Preparations for India and crying at Godzilla
Yesterday I had to get up far too early to go and get the visas for myself and our photographer to go to India in a week. Quite an adventure - a sort of weirdly chaotic order of far too many people in the room, a supposedly quite strict and efficient system that actually broke down rather a lot and then resurrected itself in quite a human form when you least expected it. I eventually emerged triumphantly - five hours, two faxes, two couriered letters, and many phone calls back to the office later.
Then it was time for a couple of hours in the office before I went off to have my jabs at the BA travel clinic - a rather surreally efficient process whereby I was in, injected and out again before I'd barely had time to catch my breath. Back in the office for a few hours and then, off to see the original Godzilla movie, in the original Japanese and black and white. It was quite an astonishing film - not only for how terrifying it manages to be despite the primitive special effects, and also its appropriately ambivalent allegorical links to nuclear warfare, the American occupation and the contemporary troubling period for Japanese national identity, but also for the real sadness that I felt at the end - tears welling up, would you believe.
Godzilla itself looked a little comical at its first appearance (delayed in classic horror movie style for a good long while, during which we only see the looks of terror on people's faces and the aftermath of its destruction) but steadily got scarier and more awe-inspiring (or maybe I'm just too gullible). It really is a terribly silly concept and it is certainly to the films credit that it manages to draw one in quite so much despite things like the 'Oxygen Destroyer' and the 'Contra-Godzilla Operations Centre', not to mention all those toy boats that get sunk. Some model-maker really had a lot of fun.
Then it was time for a couple of hours in the office before I went off to have my jabs at the BA travel clinic - a rather surreally efficient process whereby I was in, injected and out again before I'd barely had time to catch my breath. Back in the office for a few hours and then, off to see the original Godzilla movie, in the original Japanese and black and white. It was quite an astonishing film - not only for how terrifying it manages to be despite the primitive special effects, and also its appropriately ambivalent allegorical links to nuclear warfare, the American occupation and the contemporary troubling period for Japanese national identity, but also for the real sadness that I felt at the end - tears welling up, would you believe.
Godzilla itself looked a little comical at its first appearance (delayed in classic horror movie style for a good long while, during which we only see the looks of terror on people's faces and the aftermath of its destruction) but steadily got scarier and more awe-inspiring (or maybe I'm just too gullible). It really is a terribly silly concept and it is certainly to the films credit that it manages to draw one in quite so much despite things like the 'Oxygen Destroyer' and the 'Contra-Godzilla Operations Centre', not to mention all those toy boats that get sunk. Some model-maker really had a lot of fun.
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