BLACK TIGHT KILLERS THEME SONG AND TITLES

Can any help me and tell me who the singer is on the great theme song here for Yasuharu Hasebe’s stylish spy thriller Black Tight Killers. I am working on a review of the film right now and expect it to be my next post. The music is by Naozumi Yamamoto but I am curious as to who the guy singing the song is. It is simply great to say the least. I loe the filma dn will save my comments and critiques for the post but the opening title sequence is so cool that I made a clip of it and uploaded to my Viddler account. It is certainly paying homeage to (or simply ripping off) the James Bond opening theme songs but who cares because this is so nice to look at. Japanese girls in 60′s style hairdos, go-go boots and mini-skirts look so darn cute even when brandishing a swithblade. Unlike the James Bond theme song sequences that are elaborate but end when the film begins the luridly stunning visual techniques of The Balck Tight Killer’s theme song continue throughout the movie. I hope to have that review up in a day or two. Damn, in fact I still have twenty minutes of the film to finish and I had better get on that first. Enjoy this sample for now of some nice Nikkatsu style go-go dancing action.

UPDATE: The singer on the song is actor Akira Kobayashi himself. The song’s title is Don’t Cry Drifter. Lyrics by Hiroko Sekino and music by Jun Kitahara. Got this from the hardcodes subs over opening credits of all places though was not easy as the subtitles are white they are all but impossible to read in some places as they blend in with the white background. I had to guess at a few letters but think I got it right.

My homemade video clip for the Joseph Losey film The Servant now has half a million hits at my Youtube site. Maybe you didn’t know I have a Youtube site but now you do. Please check it out. I have over 200 uploads there but I do not really do much in the way of posting bulletins or responding to comments. Sorry.  Lot of effort to maintain it via proxies from China where Youtube is blocked. But I was happy to get a little notice from the gents at Youtube along with some weird offer to make money off of the clip with Google Adsense. I am not interested in that at all and am saddened to see some sites I love now plastered with Google ads and Amazon.com stuff. No doubt I would slap a big ad on my site if it paid off in big bucks but I don’t think that will happen so I will not litter it with Adsense or Amazon stuff. Anyway, instead of making some offer to be a ‘partner’ with Adsense I would prefer if Youtube stopped blocking videos and sending me nerve-racking warnings because a nipple pops out of a fat girl’s blouse in a 60’s  exploitation trailer or because Bettie Page gets spanked, tied up, gagged  and thrown in a car trunk. Regardless I am happy this video is so popular but I disagree with some of the comments that slam Sara Miles. I love her.  She’s hot in that real snobby way. Like I would need some sort of freaky shoe fetish to get anything going with her at all. That will never happen but let an old man dream okay. My link to the original post is here and it is a great film I have seen several times and will maybe re-watch again here shortly. I am of course including the award winning video here. The quality is pretty poor I see now and I could probably do it better these days since I am monkeying with the more advanced Sony Vegas 8. This meager experiment was done using ULead 10 and Windows Movie Maker and I remember having lots of problems as it was my first experiment in making clips from videos.  For nostalgia’s sake watch at the very end and there is a little advertisement clip promoting my website way back when the URL was different.  History in the making my dear readers.

SARA MILES AND JAMES FOX GET DOWN AS ONLY

THE REPRESSIVE 60′s BRITISH MIDDLE CLASS CAN

IN JOSEPH LOSEY’S THE SERVANT

Sadly Jerry Lewis’s film work is typically derided in this day and age. He is lampooned and mocked for the most part and his over all fine output of films from the late 50’s and into the late 60’s is dismissed as the works of a egomaniac with lots of studio clout. This is unfortunate since many of his films made for Paramount Pictures, which he also directed and wrote (usually with script partner Bill Richmond) and sometimes produced, were pretty decent movies. I prefer this period of his films to the buddy films he made with Dean Martin and am willing to concede that by the 70’s his films were becoming unwatachable. The Errand Boy was made in 1961 and is a curious little film really. The film looks and feels more like a French or Italian film of the same time period. This is true not only of the surreal nature of the story but of the crisp b/w photography by W. Wallace Kelley who worked as cinematographer on many of Lewis’s films of the period as well as doing visual effects for films like Vertigo and The War of the Worlds.

