Watching the movie Los Bando

☆☆☆☆☆Refreshing and amazing!
Spoiler alert

It was the best.

A story about boys and girls aiming for a rock band competition in Norway.

Without excessive violence or provocative imagery, it depicts the feelings of being a teenager in a relaxed way.

If you like School of Rock starring Jack Black, or if you love music, this should be irresistible.

It is packed with things everyone felt when they were teenagers.

Like how much parental discord affects children.

Dreams and setbacks.

Ignorance and complexes.

A sense of lack of love from parents.

The pressure of expectations from parents.

The bitterness of unrequited love. But also that what you are looking for is surprisingly close by.

And so on.

Through the interactions of a three-piece band and a young man, and their journey to the band competition,

much like Stand By Me,

the characters interact, laugh, and cry,

and connect as friends.

It brings back bittersweet memories of my own childhood, especially the time I spent practicing guitar and playing in a band,

and from a parent's perspective, it makes me smile thinking about how wonderful it is to be young...

The raw, youthful energy, reminiscent of Ging Nang Boyz, is just irresistible.

In any case, the Norwegian scenery in the background of their journey is beautiful, a bit of Nordic magic that makes even that raw youthfulness look stylish.

The things that kids around their teens deal with are universal and haven't really changed much across generations, have they?

The guitar and drum-playing boy has curly hair just like the protagonist of 'Poil de Carotte',

while the young man who acts as their driver and vocalist has somewhat Asian features and is handsome in a way that reminds me of Yosuke Eguchi when he smiles,

and I wondered what this sense of déjà vu was,

then realized he looks like Björk from 'Dancer in the Dark'.

I suppose it's a common Nordic facial feature.

The cello-playing girl, who carries her own loneliness, starts playing Bach for a school performance,

and although she gets laughed at by her classmates who were doing modern dances,

the tone of that cello is incredibly cool and irresistible for a Bach lover like me.

I remembered how '2CELLOS' became popular via YouTube back in the day, and when I looked it up, they went viral in 2011. That was 13 years ago!

It's probably hard to give a wide theatrical release in Japan's super-aging society to a film like this that both children and adults can enjoy.

There used to be so many, like "E.T.," "The Goonies," or "Rex."

When I checked the official website, it seems it was only showing in five locations in Tokyo.

I decided I absolutely had to see it in a movie theater,

and the last time I went to a small theater to watch a movie

was for "Into the Wild." That was quite a long time ago.

By the way, the most recent one was "Maverick." I watched it in 4DX.

There are many people who believe movies should be watched in theaters.

But for a homebody like me, being able to watch even smaller-release films on Prime Video is truly a blessing.

I watched it with gratitude.

Starting with "Tokyo Vice," I'd been watching nothing but edgy works like those by Tachibana Akira, "Akisu Now," and the works of Kenta Nishimura, so while I felt a slight lack of that intensity in this clean film,

it was a film that left me basking in the afterglow of having seen a good movie for the first time in a while.

It's a masterpiece of a rock movie.
It's a story about a washed-up guitarist who poses as a teacher at a prestigious private school.
It's irresistible how the protagonist, the fake teacher, changes more than the stiff-headed kids. Through music, the vertical teacher-student relationship transforms into one of fellow rock peers. It's just like Shoin Yoshida and his students.

It follows the classic tropes of a coming-of-age story for pre-adolescent boys, but the fact that the purpose of their journey is to find a dead body feels like Stephen King, and the fact that it doesn't turn into a sparkly, nostalgic piece makes it feel real and good.

Ging Nang Boyz sublimated the rawness and frustration of adolescence into rock.
If the setting had been in Scandinavia, would the scent and atmosphere drifting from the work have been different?

A work that came to mind because of the protagonist boy's appearance.
I haven't read it properly, but I feel like it was a pretty terrible story from the very beginning.

The cello is cool, isn't it?
It doesn't have to be as refined as 2CELLOS, but I'd love to try playing it intensely. However, the cello is bulkier than a guitar or bass, so it's hard to take up.

It was showing at a small movie theater at the time, and I'm glad I went to see it, and I'm glad I bought the DVD at Disk Union afterward. Even though it's cult-popular in some circles, for some reason, it's not available on streaming services. This work is also about an intellectual student who has become twisted through the process of growing up, throwing everything away to set off on a journey to Alaska. There is that rawness unique to youth, and his dream is thwarted by an unexpected turn of events, leaving things unfinished. But the great nature of North America along the way is very beautiful, and for some reason, I am drawn to his half-life. I still don't really understand why.

When I watched it in 4DX, there was a scent like Coppertone that would puff out, and the chairs would rattle, and while I felt a sense of immersion, I couldn't concentrate on the work itself. It felt like Star Tours at Disneyland.
When I brought up the topic of Maverick to an acquaintance who is a former pilot, he dismissed it with an angry tone, saying, 'There's no way you could pull that many Gs.'

From here on, these are some edgy works I've recently watched and read.
First is this one. The original work was a global smash hit -> adapted into a drama by HBO Max in the US (co-produced by WOWOW in Japan) (currently in season 2), yet the translated version below was apparently rejected by every publisher, and the author is currently releasing it only as a Kindle version independently. You can guess the nature of the work just from that.
The first half is mainly about police matters in Urawa and Kabukicho in the 1990s, but from the middle, the story develops intensely, and stories from the underworld that I've never heard of before come flying out. The beginning is long, so you might want to start reading from the middle.

The drama version is presented as pure fiction. It depicts the conflict in the underworld centered on Kabukicho in a stylish way, with the sensibility of an American drama. Above all, the cast is too luxurious. Yet, the fact that it has such low name recognition domestically is also telling.

A collection of episodes from the time written by a former professional burglar. It only contains things that shouldn't be written. It's best read for crime prevention purposes, with misuse strictly prohibited. In any case, the mental state of the professional burglars while committing crimes is extraordinary. Their brains are flooded with adrenaline from extreme tension and thrills, and I thought that if I ever encounter them in the future, I must absolutely, absolutely never resist.

An autobiographical novel by the late Kenta Nishimura. It follows the protagonist's movements as he fanatically admires the Taisho-era writer Kiyoshi Fujisawa and tries to self-publish a literary collection. And the days with the 'woman' he lives with. In any case, I am overwhelmed by the heat radiating from the protagonist. And that heat is directed toward the 'woman' in a twisted form. It clearly depicts what happens to the perpetrator in a domestic violence situation. I expect that none of Nishimura's works will end in a good way, but that is precisely why the warm scenes between the protagonist and the 'woman' are so precious.