to watch as many westerns as possible, and review as many of them as possible, because the difference are just as interesting for me as the great films within the genre are breathtaking to see.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/18732/tears-of-the-black-tiger-2000-dir-wisit-sasanatieng/

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Seeds of Memory: Kaiba (2008)

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Dir. Masaaki Yuasa

Within basic, rudimentary knowledge of any form of creativity, even doodling on paper, it is made very clear how small details can alter the results of a creation. A single note of an instrument can be bent with modification, or a change in the blowing/plucking of it, to make a new sound or change how the original note is played. Shading, dimension etc. can alter a drawing, which anyone having done a secondary (high) school art class could attest to. Altering certain details can depict certain human emotions in a clearer way - the difference between the passions of jazz against the aggression of heavy metal, and both styles can be modified to convey different emotions than the ones I've given them in this example. But by changing notes, words, lines sketched on a page, whatever is in front of you, it's also possible to present more abstract concepts such as internal states, dreams and memories. Animation, which is inherently about using basic lines to creating moving images, is perfectly able to do this, as is the case in the twelve episode series Kaiba. In the distant future, a young man wakes up with no memories. He has two distinct physical traits - a birthmark that is a symbol and a giant hole directly through his chest. The only potential clue about his past is a locket around his neck with a blurred picture of a girl his age in it. In the universe of Kaiba, memories can be preserved and commodity. People can be preserved on chips and change bodies. Memories can be altered. Of course it's the rich who have the privilege while the poor go as far as selling their bodies if need be to support their families. In this universe the protagonist goes in  search of the girl pictured in the locket and discover who he is, even if it means spending a large quarter of the series in other bodies than his own.

To clear aside the one major flaw of Kaiba, from the same director of The Tatami Galaxy (2010), it's that at twelve episodes it does shorten the potential journey and possibilities it could have gone with its premise. The first six travel around the universe set-up, exploring what memory means to human beings, while the last six deal strictly with the key narrative with the ideas thought about wrapped around it. It does feel abrupt when the switch happens; if any series could justify twenty four episodes, when many procrastinate at that length, it's this one if it was written and planned well. But one has to be grateful for the series even existing. The series as a whole is inventive and imaginative, using creativity to depict a concept that is both to reconfigure the story in a new way but also bring in a melancholic attitude to the nature of memory's mutability. Immediately the visual look and character designs are instantly noticeable. In another review, they might be called "childlike" or "cartoonish". Instead I would say it's a distinct, bold and colourful one. Character designs to be sympathetic for. It benefits the series because the result allows for a greater fluidity to the animation. For a series that isn't really about action set pieces, the few times they happen, in the first episode no less, are impressive. The series' look also leads to two distinct virtues. That this is an animation willing to push itself to the most vivid things you could create from just your imagination possible, a completely alien new world onscreen even if aspects are recognisable. It actually evokes the great René Laloux's Fantastic Planet (1973) just in the level of interest in the flora and social life depicted in the background of locations. This is combined with a very thoughtful view on the concept of memory.

Kaiba takes immense joy in the notion of memories. Depicting the mind as a library of  books full of past thoughts and images. As seeds and liquid. Its fascinated with how they could be preserved and how people could continue to live beyond their original deaths. Unfortunately in such a world it means this ability to preserve and remove memories leads to greater remorse for their loss. The girl the protagonist is trying to find is likely part of a terrorist group who oppose the technology able to manipulate memories and bodies. As he travels through the universe in the first half, we also see various implementations of this technology and the repercussions of it when matched with the complicated emotions human beings have. The animation in style, composition and tone depicts this without weightless exposition. It's not difficult to compare  Yuasa's style and thoughts to Mamoru Oshii and the late Satoshi Kon, the former in his cerebral takes of his ideas, the later in manipulating reality depending on his characters' mental states. But Yuasa is different from them. Oshii is concerned with philosophy greatly. Kon's key obsession was dreams. Yuasa even above these two directors' take on it is directly obsessed with human emotion. Relationships and interaction, friendship and communication, is important in his work. He has no issues with tackling love and even sex head on, and it says something that the series can make a subtle reference to menstruation, without making it seem abrasive, in one episode when most anime now has developed an embarrassing track record in portraying women. The series even goes as far as play with a queer/pan-gender take on what being able to switch bodies could mean, not a great deal barring one episode, fitting titled Masculine Woman,  but enough to be an idea as fully formed as other within the series.