Lewis plays the nobody Morty S. Tashman who is promoted, so to speak, from dong odd jobs on the studio lot to being an errand for for the studio moguls of Paramutual Films. The bigwigs actually want to use Morty as a spy to see were revenues are going but the film actually drops this plot rather quickly and the story becomes and series of short vignettes that have no real connection to one another. Morty remains alone through out the film and there are no romantic interests or character conflicts other than the scenes between Morty and his boss. The film ends with Morty, a lost soul basically, becoming a Hollywood star through a series of goof ups and film makers seeing his idiocy as gifted genius. Lots of irreverent jabs at the film industry and at Lewis himself in the movie. My wife and I really loved one short sequence where Morty interacts with a hand puppet. The scene reminds me of something you would be more likely to see in a Fellini film. I liked it so much I a made a clip of it using Sony Vegas and up loaded it to my Viddler account. If you hate Jerry Lewis this film will not change your mind in any way. But if you like his more well known films like The Nutty Professor or The Ladies Man you should be able to enjoy this strange little movie from an over looked filmmaker and comedian.

THE LITTLE CLOWN SEQUENCE FROM

THE ERRAND BOY

Most people are probably more aware of the excellent 1995 Robert Crumb documentary by Crumb’s friend and bandmate Terry Zwigoff. That is a film and I was lucky enough to get to see it in one of Seattle’s little art house cinema’s back when I lived there. Less well known but easier to watch than Zwigoff’s often depressing exploration of Crumb’s dissatisfaction with American culture (he is moving to France with wife Aline Kominsky in the film which he considers a nation “slightly less evil than America”) is the one hour documentary produced by the BBC’s Arena Films. Crumb wrote the script for Confessions and the film is full of historical footage and cynical insights but is also a lighter look at the cartoon legend. Like Zwigoff’s film Confessions explores Crumb’s dubious acceptance of his role as a comic book icon and looks at some of the minutiae of his daily life with Aline on a farm. If you’re a fan of the guy’s work then this is a documentary you will want to see. After I moved away from buying and reading the super hero stuff by Marvel decades ago it was the natural progression of events to get into the stuff by Crumb and his peers. I cannot go on enough about how the guy’s work thrills me in terms of his technique and his writing style. His most recent contribution to illustrated stories is a verse for verse comic book rendering of the book of Genesis which is causing a stir amongst religious fundamentalists for its adult themed interpretation of the Biblical book. He spent four years on the project and I have yet to see it but am trying to find a version of it online.  A fascinating personality and talented artist.

ROBERT CRUMB’S BBC DOCUMENTARY

Ye Che (Night Train)

2007/Director: Yi Nan Diao/Writer: Yi Nan Diao
Cast: Rongcai Fu, Chao Ji, Dan Liu, Shudi Liu

In case you stumbled onto this site for the first or are a visitor who may not know it I live and work in China. I want to make that little information clear from the start since the film I am writing about in this post, 2007’s Ye Che (Night Train), is one of the more brutally accurate glimpses into life in modern China I have seen in a Chinese film since coming here. Most of the films being produced here are these atrociously boring historical epics that I cannot sit through. Those films seem to be trying to follow the path set by Li Ang’s great heroic epic Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon that won the 2003 best foreign film Oscar award. Almost everything coming out of the mainland now is some sort of epic set in the Tang or Qin dynasties and have a feel of the old Hong Kong ‘wu xi pian’ (basically kung fu films) that are not only safe as far as the Chinese censors go but might just, all the directors hope, win another Oscar. There are other films that come out of the mainland but I never really see any of them. Stupid comedies and propaganda films that show how evil the Japanese were and still are or how glorious was the founding of modern communist China back in the days of Mao Zi Dong and his little gang. Most of the new films from the mainland are lackluster and vapid. But that is not to say that there are not original and gifted film makers on the mainland whose visions run contrary to the efficient propaganda machine here. It just means their films are often financed and shown outside of the country and the versions shown here are censored and edited to death. As was the case with the Blind Mountain (Mang Shan), released the same year as Night Train. Blind Mountain tell the anguished story of a college girl in modern China who is drugged and kidnapped and held prisoner in a remote mountain village and forced to bear a child for a village man and his family. She is assaulted and beaten by the family and villagers routinely. It is a reality that this happens in modern 21^st century China still but that is not the type of film the government here want to promote. A review of Blind Mountain may be around the corner.

