Um… yeah. If I characterised our previous film as “berserk”, how can I not say the same thing about… whatever the fuck this was? This, it should be said, is considered one of the defining works of Japanese cyberpunk cinema, so it was pretty much bound to be one of the damnedest things I’ve ever seen; I have read descriptions of other extreme Japanese horror films next to which Tetsuo may seem comparatively mild, but on its own terms… yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen much else that was quite this out there. The story, if you can call it, revolves around two men, a “metal fetishist” and a salaryman who runs him over in a car accident; the latter gradually finds his life turning more metallic as it becomes clear he should’ve made sure the metal guy was in fact dead before trying to dispose of him. It’s actually more coherent than some critics seem to think it is, basically being a particularly fucked kind of supernatural revenge story, but the story’s not the point, the style is… indeed, Tetsuo is a pretty astounding case of style as substance rather than just over it. I feel like the budgetary constraints on the film (which only cost about $100,000), having to shoot on black and white 16mm film and so forth, actually make the film what it is, this would’ve been an entirely different film in 35mm and colour (like its sequel) because the grotty b/w visual just define the tone so much. Tetsuo is all about those visuals, the editing, the sound and music design, and especially the startling use of pixillation; throughout the film you can see it visibly fighting its limitations. It does get kind of wearing before the end—this is a somewhat long 67 minutes—but once I got into its peculiar vibe I enjoyed it a fair bit. Really should see more of Shinya Tsukamoto’s stuff.
Month: August 2025
The Wicked City (1992)
OH, isn’t it a grand thing to rewatch a film you haven’t seen in over a quarter of a century and discover that, not only is it as berserk as you remember it being, but even more so? That was the somewhat astounding position I found myself in tonight… I believe I’ve only seen The Wicked City once, back in the late 90s when I was first exploring Hong Kong cinema; it was on SBS and for some reason I don’t think I taped it in the way I did with pretty much all the other HK stuff SBS showed back then, so I haven’t had an opportunity to see it since then (and if I did tape it, I don’t have a VCR to play it)… I did watch the anime on which this was based a long time ago too, but I haven’t seen this live-action version of it since way back when. And I mostly remembered it being, as I said, berserk. Our story is laid in Hong Kong which is kind of connected to the world of demon-like creatures called Rapters; a drug from the latter’s world that makes humans evaporate has started to appear in ours, and the anti-Rapter agents must find the source and stop it. How this story is told, though, is what matters, it’s the bizarre details and the way some things just… happen, for want of a better word, especially in rhe second half. And, as I said, it was even MORE berserk than I remembered it being, cos I’d somehow forgotten some of those details, like the agents suddenly manifesting their own unexplained telekinetic and magnetic powers, the astounding wirework battle, the, er, pinball machine… I was terrified it wouldn’t live up to my increasingly dim memories of something I saw once in the late ’90s, but it actually exceeded them and I can’t complain about that. Really should rewatch the anime some time, too…
Seems about right
US military is buying Tesla Cybertrucks to use as targets for missiles
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has touted the Cybertruck as being “bulletproof” and designed to “survive the apocalypse.” He suggested it could be used by the military and even directly pitched the electric pickup truck to the US military.
Considering that the Cybertruck has turned out to be a commercial flop and Tesla is currently experiencing issues selling it, despite reduced production, the automaker could benefit from a Cybertruck order from the US military.
It looks like it is about to get one.
According to new documents first obtained by ‘The War Zone‘, the U.S. Air Force Test Center (AFTC) is looking to acquire 33 target vehicles—including two Tesla Cybertrucks—for delivery to the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico.
This is, obviously, not how Edolf expected his vehicles to serve the US military, and something about it feels vaguely malicious, like Mushroom Cock still paying him money for these things but giving him the finger while doing so; as for why they specifically need CybertrucKKKs, well, apparently it’s because they’re worried about The Other Side obtaining them and the US needs to know if they have the ability to destroy them or not should it come to that. Not quite as preposterous as it sounds—as the article reminds us, Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov has at least one that he claims to have used in battle—but still a bit risible. Anyway, the real problem I think they’ll face is, when the missile hits the CybertrucKKK, determining if the missile actually blew it up or the vehicle did so by itself…
Superscum!
