Why are Japanese films so terrible?

Gojira movie feat.Smog Monster (Jap version) = second gratest film of all time. At one point they convene a MAJOR ROCK CONCERT ATOP A MOUNTAIN to dispel the demons of pollution, you think ver kidz are going to save the universe god that's lame, but ROCK CONCERT FAILS!! Only a jumping man in a rubbish rubber suit will do!!

Ring 2 fails to capitalise on the idea of the first film, and ends up in some sort of no mans land of schlocky pseudo horror. Pity. I hear Ring 0 (the prequel) is appalling too.

I of course rather like some Japanese films - and think After-Life is genius. I am looking forward to Battle Royale with more than a bit of interest.

Tokyo Fist = best.film.ever

followed by 7 Samurai

Didn't get much outta Violent Cop at all. He was a violent cop though, truth in titling there...

Godzilla vs Smog Monster, liked that one a bunch back in the day. The kids on the mountain were playing surf music on psychedelic Fenders, right?

Quite Good: "Ghost In The Shell", "Branded to Kill" (or is it "Branded to Thrill"? I mean the one with the hitman who is sexually aroused by the smell of cooking rice), "Violent Cop" (if only for the ending), "Ring" (not as scarey as people say, especially not on my tiny computer screen)

Pants, but bizarre non western pants (and therefore nevertheless interesting): "Roujin-Z" (see robotic beds fight!)

What about when Godzilla does the highland fling? That was funny! Ha ha ha!

I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN PRINCESS MONONOKE. Is there/has there been showings of his new film yet? (something like "wandering spirits" - can't recall right now)

And Ozu makes it hard for me to remember if I've seen a particular film, since every other one is called 'Late Spring' or 'Early Autumn' or 'That Bit Just Before Winter When All The Leaves Have Finally Fallen But It's Not That Cold Yet' or something like that.

Were the Gamera films Japanese or Korean?

I dunno, but it's kinda irrelevant, considering the universality of their wonderful theme song:

You are groovy Gamera
groovy, groovy Gamera

Betcha that Rock concert to stop pollution would've worked if they'd played that!

is anyone familiar with Terayama's cinematic output?
(Emperor Tomatoketchup, where children rule the world and have grown ups as there slaves, and Throw away your books, go out into the streets! which is like a japanese Brecht protest film)

Nothing like eating cornflakes and watching a blind masseuse take out a dozen people in a few seconds with a katana hidden in a cane.

Yes! Mizoguchi is less known than he should be. Other good films of his are "Sisters of the Gion", "The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums", "Women of the Night", "Miss Oyû", "Tales of Ugetsu", "Gion Festival Music", "The Woman of Rumour" and "The Tale of the Crucified Lovers".

Toky Decadence
Tetsuo
Tampopo
Akira
Audition

Spirited Away hasn't had its official release in Belgium. Waiting.

Jan

Search: Ugetsu, Onibaba, Kwaidan, Audition, DeadorAlive, Battle Royale, Tetsuo, Tokyo Fist, Electric Dragon 80000, Angel Dust, Ringu, Blind Beast, Tokyo Drifter, Sonatine, Hana-bi, Afterlife, Hole in the Sky, In the Realm of the Senses, Tampopo, Throne of Blood, Bullet Ballet, Uzumaki, and random Godzilla films i liked as a child.

there should be more Kurosawa, Miyazaki and Ozu and stuff but they somehow don't fall as much into my "canon". maybe i am just being contrarian.

Still must see: Dark Water, Love & Pop, Gemini, Happiness of the Katakuris, A Snake of June, Juon, Eureka, Cure, Tokyo Decadence, Branded to Kill

Akira Kurosawa is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time! The 'Baby Cart' series are AMAZING! The Godzilla films from the 60s (especially) are great fun with tremendous scope photography and set design and modern Japanese cinema has belched out such instant classics as 'Audition', 'Tokyo Fist', 'Uzumaki', 'Hypnosis' and 'Dark Water'. I saw 'Inugami' last week and it has style for sale! Man, they know how to make a film look good in Japan.

Kill this thread. I mean, whatever next - Hong Kong cinema, a load of shit or wot???!!!???!!!

Note for people who haven't seen Afterlife, the Ritzy is showing as its world cinema matinee all week from Friday. 1-ish I think, £3 a pop. I am ver ver tempted to go see again.

"bright future" was pretty good.

because we were yammering about stuff and it was really, really gross.

although i guess the dancing is foreshadowed a few times

that film left me pretty cold overall

anyone for Hiroshi Teshigahara?

http://www.bfi.org.uk/showing/nft/teshigahara/calendar/index.php

Will def see 'rikyu' the following week.

I found UB at Borders this weekend, but haven't had a chance to watch it.

Suicide Circle/Club is genius, yes - but is it any better than Uzumaki? I think not, although for non-horror material Wild Zero is about as good as it gets.

Someone on this thread might know... I've managed to pick up a fantran of the second Ringu TV series (Saishuushou/'The Final Chapter') - has anyone ever seen a subbed version of either the first (Ring: Kanzenban, admittedly only a one-off rather than a series) or third series (Rasen: The Series)?

director mentioned upthread:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7943-1342630,00.html

xpost

it's just a nice story about the modern japanese every-family.

the best movie ever!! well second best. but certianly the scariest. hook up your player to your stereo if you can because the soundtrakc is crazy like eraserhead.

I wish I understood what this meant.

xpost I know

Late Spring is just sooooo good. I can understand why younger directors rebeled against Ozu because he was very *tranquil* but still Ozu rules! :-)

We also saw Audition which wasn't perfect but still very good. Also about Japanese society.

Prob'ly off to see Mizoguchi's "Sansho the Bailiff" tonight...

I've been overdosing on the 3 DVD set of Toshio Matsumoto's Experimental Film Works 1961-1987. I can't believe I didn't know about this guy, utterly beautiful abstract film & video works all set to blazing period electronic scores -- expensive but worth it -- if you're only getting one, get Volume 2

Black Lizard, one of my favorite films. not on this thread yet. I think there are very few people on this thread who wouldn't love that film.

Wild Zero is amazing!

http://www.pwi.racknine.net/guitarwolf.jpg

"LOVE KNOWS NO NATIONALITIES, BOUNDARIES OR GENDER! ROCKNROLL!"

Why are the French such lousy cooks?

Jews got no sense of humor. Am I right?

Why is our president so damn smart?

we should

I watched Mizoguchi's Sisters of the Gion last night... short, bleak and grim. I prefer his '30s visual palette to Ozu's or Naruse's.

http://www.subwaycinema.com/frames/nyaff06_yokai.htm

$9 + $1 if you buy online

Was Ichi the Killer that hard to follow? I didn't think so. The special effects in it were silly/bad but it was fairly easy to follow if you don't let the ambiguity about Ichi's past get your panties in a bunch.

^^ best and most truthful post on an ile film thread ever

A Taxing Woman 2xDVD edition
Tanpopo 2xDVD edition
Eureka DVD
Seishun Dendekedekedeke (The Rocking Horsemen?) DVD

The Itami special editions came out in celebration of his death (!?!), the Eureka DVD is an aspect remaster from the crummy version from a few years ago, and the last one is one of my favorite movies that hasn't been exported (no subtitles, eek)... starring an 18y/o Tadanobu Asano in his first studio role for all you Miike nuts.

I'm open to any drama/comedy/thriller (non-monster, non-horror, non-samurai, non-yakuza, non-anime please!) recommendations.

I just wanted to point out the simply wonderful fact that the blob of rape-fetishist-peeping-top semen in which the title credit for "Ichi the Killer" appears is, in fact, REAL HUMAN SEMEN.

And Tsukamoto "donated" it.

Just, you know, FYI...

:)

But me, I've even seen it a few times IN REAL LIFE.

Top that, tough guy...

They're all so good, in different ways. _Ikiru_'s dying bueauracrat, with
his last redemptive quest to build a playground for inner city children,
really exemplifies the idea that any ordinary person can find it in
themselves to struggle against injustice, and win a personal victory
against the night.

Or how about _Seven Samurai_'s vagabond warriors, lovable, stern, mostly
over-the-hill men who find it in themselves to fight for a cause not their
own, against suicidal odds. In the hands of another director, it would just
be another action-adventure. But leave it to Kurosawa to keenly zoom in
on the human element, the internal struggles that will strike a chord with
anyone that has a pulse, in any country, any era. Witness the youngest
samurai, determined to make a name for himself, fearless in battle;
yet totally uncertain and confused when faced with the lust of a village
waif.

Kurosawa Movies I Haven't Seen:
Madadayo (1993)
Dodesukaden
Red Beard
High And Low
Scandal
The Quiet Duel
I Live In Fear (also Record Of A Living Being)
Drunken Angel

which one of these should I watch first?