I had never even heard of Ye Che until I saw it listed on one of my weird bittorrent sites. My wife had never heard of it nor had any of my Chinese students. There is little information on the net about the film actually. The film was funded and promoted by French and American sources and played at 2007 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard Program section and lost out to Blind Mountain. It won various other awards in festivals in Buenos Aires and Warsaw, but the film is all but unknown here in the land it was filmed in. The movie is written, directed and produced by second time director Diao Yi Nan. It was shot around Baoji, the city he lives in his native Sha’anxi province. The film stars Liu Dan (who won best actress in the 2008 Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema) as the life weary court bailiff Wu Hong Yan. Among Hong Yan’s duties is the carrying out of executions of convicted females prisoners. In China arrests, trails, sentencings and executions normally take place in the space of about a week. We see the end result of a ‘trial’ of a young woman named Zhang Lingling who is convicted of voluntary manslaughter of a man who was forcing himself upon her sexually. For the crime of manslaughter she is sentenced to death. The judge shows disgust at her fainting spell and the man’s family assaults her on the staircase. Wu Hang Yan yawns in boredom during the court room proceedings. She later carries out her duty as executioner by a putting a single bullet into the back of the woman’s head. It seems Hong Yan really does like what she does and when she is not doing her dreary work she is looking for love at single’s dance halls and dating services. She only seems to meet psychos and scam artists. Her is a mundane and depressing routine and she seems to even envy her prostitute neighbor’s lifestyle in ways.

She becomes aware she is being followed by a man she does not know. She confronts the stranger in a tunnel and believes he is from the dating service. Nothing could be further from the truth. The man is Zhang Lingling’s broken brother (Wikipedia claims he is her husband but that is nto accurate I am certain) Li Jun. Li Jun has been transferred from his job in a metal factory to a sort or caretaker or watchman at a hydraulic plant on a river. His sister asked that her daughter be giving over to Jun Li for caring but the child’s father will have nothing to do with it. Jun Li is shattered and more than a little over the edge. Despite his lowly job and pay (about $25 a month) Wu Hong Yan becomes attracted to him and they initiate a sexual relationship. Some parts are reminiscent of Monster’s Ball as Hong Yan comes to realize who Jun Li really is and why he has been following her and yet she is so lost, lonely and guilt ridden in life she finds her options wanting.

The film is bleak and painful. It moves at a slow pace that may alient many viewers. But it may also draw in many others. It is shot sans a soundtrack and many of the shots linger on the blue and gray landscape of the industrial city the characters find themselves trapped in. The dialog is minimal and the characters are often immersed in a dark, depressing photography style. It gives a view into the lives of Chinese people that one will not see in the propaganda that Beijing wants the world to see. China is certainly a rising economic super power. It hosted and swept the 2008 Olympics and will host the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai this summer. A manned lunar landing is planned. And yet most of the people here are forgotten exist in isolated despair. It holds the morbid records of having both the country with the highest rate of female suicides as well as the only country in the world where the female suicide rate exceeds that of men.  The justice system is swift and brutal to people without money and connections. Judges typically lack college educations and in many cases people are sent to work camps straight from police stations, never to see the inside of a court room. The hopelessness of it all is shown in Liu Dan’s heartbreaking performance. I know that sounds cliché as hell but sometimes clichés are the only appropriate language to use. The final scene that involves a cart horse is gut-wrenching and many western viewers will be offended as it is all real. There should more films like this coming out of China and less historical dribble like this year’s Kong Zi and last year’s film about the Nanjing massacre. This movie is brilliant but excruciating. I cannot recommend you see this one enough. I am distressed there is so little information on the film on the net and I could not find a trailer even. I made up a clip myself and uploaded it to Viddler. The subs did not copy onto the clips of course and I do not know how to hardcode them, but I think the scenes explain themselves well enough.

CLIP OF SELECTED SCENES FROM YE CHE

Lately I am not too much in reviewing films though I have more than a few reviews in the draft folder I am finishing up and should be back to some film material with my next post. But for now I am happy to be back to being able to post audio files and I am going to try to promote a band I really have come to enjoy since hearing their rendition of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. The song was played over the closing titles of the excellent Matt Dillon directed film City of Ghosts. The story takes place in Cambodia and I highly recommend the film and while it is a newer film I am planning a review of it here at the Café in the future. The band is Dengue Fever (I think pronounced dung-yi fever like the mosquito borne disease) and the band is the creation of brothers Zac (guitar and vocals) and Ethan Hotlzman (classic surfy Farfisa organ). While traveling through Cambodia the brothers were so enthralled by the style of music they heard they decided to form a band that played 60’s based Cambodian pop music with a slightly psychedelic San Francisco twist to the sound. They decided they needed a genuine Khmer singer and searched the clubs and karaoke bars of Little Phnom Penh in San Fransisco until they found the vivacious and talented Chhom Nimol performing with a small group of singers. She had a presence and voice that stood out and the brothers approached her. Nimol’s Cambodian friends were a little shocked and concerned at the wild appearance of the Hotlzman brothers and warned her to stay away but  she took the chance and a friendship and tight band were quickly formed. Nimol was a very successful karaoke singer and was able to support herself and was trying to have her family sent over to the States with her earnings. The little band has earned a good degree of success now and is on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label and I hope Nimol has been able to move her family closer to her. Most of the songs are covers of classic Cambodian pop songs but there are some originals and a few songs in English as well. As you may or may not know I live in Kunming China and I traveled to Laos for a month before and was so delighted to hear some style of music down there that was not the crappy J-Pop style music that is copied all over China these days. These are great songs and Nimol is a fantastic singer with heart and soul and you do not have to understand the words of the songs to understand the message.

