This week's workload is not too much (good). Let me share some superstitions: the day before yesterday, I bought a dragon year sticker at Metro, which is a lucky little dragon holding a golden ingot in one hand and a banner of "getting rich" in the other. I stuck it on the wall behind my monitor. Today, I received a year-end bonus. It's unexpected that a company that is about to go bankrupt would still give out bonuses. Perhaps it's to appease my worries and fears about the company going bankrupt and leaving early.
I had a lot of content I wanted to write this week, but I wrote and deleted, deleted and wrote, and in the end, it probably didn't get written.
Fireworks#
This is the first time I've watched a film by Takeshi Kitano. This film has almost no dialogue, giving the same feeling as watching a silent film, but it gives me goosebumps.
Fireworks won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Takeshi Kitano should understand films and has a very artistic expression that does not fall into the category of academic cinematography. I used to hear others introduce Takeshi Kitano as a director who started out in comedy (I remember he was one of the three giants of Japanese comedy). At first, I thought this film would be a bit humorous (because of my wrong expectations, I watched it in two parts, and I fell asleep the first time).
In fact, this film is a beautiful intertwining of "violence" and "tenderness".
The film itself tells a tragic, violent, and love story, but it is far from a traditional love story. The protagonist is a police officer who is drawn to the edge of violence and crime. While watching, I often savor the protagonist's struggles and pain, the tenderness towards family and love, and his chilling and ruthless nature in the violent plot. The film oscillates between these two extremes, and to be honest, I find it difficult to keep up with this rhythm. However, this increasingly reflects the complexity and three-dimensionality of the character.
The color tone of the film is a point that the director used to pay great attention to. Colors express emotions. The main color tone of this film is dark and oppressive, which also matches the overall tone of the story. However, from a certain moment or at certain key moments, the colors become particularly bright and beautiful. Especially the several paintings drawn by the colleague, they are vivid and magnificent beyond reality. I haven't fully grasped the meaning here. The reason for using such bright images is to express a fantasy world (a spiritual world) or something else?
The visual style of the film is also very distinctive. Takeshi Kitano uses a large number of static shots and long shots to create a calm and oppressive atmosphere in conjunction with the color tone. In a film with almost no dialogue, emotions can only be conveyed through colors and shots. I believe the director's idea is that a suppressed mood should be expressed in a quiet, deep, and introverted manner. However, the occasional insertion of violent elements deepens the audience's understanding of his pain and helplessness, because at this moment, the male protagonist can only maintain his dignity through violence.
One of the shots that I find intriguing is in a temple. A child wants to ring the bell, and an adult tells the child that they can only hear the bell ringing at dusk. After they leave, the male protagonist secretly rings the bell. I think this is what the director wants to say: if you want to hear the sound of the bell, just ring it, don't wait until dusk to listen.
And the final shot at the seaside, where a little girl flies a kite, and the male protagonist holds the kite while the girl runs. The wings of the kite are torn off. But the little girl continues to run, a kite without wings, fluttering there. I think this is the theme of the whole film. The male protagonist's wife won't live long, just like this kite without wings, but the little girl still runs there, wanting to make the kite fly.
In the end, the shot turns to the sea, accompanied by two gunshots, and the play ends. These two gunshots really gave me goosebumps. The struggle of life is completed at this moment. This is a film that seeks hope in despair, a film that explores humanity on the edge of morality.
BBQ rating: 9.5/10. By the way, I intentionally wrote the title as "Fireworks" instead of "花火" because I believe this film wants to express not only "life is as short and brilliant as fireworks" but also divides it into "花" (flower) and "火" (fire). Just as I mentioned earlier, this film is a beautiful intertwining of "violence" and "tenderness": the tender part is the "花" (flower), short-lived and beautiful, perhaps more appropriate to associate with the "cherry blossom plot" in Japan, while the "火" (fire) part is the violent part. I think the violent part can be seen as a rebellion against the injustice of life, like anger, like a shout, like a struggle. Of course, this should be my wishful interpretation, as the English name of the film is "Fireworks".
A Little Decoration for the Blog#
This week, I didn't do much. I've been trying to decorate my blog.
What I've Done#
- Last week, after changing the theme to pink, some friends gave feedback that the color of the text was not clear. Why can't black text on a pink background be clear? After investigating, it turned out that everyone now likes to use dark mode on their phones (eye protection + power saving), and the dark mode that comes with this theme was not completely removed, resulting in white text. Deleting some parts should solve the problem.
- This week, I introduced a plugin for online chat, so now everyone can leave me messages. I didn't want to bother with a message board, but I saw on Lü Ye's blog that she made a fun little message bubble. However, when I looked at it, it seemed quite complicated to deploy, so I thought of a plugin that came with a theme I used before, and I found this plugin. The advantage of this plugin is that you can use it once you register, and as long as you copy the HTML code to a certain page, you can use it. The official app is included, so theoretically, it's not much different from integrating WeChat.
