In Review: Vacation (2008)

Another day, another Australian Premier screening at the 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, this time the film, Vacation, the latest work from Japanese director, Hajime Kadoi.

If you had to describe the way the Japanese live based on what is depicted in their films, one word would have to sum it up. Spartan.

Vacation is more spartan than most Japanese films. Much of the drama unfolds inside the confines of the tiny cell of a prison inmate. In deed, Kaneda, the prisoner, is on death row for a crime that is never mentioned or explained. We learn nothing about what the man is thinking beyond the fact that he spends every day drawing landscapes in a large sketch book.

As the drama unfolds, we are introduced to Hirai, a prison guard who is marrying a beautiful young woman with a six year old son. His only means of getting time off for a honeymoon is to act as a “supporter” at Kaneda’s execution. Again, we learn little about the woman and her child apart from the fact that her husband has apparently died.

Or has he?

Why does the little boy spend almost all of his time drawing in a large sketch book? And why does the Hirai, the guard say “Sorry” to the boy following the execution of Kaneda, the prisoner? Could it possibly be because the woman was Kaneda’s wife, and the boy his son?

We can only guess at the answers. Like Three Monkeys, this too is a darkly sombre film – understandable given the subject matter – filled with long silences, and beautifully framed shots.

According to the program notes, Vacation was a “break-out success” when it was released in Japan last year. This is director Kadoi’s second feature film and it bodes well for the future of his career, and for Japanese film.

Three and a half stars
Image courtesy of 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival

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My Big Fat Ikarian Wedding

Ok, before the family back home in Australia get too excited - no, it wasn't my wedding, it was the wedding of Mihali Stamoulou and Triantafilyia Tsante at Monokambi, which I and members of my family attended on the Greek island of Ikaria, on Sunday, May 25th, 2008.

This video attempts to document that wedding and the reception that followed. I stress the word 'attempts' since these types of events on Ikaria are essentially impossible to document completely. After all, the wedding celebrations start early, and end very, very late in the night (or go right through to the next day). Bare in mind too, that the seven and a half minutes you see here, is edited down from 45 minutes of original footage.

The music you can hear throughout the video is the Ikariotiko, the traditional dance of Ikaria.

Here it is being played on violin by Yianni (John) Rousos. He is accompanied on tambourine and guitar by two other musicians whose name I did not note. This is an edited version of the dance, which I recorded live during the wedding (hence the constant background noise and chatter). The original tune went for almost 15 minutes.

The Ikariotiko is the first dance filmed in the video. The music plays on while various other dances are also shown being performed during the course of the celebrations. In the final dance shown in the video, we see the bride and groom, Triantafilyia and Mihali dancing the Tsifteteli, the Greek belly dance. They are joined by Mihali's father as the music plays on. Of course, these other dances are danced to their own tunes, but for the purpose of this film, I have used the Ikariotiko throughout.

I have no idea how many people attended this wedding, but there would have been at least 500 people there if not many more. The centre of the village of Monokampi was given over for the wedding, and from my perspective, everything was well organised and ran smoothly throughout the afternoon and into the evening while I was there. I do know that some 600 kilograms of meat was cooked for the hundreds of meals being served, and God knows how much rice to accompany that meat.

All in all, it was a great day, a fantastic celebration, and a wonderful introduction to an Ikarian wedding, celebrated in the old style, with gunshots, fire works, good food, and lots of kefi.

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Flashback: March 17, 2008

Dateline: Monday March 17, 2008
London, England (Heathrow airport)

Sitting in the terminal building waiting for boarding of flight AA105 to JFK International in New York City. I’ve decided that nowhere can you get a decent cup of coffee in London. No-one quite knows how to make a great cappuccino and the ones that you do buy never seem to be full cups. You always seem to get a cup that is only two thirds to three quarters full.

Got to Heathrow in good time. Uneventful flight to New York. Watched All The Presidents Men and some British film with Billie Piper in it.

Getting through US Customs and Border Protection was no problem, except that it took so long – close to an hour. Each index finger was scanned and a photo of my face was also taken, and added to their huge database of foreign visitors.

