yetanothermagazine filmtvmusic apr2009 hathaways @ mochileros bar illinois’ indie folk duo performs in lima, peru. tokyo! interior design, merde and shaking tokyo! in this yam we review // everlasting moments, watchmen, u2, utada hikaru, madeleine peyroux, the l word, desperate housewives, ao akua and more // fear to freedom more on “the milk of sorrow” and peruvian cinema// film Luckily, a Peruvian film won the blockbuster season begins, and tokyo! pg2 everlasting moments pg4 Berlinale’s top prize, and I thought perhaps a few smaller films begin watchmen pg5 I had my cover story. Throughout making their round for the coming the milk of sorrow & peruvian cinema pg6 coming soon pg9 these two months, I doubted award season. whether I could keep that as a music hathaways - hand me down pg10 cover or choose another one, which This may be our most international @ mochileros bar pg10 I almost did – twice - but Nate edition to date. Hoping that you are utada hikaru - this is the one pg11 chickened out when having the wishing us luck in the upcoming madeleine peyroux - bare bones pg11 too foreign for your own good, opportunity to see Ayako Fujitani, issues of the magazine~~ please sing in english pg12 and decided to watch “Tokyo!” morning musume - platinum 9 pg14 u2 - line on the horizon pg14 some other day instead. amywong // super junior - sorry, sorry pg15 buono! - buono! 2 pg15 dbsk - the secret code pg15 As you might notice, there is also p.s.: nate, you still suck. xD a decrease in film content. Usual tv the l word final season pg16 contributors like desperate housewives season 5 pg17 insidethegold.com have taken books a backseat this time around as ao akua pg18 no me esperen en abril pg18 This is the first issue ofyam after award season, and I found myself in the middle of nothing. I had no direction, no idea what to write about, and nothing to put on the cover. from the editor // index // Generally speaking, the trilogy of stories that is the movie During Merde’s execution, someone is recording the Even as much work as that was, once one has deciphered Tokyo! could have been much shorter and would have been event with their mobile camera the way Saddam Hussein’s the layered and metaphoric visuals, you’re left a bit hungry. more successful as 10 or 15 minute shorts than a hanging was documented. Even hanging does not stop At first one is self congratulatory for having understood a single movie. the menace as he becomes as intangible as air, escaping foreign/independent film, but on hindsight, what did I walk through an air duct. He is unkillable; more of an idea than away with? Did it spawn a conversation for at least a couple tokyo! interior design a physical being. of hours after? This one didn’t for me. I really had nothing to The first short by Michel Gondry was rather charming. It relate about it save a dissection of what each audio or visual portrayed a girl (Ayako Fujitani) who felt useless and out of shaking tokyo metaphor meant. place in her first week in the big city. Initially, she seems to The third piece covered a very basic fact of urbanism. be a take charge woman carrying her artistic boyfriend A lot of people are lonely. Period. Like eating celery. Negative calories. (Ryo Kase). As her aspiring filmmaker boyfriend finds a menial job immediately to help make ends meet, she On the surface the story revolves around a shut-in, flounders in her efforts to find her niche. someone who withdraws from society and lives as completely as they can with minimal contact with As her alienation increases under the pressure of the burden the outside world. His isolated world is perfect, quiet she and her boyfriend place on their host, she undergoes a and ordered. Easy to maintain and to control. frightening transformation. Into a chair. Eventually she finds peace and purpose with her new life as a piece of furniture Once he makes eye contact with a pizza delivery girl when a struggling musician finds and takes her home. (Yu Aoi), all hell breaks loose and they experience an earthquake. The pizza delivery girl passes out in the shut- This was a pretty straightforward film that seemed to in’s home and he’s forced to take action. Not knowing how play in the vein of a children’s tale, and could have been to revive her, he notices tatooed buttons on the girl’s arms shorter had it not dwelt so long on the girl’s drawn out and leg. Pressing the reset button on her leg, she wakes up transformation and her life as a chair. and goes off. merde With this new outside factor and traumatic earthquake, this Merde was much more layered and topical; though man’s world is never the same and must seek the delivery it didn’t necessarily add too much to today’s social girl for resolution. He wanders out into the world to find dialogue on terrorism or the state of society. other shut-ins like himself. Eventually, he even finds the girl who is ready to become a shut-in herself. In beseeching her Of note is how the use of Akira Ikufube’s music from the to come out, he presses a tatooed button that says “love”, old 50s and 60s Godzilla movies, even the Godzilla roar and the story ends on another earthquake. itself, was integrated into this particular short. As a quick background, the Godzilla films were made as a veiled What was most interesting about this film was that it commentary of the use of atomic weapons on Japan. Of seemed the earthquake was a sign of how difficult it was course, instead of the nuclear weapons wielding America, to seek change, love, or human contact and to maintain Godzilla the atomic fire breathing monster was substituted. that. It is so much easier to live and maintain a predictable life without accommodation for a shared life. Even the In the modern day usage of who this music now portrays, it girl herself had her own particular way of dealing with is the horrendous sewer dwelling deformed man known as and controlling her life through her tattooed buttons which Merde. It is almost as if Merde is the manifestation of indicated which emotional state could be activated. 21st century fears. This film dwelt far too long on how sunlight traveled across Three times terrorism is brought up by word or imagery. a floor and other esoteric thoughts. In Merde’s supreme act of terrorism against Tokyo, he is dressed in an old Japanese army uniform lobbing a cache While urban alienation and adaptation is the of old World War II grenades. At his subsequent trial, the common thread of this trilogy, each story unto itself Japanese prosecutor states, “even terrorists have the explored themes so specific to those segments as decency to blow themselves up with their victims”. to make each of them unrelated to the other. This made for a mentally taxing experience where one had to reset their mind for the next film. pg2 maria larssons eviga ögonblick “Everlasting Moments” is based on the true story of Maria Larsson, a working class woman in the early 1900s Sweden, who wins a camera and then overcomes enormous obstacles to become a photographer. The film was also Sweden’s entry to the various awards, which raised my expectations of it, and I had to see it with Swedish subtitles only. Despite all that, the film is quite remarkable with pretty outstanding performances especially Maria Heiskanen who played Larsson with a certain frailty and, at the same time, a certain fearlessness. Moreover, the film is just a gorgeous old photograph through and through, but even that couldn’t get me to see another layer to her husband’s abuse, which resulted in the same thing over and over again. - amy ½ This movie is basically the book in motion. I think Zach watchmen Snyder did a superb job of translating the concept and I was really excited about this movie and it lived up to my themes of the book while picking a great assembled of expectations and then some. I read the books a few years lesser known actors to really bring it to life in a way I thought back and while I am a fan of Alan Moore, and it is certainly a enhanced the experience of the book. There have been thoughtful and complex work, the original graphic novel left people that feel it even stayed too close to the book but if me a little cold. I respect it and enjoyed it but it was more that is all people are complaining about, I think we lucked of a detached fascination then any real affection for the out, and who really cares if the squid got cut or not? (keep characters. an eye out as it does make a kinda sorta cameo) It’s basically a deconstruction of the very idea of Good performances by all involved but standouts include superheroes. Those wacky characters that dress up in long Patrick Wilson as Night Owl, Jackie Earle Haley as underwear and put on silly masks, then proceed to go out Rorschach, Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan and Jeffrey Dean in public and fight crime. It asks the question, what would Morgan as the Comedian. have happened to our “real” world if these yahoos really existed and how might these heroes really go about saving In my humble opinion a far superior movie to a certain pointy the world.