This thread neds more Kiyoshi Kurosawa, because Pulse and Retribution are awesome and I really want to see Cure.

err, "needs." Apologies to Ned.

anyone know an Ichikawa film based on Mishima, called Conflagration? May see tonight.

I really enjoyed Miike's The Bird People in China. I'm not really even sure if it's a good movie or if the concepts just resonate w/ me. Lots of great suggestions on this thread. Will bookmark!

well, Voice is underwhelmed by this 10-hour revival:

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006393.html

Seen a few films on NFT's Japanese Gems season, which is now near its end.

Conflagration was one of them. I found Oshima's Ceremony to be a far more faithful expression of Mishima's dissatisfaction with the way Japan went after WWII (even if politically they are at polar opposites of the spectrum). Ichikawa's film is too literal, with its moments.

Other highlights => Kurosawa's Ikiru, feeling drained this morning.

Ikiru was good but it dragged at the end.

Ikiru never dragged for me. My issues, if any, were with the basic story construction: local government never gets anything done, the world of politics hand-in-hand with gangsters, etc. which might've been saying something in a world recently ravaged by war but now simply feeds into everyone's cynicism these days. But the film had this (surely, even now) combination of hard iron laughs and fighting back the tears moments (I failed at this).

The switching of straight melodrama to recounting the struggle after Watanabe's death, using the tricks in Rashomon, suggesting that Watanabe wasn't -- just maybe -- as heroic really lifted the whole thing to some place else.

The acting as well...I don't have much of an appreciation of it, but recounting all I've seen I enjoyed almost every performance.

I only saw Black Rain at this particular NFT JPfest, wish I'd seen some of the others now. I did see Death Note 1&2 at the ICA to make up for it though.

Every time this thread is revived I seethe inwardly at the stupidity of the thread title.

Ikiru is great!

Saw the Seven Samurai the other day, but my two favourite samurai both got killed - the cool one and the crazy one. I thought this was unnecessary.

Stray Dog is also good!

Ha Matt! The thread starter was there last night at the same screening :-)

I think the two Ichikawa films were disappointing. Really Actor's Revenge is pretty incredible but I wonder if its a one off. The one Imamura flick I saw was nice but next to Oshima and Kurosawa its a lot of meh. Missed the Suzuki yakuza stuff.

That is probably the one really great season the NFT have got on now for the next 2-3 months. August looks a bit lame.

Miracle Fortress is another good Kurosawa movie.

(But Ikiru is my favourite, even though i agree it dragged at the end)

heh Miracle Fortress.. it's Hidden Fortress)

Anyone have any thoughts on Marebito? Just saw it, and thought it was spectacular, oddly terrifying and contemplative at the same time.

Netflix has made finding these films so much easier, which in some strange way almost diminishes their impact. I doubt I would have been quite so amazed by Tetsuo if I hadn't watched it after finding it shoved behind other stuff in a shitty small town video store.

It's interesting that Japan has produced the greatest film ever made (Ran) as well as the worst (Pinch Runner).

The bits of Ran I saw put me off Kurosawa until recently.

anyone seen Kaneto Shindo's The Island?

http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/kawakita/theislandakanakedisland.html

Kiyoshi Kurosawa really should be on this thread more. Just watched Doppleganger and it was fantastic.

so is Charisma, on the Kurosawa tip.

I also got around to Funky Forest: The First Contact a few weeks ago. It's about twice as long as it needs to be but totally worthwhile for the cronenberg gross-outs and bjorkish sequences. Haven't seen Taste of Tea yet, which I've heard is Katsuhito Ishii's best.

Londoners! Check out the Pink Films season at the BFI next month : http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/film_programme/december_seasons/wild_japan

During the 1960s and 1970s Japanese film-makers produced a series of films of unprecedented sexual candour. Returning to this legendary period of 'pink films', Matt Palmer and Jasper Sharp celebrate the aesthetic achievements of these erotic masterpieces.

The inclusion of Koji Wakamatsu's Secrets Behind the Wall in the 1965 Berlin International Film Festival sparked widespread indignation from the Japanese authorities. Softcore, independent, low-budget films of its type came to be known as pink films and these movies, although enormously popular in Japan, were deemed totally unsuitable for export. International exposure of Wakamatsu's film, with its lurid sexual content, was considered to be nationally shaming.

In truth, the sexual preoccupations of Wakamatsu's movie were indicative of a rising and unstoppable tide. The first Japanese screen kiss came late (in 1946) but only a decade later a cycle of taiyozoku (or 'Sun Tribe Films'), which centred around the decadent generation of post-war Japanese teens, would push the boundaries of screen eroticism beyond anything seen in American cinema of the same period. In the mid-1960s, against a backdrop of ever-increasing independent pink film production, highly regarded film-makers Kaneto Shindo and Hiroshi Teshigahara would produce two masterpieces - Onibaba and Woman of the Dunes - which shocked international audiences with their sexual candour.

Later in the 1960s, as independent sex film production threatened to swamp the Japanese film market entirely, the Nikkatsu studio launched its glorious roman porno (softcore 'romantic pornography') strand of movies. A slew of highly talented directors - Noboru Tanaka, Masaru Konuma and Tatsumi Kumashiro included - used reasonable budgets and Nikkatsu studio stars to create some of the most memorable and artistic sex films in cinema history.

Finally, in 1976, Nagisa Oshima would go hardcore for In the Realm of the Senses, a film that represented a direct attack on the values and censorship policies of the Japanese state itself. This aspect of Oshima's masterpiece was, in fact, representative of a political dimension that had underpinned a large number of the Japanese sex films produced in the preceding years.

This political element was allied to a staggering consistency of aesthetic quality and further complemented by the unprecedented involvement of a high number of talented and respected directors working within the sex-film field. The result of these factors was, between 1964 and 1976, the most sustained output of high quality erotic cinema from any country in any era.

This season offers a provocative, challenging and thrilling journey straight back into the heart of this legendary period of Japanese sex film production.

Black Rose Ascension
Sun 7 Dec 20:30 NFT3
Fri 12 Dec 21:00 NFT1
The Japanese softcore equivalent of Boogie Nights.

Blue Film Woman
Wed 17 Dec 18:20 NFT2
Sat 20 Dec 20:50 NFT2
Infamously rare, psychedelic portrait of swinging Tokyo.

Crazed Fruit
Tue 2 Dec 20:40 NFT3
Fri 5 Dec 20:40 NFT2
Groundbreaking rediscovered classic rich in breezy cinematic style and raging passions.

Gushing Prayer
Sat 6 Dec 20:45 NFT1
A jaded young woman embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery.

In the Realm of the Senses
Thu 4 Dec 20:40 NFT1
Sun 7 Dec 18:10 NFT3
Tue 9 Dec 20:40 NFT1
The most famous Japanese sex film in history.

Japanese Cinema for Busy People II Special: The History and Development of Japanese Pink Film
Wed 3 Dec 18:30 The Japan Foundation, London
Don't miss this special lecture, a supplement to the successful series Japanese Cinema for Busy People II.

Onibaba
Tue 16 Dec 20:45 NFT1
Sun 21 Dec 18:30 NFT1
Kaneto Shindo's dark, sensual epic remains excessive, hypnotic cinema.

The Pornographers
Mon 22 Dec 20:30 NFT3
Tue 30 Dec 20:30 NFT2
Shohei Imamura's pitch-black absurdist comedy.

Secrets Behind the Wall
Tue 23 Dec 20:50 NFT2
Sun 28 Dec 20:50 NFT2
Claustrophobic thriller from the 'Godfather of Pink Film'.

The Softcore Auteur
Tue 2 Dec 18:00 NFT3
Discussion of art-house and erotic cinema's intriguingly open relationship.

Watcher in the Attic
Sun 21 Dec 20:50 NFT1
Sat 27 Dec 18:30 NFT1
A voyeuristic landlord observes the encounters taking place in his Tokyo boarding house.

Wife To Be Sacrificed
Mon 8 Dec 20:40 NFT2
Sun 14 Dec 18:20 NFT2
Highly disturbing and gorgeously shot hallucinatory tour-de-force.

A Woman Called Sada Abe
Mon 1 Dec 18:40 NFT2
Wed 10 Dec 20:30 NFT3
Handsomely mounted, intense precursor to In the Realm of the Senses.

Woman of the Dunes
Thu 18 Dec 20:30 NFT1
Sat 27 Dec 20:20 NFT2
Mon 29 Dec 20:30 NFT1
Established masterpiece of world cinema possessing a palpable, astounding physicality.

