a sense of joy and then a panic

Reading Junji Ito's "The Will" while listening to "Come to Daddy (Pappy Mix)" by Aphex Twin at 1 a.m.?

May rank in my list of dumbest decisions of all time.

Blergh.

THE GHOST WRITER.  I held off on seeing or reading about this one because of the whole Roman Polanski thing.  And while Polanski is still definitely a douche, he can sure make a good movie.  This one doesn't even have any underaged girls (the only female characters are like 40+, so maybe he's trying to be extra careful?).  It's about a nameless ghost writer (Ewan McGregor, who at long last has become attractive) who goes to work writing the memoirs of a former British prime minister on vacation in some horrible rainy island off the coast of Massachusetts.  Unfortunately, he's come at a bad time - charges of war crimes have been filed against the former P.M.  Oh, and the former ghost writer "committed suicide" on the ferry and was washed up on the island.  Oh, and something's rotten in Cambridge.  Oh, and he has to finish the book in FOUR WEEKS [did you hear that people?  FOUR WEEKS].  The Ghost Writer is one of those traditional movie maker's movies.  It's apolitical (a good thing), has no moral, doesn't rely on special effects or action sequences or T&A or emotional manipulation: it's just a well-executed story about contemporary court intrigue.  A couple scenes made me go, "Oh my GOD," because it's such a subtle movie, and when the punches fall, they fall hard.

NOROI: THE CURSE.  This strange little J-horror is available on YouTube, and is quite the indie darling.  It is indeed a refreshing change from the standard J-horror, much like Marebito.  It's a mockumentary purporting to be the last video tell-all of an investigative journalist who's trying to get to the bottom of mysterious deaths and other phenomena, like crying babies that aren't there and dead pigeons.  He discovers that the root of all the problems is a demon that went haywire after the rural village that always performed its pacifying ritual was scheduled to be submerged for a dam project.  I didn't find it very scary, but other people have.  I thought that as a scary movie it was not as effective as The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, or even Quarantine (all mockumentaries), because it kept breaking the oppressive tension that horror mockumentaries are famous for by pushing the audience away, diverting from the action to look at news articles or variety shows.  A curious choice if you're going the mockumentary route.  The anthropology-infused story itself, however, is very solid, disturbing, and interesting, and I suspect if it had been shot straight through as a dramatic script, I would have been a lot more freaked out.

SOME SONGS.

• "Don't Fight It" by The Panics.  The song is actually longer than that video, but I love Battlestar Galactica and Sharon is my favorite character.  Plus the band's music video is pretty pathetic.  The end.
• "Rhinoceros" by The Smashing Pumpkins.  An unusually subtle song, for them, which is probably why it took me a while to sit down and listen to.  Great crescendo.
• "If I Had A Heart" by Fever Ray (aka the girl from The Knife).  Yeah... FUCKING WHOA.  Maybe I'm just late to the party, but holy shit.  That's my reaction to this one.