From http://animewriter.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/kaiba290.png

The series has no issues with melodrama being used to convey its ideas, pulling at the heartstrings and making the director vastly different from Mamoru Oshii. The best episode is the third in the whole twelve series, but is a great beginning for a story that continues as highly in quality long afterwards. A character is introduced, leaves halfway through in a way that is heartbreaking, and in a nicely wrapped up little story, when I'm usually not fond of episodic anime because the stories are weakly put together, makes a dramatic and philosophical point that strikes home fully. That this character, while long gone, still exists physically for a large portion in the series for a while adds a very inspired move by the anime, in forcing home the the subjectivity of what the body and mind mean, disturbing in its implications, but also in how she still "exists", and the queer/pan relationship that happens with a secondary character, suggests a glory in someone being allowed to still live even if they're technically dead. If the series could have been twenty four episodes long, with this level of quality still there, moments like this episode could have been allowed to be even more powerful, even if the final work in reality is still something special in its own right.

Particularly for a series clearly made in the era where anime is created with computers rather than hand drawn cels, very noticeable even to a novice like myself when you see enough anime, Kaiba nonetheless shows far more of the amount of talent human hands and minds are capable of in building its world. Everything in this was clearly designed, such heady ideas through the simplest visual flourishes allowed to be taken as far as they could. Its baffling the series never got a wide release in the English speaking world; maybe in anime fandom its "weird", but the story and ideas are conveyed in ways that are fully graspable without having to work with them as other anime required. Oshii was difficult with the celebrated Ghost In The Shell (1995) even before the divisive sequel, but his work was released over here. Kaiba is unconventional because, if one takes the simplest and obvious of changes in something, a colour palette, character style, how everything is conveyed by what is drawn, its furthest, there's somewhat of a paradox that, when even the simplest of modifications of image or sound are avoided in more mainstream work, something that does them looks more experimental. With this series this is strange to have taken place. A legitimately beautiful, gentle opening and closing song are wrapped around each episode, rather than something really trite like is an unfortunate case with other works, setting up the notion of love that can even overcome the loss of memory and multiple bodies that is the eventual key theme for the whole series. Despite the jarring jerk in the plotting in the middle, the series does indeed fully run with the notion of how human existence and interaction could be drastically altered, in reality and philosophically, but that notions of love and kinship could still exist despite the burdens created. Far from naive with this message, Yuasa also has the advantage of realising how badly human beings can negate this and harm themselves, as seen in realistic terms in The Tatami Galaxy, even if his heart is for the happy endings. The notion of fate or the strength of eternal love in these two works isn't the sappy, asinine debacle is its usually turned into but a true optimism for good of people to be able to exist together regardless of the fact reality can be completely undermined. The last episode of Kaiba suddenly turns into Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997), completely within the bowels of the human mind like that film becomes, but rather than the violent catharsis and destruction of what was before to even consider healing, this ends with reconciliation of what existed before instead.

