Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997) is a supremely violent, unnerving Austrian film. In March next year it is going to acquire a supremely violent, unnerving, American remake. However, while the Hollywood revision essentially translates originals into “American” by Americans, this case saw Haneke remain as the director. Furthermore, as we are talking of a player […]

For the techno-fetishist of the 80s cyberpunk culture, Tokyo is the City. It is vast and incomprehensible, yet depressing and exhilarating too. It is the future: a mass of concrete, asphalt, and neon signs that expands almost infinitely–a human creation that has attained an inhuman life of its own. That being said, it is interesting to notice that “Godzillas” and other “ends of the world” have apparently menaced the city throughout its living history. Of all the meanings the super-city embodies, the urge to destroy it is the integral corollary to its allure: a result of all the intellectual machinations–desires, metaphors, elaborations—attached to the juxtaposition of human flesh and urban context.