With the new Superman movie causing so much discourse at the moment, it’s nice to see one former Superman being inspired by it… if only it had been in a positive way:
Former Superman actor Dean Cain has announced he has signed up to join US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), in order to support Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.
The federal law enforcement agency has aggressively ramped up immigration raids since Trump’s return to the White House and was recently awarded $75bn in extra funding as part of the president’s “big beautiful bill”, which includes billions for hiring an additional 10,000 Ice agents by 2029.
Speaking on Fox News on Wednesday night, Cain told host Jesse Watters that he decided to join Ice after sharing one of their recruitment videos on his Instagram account on Tuesday, which Watters had spoken about on his show.
“I’m actually a sworn deputy sheriff and a reserve police officer – I wasn’t part of Ice, but once I put that out there and you put a little blurb on your show, it went crazy,” Cain told Watters on Wednesday. “So now I’ve spoken with some officials over at Ice, and I will be sworn in as an Ice agent, ASAP.”
Asked what inspired him to join, Cain said: “This country was built on patriots stepping up, whether it was popular or not, and doing the right thing. I truly believe this is the right thing.”
Funny, I could’ve sworn the Unhinged States was founded on white people moving there from Europe and settling there illegally, followed by other white people doing the same thing and declaring the previous lot of white people weren’t white enough, and meanwhile the people already living there were just confused by where all these white people were coming from and where the situation would leave them…
The “woke” discourse around the new Superman film and the latter being an “immigrant”—the ultimate illegal immigrant, indeed, and one you can’t just send back where he came from—is evidently what’s provoking Cain now, cos he’s been a right-wing shit for years; he apparently claimed that he’d been a registered Republican but switched to independent cos the party didn’t represent him, but he seems to have only voted Republican in this century, and he’s a director of the NRA. Plus he’s a reserve officer in three different police forces, one of which is a deputy sheriff position. It’s nice to actually live one’s beliefs, I suppose, and it’s something I can respect, but not when said beliefs are odious and could result in harm to others that don’t deserve it…
Incidentally, I only discovered today Cain is actually quarter-Japanese, his father having been one Roger Tanaka; the latter appears to have bailed on the family before Dean was born, but I suspect that, depending on exactly how old he was, he might have had similar tales to George Takei about being, you know, concentrated for being the “wrong” race that he could’ve told Dean if he’d stuck around, and the latter might have taken them on board and decided this sort of thing he’s now doing is a bit bullshit and needlesly cruel. Or maybe not. Probably not, in fact. Cunt.
Christ 2: This Time It’s Biblical (?)
So this fucking thing is real after all? And it’s in TWO parts? I know there’s been a rather tedious tendency in cinema over the couple of decades to split film adaptations of certainly particularly long books into two parts ever since the Harry Potter series first pulled that stunt, but where the fuck is the material for TWO films going to come from on this subject? Jesus Christ (as it were), even the Bible has piss all to say about the resurrection, and about as much to explain what he was doing on his long weekend off… TWO films. The last time I wrote about this nonsense I described it as Gibson’s white whale, and I somehow don’t feel like this news really changes that, it feels more like he’s named these two dates—TWO! for fuck’s sake—to force himself to be accountable or something, “honestly I will have these TWO! films ready to go by those dates, I promise”… Mind you, now that he has named the dates, God has the perfect opportunity to pull the ultimate trick and bring about the apocalypse before Good Friday 2027…
The time that it’s always been
Another crush bites the dust?
Yeah. I’ve written about Sydney Sweeney before, the woman with The Tits That Saved The West From Wokeness Somehow, and I said then that I didn’t know much about her, so I didn’t know where she herself might stand on that issue and other matters political… well, I have more of an idea now. Mind you, even if I didn’t know much about her, I did find her awfully cute, and I could’ve added her to the list of ladies on that older post. I wish I could still find her cute in the same way, but now I don’t know if I can… Oh well, not the first time I’ve discovered someone I had a bit of a crush on might actually be shitty in some way, and it probably won’t be the last time. I just hope Emilia Clarke doesn’t come out as a Reform voter or some such, because that would be too awful to handle…
Anyway, as to that ad campaign:
The actor by then had generated considerable media coverage after the outfitter American Eagle released several videos showing her modeling the company’s denim jeans and jackets. American Eagle’s campaign generally revolves around the punny use of the phrase, “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.”