Woods are Wet
Sun 14 Dec 20:50 NFT1
Wed 17 Dec 20:45 NFT1
A rare chance to see Tatsumi Kumashiro's jaw-droppingly extreme film.

just watched taste of tea again

so amazing

katsuhito ishii is the noizest director

especially funky forest

Been watching a lot lately: Kiju Yoshida has been one of my late-2011 discoveries, due to Eros Plus Massacre. Just not heard of the guy before. The story - two students in 60s Tokyo research on former anarcho agitator who is killed on the back of chaos post-earthquake in 20s Japan - seems thin, but actually this is what cinema was surely invented for. Great use of continous backwards-and-forwards chronology, the framing where people are seen at the edge actually fits the whole narrative of characters on the margin trying to carve a 'space' for themselves, and some incredible staging, highlight is 5-10 min row between Sakae and one of his lovers in the house, culminating in the attempted murder.

Won't be to everyone's tastes, its long (but the meandering is integral to its effect) - and it is anti-Ozu, so doubt there will be any revivals soon, but have a go sometime.

Other good things I've seen are Toshio Matsumoto (as Milton talks about above, all of the shorts are on Ubu btw, although I only really liked 'for the damaged right eye', a companion piece to Funeral Parade of Roses)

Making my way through the films of Masahiro Shinoda

Watched this last night, fantastic:

http://eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/catalogue/harakiri/

The samurai duel near the end, shot amongst grass swaying in the wind, is a sequence of pure cinema, image/sound/performance all working together. The anti-hierachy politics and complicating of the samurai code is typical of that early sixties quasi-Marxist strain of Japanese cinema (eg Onibaba, Pitfall) that I find so intense, and so inspiring.

Yeah that's a classic, love Kobayashi's Kwaidan as well. Some great staging and sets on it. The song in the third story is just some of the best music set to film that I've seen lately.

Get that inspired feeling from the booklet that comes w/the DVD, which has a good interview w/Kobayashi, talking about his films but most of it devoted to Harakiri. A few comments that show a lot of integrity and humility (his insistence that his films are really collaborative) and his debt to Takemitsu's scores.

'for the damaged right eye'

that's a great one. though I like 'Atman' as a study, and 'White Hole' is incredible for the electronic music by Yuasa, and 'KI or BREATHING' is a little slow but ends up working because of the Takemitsu score. I still haven't seen 'Funeral Parade of Roses' yet -- it looks so amazing

julio, have you seen Shinoda's 'Petrified Forest'? That one has such a great Takemitsu I'm thinking of hunting it down

Not seen that. I was just looking at his Samurai Spy and the credits have this really spiky theme by Takemitsu. It is something like spy music, if spy films were creation of medieval Japan, if you see what I mean.

I'm finding one delight after another with Toru. Great to actually hear these with the images they were designed for (and they really feel designed, not tacked on). Wish I could get that w/Morricone but I don't think I ever come across any of the films he soundtracked in the 70s, so only the Leone/spaghetti stuff for the moment, but it reminds me I have to see those films.

my favorite Takemitsu = his scores, the fusion with his sources go so deep that by the end you nearly feel that Monteverdi or Bach or John Barry or Ligeti or the Shadows or whatever must have been Japanese

Morricone's weirder 70's scores were mostly for bad films like 'Exorcist II', where he just clearly felt free to do whatever without repercussion but it does mean limited rewards when hunting down the films to see the music in context. Have a feeling that is not true of Toru. I'm saving 'Rikyu' for some special night, that is my favorite score of his

Yeah, you really feel he's delved deep into his sources, so skillful he is at adapting them for whatever scene.

Someone needs to write about these soundtracks, good opportunity now that the films themselves are more available (not sure if this ws the case 5 years ago). And he is fairly unique in that many people would then say he wasn't ignored at all, that his orchestral works get a fair hearing. The argument needs to be made that the works for the hall don't have as much pay-off.

Bet Morricone is jealous tho'. He's always tried to say that he really is a COMPOSER. When, no, I'd say he's written incredible music, as orig as anybody's in the 20th century, its just that the space for these happen to be shared with the images.

as orig as anybody's in the 20th century

uhm

japanese new wave is quite widely available now, there was almost nothing a few years ago when i was interested in this stuff

funeral parade is v interesting, possibly not 'great' but more than a historical curiosity

What are you talking about, man? Funeral Parade of Roses is most definitely 'great'. In fact, even that I would say was an understatement.

no it isn't

i think ichikawa was maybe the 'greatest' filmmaker of this period but he was temperamentally from an older generation

oh and seijun suzuki was brilliant and needs defending from the unfortunate patronage tarantino and that ilk

Accrding to wiki Ichikawa made no films from '67 till '71, which is the period Matsumoto was active in as a feature filmmaker.

Not sure about scaling the er, greatness of FPR but there were few films made in '69 that were better. You can put it in another way: its a better adaptation of Oedipus Rex than that made by Pasolini.

Anyone seen 'Pitfall'? I want it but it's 'spensive on Amazon.

Pitfall is gd - excellent commentary track on the Masters of Cinema DVD by Tony Ryans - but a bit more socially realist than either Face of Another or Woman of the Dunes

is £12 here: http://www.moviemail-online.co.uk/film/dvd/Pitfall-Masters-Of-Cinema/

(which isn't dirt cheap, but also isn't the £50 it is on amazon)

It is not worth £50. Is it OOP?

You can rent it from I Love Film, of course.

yes, oop i think. Eureka were victims of the sony warehouse fire and lost a lot of their stock. i can imagine them not re-pressing the older titles in their catalogue (and this was one of the first 10).

(no guarantee that it's available from moviemail either tbh. they are quoting a 2 week delivery time...)

not seen pitfall but woman of the dunes is great, as is oni baba (all in a similar vein). thought Face Of Another lacked a certain something though. that said, the shots in the surgery were stunning...

am currently working my way through Eureka's 8dvd box of Mizoguchi films. Ugetsu Monogatari was latest. think i prefer his work to Ozu's (which is comparing chalk and cheese, i realise).

mizoguchi was better than everyone

think i'd take at least some of kurosawa's samurai stuff over the best of mizoguchi. they are just bigger in scope if nothing else.

idk

they have more extras & spectacular scenarism

nobody cld give you a tracking shot like mizoguchi, nobody

talking of whom, this looks p tasty, and a gd compliment to the MOC box:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mizoguchi-Collection-DVD-Minosuke-Band%C3%B4/dp/B004SXSRS2/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2VE3G809MNXZK&colid=J68FNACBJQ61

also, Eureka/MOC slowly seem to be transferring their titles to Blu-Ray, or Dual-Format editions, so maybe that will happen w Pitfall

awesome

ive been waiting to see those films for ages

have mizoguchi's "story of late chrysanthemums" queued up to watch soon

their end of 2011 editorial has a few words to say on the subject of BR only releases if you didn't see that. they do specifically say "Work immediately focused on getting our entire catalogue back in print." which is promising. (the late mizoguchi box was £100 on amazon for a time but has come back down to the previous price)

new AE mizoguchi box is on my wishlist, yes 8) and the early kurosawa (which was down to £14 earlier in the week) is in the post...

must also pick up Harakiri...

doc films is doing a naruse retrospective but it's really a pain to get there across town

Mizoguchi and Renoir are my blind spots! I mean, they've made some really good films but it hasn't hit me yet in a way that keeps me awake at night. Which happens, could be something to do with not seeing any of Mizoguchi's films on the big screen where you can never miss a great tracking shot.

A bit underwhelmed by Pitfall, although its possible one of the best attempts to do something Kafka-like, which is why I don't see much of a socialist realist dimension.

The ICA are running a ton of Japanese dramas in Feb, looking fwd to catching up on a couple of them by researching the terrific midnighteye webzine.

Saw Harakiri this weekend. Wow. Kwaidan was wonderful but this one really just worked me over, just powerful and satisfying on every level, from the tableaux to the politics to the final battle scenes

Eyes bugged out in the first ten seconds when the ronin introduces himself as belonging to the Fukushima Clan from Hiroshima.

Oshima's Death by Hanging is a film I'm still recovering from. Might be his best, although I have much to see.

Season of recent Japanese film coming up and I just didn't do it could be a good on, following from Oshima.

watch Akasen Chitai (Street Of Shame) yesterday, another of mizoguchi's brothel dramas (and his last film). was much of a muchness.

what do people reckon is the most famous japanese film? (i ask because someone accused me of being obscure by saying someone looked like kyuzo from seven samurai)(i think that must be in the top 3, along with godzilla and maybe ringu)

spirited away prob.

I suspect that its not so much you mentioned the film but that you named one of the characters from it.

