Hell Screen

Last night I was listening to an epiosde of the radio series Fantastic Tales, which this week was a reading of "Hell Screen" by Ryunosuke Akatagawa, in which a powerful Japanese lord hires an extremely talented, but also extremely violent and cruel, artist to paint a lavish screen depicting images of Hell. However the artist, when depicting the various tortures believes that he can't paint anything that he has not personally seen. Which is bad news for his apprentices and servants. It is a really good story and very disturbing. Akatagawa's most famous works are "Rashomon" and "In a Grove" which were both adapted by Akira Kurosawa for his classic 1950 film Rashomon, in which a vicious assault and murder is told from several different perspectives.

I was also watching a documentary on TV called Dive!, Dive!, Dive! about the history and popularity of submarine movies. I suppose with submarine movies, they show people in an extremely dangerous situation and also in an extremely claustrophobic situation which they can't really get out of and so the dramatic potentials are obvious. Though it's been years since I last saw a submarine movie.

It was another dull day at work, but at least it is now the weekend.