Sansho the Bailiff Recounts The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai

Sansho the Bailiff was a depressing film about a good governor exiled for not being evil to his subjects, and his wife and their two kids are separated from Sansho and sold into slavery. I just got so sad because the film is pretty unrelentingly miserable, and pretty much any time it could possibly be not miserable, they just toss in some other terrible thing. Not as good as Ugetsu, another Kenji Mizoguchi I enjoyed.

Recount was written by Danny (Jonathan from Buffy and Doyle from Gilmore Girls) Strong. If that wasn't enough to make me want to watch it, it's about the Florida Recount. Of course, the major problem with it was the liberties it took with history. Which I heard about in detail from someone who was there. And did some of the things attributed to others in the film. That person also tried to watch it, but was understandably upset by both the changes and by the reminder of history. If you, for some reason, weren't also traumatized by the 2000 election, you could do worse than watching this film. If only for Laura Dern as Katherine Harris. So damn frustrating. I definitely get more and more disgusted with pretty much everyone involved in that the more I read. Maybe I should stop reading. I do want to say that Sydney Pollack's death is a damn shame. I'm a huge fan of his, and I can't help wondering what he would have done with Recount had he been healthy enough to direct it. This does actually make one (1) thing that Jay Roach has done that isn't responsible for the demise of America, though, so good for him. This just is about the demise of America, not responsible for it.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai has, in my opinion, one of the best trailers ever: it's the director calling up the office of the prime minister of Japan and trying to get the secretary who answers to agree to show the film to Koizumi for a comment. And the film is a softcore Japanese film about a prostitute who gets shot in the head, develops genius-level intelligence, has her sense of taste delayed by a long time, gets the severed finger of a cloned George W. Bush, and has to avert a nuclear attack. It references Noam Chomsky (misspelled as Chomski every time), features copious cumshots, a horribly fake floating George W. Bush finger that has sex with her, stock footage of Bush giving his Mission Accomplished speech with ridiculous dubbing, and very basic liberal political points. It's totally awesome. Plus, I think that most of the "smart" things she says actually make some sense.