Anyone can do this. On a written page. Painting. Film. Sculpture. Anything. Knowledge helps improve your ability to do this. In trying to depict these ideas to a wider audience however a problem arises. Anyone can do this, but to widen the palette and tools, you're stuck with issues of commercialism. It's actually not encouraged in the mainstream to even modify a slight aspect of what you're doing to be different unless you have the money and ego to go forth with it. Music has the most freedom because, even before MP3 distribution furthered the ability to reach new audiences, musicians can play the most unconventional music possible and find a way to get it distributed, the most uncommercial acts and musicians able to develop cult followings and reputations. Art in general has the advantage that, despite the questions of what "art" is, that many different manifestos and techniques have opened up what it is as expression of thought. Literature and writing in general is helped by the fact anyone can write an idea or mood down on paper, since paper and a pen is easily available, although as someone who wants to become a fiction writer myself, I dread when it comes to actually trying to publish the novel I presume I will make; even if the internet (again) has made it possible to distribute one further, the issue of whether the most interesting works, like in music and art, eventually rise to the surface will happen with novels now is something I'm worried about, the desire just to cause one person to think enough for me to have succeeded. Moving images unfortunately have suffered in this area because the cost of making them. The great creators have managed to make films regardless of this but were still handicapped by distribution. Animation has greater flexibility, but unfortunately the perception that it's for children, and like Disney or Pixar has been a severe handicap on it. Thankfully Kaiba managed to get made. This proves that you can always have hope even if the final work is never financially successful. Although it's on a roll of a dice in a lot of cases. In fact Yuasa had to use Kickstarter to fund his last animated work, a mere short. The further sadness is that I could only see Kaiba through the kindness of a person online in a way considered very un-Kosher in some eyes. It's annoying because Kaiba is bold in style but not alienating, very clear in its ideas. Very simple, understandable ideas merely stretched as far as they can go, through characters who are only real in their voices but living through the few pen strokes people made on computers. The thing that avoids making this epilogue completely sad is that the work being reviewed is a testament to how the simplest bendings and modifications of the moving image, animation, led to something that was great.

From http://animediet.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/vlcsnap-00193.jpg

To Clear Through The [Re]Watch List #2: Nurse Witch Komugi (2002)

Form http://nsm01.casimages.com/img/2008/01/24//080124073811194601639808.jpg

Dirs. Masato Tamagawa, Masatsugu Arakawa, Yasuhiro Takemoto and Yoshitomo Yonetani

The problem with Nurse Witch Komugi is one that goes beyond the complaints taken at Japanese anime within the last decade or so. Those complaints are still there. The discomforting sexualisation of young girls even if they're animated. The pandering to a small subset of otaku where the fetishes and in-jokes to anime are alien to any outsider. Honestly even if you did have fetishes to glasses on a woman, big breasts, maid outfits etc., or have watched obscure giant robot shows from the seventies, you may feel a disconnect to this still. The problem is that, for its few bright spots of imagination and clever humour, able to mock itself too, the sum of it is the issue that faces not just anime, but any group. Geek culture. Cult works. Hobbies. Dare I say even religion and politics. When the quality and fun is replaced with a cheap aesthetic look and everything feels tacky. Not fun. Extravagant. Sincere. Uplifting. Clever. Sexy. Any potent feeling, not even kitsch. Just tacky. And such works are knowingly tacky, which is worse because it'll encourage the followers of that areas to just want tackiness. Within five straight-to-video episodes, including a bonus "2.5" one, it automatically caused my heart to sink when the opening theme is a sickly cute song, sung in too high a voice by the female singer, using medical terminology to describe romance. The lyrics are ridiculous, the voice too high, but the problem is how contrived it feels even when I don't speak Japanese. Too cute. Too quirky. To the point it doesn't feel sincere. This is not something cheesy that you can enjoy for its sincerity and because it's ridiculous, like how I've fallen in love with the song by Loudness from the animated box office bomb Odin (1986) which I covered on this blog. This is just being cute because it wants to be surface level cute and nothing more.