BOTH SIDES NOW

Download audio file (bothsidesnow.mp3)
SEEING HANDS
Download audio file (seeinghands.mp3)
LOST IN LAOS
Download audio file (LostInLaos.mp3)

FLOWERS

Download audio file (Flowers.mp3)

SOBER DRIVER

Download audio file (soberdriver.mp3)

VIDEO FOR SEEING HANDS

HOW TO DOWNLOAD AND SAVE AUDIO/VISUAL FILES FROM THE URANIUM CAFE:
If you want to download and save an audio (or even video) file this is the easiest way to do it:
1) Use Mozilla Firefox
2) Install any number of add-ons that capture Flash Media. I use Fast Video Download. It is straight forward and easy.
3) Play the file let it buffer a bit then click on FVD in your status bar and select the file then rename it after the download completes.

Hot on the heels of my first rare Robert Fripp interview is this second tasty little morsel. Fripp is young and intense here, looking like he did from the time of his Exposure album. He is in good spirits as he chats with the two fanboy hosts with enviable connections at the Boffomondo Show. Not sure what that is but it looks like some type of public access thing back when some of those shows were cool.  There is some info on the show at the link I posted. Seems these guys (sort of a couple Wayne’s World type  lads) really dug prog rock (as I do) and somehow got some big names to appear on their LA based cable show. Other than Fripp some people they had include Adrian Bellew, John Wetton, Phil Collins, and fusion guitarist Al Di Meola. and  I can’t remember where I got this but it looks like it may have come from Youtube as it was in four short sections which I joined together and uploaded to my Viddler account. Lots of talk about King Crimson and its break up after the Red album.  Not much more to say about this one except that it is not to be missed by Fripp and King Crimson devotees. Will have my Fripp article back up soon I hope after I get the audio file hosting sorted out. Enjoy.

ROBERT FRIPP: RARE INTERVIEW 02

If you do not care much for Robert Fripp then this post and the next one will not interest you much. If you like the man and his contributions to music as both a musician and as a producer then you will may want to check these out. I forget where I got them from but this interview and the next one are pretty short but worth watching. Fripp does not seem to do a lot of interviews in any format and so these video interviews I came across are of special interest to Fripp enthusiasts. Both are ripped from fair quality VHS tapes and on this one Fripp performs some music as well (laden with Frippertronics and ambience) in a place called The Reverberation Chamber at the Acoustic Research Lab. The next interview, coming in the next post or two, shows a more hyper and manic, and there more entertaining, Fripp while this one has the King Crimson mentor a little more laid back but none the less cynical at times about the state of modern music as when he discusses appearing live in public (“we are all turkeys”) and watching music videos. And this was a few decades ago when ‘modern’ music didn’t reek as bad as it does now in the 21st century. If you’re curious I also have a Brian Eno interview I may need to edit a bit before uploading it somewhere, but it is pretty cool too. If you like Eno that is. Some people do like this sort of stuff I realize. I, on the other hand, admire both Fripp and Eno and actually owned their collaborative album No Pussyfooting album on vinyl at one time. Have it on digital MP3 nown along with their other collaborations,  and still give it a listen now and then. I will eventually get back up my post of five albums by Fripp that I stuck back in my draft folder after having issues with the audio files being disabled by the hosting service. I will be hosting those files at my own account soon and that post will be back up in a month or so I hope. For now enjoy this little look into the great mind of one of progressive rock’s most creative and hardest working individuals.

ROBERT FRIPP: RARE INTERVIEW 01

TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT LIVE AT EARL’S COURT 1975

MP3 SELECTIONS FROM VARIOUS POST ZEPPELIN PROJECTS

FORTUNE HUNTER

MAKE OR BREAK

WANNA MAKE LOVE

WALKING INTO CLARKSDALE

AUDIO FILES MAY BE NOT WORK FOR A WHILE. I AM RESOLVING THE ISSUE. PLEASE HANG LOOSE WHILE ALL FILES ARE MOVED TO MY HOSTING ACCOUNT AND THEN MOVED BACK TO INDIVIDUAL POSTS. IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME BUT IT WILL GET DONE EVENTUALLY. SORRY.

URANIUM WILLY 4 FEB 10

TODAY’S TANTILIZING THRILLER:

MESA OF LOST WOMEN