I'd add some anime - can't say I care for any of it, but Miyazaki and the like wd be the black hole in this thread. xp

just saw a breakdown of Miyazaki's films by earnings & Spirited Away is by far the biggest - Spirited Away 32%, Totoro 13%, Howl's 11%, Mononoke 11% etc

i did have to look up the name...

think the real answer may also include Pokemon The Movie. various internet lists mention Akira, which i'd overlooked. and tokyo story, which i think way fewer people have seen compared to SS.

i will ask my mum 8)

also Miyazaki's films have generated nearly 4 times as much money as his nearest anime directing rival, including TV series - anime market outside Japan is lot smaller than internet nerdz would have you believe

Godzilla must be the most famous character but the Americanized version of the original film may be more famous.

watch Akasen Chitai (Street Of Shame) yesterday, another of mizoguchi's brothel dramas (and his last film). was much of a muchness. ― koogs, Sunday, February 5, 2012 11:17 PM (Yesterday)

Eyah. Would you be so condescending to another one of ford's western dramas? Most of Mizoguchi's films were geisha films not brothel films. The distinction is important, to both the characters and the film's vulgar/fresh execution, with Mizoguchi completely abandoning his long take style (contrast with his preceding Princess Yang Kwei-Fei) and foregrounding Toshiro Mayuzymi's perverse score (one of his best). Easy to see as proto-New Wave, and the last shot of the debutante prostitute nervously attempting to seduce passing men is as devastating as any of Mizoguchi's shots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGBNZizzY74

Gearing up to watch Kobayashi's Human Condition over the next two weeks, all 10 hours of it. Anyone seen it? Avoided finishing the slate article comparing it to Berlin Alexanderplatz as it was dropping too many spoilers

Xp that mayuzumi score is crazy! Carl Stalling-level disjunctiveness

Xpost tried getting thru it a couple of years back but there's something about Tatsuya Nakadai's unchanging bug-eyed "I'm about to cry" expression throughout the entire thing that really irked me.

Better not watch "The Sword of Doom" then.

Ha! Thing is I've watched him and thought he was great in a bunch of other films including "SOD" but he was just *too much* in "The Human Condition".

XP Yep, Stalling is a perfect point of comparison - it gives Street of Shame its cartoonish swagger* and provides a real statement of intent to the opening of the film.

* Cartoonish swagger by Mizoguchi standards obviously.

> Eyah

sorry to sound so dismissive. i've seen a few of them now and this just wasn't the best of those i've seen.

but yes, you did pick out my two favourite bits - the electronic score and that last shot, which was stunning

(there's another film where the debutante is paraded through the red line* district in her finery and that's my favourite scene of that film)

i didn't like machiko kyo's westernised Mickey, i think that's the reason for a lot of my dislike of the film. she's been great in everything else i've seen (oharu and rashomon especially. ugetsu most recently) but all those parts have been more traditional.

("red line district" being the literal translation of "Akasen Chitai", and a slightly different term to that we'd use in the west)

> oharu

gah! this wasn't her.

Street of Shame is really really good, I don't think I've ever seen any movie about prostitution (even among Mizoguchi's oeuvre) that would deal with the subject with such complexity and care, and it was made in the 1950s. Easily my favourite movie by Mizoguchi.

It's a pretty important detail (as Koogs) that then name of the movie was changed from "Red Light District" (the literal translation) to "Street of Shame". The English title actually misrepresents what the movie is about, as Mizoguci tried to present a broader, more understanding view on prostitutes than just the "shame" aspect, even if he was critical on the exploitation of women. In some of his earlier geisha movies (like the 1930s version of "Sisters of Gion") the shame aspect and straightforward condemnation of the profession are more obvious, but by the 1950s Mizoguchi's take on these issues had become more rounded and humanist. It's sad that he died after making his (in my opinion) best movie, I think he stull would have had a lot to say.

"as Koogs points out"

the whole geisha thing itself changes so much between 30s and the 50s though. in the 30s it was transitioning from the courtesan to the more deregulated prostitution. and the american control in the postwar period was trying to move it into the shameful (which the japanese people weren't really feeling). i think he captures this well in his various films. (i think his sister was involved, which is why he feels such an affinity)

i did think the action of the women in this film, specifically how they were dragging people in from the streets, was a bit o_O

^ all this gleemed from several short intros on the MoC dvds i've been watching, is not a very detailed knowledge, i admit.

not seen sisters of gion, but it's part of the new box that's out at the end of the month so i'll see it soon. it also appears on amazon that those 4 double packs of later films are out soon on dual format bluray. oddly the secondary titles aren't shown in the cover shots but "Number of discs: 3" would suggest they are still pairs of titles.

(actually, the second film is mentioned on the cover, on a simulated sticker, in white on grey, easy to miss in the thumbnail) (and the one that's paired with Sansho is, i think the one with the debutante i mentioned above in it, Gion Bayashi (Gion Musical Festival? / just "A Geisha" according to imdb))

His sister was sold into geishadom - partly to help pay for his education. But he still patronised geishas and, as I think Rayns points out, one of his geisha's scandalised him by slicing him from neck to his lower back after discovering he was a patron of another geisha.

In other words he understood the moral horror of geishadom, but he also lived in a society that normalised them - geishas fascinated him, he picked at them like a sore.

And yes I was equally irritable. I do think Akasen Chitai is one of his greater films, and it is frustrating to know he died just as he was striking out in a new direction away from the ossification of Princess Yang Kwei-Fei (which I like, but I can't deny it has the qualities you'd expect of a film made mainly to see how a particular film stock handles plum purple).

> Princess Yang Kwei-Fei

watched this tonight but probably need to revisit the last 30 minutes again. so many pastel colours... was pretty, but slight.

and tony rayns points out in his introduction that it's not Princess in the title but Royal Concubine. and it was called 'Yokihi' on the Moc dvds.

think the MoC booklets that come with the films are almost an encumbrance rather than an extra. don't think i've managed to read a single one. must get around to that next time i'm between books.

Watched The Crucified Lovers last night. So great.

(i asked my mum, she had nothing. told me about having talked to someone in the pub who'd watched 'the last samurai' recently. and did recognise 'seven samurai' when i mentioned it.)

Sisters of the Gion — excellent.

(the new mizoguchi box set with that in has been delayed a couple of weeks)

but i watched Equinox Flower, ozu's first colour film, and it was obvious he was playing with it a bit - bright red objects in nearly every frame. story all very familiar though.

Don't think any documentaries have been mentioned:

Kazuo Hara - Extreme Private Eros

Noriaki Tsuchimoto - Minimata: The Victims and Their World. This one is something - follows the victims 10+ year fight to have a chemical company bought to account for their pollution and destruction of lives, families and communities leading to the victims storming the shareholders meeting. It is VERY cleverly put together - Tsuchimoto actually isolates the woman's distressed cries and speech and scream at the president of the company and it totally works - one of the most manipulative and yet powerful sequences in cinema I can think of, an effective (to say the least) climax to all the testimonies of physical pain, mental anguish, social discrimination and government's failure to act.

Never has the traditional bowing motion been cast in a more disgusting light - its all these suits want to do!

I speak of Tsuchimoto's manipulation, but just in the sense that all film/documentary is a manipulation in the first place - and how you can harness that. Aesthetically its quite striking; the print I watched was awful but a restoration will surely bring back the elegance of those sunsets and fishing scenes. He is overall exemplary when leaving scenes of burnt and severely crippled flesh, insanity, paralysis he is truly unflinching as the best of 'em; but also respectful and he never stoops to the personal observation or (god forbid) Micheal Moore style clowning.

The Kazuo Hara is v barmy - just talked about it on some other thread. Seeing these back-to-back you think 70s cinema really was the most incredible thing. That is said of film, but rarely of documentaries.

I'll be hunting for some Shinsuke Ogawa.

The New God also looks p good.

More Japanese doc recommendations would be welcome.

Kazuo Hara - Extreme Private Eros

^^ thanks for recommending this, really can't say I've ever seen anything like it. profound film.

No probs: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is also incredible btw (saw it on TV years ago).

'emperor's naked army' is on some dateline shit, it's p good
im intrigued by the 'extreme private eros' rec also

Looking fwd to some Terayama:

http://beta.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/film/shuji-terayama-programme-2-mothers

This ws worth a watch, Terayama has an eye for composition for a scene -- one where he is playing chess with the character representing his 13 year old self, somewhere in the country with people moving about in a pleasing yet enigmatic way (it is dreamland), sudden switches from colour to one colour filters depending on the bit of dialogue, then an appearance and 'mad' speech by Japanese singer Kan Mikami (this ws great to see, as someone who heard his music years ago, need to pull out the recs I have after I fire this off). REally good 10 min scene.

Tate did kind of fuck up the context -- it ws meant to be a dbl bill aroudn mothers, and while the film is about Terayama's relationship w/his mother at times the dominant theme is the strong childhood memories you attain and cannot shake off -- despite trying to re-order them in fiction and film-time. The landscape of the memory cannot be altered -- and this programme ws orig titled Landscape Theories of the Past). They've taken it off the site but originally it ws a dbl bill w/Oshima's The Man Who Left his Will on Film, which makes sense. This ws a not-quite Mothers Day thing -- v fkn art gallery, unfortunately.