The anime is a spin-off from a TV series called Soul Taker (2001), which not only takes characters from a serious work and place them in a comedy, but it became far more popular and talked about then the original source. I have never seen an episode of Soul Take but this isn't a hindrance for Nurse Witch Komugi. Now the references to anime from the past I may have to see to get some of the jokes. Komugi is a downtrodden cosplay idol, looked down upon by her management for continually screwing up the jobs assigned for her to become more famous. A lot of the reason she screws up is that she has to juggle a secret alter ego, transforming into a nurse witch to defeat the minions of a King of Germs, a task assigned to her from a magical land of medicine with a perverted rabbit mascot by her side. Representing the villains is a maid witch; a great idea from the series is that she has a Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde personality where neither side knows of each other, one the villain, the other Komugi's school friend. From there it's a comedy with action but its empty. You're stuck with a work that panders but offers nothing of real interest for a great deal of it. Loosely connected around Komugi having to fight evil virus monsters and being a cosplayer trying to get higher in her career choice, it boils down to a series of absurd sketches per the six episodes but not really succeeding.

A great deal of it is arbitrary. The titillation, of course taking cue of the magical girl genre its riffing on to show Komugi's costume change sequence like a stripshow, is creepy because, like in most anime unfortunately, the characters are seventeen or younger. But its creepier and perversely lazy in how it's incredibly chaste while yet having countless bathing scenes and the like, especially as a straight to video release. Treating sexuality in such a compromised way yet presenting dubious sexuality in a sugar coated tone is incredibly off for me even after all the anime I've seen. In the perfect world, if titillation was still required, the creepy sexualisation of young girls would be boated out in favour for grown up female characters, as much in control of the sexual nature of the work as the viewer. Unfortunately even then, if the lazy, chaste tone to it was kept in still, the anime would be compromised as before. This kind of anime takes sexual fetishes and smoothens them of all their interest and depth in favour of a checklist mentality. Big breasts. Older women. Maid costumes. Nurse uniform. Flat chests. To decry any sexual objectification of this sort of thing is too obvious. Decrying this sort of anime for killing off any sense of mystery and tantalisation to sexual fantasies, especially when animation could give one the chance to show something completely fantastical if actually used properly for once, should be done more often.

The same laziness is there with the references as jokes. They're funny when you don't even need to know the references, when the jokes already funny in context of these new characters or completely bizarre to you because of the lack of knowledge. But like Family Guy at its worst, it's a private conversation that isn't actually that worth knowing the secrets of, because there's nothing beyond the surface name checking. Moments do shine in the anime. The bosses Komugi deal with are imaginative and funny. One representing all those otaku fetish forums, which naturally pisses Komugi off when the "flat chest" forum, represented by cat people, group around her. A giant robot that gets its own mecha show theme tune sung with burning passion like the originals. Legions of road raging vehicles that leads to a peculiar joke mocking completely CGI animation being released around the time this was made. Even a wrestling match in Hell. And those moments, mentioned earlier in the review, when it mocks its own industry, while completely hypocritical considering the anime itself, do sting. Crazed fans. The chaos of fan conventions, and an entire episode about making anime that shows that the creators of this are masochistic about their profession.

There was the potential for something great here, but most of Nurse Witch Komugi is not like the good ideas presented above. Most of it responds to the most mediocre aspects of anime in recent years, which are just dull to sit through. The final episode tries to be fairly serious, in air quotes since its still humorous, about a teacher witch (presumably) with breasts so large they have the consistency of beanbags than living flesh. The lack of time in twenty or so minutes to make something compelling, especially when the actual story is of the episode is dull anyway, prevents it from doing anything of worth. It's pretty much like this for most of the anime over its episodes. Brief glimpses of goodness swallowed by the tenuous. It's kind of surprising that one of the directors of this was Yasuhiro Takemoto, considering looking into him he made two good comedy vignettes series, Lucky Star (2007) and Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu (2003), bearing in mind their imperfections and that they were based around vignettes rather than a consistent plot. The thing is thought, while Lucky Star is the superior of the two, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu is a good comedy series which yet still suffers from problems effecting this one - bad opening theme, creepy titillation suddenly appearing in a later episode, and some moments that fall over badly even if they're rare. And this was a work with clear delays between each episode, and multiple directors working on various episodes, which unless the quality is kept to a high level, is going to cause drops in said quality to take place. Ultimately Nurse Witch Komugi is pretty much the sort of thing not really worth seeing. I actually rewatched this a second time when it came to this review, and frankly the sense that this was made for the smallest, tiniest audience of people who have no real connection to anyone else even in Japanese pop culture is big. And it's not good. It looks cheap, it's not funny enough, and it does define how tacky anime can unfortunately get.

