Categories
Animation Features Movies

Inu-Oh
(Inu-Oh,
犬王)

Director – Masaaki Yuasa – 2021 – Japan – Cert. – 98m

***1/2

In fourteenth century Japan, a blind musician and a deformed, masked dancer shake up the culturally staid world of Noh theatre by forming a hugely popular rock band – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, September 28th

You never quite know what you’re going to get with an animated feature by Masaaki Yuasa (Ride Your Wave,2019; Lu Over the Wall, 2017; Mind Game, 2004) as he has a tendency to break with tradition. Here, he takes on periods of Japanese history but rather than go with power struggles as to who rules Japan, he focuses on two outcasts, an orphaned musician and a deformed dancer, who join together to form a rock band with an emphasis on theatrical showmanship to upend the artistic conventions of the day and become an overnight sensation until the ascendant ruler, determined to control the historical narrative, has the musician killed, and the dancer emasculated, forbidden to perform anything but state-approved material, and that only in the Imperial court.

It’s a triptych, one long story split into three sections. In the first section, after a prologue detailing the decisive Battle of Dan-No-Ura towards the end of the twelfth century, in which the Heiji clan were defeated by the Genji and the formers warriors threw themselves into the sea and perished, two centuries later in the period of the Northern and Southern Courts, Northern would be Kyoto-based, shogunate emperor Ashitaka decides that the power to rule demands he acquire three sacred treasures, one of which is a sword buried in the lake at Dan-No-Ura.… Read the rest

Categories
Exhibitions Music

The Pink Floyd
Exhibition:
Their Mortal Remains

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK.

13 May – 1 October 2017.

*****

On my Must See list for a while: finally managed a visit last week. Thoroughly enjoyed as someone who grew up when everyone but everyone owned a copy of Dark Side Of The Moon and subsequently discovered the whole back catalogue only to lose interest some time after The Wall (which I saw them play live at Earl’s Court) as the whole thing shifted toward a Roger Waters ego trip. Was busy listening to other things by the time Waters had been booted out and guitarist David Gilmour pulled them back on track (though managed to pick up live recording Pulse on CD and LD in the nineties when I was reviewing laserdiscs) but have since picked up the complete works, album by album, on CD. So, a casual fan but not a die-hard.

The exhibition is a mixed bag. Unlike the V&A’s earlier popular music exhibition David Bowie is, there aren’t lengthy dire periods to be avoided and amazing periods to celebrate, but there ARE chunks of Floyd career where there isn’t much surviving material on which to build an exhibition. Thus an early room covers the first eight albums in scant detail – including such highs as Atom Heart Mother and Meddle – so you feel the whole thing is going to be a disappointment.… Read the rest