Sensei Sensibility

  Big Nedry Energy! Welcome to Sensei Sensibility!  You  are the hungry mind yearning to learn about the secret, inner workings of Ireland's largest Comic Con;  I  am the (questionably) knowledgeable  Sensei , more than happy to satiate your nerdy appetite. Sunday, March 12th, 6am: Up! Up! GEDDUUUUP! Bellows the internal scream, as I externally sob. Ireland is in the grips of a dual monsoon-season/snow-spell; it is as bitterly miserable a Sunday morning as you can possibly imagine. Only madmen or those being paid to be up at this time, in these conditions, would be up.  But I am not gaining financially from being up at this ungodly hour, I am in fact volunteering my sacred Sunday to help out at Dublin Comic Con .  Not only that, but I even PAID a volunteer deposit to offer up my (not so) free time. Does this mean I fall under the latter, "madmen", category?  Unequivocally. 8am: Armed with a belly-full of porridge, comfortable shoes, my ref...

Welcome to Sensei Sensibility!  You  are the hungry mind yearning to devour Asian horror cinema;  I  am the (questionably) knowledgeable  Sensei , more than happy to satiate your cinematic appetite. Junji Ito's iconic Uzumaki - does the 2000 Higuchinsky film adaptation do it any justice or should the oeuvres of Ito just be left the hell alone, in a book, where they belong? I love Junji Ito and I want everyone in the world to revere his genius. Surely the endless film and anime adaptations are a sign that others agree with me, right? Yes, but as I said in my recent review of  Nagaiyume , the intricate and nightmarish works of Ito rarely translate well off of the page. Considering their often cosmic and other-worldly style, how can they possibly be replicated in the flesh?  Let's break it down. It's safe to say that we're all familiar by now with the basic premise of Uzumaki.  Sweet young schoolgirl Kirie (Eriko Hatsune) and her gloomy boyfriend S...

Welcome to Sensei Sensibility! You are the hungry mind, yearning to devour Asian horror themed cinema; I am the (questionably) knowledgeable Sensei , more than happy to satiate your cinematic appetite. Chances are, you’re familiar (at least in passing) with Master of Horror Junji Ito. As a highly-acclaimed, prolific manga-ka, Ito carved his throne of nightmares with grotesque and surreal genre-pushing imagery and storylines.  Often blending horror and sci-fi, the beauty of Ito’s terror is the fact his works depict scenes that are beyond the day-to-day imagination and comprehension of us mere mortals. How then, do you take the monstrous, otherworldly works of Ito off the page and onto the screen? Generally, with great difficulty. Enter Higuchinsky’s Made For T.V. movie Nagai Yume , (2000) better known in the west as The Long Dream. While there are certain Junji Ito stories that lend themselves to cinematic adaptation - Tomie , for example, centring round an attractive “human...