Series of Tubes: Battle Royale

If a college semester were an action movie, then right now this one is entering the Third Act Shift, when things start to spiral out of control, and there are lots of car chases, explosions, and shootings, followed shortly by shots of people huddling fully-clothed in the fetal position in the shower.

Which is all by way of saying it's a brief post today. "Series of Tubes," with apologies to Ted Stevens, is movies I've found available online for some reason that need to be seen. First up is one of the craziest movies ever: Battle Royale.

The premise: to deal with rebellious national youth, the Japanese government of the near future randomly selects one class of high schoolers to be sent to an island. Once there, they all are forced to kill each other, or be killed themselves. The movie and the novel it's based on probably had some sort of high-minded idea to say something about totalitarianism and reckless authority, but mostly Battle Royale is about crazy killing. It's almost surreal in the way it handles its premise with utterly straight-faced action movie tropes- the badass, the femme fatale, the everyman hero, the damsel in distress.

I've got no idea why it's online, but here it is on Google Video. And for the curious who don't have two hours to try and read subtitles on a computer screen, just watch this trailer and make sure to add it to your Netflix queue:



If you're not put off by violence, it's actually pretty hilarious. Enjoy, and I'll see you tomorrow with a top ten list I've been working on.