In one video, “genes” is crossed out and replaced with “jeans”. Another clip showed the blue-eyed blond suggestively looking at the camera and discussing how her body’s composition “is determined by … genes”.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue,” Sweeney continues in the advertisements, which include a joke about the cameraperson becoming distracted by her breasts.
Some social media users dismissed the campaign as graceless, arguing that it echoed rhetoric associated with eugenics and white supremacy at a time when the Trump administration was seeking to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as well as aggressively pushing to detain and deport immigrants en masse.
One TikTok reaction video that received hundreds of thousands of likes accused Sweeney of ignoring the political climate of the moment, saying “it’s literally giving … Nazi propaganda”.
US conservatives have seized on the indignation over the campaign on the liberal fringes, rushing to praise Sweeney for landing a blow on “woke” advertising, invoking a term some use to besmirch DEI measures.
Now I’m not above using the word “Nazi” when I think it’s warranted, of course, but in this case… yeah, I’m not feeling it. I just don’t think it’s the white nationalist dogwhistle some people on the Left are calling it…
Mind you, that doesn’t mean some people on the Right aren’t taking it as one, even if I’m not hearing the signal… which is the point of dogwhistles after all, I know, though I suppose some people will pick up signals even if they’re not intended (cf. noted Beatles fan Charles Manson). This particular creep has a bunch of Taylor Swift AI pics with sunwheels and the like, so, you know… one of them.
I don’t know, I just find the whole thing dispiriting somehow; we perhaps should’ve known (and I’m seeing quite a few people saying they did, because OBVIOUSLY they’re all so SMART) after the “MAGA party” thing that she would be as Republican as the rest of the family evidently is, but the evident confirmation is still a letdown. I hope she has enough sense to disavow the chuds who’ve replaced the aforementioned Ms. Swift as their “Aryan” icon and that she does it in less time than Tay Tay took to make her own positions clear; like I said, I don’t entirely buy the argument that this is all some eugenics propaganda, and I rather doubt Sydney had that much creative input into the campaign… but she’s still the public face/cleavage of the thing, and some sort of clarifying statement might not go astray. In conclusion, I offer you this video I found:
Oh not again
Well, that’s ANOTHER apocalypse I’ve lived through, and I didn’t even know this one was coming. However, in an interesting twist, this particular doomsday prophet is actually denying being one:
Renowned preacher Prophet David Owuor has distanced himself from viral claims suggesting he prophesied the end of the world would occur on August 2, 2025.
In an official statement released by the Ministry of Repentance and Holiness on Friday, the church dismissed the circulating reports as false, misleading, and deliberately twisted to damage the reputation of the preacher and undermine his ministry’s message.
“The leadership and congregation of The Ministry of Repentance and Holiness strongly denounce the recent spread of false and misleading information about The World Ending on August 2nd, 2025,” the statement read.
“Prophet Dr Owuor has always been very categorical on the fact that nobody knows the day or the hour when the Messiah will return, as the Bible clearly states in Matthew 24:36,” it added. […]
This was not the first time such news emerged online.
Last year, similar claims attributed to the prophet also went viral, claiming that his prophecy had pointed to November 2, 2024 as doomsday.
We should be fair and note that this denial was also published before this putative apocalypse was supposed to happen so, unlike Harold Camping, for example, he’s actually not going for a post-facto rationalisation of an event that conspicuously failed to happen. Dave is so not wrong about something he supposedly said, he never even said it in the first place! Unless, of course, he was right nonetheless and the world DID end… but only in Kenya. That’s a possibility, I suppose…
No shit
I imagine there’s a surprising number of those in that specific place. First thing I’d do is check sure there’s no holes on the premises that look like they’ve been dug from below…
As opposed to what, food?
OK, Edolf, so what are the poor supposed to eat first? The AI? The robotics? If I rephrase that as “so WHO are the poor supposed to eat first”, do you understand it better? I mean, eating you wouldn’t solve world hunger either, but at least some folks would get a nice biltong snack to keep them going…
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