zatoichi

fans of "kill bill" should watch this film by takeshi kitano. but, gory fight scenes aside, this movie really cracked me up--period! zatoichi is a blind masseur with bleached hair who carries around a mean samurai sword disguised as his walking cane. unprovoked, he is but a quiet, blind man who helps a vegetable vendor carry her stuff. but he can turn attackers into sliced sashimi faster than a wink of an eye.

thanks to brilliant CGI work, the blood splattering is choreographed in perfect graphic detail. other details i find amusing are the scenes involving these four farmers who at first were tilling the soil, and in the next were dancing in the wet ricefields. their work was choreographed into a rhythmic pattern, so that it joins the beat of the seemingly innocent background music. it all culminates into the japanese tap dance presentation at the end of the movie, where some of zatoichi's co-actors are seen dancing along like it's the movie's "curtain call."

the comic relief of the movie is shinkichi, the vegetable vendor's gambling-addicted nephew who befriends him for dice-betting tips. there's this fat guy who runs around the vegetable vendor's house in his undies (or what looks like undies) with a spear and screams like a lunatic, because that's what he is. he's a frustrated samurai, hence the running amuck. but he's harmless, really. his mere presence is already funny.

zatoichi isn't totally blind, as revealed in the end of the movie. he's only blind in one eye, yet he chooses to roam about with both eyes closed. he inadvertently befriends two sibling geishas who kill and rob their unsuspecting customers. their thirst for avenging their family's massacre finds fruition with zatoichi's help.

i think i've written a long enough review for this movie...(90% is a narration of the story, haha.) well, i'm out of DVDs to watch at home. time to visit quiapo! hehe.

on a side note, i can't believe yahoo mail is now 100MB!