Takashi Miike Has To Be Crazy

I was doing some channel surfing the other day, and ended up discovering that we get the Sundance Channel here at Casa de Sutton. I was kinda surprised to find that out, since we're subscribed to the Starz channel package, not the Showtime package. But we've got the Sundance Channel anyway, and I have to admit that I've never really had the desire to watch it before. They rarely air any programming that I'd be interested in watching, and when they did, I couldn't watch because we didn't get the channel. And I was happy with IFC, since they occasionally show something that I'd like to see. Stuff like Monster, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Ed Wood, May, Greg the Bunny, things like that. But after idly flipping through the channels two hours ago, I ended up on the Sundance Channel watching a movie that I hadn't seen in quite a while: Takashi Miike's Audition. The movie just ended, and it's got me in a posting mood.

I haven't seen Audition since right around Christmas in 2005, but it's just as crazy as I remember it being. Everything about it is just... I don't exactly know what word I'm looking for, but it's a very surprising movie. What gets me is that it starts out almost like a romantic during the first act, gets a little off-putting during the second act, then it goes and punches a one-way ticket to Crazytown during the third act. It's definitely a movie that will catch people off guard if they're watching it for the first time and don't know what to expect. And it still managed to work me around, and this is the second time I've seen it.

I probably can't say anything without repeating what I said in the post I wrote way back when. Audition is an amazing, amazing movie, and I can't say enough good things about it. I'm just amazed that I don't own the DVD yet. It'd make a great addition to my foreign horror DVD collection, but I haven't bought it yet. That's going on my "To Do" list.