*Spoilers* I must admit that I am not an admirer of the works of Takashi Miike. His movies to me are shallow expressions of violence and sexuality seemingly existing only for its shock value. His films usually leave me cold. When I heard that he was going to do a chanbara film, I was filled with trepidation. I love chanbara – from Akira Kurosawa to Zatoichi to the works of Yoji Yamada. Because of this, I put off watching the film until last night. My final opinion was one of admiration. I feel that this work was a great expression of the duality of samurai honor in a modern perspective.
The duality exists between the two main samurai, Hanbei Kitou and Shinzaemon Shimada. Hanbei serves an evil man, Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira, who is the half-brother of the Shogun. The Lord uses Hanbei’s honor to control him all the while taunting him. In between this, he also performs such sadistic tasks as using a whole family for target practice, raping a women and then killing her husband, etc. We get the point – he needs to die, especially as he is about to join the Shogunate council leading the nation. One of the other members of the council commissions Shinzaemon to kill Naritsugu.
Shinzaemon provides an interesting contrast to Hanbei. He performs his duty in order to be obedient but he cannot hide the excitement that this job brings. There has been a long period of peace and samurai have been regulated to the mere caricatures that Naritsugu ridicules. He joins with 11 other “true” samurai for this task, picking up a 13th ruffian on the journey. Each of these men, it seems, live at the margins of Shogunate enforced peace – gamblers, playboys, hired swords, etc. All of them are looking for a way to re-enbue their lives with with real purpose and regain true samurai status. Shinzaemon’s nephew, Shinrokuro, was acted by Takayuki Yamada. I enjoyed his work in another one of the few Takashi Miike movies that I can stand, Crows Zero.
All of this reaches up to the final combat scene, which employs a great deal of violence. Interesting enough, Miike seems to eschew the blood sprays found in so many other samurai films. There is plenty of killing though, as 13 men go up against 200. The final scene leaves the evil lord crawling in the mud, finally coming to an understanding of the reality of both pain and death. Like I said, it was a great movie.
I have long been a fan of Korean food. Now, as I try to increase my culinary repertoire, it is only natural that I go to that cuisine style that I have so joyfully embraced. For my first dish, I picked a simple one that I learned about through my Youtube subscription 
My sister-in-law, Marianne, is one of my favorite people to talk to, especially about food. I like my other ones as well, but she is the one I have had the longest. More importantly, she lives the closest to me. This means that I can go and mooch off her when she allows. This past Friday she was without my brother as he was working a double at the Firehouse. I successfully ingrated myself to her when she said she wanted to cook a little Indian food. She has raved about it before and my ears perked up like Georgia (her German Shepard) when I heard Indian food. I even volunteered to help her collect the fixings. So off to the store leaving my two nephews to watch over the home front.
In the winter of 2006, I accompanied two friends on a journey through Southeast Asia for three weeks. We spent a week in Thailand, one in Cambodia, and a final one in Vietnam. During this time, I found paradise. When a man finds something close to heaven, it is difficult to replicate if it is not at the same place with the same people. Me and one of my friends – a beautiful, young lady – visited the Temple of Confucius in Hanoi. Outside of one of the gates, we sat down on a little curbside cafe operating out of a small stall. There, I had the best Ph? that man can taste. Heaven. Later that night, we attended a wonderful opera that capstoned the experience.
When I started this blog section on reviews, I promised myself that I would not review chain restaurants, especially fast-food ones, if I can reasonably avoid it. On reviewing Cane’s #1, I cannot resist temptation. I do so, however, with the understanding that this is the first Raising Cane’s and the one dear to my heart.