From http://pic.rutube.ru/video/33/3e/333e02e08f06fb49d6e34f95303bc03e.jpg

Clearing Through The To-Watch List #3 - Jinki: Extend (2005)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/Jinki_Extend.jpg

Dir. Masahiko Murata

"Do I have to write about this? " "Yes, because you're a crazy completist!" "I'm wasting my time." "But you're a cine-masochist..." "But-" "-and will write about any anime you-" "But I didn't write about Cospley Complex (2004) and that was atrocious..." "Ignore that one." "Fine," I think to myself having this internal debate, "But I'm going to strop about it while the series is still warm in my mind." I found a science fiction anime series for cheap. Giant robots. Front cover of the first volume is two girls, one with black hair, the other blonde hair. First scene of the first episode is them, older, fighting each other in "Jinki" war robots in the centre of Tokyo. The blonde girl, drawn like a very cutesy, moe character, is the villain. Even in bad anime, how characters, especially female ones, have their eyes depicted when they've lost their sanity or moral compass is always artistically effecting. The stereotype of female character with eyes bigger than their heads has use when you can exaggerate emotions for potent effect. The other girl is the heroine completely outmatched. Clearly the series is going to skip back to when they were younger, together in the same training camp as friends, maybe as close as sisters, maybe a tragic back-story. It's obvious but you can get good powerful drama from the idea. This is not what you get.

The series is actually a mashing together of two separate manga into one narrative. It tries to be clever by juggling two different time periods but with a lacksidasical tone. The first is in 1988. The black haired girl, Aoba, is shipped off to a Jinki defence base against her will in Venezuela by her evil mother. Nonetheless she shows a superhuman ability, and enthusiasm, to pilot one of the Jinki that needs to be honed out of the unatheletic girl who was more interested in plastic model kits before. The time period is never told to us, and with any reason for why this alternative dimension is as it is for this advanced robot technology to exist in the eighties. The blonde haired girl, Akao, appears in this segment, but she exists more so for the part set three years later in Japan. A more advanced version of the Jinki defence force exists, with a whole group of girls and women piloting multiple Jinki. With no memories from before those three years previous, Akao also has superhuman powers of her own which are of interest to a dark group. Completely off topic for a moment, the main villain is a rather bland, height stunted masked man who is so much of a void I wished one of his barely seen minions stabbed him, Julius Caesar style, and taken over the world domination plan for themselves. But he exists and he's interested in Akao, with plans to pervert a girl who refused to fight into evil. A girl so much of an innocent that, unfortunately, to depict it there's one of her flashback memories, of how happy she's been with the Jinki pilots, of her being completely unable to open a packet of crisps without someone's help. Yes, some packets of food are a bugger to open but as characterisation of a female character I wouldn't be surprised if anime was dismissed as misogynistic for this sort of thing and an insult to crisp packet manufacturers. This moment happens long after it becomes clear that Akao, along with all the other characters, even the more sparky Aoba, are pretty one dimensional. In the first few episodes the white elephant already went to sitting on top of me refusing to be ignored. The young, innocent Akao, turned into a killing machine, piloting a leviathan sized red robot, with dead eyes is a starring character of a badly put together, cheap looking series.

At thirteen episodes, there's far too many characters and plot points to cram into them, especially as this is two manga set in the same world being combined together. The story actually had to be finished on the twelfth episode, the final one an epilogue as a DVD extra. It is a complete mess. It might have worked regardless of the squashed length. Hades Project Zeorymer (1988-1990), giant robot sci-fi too, was four episodes with far too much plot to cram into them, but not only was it good hand drawn animation, with great robot designs, but the plot was an amazing dramatic sucker punch regardless. Jinki:Extend is bland. Generic plot. Paper-thin characters. Beyond Aoba, the female characters, who dominate the show, are less like real female characters then strange perceptions of femininity written by isolated males. The girls are submissive, despite being pilots of city destroying war machines, easily breakable or/and mentally nonexistent. It comes apparent too this series is trying to rift on Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) in being dark, but never succeeding. I'm flabbergasted, despite having legitimate problems with it, that I could have hated that acclaimed series  at the same level as something like this. "Why?" I ask myself, "Because I'm an idiot."

