Survive Style 5+ (beautifully mental Japanese film)

Posted by Hex on Jan 28th, 2008
2008
Jan 28

A few years ago I heard about a film called Survive Style 5+ and it sounded pretty cool so I wrote down the name on a notepad. As time went by I moved it to my WishList. It stayed there for a couple of years, but no-one bought it for me. As my folks were in Florida and I was sick of getting no post, I ordered it from Play.com. I watched it about a week ago…

WOW! It is now in my top 5 films list! I love it! It’s completely mental, really laugh out loud funny the whole way through. The fight scenes look brilliant. The colours are magical. It even manages to have a real lump-in-throat moment near the end. It bombards you with mentalness and then suddenly BAM! Hits you full on with something so wonderful it makes you want to cry. It’s likened to Pulp Fiction quite a bit due to the 5 seemingly unrelated stories intertwining, and Pulp Fiction is also one of my favourite films… but I think Survive Style 5+ tops it. The soundtrack is fantastic and upbeat, I’m going to try and get hold of as much of it as I can.

The storylines go like this:

  • A man (with an awesome house) kills and buries his wife, only for her to return. Rinse and repeat for the films duration. By far the best and main story. Tadanobu Asano was probably the main reason I heard about this film and wrote it down.
  • A middle-management father takes his family to the “Viva Friends!” hypnotist show. He’s hypnotised to believe he is a bird before a hitman shows up and kills the hypnotist leaving him as a bird.
  • Three young burglers out to have fun, suppressing their secret love for each other. (MUCH funnier than it sounds, Jai West’s facial expression is brilliant).
  • An English hitman (Vinnie Jones in probably his best cast role ever) who wants to know everyone/things function in life.
  • An advertising executive with a bizarre sense of humour is inspired by all around her. (This actually seems like the story that doesn’t need to be told. As if this part isn’t really of the glue that holds the rest together. However, when you take into account the fact that the whole film is like one giant advert and the directors are more used to directing commercials… you realise it is probably one of the more important storylines. And the 2 schoolgirls in the diner are hilarious, not to mention the small role by Sonny Chiba).
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    Adobe Air (R)

    Posted by Hex on Jan 20th, 2008
    2008
    Jan 20

    I’ve been playing with some Adobe AIR apps for a few months now and I have to say they’re pretty sweet.

    http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/

    http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/samples/

    I posted to this blog a few times using Bee and it all worked perfectly. It also connects to your flickr which is handy. I expect to see some really cool things coming from this soon.

    Spring has sprung

    Posted by Hex on Jan 14th, 2008
    2008
    Jan 14

    I haven’t had time to blog much lately as I have been soooo uber busy.

    Christmas was OK, same as usual really. Fewer presents. Fewer family arguments this year though so that was good.

    New Year’s Eve was fun, didn’t bother with going to a pub/club as it’s always such a let down. Went to Lou & Rich’s and played Guitar Hero 3 and Pub Quiz with them, Claire & Tony. Met some interesting people on my walk there/back…

    My parents have gone on their first ever holiday which is pretty cool. My Mum’s brother has taken them over to Orlando which is where he spends about half the year. Their flight was delayed by 2 hours and then they got diverted to Canada so it was already exciting for them on their first ever plane journey (they have flown before, but only on Concorde for their wedding anniversary and in helicopters at Game Fairs). Took Mum 12 hours to call me after they’d landed. I’ll remember this… if I’d have left it that late to contact her she’d have been having kittens!

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    2007

    Posted by Hex on Jan 4th, 2008
    2008
    Jan 4

    Thinking back over 2007 and trying to work out what happened.

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      My name is Jo, but on-line almost everyone knows me as Hex.

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