 Battle
Royale:
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, this 2000 release is the movie
that compelled Quentin Tarentino to cast Chiaki Kuriyama
as Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill. But Battle Royale is more than
just a movie you can watch & think to yourself; "Oh
it's that chick."
Based
on the sci-fi novel & popular comic book, Battle Royale
is a cinematic hybrid that blends Lord Of The Flies with
The Running Man. Its set in Japan where each year a junior
high school class is selected to play the Battle Royale.
Their school bus is abducted while the students are sedated
with gas. The teens awake on a small deserted island with
explosive collars around their necks. In walks their former
teacher Kitano, played by Beat Takeshi, who, with the help
of an amusing instructional video, explains their situation.
The
island is broken down into different zones & at various
times several of these zones are forbidden. If a student
is in 1 of these forbidden zones, their collar explodes.
It also keeps the teens moving in the hopes of them playing
the game. The object of said game is to kill all of your
classmates. Last person standing gets to go home. This is
the real version of Survivor.
The
students are then given a bag with a map of the island,
a compass, a flashlight, bread, water & a weapon chosen
at random. Then it's on! 42 kids must battle to the death.
Some of the kids actually get into it. Other kids refuse
to kill, which is a mistake. Still others think there may
be a way to beat the game & form alliances. Most of
the movie follows Shuya, played by Tatsuya Fujiwara, &
his attempts to aid the girl who has a crush on him, Noriko,
played by Aki Maeda. They meet & join forces with Shogo,
portrayed by Taro Yamamoto, a transfer student who claims
to have played & won this game before. But is Shogo
really their way off the island
or is he their betrayer?
The
body count rises as the hours pass. What makes this film
both disturbing & refreshing is that unlike Hollywood
films which cast actors in their 20's to play teens, Battle
Royale's cast is actually made up of teenagers. It's an
uncompromising film that has already birthed a sequel that
features a cameo by Sonny Chiba. But let's not get ahead
of ourselves. Watch Battle Royale & see who makes it
out alive.
 Outfoxed-
Rupert Murdoch's War On Journalism:
Directed by Robert Greenwald, this documentary
points out the obvious bullshit factory that is the Fox
News Channel.
When
Rupert Murdoch founded the Fox Network in 1985, no one really
paid much attention. But his personal worship of Ronald
Reagan
was the catalyst for Fox leaning hard to the right in terms
of news casting, if not content. Rupert formed the Fox News
Channel in 1996 & appointed Roger Ailes, a former media
specialist in the Nixon,
Reagan & Bush Sr. administrations, to helm the new channel.
Ailes saw no conflict of interest in managing an entire
news network. But Fox never has this conflict whether is
be having George W. Bush interviewed by a man whose wife
worked for Bush's campaign in 200 or having Dubya's first
cousin, John Ellis, helming the network's coverage of that
year's presidential election. All this happens on a network
that claims to be "Fair & Balanced". Bullshit!
Greenwald
uses Fox's own footage to point out their bullshit. He shows
Bill O'reilly claim to have only told 1 guest to "shut
up" during the entire run of his program. This claim
is followed by numerous clips of O'Reilly telling everybody
who verbally bests him to shut up. Then there are the network
wide edicts of interrupting liberal guests or simply cutting
off their microphones if they go against the Bush administration.
You hear about stories that were buried by the networks
upper echelon & reporters who had their contracts terminated
then asked to sign confidentiality agreements after compiling
a story that makes the conservative right look bad.
But
wait. There's more. You also get members of Fairness &
Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) discussing Fox's lack of both
fairness & accuracy. They document how liberal guests
are outnumbered by 5 times as many conservative guests.
They also give polling results, which show that Fox viewers
were more likely to believe that Iraq had WMD's & ties
to Al Quaida than if they watched other news sources.
This
is just 1 among many politically themed documentaries that
are out this election season. They sift through the dirt
of the Bush administration because, in the words of Martin
Luther King, there comes a time when silence is betrayal.
R
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