Fan service creeps in slowly. Aoba is caught with her pants down a couple of times. Eyes roll. There's a clear attempt at potential underage Sapphic passion that's not edgy, in this TV friendly work, not character building or romantic, but a lame attempt to keep the male otaku happy. Indeed, when they meet again, discrete under the sheets, two characters fondle each other admiring how much they've "changed" everywhere on themselves, not with an (admittedly) perverse take on horseplay between two girls, but because, hey, let's drool over underage animated girls groping each other. With an innocent casualness that's more disturbing than being explicit about it. A female character is from Nottingham, England, raising a brief smile cause it's not that far from where I actually live, but she's abruptly introduced late in the series, uselessly characterless, and is there only to have a character who wear shades, to be an adult with big breasts, and wear clothes to show said assets off without any sense of a person oozing sexuality and charisma. Then there's the creepy aspects which scuttle in through the later episodes in the Japan arc. Anime can be dubious, which I admit as a fan of it, completely offensive, but even something like The Legend of the Overfiend (1989) forced you to see the things it showed and the full horror being shown. Jinki: Extend is the first thing in a while that's made me sit up in some of the stuff it was showing, legitimately creeped out by its slapdash and casual use of some of the perverse material is references. It's even beyond having a female villain, randomly introduced later on, be represented as being evil by having her snog any girl in her vicinity, as if being attracted to the same gender is a villainous character trait on her bio. A female Jinki pilot, whose already depicted as a asinine, weak and frail archetype, is kidnapped by a man disguised as her older brother, who plans to pilot his Jinki in a later fight with one hand while the other "plays" with her. It's not played as a sickening gut punch or a trangressively potent comment, just an offhand remark that is flippantly suggested and never mentioned again along with his whole character. One girl is dunked into strange liquid which partially dissolves her pilot's suit, skin-tight as designed for male viewers, yet doesn't dissolve the ropes she's tied in, by another male pervert on the villains' side who, along with the scene, is never mentioned again too. The lack of actual explicit content and the rushed nature of the plotting makes this stuff pointless disturbing than important for the plot, which is worse than something that was being offensive on purpose. A key part of a relationship, barely sketched out anyway, is that one of the people within it was raped and she still gave birth to the child conceived. The discrete, flippant tone of the off-screen rape, and the plot reveal, barely mentioned again too like the other examples, is in all serious far and away more objectionable, when such material can be written in half heartedly because it seemed "normal" to have it done in the narrative.

Its despairing to defecate verbally on something other people worked hard on, but this is terrible. Characters look the same, confusingly, but on purpose for the plot. Some look the same but it wasn't on purpose. Major plot points and events are skimmed over, for being able to get the entire narrative gone in such a small space of time, but also for squandering it on the wrong things. The thirteenth, final episode is the one that actually has some virtue. It's nice that a character has some back-story from photos and unprocessed photo film found in her old home, memories once lost rediscovered. Its legitimately funny when one girl, too young to drink, still pretends to be drunk for fun, as every girl is firing off twenty year old fireworks that still work in a back garden, to the bafflement of others. But it's too late. It cannot save a bland, forgettable anime. And it can't save it when the characters had no personalities before and when some were pointless molested in an occasional, out-of-place sequence in a previous episode. A paradox is created. Why review something no one would want to watch?  Catharsis. To get something of worth from my wasted English pounds. To warn people off it. To cause people to remember this series, blocked in amnesia by its blandness, reading this and remember how bad it was to share the pian. If a fan of Jinki:Extend, if one actually finds this, gets annoyed, and tries to convince me to try it again, or read the mangas, although it would have to be a bulletproof argument to even consider doing so. Because I'm a masochist who will cover any anime I watch. Admittedly I did skip over reviewing one as stated in the beginning, but that might be the exception. I may stupidly rewatch it just to review it. But in this case, Jinki:Extend is just horrible even for someone fond of collecting bad anime along with the good anime.