The booklet is good, making my way through an exchange between T and Mishima.

Back to Terayama -- which is a tick from me, need to see some more features.

re: Terayama. On the minus side there ws a bit made of his taboo breaking blah and I'm not sure that really registers, which is fair enough, its bound to age. Some of the songs don't quite work, sadly. More pluses in that I really liked some of his poetry and -- quite a big theme from the booklet I picked up -- his desire for a theatre in/from/of the streets and open spaces was well communicated. The last shot is a manifesto for that.

I watcched Ogawa, quoted pulled from the article above:

But first, a quick overview of the Ogawa story: After a couple of films cataloguing issues relating to the student and civil unrest that was occurring in Tokyo following the extension of the Japan-America Joint Security Pact (or Anpo treaty), Ogawa Pro's filmography falls fairly neatly into two halves. The first consists of the monumental seven-title series released between 1968-73 and beginning with The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan -Summer in Sanrizuka, which chronicled in gargantuan detail the struggle between local farmers against the government's decision to build Tokyo's new Narita international airport on their land, a time described by Nornes as "one of the most traumatic social struggles in modern Japanese history." The peak of the protests, captured in the film Sanrizuka - Peasants of the Second Fortress (1971) ("the Seven Samurai of social protest documentaries") saw the farmers' ranks swelled by hordes of sympathetic students and members from radical leftist groups; a grand total of some 20,000 protesters amassed against 30,000 police. It's no exaggeration to say that Japan was effectively in a state of near civil war at the peak of the Narita protests.

Watched Peasants of the Second Fortress. I can see the Seven Samurai thing as they are defending their space, just that the peasants digged tunnels and tied themselves to trees!! And, of course, no one saves the day. The copy I had was on its last legs, the subtitles were therefore hard to read at times, and what ws there in itself was incomplete but there was enough visual meat -- in one of he conversations between the peasants there is a bit about how 'mundane' protests scenes are and I think that is where the comparisons to film depart. This film revelled in mundaity and grit: thing looked like, well...at times like last summer's riots in London -- a carnival of mundane destruction ('cept it wasn't summer, and here the sympathies are with people fighting for the right not to be moved). Not sure it felt like civil war, like the quote says, but when peasants who admit they aren't 'educated' have suddenly seemed to learn almost all they need to about power and politics through their experiences it felt equally seismic somehow.

watched Chikamatsu Monogatari and Uwasa No Onna. both for the second time. just Sansho and Gion Bayashi left to watch from the late mizoguchi box.

new mid-period Artifical Eye Mizoguchi box has arrived too. oh, artificial eye, why you print the titles on the sides of your dvds the wrong way around? and whilst the Eureka! dvds all have lavish booklets the AE came with nothing. (but maybe there are extras on the discs.)

http://www.ica.org.uk/32288/Film/Sansho-Dayu-Sansho-the-Bailiff.html

Couple of MIzoguchi films at the ICA in Apr -- haven't seen Sansho so will wait to check out those tracking shots on the big screen next month.

kurosawa crime drama box set has arrived. not seen any of them. am a bit fearful tbh, don't really know what to expect. but all the kurosawa boxes are cheap on amazon at the moment. £15 for the samurai box is a bargain.

haven't watched any of the aforementioned mid-period mizoguchi either.

bought the new miike yesterday, his remake of Hara Kiri. bought it in the supermarket, because i could.

Shindo obit from the guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/may/30/kaneto-shindo

Sight and Sound tribute

Looking forward to the season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wrjy8WR-U

There are a bunch of not-so-terrible Japanese films up on yt at the moment.

Yup, watched four of Mizoguchi's films this week, and more to come.

Koji Wakamatsu passed away after being hit by a taxi!

Whatever you think of their rough-and-ready quality (and I've only seen a couple) (either in the way they were made, or their politics) I really liked his shit-stirring ways.

He helped get In the Realm of the Senses made, too!

Is When a Woman Ascends the Stairs? anywhere on yt?

So been watching loads of Mizoguchi:

Five Women Around Utamaro (1946)
A Geisha (1953)
The Crucified Lovers (1954)
A Story of Late Chrysanthemums (1939)

Five Women... is a good counterpart to a story of late chrysanthemums, in its depiction of (male) artists as a vampiric species.

A Geisha is a side of Mizoguchi I'm hoping to explore more this coming week -- i.e., more contemporary: the way men use women outright by their bodies, and his outrage that Geishas weren't seen as prostitutes (Prostitution was made illegal in '57, a year after M's death). You could say the others are offset by an 'its all kinda of ok if the art is good'; not saying this is the case but its far more conflicted, as oposed to the Geisha dramas which involve a businessman groping a woman 30 years younger than him (and when you watch these back-to-back the flesh crawls as you see repeatedly the way men touch and avail themselves to women).

For all of the above I'll go w/The Crucified Lovers as something he possibly may not improve upon, for my eye. Maybe its the feeling of relief after watching tale after tale depicting a complete failure of relations between men and women that he is able to bring to conjure up an adaptation of a story of the organic growth of such utter love and devotion in such a convincing manner. It even tops ...Crysanthemums in the way the relationship turns to something cordial and master-and-servant (here it helps the story is set at an earlier era in Japanese history) to a partnership of equals in an instant. The music is punctuating: best moment is the strings beginning as the fugitives in their first night together discuss whether they should sleep in the same room.

And The acting really makes this, the way the two of them express their love with enough measure of suffocation to bliss, to switch seamlessly to utter sadness, and then to surpise w/the look of pleased evil in their faces as they march to their deaths. Perhaps revelling in the scandal and the fuck-you to family and duty they were somehow meant to follow (to know your place and serve your disgusting master) but just pleasure and contentedness that they are able to die together. Really great moment in cinema.

> his outrage that Geishas weren't seen as prostitutes

mizoguchi's outrage? that not the impression i got from the various intros to the dvds i've seen which seemed to say he was sympathetic. i think we covered this upthread.

Just went back to the posts. That article I linked to he calls hs last film Red Light District. My impression is enforced by watching his non-Geisha films, so in the Crucified Lovers the male lover stresses that he would never spend money on a Geisha. Not that he was utterly "correct" as in later on, when discussing the random lovers as they are paraded for their punishment he responds to accusations that the law is on the side of men by saying they broke the law.

From the posts upthread he might have been conflicted but all I saw were bits of not too subtle rage: Geishas were a relic of the past that somehow survived for the pleasures of men, and for tourism (the head former Geisha (in A Geisha compares their partic form of Geishadom to the Japenese tea ceremony). And I observed that disgust Mizoguchi manages to insert in many of his films in the way (usually older) men grope women.

I've yet to find any sympathy but as I said I'll watch a few more of these..

afaik mizoguchi's sister was a geisha and helped pay for his education (or some such)

any of these titles familiar?

Art Theater Guild and Japanese Underground Cinema, 1960–1984

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1337

Pitfall and Death by Hanging both pretty well-known, tho I haven't seen either.

Oh yeah, Oshima -- may have seen that, in fact. Also have read about The Man Who Left His Will on Film.

FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES and PITFALL are perhaps slightly better known in Europe than in the US, thanks to their release on Region 2 DVD. The former is properly kaleidoscopic and polymorphously peverse, and allegedly influenced some of the decor in Clockwork Orange; the latter is the first collaboration between Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kobo Abe (and Takemitsu) before they went on to make Woman of the Dunes, and is a bit more 'leftist' (socially realist) than the Matsumoto. Both are well worth catching, imho (as are lots of the others, I'm sure - Oshima, Shindo and Imamura are normally pretty reliable, no? )

thx. I also missed that they just have the first 2 weeks of titles posted....

Missed that the nutty Funeral Parade is part of the lineup.

that Mishima film is kinda disturbing to watch if you know how he died later on

I think that's the first thing most ppl know about him...

There was an ATG season at the BFI last year, but this is a different slice, w/a short-film prog and a couple of films from the 80s, past the point at which the ATG is seem to be a significant force (but hey it was tough for everybody in the 80s so I've heard)

Anyway I saw Pandemonium and if Funeral Parade... will always be the Matsumoto film this overlong-ish adaptation of this Kabuki play has a lot of style and verve to go along with the violence. Love the shots of people running around with those lanterns late at night.

Seen both of the Oshima films: Death by Hanging is a must, takes his whole rage at the xenophobic treatment of Korean citizens by the Japanese authorities to a peak (he made a couple of other films on that subject) by also aligning it with an attack at the Japanses judiciary and the conformist mindset. The Man Who Left his Will.. is one you can look at as Oshima's lament for cinema as revolutionary/the confusion of youth in '68, so in some ways a sad film.

