Survive Style +5

At Fanime 2010, a couple weeks ago, my friend Jenna and I got to see the Japanese film: "Survive Style +5".

It was amazing. An equal mix of drama and comedy, violence and romance, the movie has 5(six if we include the two jaded teen girls) stories that all seem separate but eventually merge and cumulate into a mind-blowing, head scratching visual feast known as "Survive Style +5"

The five stories are thus:

Story 1: Husband (played by popular actor Tadanobu Asano) and Wife (not sure who plays her, but she had such gorgeous clothes, the favorite being the one in the picture above.) Both are creative and unorthodox characters, as visualized from his car, painted with flowers, the clothes she wore, to the house they lived in, each room decorated in a 'theme' of sorts, a wonder house of different things to look at and observe. The house was almost a third character itself. But visual aspects aside, the story is this: For reasons unknown, Husband has gotten into the habit of killing Wife, who has, herself, gotten into the habit of coming back from the dead. She appears, attacks and in his self-defense, he kills her. Rinse. Repeat.

Story 2: A loving, happy family gets tickets to see a hypnotist, who hypnotizes the father into believing he is a bird, and when the hypnotist, due to the actions of the characters from Stories 4 and 5, is unable to return to his human self. The story then shows the family learning to accept their 'bird-dad'.

Story 3: Three young men have a hobby of breaking into houses and supposedly stealing things to sell, although they were only ever shown to play with the kids' toys and games. One of the three is in love with another of the three, and this story is more of the comedic variety.

Story 4: A self absorbed self-described 'genius' Ad Exec has ideas for the weirdest, lamest commercials, none of which are funny, and if we laughed, it was only because the ads were too weird to be believable. When she is insulted by the hypnotist from Story 2, she hires the characters from Story 5 to wipe him out, thus forming the connection between the characters of Stories 1-5. The least interesting, but most vital in how she causes the events to all merge and take place.

Story 5: An American assassin and his Japanese interpreter are hired by the woman from Story 4 to kill the hypnotist, causing the father from Story 2 to remain in his 'bird brain' state, as well as being hired by Husband to kill his wife. In the process of Story 5, the assassin also has a run-in with the three from Story 3, attacking one of them.

Story 6: I consider this another story, but the girls were pretty much side characters who only appeared three times, one girl getting more bandages with each appearance, and both girls having an unemotional exchange in which the bandaged girl explains that she was attacked by birds and then by a would be rapist, while the other girl continues to text.

I won't spoil the ending, but all I will say is that Bird-Dad and Husband finally meet and their respective stories overlap.

This movie was a blast to watch, visually stimulating, and a tear jerker in some places. I recommend seeing this movie.

Interdimension time travel talk

No, there isn't going to be any physics or any scientific talk here. What I know of science is from comic books and films.

But really, I've been thinking, if I had a choice between who I'd travel with, which would I pick? The doctor with his TARDIS and his sonic screwdriver and his need to help everyone and be involved in politics and altering time and history, or Ford Prefect and his thumb and his towel and his need to see the world and have fun and get lost in the past and drink dangerous alien alcoholic drinks?

I asked my dad this question and we both actually had to think. Either is just as dangerous as the other, the Doctor has enemies after him(the Master, the Daleks, etc) and there's no garauntee that you, as companion, would survive traveling with the Doctor (Rose-lost in another dimension, Donna-forgot everything about the Doctor and if she ever remembers her brain will burn out, Sarah Jane-waited forever for him to come home. Martha's the only one who walked away and got a normal life, but she'll never recover from the Doctor). And Ford Prefect, he makes enemies and friends everywhere he goes, he has no concept of self-preservation, much less looking out for his companions, he left Arthur Dent alone in the universe to figure out what to do. The Doctor at least worries and protects his companions, Ford Prefect just goes off on his own.

And then Dad pointed out that the Doctor controls time, or can manipulate it, so you could travel with him for years and centuries and decades and millineum and then he'd drop you right back at the second you left, and no one would be the wiser. Ford Prefect would take you to the end of the Galaxy, the end of Time itself and then say, 'well, how do we get back home?' and it'd be another adventure to get back, but no gaurantee that you'd make it to the world you knew.

(although technically, the world you knew was already destroyed, hence the whole getting onboard with Ford thing.)

I don't know. Ford seems to be more a partyer, going from planet to the next and just doing his own thing. The Doctor's just traveling because he has no where to go, so..

I suppose, in the end, I'd pick to go with the Doctor, even if it meant I got a bad ending.

Ford Prefect, his philosophy is amazing and inspiring, but he's freakin' nuts, I'm not trusting my life with a dude who got Arthur Dent lost in prehistoric Earth-2.