Representing Thailand: Shutter (2004)

From http://www.loyvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Shutter2004.jpg

Dirs. Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom

To think ten years ago in the noughties, Asian ghost stories in cinema were an obsession for the genre, both in the films made in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and, with this film, Thailand, and all those English remakes. Ghost stories are still being made, but the trend has passed. I want to claim it was when The Eye remake (2008) with Jessica Alba vanishes from our consciousnesses after its cinema release, but even as the remake fad of those films finally died out there were still remnants being wringed out. If I'm permitted to reference old podcasts I listen to again, paying lip service to Mondo Movies for another time, I'm reminded of how one of the presenters said these films eventually descended down into random objects being possessed by evil than actual tension - "eck, it's in the walls!", "No, it's in the water!", "Oh, it's in my eyes!". Unfortunately Shutter, with its camera motif, doesn't provide evidence against this point in its existence.

From http://www.fantastique-arts.com/photos/2062.jpg

One night a couple, a man and woman, believe they've ran over a woman on a night-time drive home from a celebration. When its revealed that no one has been found afterwards, it becomes clear that the boyfriend is being haunted by a ghost of a young woman who keeps appearing in photographs. As it continues, this haunting reveals more of him than his girlfriend ever knew. For Western viewers, this type of horror cinema began with Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998), a great start for the boom that begun. It was very much of its home country and of Asia. Unlike the West where religion has dipped in social influence and ghosts are an abstract idea, or in programmes where people sit in dark rooms about to scream when they feel the wind on their shoulders, spirituality is still significant and spirits of the dead still linger with those mortally alive. But it could be understood easily in the West regardless - ghosts are still scary even if we only view them through cable TV programming - and could be remade as PG-13 material for the ticket money of young adolescents. But Ringu is not a succession of jump scares tied around somewhat of a plot. It was mood, oppressive dank atmosphere, sombre drama which, when it went to the horror scenes, chilled the spine, the idea of the dead being on your mind for your ordinary lives disturbing when you encounter a malevolent ones. Shutter is from another country, Thailand, with its own cultural marks on it, but that doesn't excuse that its only sense of horror is a succession of uninteresting jump scares, a flaw that is understandable in any language.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-trK67CNVeV4/UQ5IX4A9cOI/AAAAAAAAFm0/5RubotnbDps
/s1600/SHUTTER%2B2004%2BTHAILAND%2BPHOTO.JPG

It suggests something interesting, like many films, that when you investigate past the surface, behind the bookshelf or in certain images, you will see secrets of another person you never considered being tangible with them. This film even juggles having a segment with a paranormal magazine that doctors fake ghost photographs with a conceit suggesting certain types of photos will be always legitimate. But Shutter is such a dull film. The story, full of dark secrets, is not interesting, and being scary is not possible when you do jump scares continually and use obvious ones repeated from other movies. Neither does it help that, if you are not engaged with a film, the mechanism of a jump scare, pulling you in them making you jump, doesn't work then on that viewer. Neither does it look visually interesting for a ghost story like this to work. Shutter ultimately contributes nothing of real interesting beyond the basics and maybe a joke that suddenly happens in a men's bathroom. No oppressive mood, no cultural details aside from a scrap of things, nothing that distresses or creeps you out. It's an average rollercoaster wrapped around an uninspired mortality drama, even squandering the photography idea it carries in its potential. Shutter was only made in 2004, but suggests this subgenre was already in danger of falling back into obscurity that early on. 

From http://horrorsnotdead.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/shutter-32.jpg