A Deadly Obsession: Gelatin Silver Love

The 2008 dark movie Gelatin Silver Love tells the tale of a man (played by Nagase Masatoshi) hired to “keep tabs” on a mysterious woman by means of videotaping her at her living quarters and photographing her activities. He is given no reason for this assignment, and is told that who the woman is is "none of his business” and that his only job is the recording of her doings.

Working in a covert operation like this can take its toll on a guy’s sanity as his job requires him to eat, sleep and live in his stakeout apartment for almost 24/7! Synchronizing his life according to his target makes him feel closer to the woman, and over time, he finds himself attracted to this beautiful, mysterious lady who always seems to be around when someone turns up murdered.

Soon enough, attraction turns into obsession, and the thing that entrances him the most is… watching her eat! He finds himself watching the videotapes of her slowly and sensually consuming her perfectly poached eggs over and over again, even going so far as to take photos of the video to blow up into enlargements that eventually cover his wall.

I can understand the allure of capturing a beautiful woman eating (hence my Tabemashoo Blogsite), but yikes, is this what I’m gonna turn into? LOL

Funny thing about that mysterious woman: when we first see her, it is from afar (rather, his viewpoint across the way in an opposite apartment), but once we see through his camera lenses, we see her up close, and she is indeed devastatingly gorgeous. When they get to the scene where Nagase comes upon her (where yet another murder has taken place), she’s there coolly licking an ice cream cone, and I was like all “WHOA, who the heck is this lady? She’s fine!” It wasn’t until the scene where she sits down and confronts her stalker where she appears without a wig or effect that I realized it was none other than beautiful Rie Miyazawa! Damn, she’s still got it goin’ on!

Well, despite Rie’s gentle but firm warning to Nagase to stay away from her, he’s too far gone into her to stop, and even when he witnesses her murder someone with his own eyes he can’t help but make himself known in her presence! That’s how it is for guys in love! In Love? I meant OBSESSED!

A Hidden Blade Repeat Viewing

A few days ago I was talking to Car about Samurai Movies in general after she'd gotten her Father both "Twilight Samurai" and "13 Assassins" for his birthday, to great success! I was talking about some well-done and realistically paced sword fight that I'd seen in some samurai movie, but couldn't remember which one it was. All I remembered was that it ended up with the protagonist with his arm hacked almost clean off, a gory end, to be sure!

Figuring in the time-frame that I must have seen it in, I guessed that it was probably the 2004 movie "The Hidden Blade" that had the duel I was thinking about, and later that day, wanting to make sure, I popped the movie in to check it out. Well, in turns out that the Hidden Blade WASN'T the movie I was thinking of, but it was great that I got to re-watch it, because MY GOSH, I FORGOT how frickin' GOOD it was!

Starring Masatoshi Nagase as a semi-retired Samurai named Katagiri and adorable and cute Matsu Takako as his live-in maid servant Kie, this movie was more about his adjustment to a world without samurai as well as coming to terms with his feelings for the sweet Kie than your regular "slice-n-dice" samurai action flick.

Though there aresome great sword fighting scenes, my favorite scenes are when it's just Katagiri taking care of Kie when she is ill, or Kie taking care of him like a doting wife. Such a touching film, it's sometimes hard to remember it's a SAMURAI movie!

PS: Turns out the movie I was looking for from before was none other than the Kimura Takuya/Dan Rei movie Bushi To Ichibun: Love and Honor that featured that intense fight scene, another great movie that I'll have to re-watch as well!