Masao Adachi is an interestinng figure. He joined the Palestinian camps in 1970 (shortly after that film was completed, I think it was after the Cannes film fest) and stayed in and around for years, only returning to Japan and any filmmaking a few years ago. Spent time in jail for all sorts of er activites. I could watch his film right now tbh.

Just to correct the above he left Japan around '74.

Ikiru (1952). superb.

i would really like to see some more recent japanese films

new aoyama seems to be some MOR drama thing

new kore-eda bluray is on the internet but no subtitles

(also, and this is possibly an aside, hmv have a bunch of cheap anime at the moment, for £3 and up. 2 different Dead Space (the video game) things, Appleseed, Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Origin, Van Helsing, a Ghost in the Shell thing?, er, Astro Boy)

i have hulu plus and am regularly daunted by the amount of japanese films they have. would love to spend a weekend just plowing through some random ones

Satoshi Miki has a new film out soon, Ore Ore (It's Me, It's Me), i'm a fan so hoping its good
a film based on Tokyo Story is coming out next month, looks as rubbish as you'd expect :/ http://youtu.be/VQjiqxx3rNw

new kore-eda bluray is on the internet but no subtitles

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 11 December 2012 15:26 (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wish, or one of the others? i can't keep track w/kore-eda, he seems to make a lot, some of which become canonical & the others which are just "oh yeah he made a film about a sex doll you can get it on import nbd"

i wish

the only one of his i have seen is nobody knows iirc

i'm the same, i've only seen after life & spend most days feeling guilt at not having got to nobody knows or marborosi (i figure still walking will be sorta easier than those?, & so/somehow it's less alluring). nobody knows sounds really great, i think i'm gonna try to squeeze it in over the holidays. after life is classic fwiw.

i was going to do a double bill of 'distant' and that film about the japanese red army

"still walking" is great, obv ozu comparisons will be made but it's a quiet japanese generational family drama what can you do

so the MoMA series continues... more on Wakamatsu and 'pink cinema'?

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/17267

Saw Ecstasy..., its very rough around the edges (that's the way he likes it), a very different side to Japanese film (even compared to Oshima), he likes to initiate conversation around other underground(s) (Japanese free jazz, deals w/The Red Army), doesn't flinch at the seedy Shinjuku side of life etc.

Don't enough about 'pink cinema' though...

Would really like to see that. Got the Ozu Student Comedies box for Christmas, haven't dug in yet but will soon.

The title of this thread is kinda depressing, wish we could change it.

pisses me off every time it pops up. Pete you are a bad man.

worst and wrongest thread title on ilx?

it was a 'thing':

French films are shit. Porquoi?

A mod title change is in order. May I suggest

Japanese films are kuso. Doshite?

lol

(my copy of rashomon has just arrived, but is missing the slipcase and the booklet. boo)

am now onto the Kurosawa Classics box. but only managed 30 minutes of The Lower Depths at the weekend. should branch out a bit, i think...

The title of this thread is kinda depressing, wish we could change it.

― MaresNest, Friday, 4 January 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pisses me off every time it pops up. Pete you are a bad man.

― ばかザッピ (zappi), Friday, 4 January 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

worst and wrongest thread title on ilx?

― Jamie_ATP, Friday, 4 January 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YOU GUYS

I need to remind myself to tell Pete about this when I run into him again.

you know it's a good troll when it's still aggravating people eleven years down the line.

The Living Koheiji?

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/17290

Susumu Hani films at MoMA this weekend (he'll be present too). Bad Boys and what else?

Only seen Nanami: Inferno of First Love but oh my if it isn't one for all of you new wavers out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZZD-WW879s

Kwaidan, 1964, colour, 183 minutes (4 separate stories). looks lovely and i think the audio would work on its own, just don't listen after dark.

one of the greats

coming back to kwaidan i have a question. the answer is probably 'of course, you idiot' but hey. the first segment, 'the black hair', at the end the music and sound effects bear no relation to his stumbling around. is it meant to be like that? makes the whole thing feel horribly disconcerting, which i guess is the point.

yes

coincidently, i found this, from the same week i watch kwaidan, talking about the music by toru takemitsu, mostly of the third part, hoichi the earless. http://www.20jazzfunkgreats.co.uk/wordpress/2013/04/kwaidan/

and the music appears to be available here: http://avantgardeproject.conus.info/mirror/AGP24/index.htm

Can anybody tell me if there are any period Star Wars knock-offs other than Message From Space?

Naruse's Late Chrysanthemums is on film4 at 11am on thursday (uk)

and the announcer mentioned that the next two thursday morning's will also feature films by Naruse. tv episode guide says the next one is Floating Clouds so i'm guessing the one after that is When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

which saves me £21 - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mikio-Naruse-Collection-Hideko-Takamine/dp/B000WM9WL4/ref=sr_1_1

film4 you are a fucking joke

meanwhile at 9 o'clock when i'm home to watch something they'll be showing a fucking comic book movie no doubt

(Golden Child on now, Forrest Gump at 9)

i rest my case

a starter's Naruse guide

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/feature/better-late-than-never-the-films-of-mikio-naruse/174

list of Kinema Junpo top 10s by year

http://www.rinkworks.com/checklist/list.cgi?u=crimsong&p=kinemajunpotop10s

Kinema Junpo's Top 200 Japanese Films of All Time

http://www.imdb.com/list/hnvRBfilvaI/?ref_=tt_rls_5

Kinema Junpo's Top 15 of all time (1995 version)

http://www.imdb.com/list/z9-B5AIuIgY/

(i've seen 8 of that last list. Floating Clouds is on next week and i plan on picking up the others. 2 aren't available here though (although one is available in french))

You'd expect Ozu to be shown as his reputation is so high not Naruse so its terrific that Film4 are doing it actually!

yeah, this is the first time that any Naruse films have ever been broadcast on a UK TV channel

in a slot usually reserved for Gary Cooper's lesser movies and the odd Gainsborough bodice-ripper

no, that 11am on thursday is normally a foreign film. lots of ghibli stuff etc. lots of the films for that Story Of Film season got broadcast there. but usually they are repeats of foreign things that have been on elsewhen (often v late at night)

on the 10th, for example, it was Monsieur Lazhar (french canadian). on the 3rd, Las Acacias (argentinian), the thrusday before that The World of Apu (indian), the week before that part 2 of the Apu trilogy, Aparajito...

(why is film4 listings website so terrible? can i not just get an ascii list of the next week's films instead of the web2.0 scroll-a-thon they subject me to?)

You can do it day by day on the iPlayer site, though it only has the upcoming three days and is time+title only.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv/film4/20131019

yeah, i found somewhere else. i also adblocked the hell out of the daily listing page - http://www.film4.com/ontv and now it loads without the weird pauses whilst something i don't care about refreshes.

in on-topic news, the above has Kiki's Delivery Service listed for two thursday's time where i'd be expecting Woman Ascends to be if they were doing the trilogy, like they announced. but i realise that might change, or it might be on later due to content.

tbf i accept that broadcasting the movies at all is a Good Thing and i will leave my irked vendetta with Film4 for another thread

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is on on the 7th november

anyone seen Himizu? just arrived in NY after 3 years.

http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/himizu-20645

here's a review of the two Sono films playing NY... Himizu had me shaken throughout, among the best I've seen this year or last.

http://filmcomment.com/entry/reviews-guilty-of-romance-himizu

(searching the board, didnt know his other stuff is usu horror)

oh, i have seen love exposure - martial arts meets up-the-skirt photography. odd.

Land of Hope and Why Don't You Play in Hell? are both playing at this year's MSPIFF.

haha, "love exposure" is more than just "odd"! it's a spectacle!

sono is probably the most interesting filmmaker working today (not counting malick as he's on the way out, shane carruth hasn't done enough for me to really tell). (weerasethakul is up there too)

only sono i've seen is Cold Fish, which was a p good, slightly overextended, serial-psycho killer movie

definitely check out noriko's dinner table and strange circus, then love exposure if you're feeling daring.

I'm p sure i watched the first hour of Love Exposure a few years ago

I hated Cold Fish, but adored Love Exposure. Oh, and Strange Circus is pretty great, too. I can't wait to see Himizu!

Land of Hope played at last years PIX, and I pretty much loved it. But I have family who fled Fukushima, so it hit close to home. Had never seen a Sono before. He has another, apparantly more horrific, playing this year, and I'll see it.

http://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/seasons/yoshitaro-nomura-film-season

^ Looking to catch something from this season. Anyone know him?

