We've been somewhat persistent in keeping up with writing our movie-related haiku poetry. I've got a bunch from tonight but first let's skip back a bit. Last Saturday Dan, Katie and I watched Lost in Translation (dir. Sofia Coppola, 2003, USA). It was good if perhaps mired in the concept of existentialism, a fairly weighty subject to spring on an audience. Here's some haiku from Katie and I, plus one from Charles who'd seen the film previously. I'll leave it to you to decide whether "Tokyo" is two syllables or three, as it's an endless source of debate amongst our lot.






On Thursday Charles and I watched Pandora's Box (dir. G. W. Pabst, 1929, Germany), which starred the lovely Louise Brooks and is one of my favorite movies. I wrote a poem expressing my fondness, but I don't think Charles' heart was quite into the haiku. Katie provided one as well despite despising the movie's lack of sound.






Right. That's what she thinks.

This weekend though, Dan, Charles, Felicity, Katie, and I got together to watch Elizabeth (dir. Shekhar Kapur, 1998, USA). Dan and Felicity refused to write anything, so here's another trio of haikus from Chuckie, Katers, and me:






Finally, we wrapped up with Visitor Q (dir. Takashi Miike, 2001, Japan). Yes, another Miike film, despite my misgivings about the previous two. This one was abominable. It takes a lot for me to just leave the room, but I refuse to see anything humorous -- and this film was up to its ears with extremely black humor -- about rape. It's even worse when the attempted rape leads to murder and then to necrophilic acts with the victim. I could handle all the lactation scenes, but between the domestic abuse and forced sex I lost my stomach for the film. Here's some thoughts from us about it:






I also wrote a premature haiku about the opening scene, which featured incestual sex filmed through a handheld camera:


Which led to...


Oy, what a night. If I may quote Auda abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia ... "I must find something honorable."