Masami Akita - aka Merzbow – is one of the most prolific and respected ''noisicians'' in the Japanese noise scene today. He has been cranking out Harsh Noise since the early 80's and has collaborated with various artists from Genesis P-Orridge and Gore Beyond Necropsy to Mike Patton and Sunn O))). I am a big fan of his work, so naturally when I found out he had directed a short film I was rather excited and sought it out immediately (which was not an easy task).Lost Paradise is a Seppuku - or Harakiri - fetish film. Seppuku is an ancient form of Japanese ritual suicide which involves disemboweling oneself, and was a key part of the Samurai warrior code, Bushido. If a warrior had been taken hostage or dishonored he would take his Tanto (ritual blade) and pierce his abdomen, then make a left-to-right gash, letting his intestines spill out onto the ground.Lost Paradise is part of a six film Harakiri series produced by Right Brain. Other entries in the series are exactly the same (minus the Merzbow direction & score of course), the only difference being that the female is portraying a different character – eg: schoolgirl, nurse, Kabuki actress, traditionally dressed Japanese woman, etc. So once you've seen one you've basically seen 'em all.The runtime of the film is 30 minutes, heres how it plays out - first 10 minutes: A woman dressed in military uniform enters a room. She sits cross-legged on the floor and proceeds to methodically strip down to just her shirt. She then opens her shirt and caresses her naked stomach for a while before pulling out her ritual blade. She stares at it for a few minutes then wraps ½ the blade in a ceremonial cloth. Next 10 minutes: She plunges the blade into her stomach and slooooowly pulls it across from left to right. She moans sexually as her intestines begin to fall onto the floor. Last 10 minutes: she rolls around in her entrails groaning and then finally dies. A man comes in, and at discovering her body promptly blows his brains out. The End Obviously there's not too much ''substance'' to it, but I enjoyed this flick immensely, it is a true piece of transgressive art. The way the camera caresses the actress's body as she's in the midst of her death throes, zooming in on her breasts as she moans and groans erotically, is a total sexualization of death.A lot of the bleak mood comes down to Merbow's fittingly grating soundtrack. While not as harsh as "classic" Merzbow, it's more of an underlying rumbling static, which sometimes rises to dissonant peaks. Merzbow has also directed some Shibari rope-bondage videos for various companies and written copiously on the origin and history of the art of Japanese bondage. Recommended for fans of Merzbow or confrontational & obscure cinema. 8/10

This is NOT a horror-film, Nothing to be afraid of here, keep moving, go on. Nothing to see here.Horrible? Oh yes. Gory? Check. A big V on that. But most of all, its terrible. I have seen the inside of a belly, its not a pretty sight, not ugly either, it depends on why you can see it (I prefer the doctors cut, I think, but then again, I have never seen the ax-slayers cut in real life. I could be wrong). Anyhow, those guts was not human, and that is a good thing. They wasn't even close, and that is a bad thing. You can SEE that they have been packed, compressed (At the butcher shop: Yes, I take some from that cow over there, and that goat liver looks cool, and throw in some fish guts while you're at it. Can you wrap them up in plastic for me, hate the smell. Do you have any blood? some red blood?), awful. If you need human guts, go for a pig. You can fool your local police with that one. Stay away from personal road kills like snakes, cats and ducks.And then the knife work. I have seen it worse, in Satánico pandemonium. Why not try to make it look real? Just a little bit? a tiny little... try?Works best in fast forward, even the soundtrack sounds better in double speed. Maybe we need a Charlie Parker for the white-noise electronica genre? You know, double-tempo and all that jazz?

Always looking for movies that can still shock me like Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood or August Underground: Mordum did, I stumbled upon this short movie of a woman performing ritual suicide.Yes, that's the "story", a woman performing ritual suicide. With a setup like that you can assume the director wanted to at least shock his audience, but he fails miserably because of the bad special effects (we never see a wound, just lots of fake blood and what is probably animal intestines).Well, maybe he wanted to make a fake snuff movie, like the movies mentioned earlier? This doesn't work either because of the many camera angles and the artsy beginning and ending of the movie.Having said this, it's still at the very least an interesting movie, worth hunting down if you like rare and weird stuff, and it has some nice atmospheric noise music, but it's definitely not for everyone.Rating: 3/10

OK, so I'm a fan of that racket-making kind of industrial ruckus that is referred to as noise and I've been a fan on Masami Akita's noise work under his Merzbow moniker for quite some time (even though his material of late has been somewhat unchallenging and tame) and I've always been interested in (but perhaps not a fan per se) of arty film and experimental movies and cinema in general. So I was of course excited when I found out that Masami-san had actually made his own movie. I was equally excited to actually stumble upon it on one of the lesser-known p2p networks lately (in divx format) and so I promptly downloaded it.I had no idea what the film was about, not an inkling as to what to expect, though I think I expected it to be at least loud. But it wasn't. It's quite subdued actually. And, to be blunt, quite boring as well. It's about a Japanese girl, dressed as a schoolgirl who flips through some photographs and after a while starts to fondle herself. After a couple of minutes she pulls out a knife and starts fondling that for a while. Then she promptly starts to commit seppuku (or is it harakiri? I never get that right for some reason). After she has sliced her abdomen up she pulls out a piece of intestine and wiggles it about for a bit before she collapses and dies, apparently from blood-loss (all the while with a vaguely pleased look as if this somehow sexually arouses her).That's it. The special fx are good but not spectacular. The point of this piece eludes me. I admit I'm no art critic nor am I crazy about gore for gore's sake, but to me this film is pretty much useless. The camera work is decent, the editing OK and so on, but really: what is the point? I'm bewildered and confused and also a bit disappointed. I guess I had expected more somehow. I'm just not sure what.