Completely ignorant of him. Anyone know Kohei Iguri or Muddy River?

http://www.japansociety.org/event/muddy-river

yeah, it's a good one. art theatre guild production if I'm not mistaken.

i wish I had more time to keep up w/ contemporary Japanese cinema. I could post some suggestions later if anyone wants 'em.

btw the thread title is probably the wrongest thing ever posted to ILX. :(

i have "why don't you play in hell" lined up for watching this weekend.

I saw Kitano's Outrage Beyond being reviewed earlier this year, did anyone catch it? I was really pleasantly surprised by it, has some really great scenes in it.

last couple of JP films I've seen have been hard work - am now onto the silent ozu gangster set. think I need to switch up to major films by minor directors rather than minor films by major directors and stop watching 80yo films. that said, I've also just bought the yamanaka box.

you're right, outrage is pretty good, although it probably benefited from my very diminished expectations after over a decade of kitano going from failure to failure (some more interesting than others).

koogs, make sure you watch shimizu films, they are the best.

haven't seen outrage II: outrageous, though.

(which shimizu? imdb lists a couple, one active in 30s, the other the ju-on guy. I do need to pick up copies of that and ringu, yes, as it's been a while)

finished the bfi ozu gangster set. all silent, which isn't my thing, really.

and he did that thing where he takes a film he made 3 years earlier (Walk Cheerfully) and uses the same initial premise for another film (Dragnet Girl). so you get a secretary who is proposed to by her boss but isn't interested, and a bunch of gangsters hanging out in a boxing gym. and identical shots between the two films (slow pans across a row of typewriters...). and only then do they diverge...

(Dragnet Girl also features a scene in a yoyo jazz club, which is a bit bewildering. i assume it's jazz - it's silent so you don't get to hear...)

lots more motion in these films than in later efforts. you get some of the two-people-both-talking-straight-to-camera conversations and he's already got the pillow-shots down but you also get movement.

oh, and early chishu ryu roles in a couple of them, playing a policeman each time

(which shimizu? imdb lists a couple, one active in 30s, the other the ju-on guy. I do need to pick up copies of that and ringu, yes, as it's been a while)

― koogs, Thursday, March 20, 2014 7:28 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, there are two hiroshi shimizus. i mean the one who worked from 1920s to 1950s (I believe). there's a cheap criterion eclipse set featuring four of his 1930s films, it's the best thing you will ever buy for yourself IMO.

http://www.criterion.com/boxsets/601-eclipse-series-15-travels-with-hiroshi-shimizu

(you can find it for 1/2 that price, just look around the interwebs)

not so available in the uk... £30 on amazon but likely to attract import tax.

hmm, well I would head to the torrentosphere then.

also the films are on criterion's hulu plus channel.

The what what?

oh, you britishers.

http://www.hulu.com/movies/criterion

Has anyone seen Miike's Big Bang Love, Juvenile A? It's supposed to be a slow, moody, overtly homoerotic Brecht/Genet prison thing, which sounds awesome, but I've been burned before.

Can only be watched from the US.

big bang love is great, def favorite miike

I saw Sion Sono's latest, Why Don't You Play In Hell, last night, wrote a bit about it here: http://centrifugue.blogspot.com/2014/04/cphpix-day-2-jealousy-why-dont-you-play.html Short version: It is mad, but fun and really well made. I need to see more Sono.

I've also seen Miike's 13 Assasins on Mubi. My first Miike. Don't know how much I feel the need to see more.

At least see The Bird People in China! Trust me, you won't regret it.

I love Bird People Of China. Possibly my favourite by him. I love that crazy drug scene that sticks out like nothing else in the film.

We were talking about Sono on the 2005 - present horror film thread, this is my rundown of his films I've seen...
ok lets all shit our pants to something new: post 2005 horror film thread

> I've also seen Miike's 13 Assasins on Mubi. My first Miike. Don't know how much I feel the need to see more.

i liked his 13 assassins, probably more than the original. but it was obviously cut for a 15 certificate and that started to annoy me after a while.

his remake of harakiri is also worth a watch

my fave miike is Happiness of the Katakuris but your average viewer should also prob see audition, ichi, bird people, shinjuku triad and if you want to put a capstone on it, citizen q

Thanks for the list, Robert Adam Gilmour, I'll use that as a guide.

I'm considering catching Shield of Straw at the festival, anyone seen that? Logistics, and all that. Also, I saw Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata last wednesday, which is amazing, and I think I'll catch his new, Real, tomorrow.

I saw Shield of Straw on a plane. Fun for a while.

Any fans of Great Yokai War? Some terrible cgi and an overlong sentimental scene, but manages to be beautiful, joyous and magical nonetheless, one of the best family films I've seen. Lots of Chiaki Kuriyama looking like a hot King Of Fighters character and a cameo by Shigeru Mizuki. My second fave Miike.

As far as "light" Miike goes, Zebraman and Zebraman 2 are a hoot as well. The latter is one of the weirdest film experiences I've had.

Just been reading Midnight Eye's films of 2013 and one guy really hated Land Of Hope, he said that a Japanese film magazine rated that and Himizu as the worst of last year. Ouch. I didn't mind those films but I am becoming more convinced Sono is best at crazy stuff.

Midnight Eye in their recent annual roundups have painted a convincingly bleak picture of recent Japanese film.

They might be right. Saw Kurosawa's Real and Kore-Eda's Like Father, Like Son and it was kinda lifeless. What's the last really good Japanese film? Tokyo Sonata?

Haha, they loved Like Father Like Son. I'd recommend their best in year lists, but since they see a lot of films in festivals and in Japan, you might never see some of the interesting films they cover.

@clouds, I loved Zebraman! I saw it at the cinema with a bunch of other people and we were laughing at the WTF-ness.

Talking about Kore-Eda, last night I saw Nobody Knows. That really got to me :( Beautiful film.

I'll look through this thread for another film to watch tonight!

I loved like father like son

Surprised to see Tatooed Swordswoman/Blind Woman's Curse on fancy dual format release yesterday. I've saw a few other Teruo Ishii films but none really grabbed me.

midnight eye is pretty much what i rely on to "follow" the commercial japanese cinema that doesn't make it to the US (which is the vast majority of it, of course).

the quality may be dire on the whole, but the japanese share of domestic box office is pretty good these days. most of the big japanese hits appear to be series films, some of them anime, some not. without fail i know next to nothing about these films, and even variety and film international tend to avoid discussing them at all.

i wonder how japanese film attendance per capita compares with u.s. film attendance these days.

i'm a little wary of kore-eda. early on he seemed to chase fashions a bit (even when he was making great movies like after life and—especially—maborosi) and not so long after he introduced a twee element (yes, even in nobody knows) that i find hard to stomach. but there's no denying he's a kind of master and his recent films, however much i wish they went down a little less easy, are leaps better than the sort of comparable indie dramas that america pumps out.

Million Ryo Pot this morning. pictures of Yamanaka with Ozu in the accompanying booklet but the style is a bit more dynamic, the content a bit more humorous.

http://updateslive.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/sadao-yamanaka.html

I've written a bit about Like Father, Like Son on my blog: http://centrifugue.blogspot.com/2014/04/cphpix-day-1112-3x3d-like-father-like.html It's the second one.

finished the last of my bfi ozu's this afternoon*, went to order the melodramas box only to find it'd gone up £8 overnight. argh.

* "Good Morning". lovely to look at and all but, y'know, fart jokes. also, a bottle in every scene...

the fart jokes are the best

Anyone seen Kumashiro's film Ichijo's Wet Lust (sometimes titled Sayuri Ichijo: Following Desire)?

I've been interested because this is apparently placed high in the Japanese canon (I don't know if there are many others with a similar position). I think it's half documentary about a stripper, half sexploitation.

these recent titles upcoming in NYC familiar to anyone?

http://www.japansociety.org/page/programs/film/japan-cuts-2014

Why Don't You Play in Hell is pretty fun, and is also about the joy of 35mm. http://centrifugue.blogspot.com/2014/04/cphpix-day-2-jealousy-why-dont-you-play.html

you really have stuff covered, Frederik.

i know the people who program that series; they are generally very much on their game

all but two of those are unfamiliar to me; i'm jealous of folks t hat would get to see them. japan makes so many new movies a year and i see, maybe, two or three. it's embarrassing.

Tsukamoto's new film Fires On The Plain is supposed to be an extremely graphic war film based on a Shohei Ooka book that was previously adapted by Kon Ichikawa.

I can't wait.

prize title:

http://www.japansociety.org/event/inflatable-sex-doll-of-the-wastelands

I'm working on this one. Live avant-garde impressionistic live scoring on shamisen and percussion to a classic prewar Japanese film
http://www.japansociety.org/event/the-shamisen-sessions-vol-2-yumiko-tanaka

Bought a few more, up to 80 something now. Original hara kiri, kagemusha and silent duel, all new to me and less than 18 quid for the three. Now just got to find time to watch them...