By the time I got through Customs and to the baggage carousel to pick my luggage up, it was sitting on the floor with a bunch of others that had simply been off-loaded by (presumably) baggage handlers, and left there for anyone to pick up and walk away with. At least it hadn’t been destroyed in a controlled explosion by paranoid, security conscious staff!

It took another half hour before I could finally get a cab to the YMCA. I waited, not because there were no taxis, but because the queue was so long. Welcome to New York. I told the taxi driver where I wanted to go, and he seemed to be making good progress getting there by the quickest, most direct route – until he got lost in a warren of narrow, traffic laden streets close to my destination. The driver knew the general location of Greenpoint, the Brooklyn suburb the YMCA is located in, but that was all. He kept stopping to ask the locals where the actual YMCA was, but most of them had no idea themselves.

Thankfully, I had printed out a Google map of the area surrounding the YMCA, with just enough information on it for me to help the driver find the building. Once we were on Manhattan Avenue, the main road we needed to be on, and heading in the right direction, I was able to guide him to Meserole Avenue, the street the ‘Y’ was on. If I hadn’t printed that page out, we might still be driving around looking for the place!

I thought it quite ironic that having just arrived in New York for the first time, it was I who actually found the way for the taxi driver.

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Three Days - Three Songs

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
After six and a half weeks in London and New York, it was time to get out and see some country: Trees and meadows, lakes and rivers, mountain peaks and open skies – that sort of thing.

So today I boarded a Greyhound bus and came to Lake Placid in upstate New York. As the journey progressed I began to make notes of the things that caught my attention: buildings, trees, the names of the towns we passed through, that type of thing. I was doing this as an 'Aide-mémoire'*.

Between Albany (the state capital), and Lake Placid, completely unexpectedly, I began to write a song. The words just oozed out of my subconscious onto the notepad, and before I knew it, I had my first completed song on this vacation.

Looks Pretty Good To Me

© 2008. Jim Lesses. All Rights Reserved.

I left New York City far behind,

I had lakes, and woods, and peace in mind.

So Lake Placid sure sounded mighty fine,

And it looks pretty good to me.

I headed into the Adirondacks,

With its weatherboard homes and its lakeside shacks.

A ragged Old Glory waving out the back,

And it looks pretty good to me.

Chorus

And it looks like America,

As far as the eye can see.

It looks like America,

And it looks pretty good to me.

And it felt pretty good to be finally writing again, let me tell you. I’ve had lots of ideas and nibbles for other songs and snippets over the past six weeks or so, but this is the one. The first one. Strange what a little trip in the country will do to a man.

But there was more to come.

Friday, May 2, 2008
At 7.15am today, I woke up out of a dream with the melody for this song going through my head. As I lay in bed repeating the melody over and over so I wouldn’t forget it, the words began to materialize spontaneously, and I began to write them down. Within a couple of hours, the first draft was complete, and I was beginning to feel delighted with my decision to leave New York for a few days.

Filled With Peace
© 2008. Jim Lesses. All Rights Reserved.

See the sun over Mirror Lake,
All is peaceful...
Here I am, this is no mistake,
Fills me with peace...

Down the valley a snow goose calls,
All is peaceful...
Bathed in mist as the water falls,
Fills me with peace...

Chorus
Who could have told me?
Let nature enfold me;
Nurture and hold me,
And fill me with peace.

A little sentimental perhaps, but it is a song with a melody that reflects my state of mind: relaxed, happy to be here in Lake Placid, and especially happy to be alive and on vacation in America.

It’s amazing what happens when you stop racing around, and let the brain unwind and the body relax. Sometimes you have to give your body and soul the time and space to stop thinking, planning, organizing, and running – so that it is able to slow down and feedback through the unconscious, thoughts, ideas, and songs you never knew where there. But I still wasn’t done.

