pk-34

To make a good movie about bull fighting one should first contract a great matador: and Miguel Mateo Miguelin could hardly be braver or more graceful. I saw the movie despite my modern distaste for that ahem sport: and was at least semi-converted. In ancient northern religions, with their male animal gods, the animal god presents himself to the people to be ritually slaughtered. The ritual must be beautiful. The ritual must be risky: potentially fatal for the killing-man-priest as well as for the animal-god. Migueline shows how it's done when it's done right.

Bandits on the Wind, Inagaki. This movie is beautiful, funny, heroic. It's a shame it's not better known. At one point the most immature and pathological bandit (in a bad bunch) is forced to pretend to be a prince. The timing that shows this Japanese's inability to sit cross legged is hysterical. There's a wonderful joke where a bandit weeps to recall how peasants were forced to build a defensive wall, and then slaughtered to keep it secret. "How did you escape?" another bandit wants to know. "Escape nothing: I was one of the guys doing the killing!" The martial arts triangle defense--two katana and a spear--is stellar. The bandits blend cooperation and chaos as it suits them; in the end their Bushido is heroic.