What I Want to Do#
- I want to copy Jiāoyán Dòuchǐ and add a heat map to my blog. I've actually wanted to do this for a while, but when I copied it, it gave an error. I'm confused. Why can others copy it, but I can't? Then I traced it back and read Yibocat's Hugo Adding Article Date Heatmap. It seems to say that the code needs to be written in HTML, or something like that. I don't understand, but there must be an error when getting the article data. Hugo uses Go language, and I don't understand it.
- I also want to add a friends link. I found a tutorial on Adding Friends Link, but I don't want to go around leaving messages to add friends links. But it seems inappropriate to unilaterally write other people's blogs as friends links, like telling others, "I'm friends with that big shot~," when they don't even know me.
- I feel a bit awkward about decorating my blog. Sometimes I want others to see it, and sometimes I don't. I feel that not everyone wants to see some of the content, so I want to study front-end encryption. I looked around, and for example, hugo-encryptor can achieve it, but it's quite complicated. The principle is to encrypt locally and decrypt on the front end, but encrypting every time I deploy is too troublesome, and I don't want to bother.
- I've seen NeoDB entries on other people's blogs, and they are quite good. They also use shortcodes, but I don't really like the style, so I haven't copied it. Recently, I don't remember where I saw a tutorial, and I didn't save it, so I can't find it now. I'll try it next time I see it.
- There's also the issue of images. Sometimes I want to add more images and make the img tags display on the same line or something like a carousel of images. I haven't tried it yet, but I want to. I think I saw a tutorial a few days ago, but I didn't save it. I'll try it next time I see it.
When the Seagulls Cry E1-E2#
I've heard of this work for a long time, but I'm not really into playing visual novels. But when I saw someone playing it on Weibo, it sparked my interest, so I finished the second chapter. After finishing the second chapter, there is no option available, it's just pure text. I'm a bit confused. Is this game not a full-fledged detective game?
The first chapter ended mysteriously. The structure is very similar to Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None." Many of the locked room solutions were not written out, but they were deliberately hinted at, and you can more or less guess some of them. For example, it's highly likely that there was no sixth person in the warehouse on the first night, and it's highly likely that there was no locked door in the locked room on the second night, so there was no locked room at all.
The second chapter also has some hints. The tower seat is most likely the wolf (since you were in the auditorium every night and you were the only one who survived), but the others are not easy to guess.
Combining the two chapters, I speculate that the servants who always refer to themselves as "furniture" are more or less assistants to the wolf. At least those with the family emblem are definitely assistants to the wolf.
I plan to finish the rest after the Chinese New Year. Actually, it would be interesting if this game could make each locked room a full-fledged detective story. As we all know, the locked room series has already been written by Agatha Christie, and the most exciting locked room is probably Ayatsuji Yukito's "The Decagon House Murders." Of course, in terms of schemes, Shimada Soji is also T0 level (I really like the character Washizu). Looking at the first two chapters of this game, the first chapter introduces the concept of a witch, and the second chapter is just arguing with the witch. As long as it can be proven that it's not witchcraft, it can be done with magic. This is not yet a detective novel.
The End of the FXXXking World Season 1#
I didn't finish watching it in 2019, but recently I was a bit bored, so I picked it up again.
The male protagonist considers himself a psychopath, fearlessly harming his own body, killing small animals for pleasure, and waiting for the opportunity to kill a person to satisfy himself. But in fact, these are all ways he builds walls to protect his fragile inner self. The female protagonist is nihilistic, from a single-parent family, and her stepfather even sexually harasses her, while her mother acts as if she hasn't seen it. That's how these two people meet, then start dating, and then they start running away from the town...
The ending of the plot is similar to "Fireworks," with a gunshot at the seaside. But considering that there is a second season, the male protagonist should not be dead, right?
This world is rotten, but they are cool enough to resist. I looked at the comments on Douban, and for many people, they are rebellious, but I think they are cool. In fact, many people in this drama are very miserable because the world is rotten and they are powerless to resist.
There is a part of the plot that I think is well written. The male protagonist's father often tells jokes that no one understands at home. The male protagonist finds him annoying and noisy, and even punches him before leaving the town. But when the female protagonist feels scared after killing a pervert because the male protagonist carries a hunting knife with him, she temporarily leaves him. At this moment, the male protagonist says that the world is so quiet, and this silence is deafening. So he understands why his father tells those jokes, because the quiet world is really noisy.
Although the female protagonist seems to be indifferent to everything, the voiceover reveals her fear everywhere. What she has always wanted to pursue is a sense of security. After leaving her mother's family, she goes to find her biological father. Her biological father seems cool, but he is actually an irresponsible jerk. She realizes that only the male protagonist gives her a sense of security, so she decides to be with him no matter where they go. If the juvenile detention center separates them, they will attack the police and run away.
The male protagonist always says he is a psychopath, finding pleasure in slaughtering small animals. But later, it is revealed that when the male protagonist was young, his mother had depression (I don't remember what illness) and committed suicide in front of him, so he has been building walls in various ways to prevent himself from having emotions, actually to protect himself. But after meeting the female protagonist, he changes. First, he understands what loneliness means, and in the end, he understands the meaning of people to each other.
And they are both defeated by this rotten world, but they become each other's heroes and redemption.
Why are both movies I watched this week like this? Is fate guiding me?