Saturday, May 3, 2008
I went for a walk into the centre of Lake Placid this afternoon. Down the end of the main street there is a little park with seats and benches, and lawn running down at a fairly steep angle to the edge of Mirror Lake. There is also a small sound shell where four local musicians were performing some old folk and country standards. They played and sang without amplification, and it seemed to me they were performing just because it was a lovely afternoon and they felt like doing so.

I was sitting in the park having lunch in the late afternoon sun, and watching the world go by. Little kids were running around, and I it occurred to me how easy it would be for one of them to be running down the small hill with such momentum, that they would be unable to stop themselves from falling into the lake, which was not fenced off at all.

I kept wanting to say to several of them, “Stay away from the water”. And the phrase kept returning to my head, over and over. Before too long, I had started writing this song.

Don’t Go Down To The Water
© 2008. Jim Lesses. All Rights Reserved.

Chorus
Don’t go down to the water,
Stay away from the well.
Keep your eyes off the Taylor boy,
Or we’ll all be goin’ to… Well…

Nobody listens to Papa,
They’re always chidin’ at Ma.
Sittin’ there chewin’ t’bacca,
Nursin’ that ol’ liquor jar.

So she went down to the water,
Took a drink at the well.
Makin’ eyes at the Taylor boy,
An’ the rest – I don’t have to tell.

Again, within a few hours, I had completed my first draft of the song. Since the incidents and ideas that triggered the song, were entirely different from those that triggered the first two, the mood and sentiments expressed in the song were also quite different.

Each song is distinct in its own way, but I am sure that if I had not embarked on this little side trip to Lake Placid, I would never have written any of them.

Maybe the lesson here is, that if you are stuck in a rut, or suffering writer’s block, you need to change the environment you are living in, even if only for a few days.

* 'Aide-mémoire'. The term is used to refer to notes, or memoranda, that are taken in order to jog one's memory later.

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London, England

Dateline:
London, England - Saturday, March 15, 2008

Got up late, missed breakfast. Spent a couple of hours at an Internet café checking emails and updating online sites.

Went to town in the afternoon, after some lunch. Caught tube to Westminster, where the Houses of Parliament and other central government offices are located. Walked across Westminster Bridge to the south bank of the Thames. Took lots of photos and video clips. Walked along south bank where the former Greater London Council offices used to be. Now the building houses various tourist attractions such the London Aquarium, Movieum, the London Eye, the Salvadore Dali exhibition, a McDonald’s with seating for over 250 people, and who knows what else.

I saw a man holding a placard calling for the end to the war in Iraq, and I suddenly remembered that it was the 5th anniversary of the start of Gulf War II. I asked him if there was a demo going on somewhere, and he said that in fact, a demo was taking place right at that moment in Trafalgar Square. I couldn’t believe it. Of course, there would have been a rally on this day, in London especially. And I’d been playing the tourist, like a country bumpkin.

I made my way slowly along the south bank, photographing and filming, and then crossed back over the Thames River via the Golden Jubilee Bridges. I walked back up to Trafalgar Square, but the demo was over and I went to have a coffee in the National Gallery. I also had a curry, which members of the Hare Krishna’s were giving away for donations.

Went and saw Neil Young for the second time at the Hammersmith Apollo. This time I saw Pegi Young’s full set, and while I enjoyed it, I was not blown away by her music. She writes mostly in the country music genre, and for me it was not quite biting enough.

Neil Young again took to the stage solo for his first set. Tonight he was much more focussed, at least for the first few songs, but he was just as good as he was the previous night. However, the second set was a barnstormer. It was the last of 51 gigs, and he had no need to conserve his energy for performances on subsequent nights, so he didn’t hold back. Tonight he really rocked the way I expected he always would. I would have loved to see him do Like a Hurricane, or Pocahontas. But it was not to be. The audience where a lot more vocal and into the performance as well, and I got the sense that he was feeding off the energy of the audience during his performance.

Internet café 1.50
Lunch 4.05
Coffee 2.20
Subway 6inch 3.50
Hare Krishna 1.00
Donations to buskers 3.00

Total spending today: GBP: 15.25 ($32.95) Note: Again this does not include the cost of Neil Young tickets, as these had been purchased several months ago.

