More Relevant Movies

Miss B how could you miss this one...
THE BACHELOR: Hijikata ^_^

I keep mentioning that Mamoru Oshii's (famous for Ghost in the Shell)
Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade is influenced by the Shinsengumi...now I
have even more proof. Mamoru Oshii also made a film called Jigoku no
banken: kerubersu (1991) or Stray Dog: Kerberos Panzer Cops (USA
release 2003) (actually made in 1991)I think Kerberos is a corruption
of Cerberus the 3 headed dog of the underworld. It can be categorized
as an art film and it is not for everyone. "Stray Dog" is almost a
live action verson of "Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade" (easy to find in the
U.S.) but with a totally different storyline. Same group of guys
(with armor and night vision capabilities) but this time it is about 2
surviving members of Kerberos. One was a prisoner for 3 years, I'll
call him Mr. A, and the stock phrase "best behavior" was in the
subtitles...one escapes to China. Most of the movie takes place on a
shrimp farm in China as the subordinate officer tries to understand
his former superior officer (commander of the Kerberos Group) let's
call him Mr. B. Mr. A receives a deal from the government to track
down Mr. B so Mr. A is working for the new government on an informal
basis. The movie makes a bid deal about "dogs" and their value in
society and their role to their masters (Jin Roh replaces dogs with
wolves)...and how dogs are used and discarded. The movie contains
flash backs, during the end of the Kerberos force, Mr. A is abandoned
by his commander Mr. B.(this is the source of confusion for Mr. A).
Now after the government is established both Mr. A and Mr. B have lost
all direction in life. Kerberos and Jin Roh are without a doubt a
synthesis of Shinsengumi history and not any other group because of
the emphasis on the end of an era and noticeably in Kerberos the
bringing together of various stary dogs (ronin?), giving them the best
equipment money can buy and organizing them into small units (namely
1,2,3). Kerberos and Jin Roh are not armies they are a special task
force of the police department thus there is no basis for connecting
them to let's say the Satsuma samurai now known to the west as the
Last Samurai.

QUOTES FROM THE MOVIE...(and ummm some of it will sound very familar)
"The riots were over and became just a part of history. The
government officials had completely oppressed and annihilated the
opposition. However, this lead to another battle against the elite
security unit that is known as "kerberos" who refused the order from
their officials to disband. It created a symbolic figure at the end of
this age. It was a rebellion of watch dogs who had lost their
masters. People called it the Kerberos Uprising."

I'm still human inside even though I was trained to be a dog.

the ability to "smell" comrades and find them

desire to choose a master to be faithful to..."like a nation or a thought"

"I wish we both could find masters who we won't regret"

"They(watch dogs) will never know the reason why their master had to
dump them."

"I'm going to talk about and impressive but tragic story about a dog
who is looking for his master and his future."

"There are many reasons why masters dump their dogs...you can even
call it a historical necessity. No matter how unreasonable it may
sound the dog has to pay for any misfortuneon his own even if he
couldn't understand the reason why."

Hero/main character got out of jail fast because "given a separate
trial and was a well-behaved model prisoner."

"the time when dogs will disappear from this country will come...Even
if your membory of the time you were a dog fills your hear with
excitement humans have to live only as humans."

[I have screenshots from this film and will put them side by side with
Jin Roh and will probably go all crazy and do a write up for
SHQ...even though I have to finish other stuff ^_^]

I watch Onmyoji (recommend by unsafesects I think) and it is from the
director of Mibu Gishi Den (When the Last Sword is Drawn)...decent
film about the sorcerer Seibei who lived during the Heian era AND HE
WAS A REAL PERSON!!!! I watched the extras and found the extras to be
very cool because the guy who portrays seibei, a kyogen actor(?), had
to go to Seibei's shrine in Kyoto (built at the location of his.
Seibei's house). The actor in the extras and in the movie talks about
the significance of names for spells and how names ARE spells. He
said "when I get tired of myself I can/will just change my name".

And to finish off my marathon movie watching weekend my new copy of
Twilight Samurai arrived. If Mibu Gishi Den is about what was going
on in Kyoto then Twilight Samurai deals with what was happening in the
countryside during the exact same time period. The 2 fight scenes in
Twilight Samurai are ~masterful~ (and I wish Mibu Gishi Den had more
of these scenes!) and the movie gets and A+ from me for great story,
cinematography and acting. The film will touch on the koku rice
system, famine, the escalating violence in Kyoto, the hardship of
ronin, the representation system in Edo (where retainers hardly meet
their lords) and low ranking samurai. The domain in which the movie
takes place was pro shogunate and close to Aizu (heroine was supposed
to marry a retainer in Aizu)...and well you can kind of guess the
ending. This film is not an epic it is like Mibu Gishi Den a very
good drama. Twilight Samurai is a must see because it will allow us
to better understand the demographics in the Shinsengumi not everyone
was from a high ranking samurai family e.g. Saitou.