self introduction and more..

[Tim Cooke]

Hello all. I'm Tim (but will also answer to my pseudonym 'Moose') and I hail 
from Dublin, Ireland.

Ok, right now I am slaving away at a MA dissertation on contemporary 
Japanese cinema, with 1989 as my somewhat arbitrary cut-off point. Obviously 
this is still a huge area so I'm only tracing themes pertaining to violence 
and apocalypse, using a limited number of case-studies. The fact that I'm 
dedicating 1 of my 3 chapters entierly to four films by Takeshi Kitano 
should imply something... Aesthetics and the state of the industry are also 
part of my interests as well as American films that take Japanese subject 
matter as part of their narrative (e.g. Rising Sun or Ridley Scott's Black 
Rain), which opens up that other can of worms relating to national identity 
construction etc. Animes and extreme/horror films is another area (Legend of 
the Overfiend, Battle Royale, Audition) and these examples will make up the 
body of another chapter; i.e. filmic parables and the dark side of the 
Japanese sense of 'the fantastic'. I'm trying to look at a range of 
filmmakers like (late) Kurosawa, Seijun Suzuki, Kinji Fukusaka, Takeshi 
Ishiima and Otomo Katsuhiro. If anyone has pointers for articles on the 
current representations of violence and apocalypse in new Japanese cinema 
then I'd love to ear about them or films to see, individual ideas or 
whatever else comes to mind. Don't be shy, I'm keen to read any email and 
get all the help I can. I may be a film student and may love Japanese cinema 
but I would never for a second assume I knew all that much. Ok cheers for 
hearing me out,

Moose.


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