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Trafalgar Square, London

Dateline: London, England - Friday, March 14, 2008

Caught up with my nephew Kos.

Met him down at Trafalgar Square. I have so many memories of this place. Most of them associated with political rallies and demonstrations I attended during my years in London in the early 1970s. Spent time catching up with his life here in London, and the news from home. Visited the National Portrait Gallery. Magnificent works of art. Turner, Degas, Van Gogh, and many others.

We also walked around the local area, down through Green Park to Buckingham Palace, and back up to Piccadilly Circus and the West End.

Went and saw Neil Young at the Hammersmith Apollo. The support act was Neil’s wife, Pegi Young. We missed most of her set since we were out having a Thai meal at a local restaurant. Neil Young was solo for his first set, then with a full band for his second (which included Pegi on back up vocals).

It was a great performance, only marred by the idiots who insist on shouting between songs for their own favourite Neil Young song. Why they can’t be happy just to be at the performance and enjoy the selection of songs he wants to perform, I’ll never understand.

Total spending today: GBP: 48.50 ($105.05) Note: does not include the cost of Neil Young tickets, as these had been purchased several months ago.

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Natural History Museum, London

~ Dateline:
London, England - Thursday, March 13, 2008

The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London.

Went out walking. Found myself at the Natural History Museum. London is full of buildings like this. The building is magnificent – inside and out. But inside especially, the building is a testament to the craft and engineering skills of master builders who are long gone, and the likes of which we may never see again.

I spent several hours walking through the Museum, and although I enjoyed the displays, I was fascinated more by the construction, than I was by what the Museum housed.

The exhibits are very modern – as they need to be these days. After all, the vast majority of visitors to the Natural History Museum were school students and tourists. The average age of visitors seemed to be somewhere between late teens and early twenties.

Found internet café and uploaded two video blogs to YouTube. Must update my Honouring the Muse blog as well.

Total spending today: GBP:20.65 (AU$44.70)

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London, England after 31 Years

~ Dateline:
London, England - Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Arrived London, Heathrow Airport at approx 5:15am (local), or 3:45pm Adelaide time. Total time traveling or in transit - 24 hours and 15 minutes. We left Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at 3am (local time).

Stayed at the airport until 8am or so, before catching train to Earls Court station and Earls Court Hotel. It did occur to me that I might get caught up in the morning rush hour, and sure enough, I got caught up in the morning rush hour. Luckily I just happened to be on the right side of the train which enable me to alight at Earls Court with a minimum of fuss. Thankfully, I didn’t have too many step to climb to get to the street. The hotel was only 50 metres or so down the road.

Checked in and climbed two flights of stars to room 31. For 45 GB Pounds I get two beds (one single and one double), small TV, and a tiny combined toilet and shower facility. Room (and hotel) is rundown but not unlivable. Power point is loose in the wall. Showering in the bathroom will be a real challenge. May need to sit on the loo while I shower.

Decided to stay up and not go to bed. Will sleep well tonight. Walked to Hammersmith Apollo and checked out the neighborhood. Bought Time Out London edition. Found internet café close to hotel. One hour cost one GBP. Sent email to family and a few others.

Couldn’t connect with my laptop, although it does seem to be connecting to unsecured wireless networks. Had to buy power adaptor to suit British power supply since the one I bought from home is suitable only for the US and Asia.

Temperature: 12C. Freezing cold wind blowing most of the day. No rain. Intermittent sunshine. Wore beanie to protect head from cold. Took a bunch of photographs. It was a cold, grey day.

Overwhelming impressions: English architecture is very distinctive. Long rows of cottage housing remind me of waves rolling along the sea shore. Many such blocks rise to three or four stories in height. It was probably felt that it was too much to expect that residents climb more than four floors.

I have been quite nostalgic for my past years here. The city has certainly changed. The ethnic mix of the city is much more diverse than back in the 1970s.

It is now 8.15pm and my head is starting to drop. It’s time to hit the sack. Night, night.

Total spending today: GBP: 25.75 (AU$55.75)

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