Just watched Himizu. A different kind of film from the other Sono films I've seen (way less gory, albeit still very violent). Pretty powerful and effective. Not sure how much the Fukushima-related insertions are necessary, would have been very affecting regardless.

Been watching a few militant-ish Japanese films - I am sorta preoccupied with Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, and the work of Nagisa Oshima in general. Picked Joan Allen's BFI monograph on the film too.

Mandara (Akio Jissoji, 1971)
United Red Army (Wakamatsu, 2008)
Serial Killer (Adachi, 1969)
Postwar History of Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (Imamura, 1970)
Dear Summer Sister (Oshima, 1972)

Mandara is flat out amazing, a dbl bill w/In the Realm... could be fruitful, its a story around a sex/religious cult. Jissoji (like Yoshida and Shinoda) relishes the license given in this non-commercial gig (Art Theatre Guild was set up to make more new wavey-films) and inserts a set of bizarre tracking shots along the beach (recalls Levy's Herostratus), the music is church organ type (different tone but in the context its very Marienbad.., the rape scenes are akin to Strawdogs (made around the same time). The Buddhist dimension looks forward to Kin ki-duk. Comes with these long-ish arguments that we all ask - how to live? What was lost through the embrace of modernity? And the key - what was repressed? Sexuality for one.

The Imamura is one of his best - again the Bar Hostess has to fight. No story of survival, she just lives, and really has the economic power - men rely on her for money so seeing this play out is great. The skill here is in Imamura drawing her story out via newsreels they watch together - of Hiroshima, the royal wedding, the demonstrations against US occupation and Vietnam. She has that mixed lower-middle politics (this is basically Naruse's world). Hates the Royals but never bothered with demonstrations so she goes to watch Gone with the Wind instead. Imamura's editing is witty - comical high point: she talks of sex with an American sailor ("two bangs and he was done"), then cuts to a newsreel of Kennedy's assassination. Urgently in need of reissue (caught this torrent of a taped showing on Italian TV)

She is from an area which has an US base so there is a whole cast of sailors - whom she mostly likes.

Okinawa was also occupied by the US and given back to Japan - this is a subject of Oshima's Dear Summer Sister. A family is putting the jigsaws together, and so have we. Oshima doesn't make it easy - its a mess, but all we have to do is sit through. The loss of a culture, and how children have the trauma of adults passed on to them - all that resonates. I love Takemitsu's score, so good but kind of distracting as well.

Wakamatsu's United Red Army was ok. I've never been that impressed with a couple of the films of his I've seen from the 60s/70s, so this sorta started as Watkins like re-telling then had a brutal 45 mins as members of the cell are up in the mountains for training killing each one another, seemingly unable to carry out "self-criticism" its self-appointed leader demanded. Sorta annoyed at the score - which I later found was by Jim O'Rouke. Kinda tired, didn't have the energy of Carlos (or its inspired s/track choices). Masao Adachi was listed at the end - he was an associate of Mishima and Wakamatsu (a member of the RAF and then arrested in Lebanon five years ago) and I caught his doc Serial Killer. A few factoids of this 19 year old who went on a killing spree - one job to the next, one town to the next, etc. - overlaid with images: the street, alleyways, the park, some of these are peopled, some have a 6am feel. Oh and military parades - so you know what that is telling you - comes with a free jazz-ish score.

I watched Tokyo Tribe from Sion Sono tonight at Gothenburg Film Fest. That one is weird as fuck, destined to be a cult feature. Japanese hip-hop opera with tanks and bejeweled katanas and thongs and gangwarfare and scratching grandmas and a bunch of other weird ideas. Blogged some more about it here: http://centrifugue.blogspot.com/2015/01/giff-day-1-timbuktu-mateo-tokyo-tribe.html

Just watched Himizu. A different kind of film from the other Sono films I've seen (way less gory, albeit still very violent). Pretty powerful and effective. Not sure how much the Fukushima-related insertions are necessary, would have been very affecting regardless.

― Basically / I Don't Wanna Be / An mp3 / 3-2-0 kb / ps (Craigo Boingo)

insertions not strictly necessary, but an amazing interpolation of the moment. loved the film, though i found the (male) protagonist's angst-ridden diffidence a bit overstated. up there with love exposure, strange circus and guilty of romance? yeah, almost.

wanna see tokyo tribe, not sure why i haven't yet

'for the damaged right eye'

that's a great one. though I like 'Atman' as a study, and 'White Hole' is incredible for the electronic music by Yuasa, and 'KI or BREATHING' is a little slow but ends up working because of the Takemitsu score. I still haven't seen 'Funeral Parade of Roses' yet -- it looks so amazing

julio, have you seen Shinoda's 'Petrified Forest'? That one has such a great Takemitsu I'm thinking of hunting it down

― Milton Parker, Monday, January 9, 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Milton watched this last night - score was amazing, really one of Takemitsu's best. Almost overwhelmed the film.

Really sucks that the Asian film dvd releases have dried up so much, especially when all sorts of stuff is coming out on fancy bluray editions. Maybe the main audience for a lot of this stuff is just torrenting everything?

Third Window is still going but there's no sign of any of Sion Sono's films since Land Of Hope.
Here's their 2015 releases, which I hope there will be more of.
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=75efa0407558406b19a943c40&id=d69b433f90

Here is a piece about some of the difficulties Third Window have had from a few years ago. Some things specific to way UK film business works. Don't know if much will have changed.
http://twitchfilm.com/2012/06/third-window-films-stops-with-theatrical-distribution-and-this-is-why.html

yeah, that's sad. i try to buy their stuff when i can. but i admit i often save my cash for blu-rays, since i often get burned when i buy a DVD import only to see it come out on blu-ray subsequently.

Have to admit that most of the Third Window stuff looks too much on the quirky kooky indie side for my taste (which nonetheless appears to be more poppy, wild and imaginative than American indie films). But I don't think they can afford a lot of the stuff Tartan used to put out.

here in the states the studio boutiques like sony pictures classics occasionally pick up a japanese film they think might get a little awards buzz but in general its terra incognita. i actually /have/ to use torrent sites to find a lot of recent japanese stuff; it's the only place to get subtitled copies.

i emailed third window with some suggestions of 1980s and 1990s japanese films they might consider picking up, but i'm not in the business so i wouldn't presume to know what their economic calculations are when they decide what to release.

so many important japanese directors of last 30 years are almost completely unknown in the states, e.g. jun ichikawa (only "tony takitani,' not one of his better films IMO, got distributed here), sogo ishii, shuinichi nagasaki, shinji somai, masayuki suo....

in the states, and i presume in the UK too.

I was thinking of emailing dvd labels about what I'd like to see. Is that something they're known to appreciate or expect?

Sogo Ishii for sure. I'd like Angel Dust and Crazy Thunder Road in particular.

I think Ghost Of Yotsuya is the most glaring absence of classic asian horror for home viewing. Especially considering it's way better than most of the other classic asian horror films.

I've always wanted there to be a site dedicated to showing what was in demand, like database listings for all manner of films, books and music and a petition on each thing so that publishers know how many people would like this or that.

The festival I'm at has Japanese theme. Any of these I need to check out? http://filmweb01.filmfestival.org/filmfestival/info/sv/festivalprogram/programentry?page=searchlist&filmId=185481

http://filmweb01.filmfestival.org/filmfestival/info/sv/festivalprogram/programentry?programSectionId=185488

Think you meant to post this link?

Tsukamoto's Fires On The Plain definitely. I hope it isn't too long before I can see it.

I think Terracotta might be picking up a lot of the new Asian films for UK home releases and cinema. But the releases haven't been that frequent recently.

I was pleased to discover Survive Style 5+ on YT. Strap in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Av8RGht0M

The Japanese Embassy in London puts on free movie showings, this month it's Yasuo Furuhata's 'Station'

http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/en/webmagazine/2015/01/film.html

crazy thunder road should be a huge cult film everywhere, not just in japan

if i ran a cinematheque i'd program a thunder road / crazy thunder road double bill for sure

I saw Tokyo Sonata yesterday and liked it but is that really possible for a boy that age to be locked up with adult criminals in those circumstances?

The Japanese Embassy in London puts on free movie showings, this month it's Yasuo Furuhata's 'Station'

http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/en/webmagazine/2015/01/film.html

― MaresNest, Sunday, 1 February 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks for the reminder I should go there sometime. At a three quid too.

i think part of the requirements might be difficult:

"To know where you heard about this event"

er, on an ile thread called 'Why are Japanese films so terrible?'

ICA is doing a week of japanese films. i saw 2 yesterday and 3 on saturday. would love to see them all actually. never seen anything by naruse before so was good to see one of his last night though i think i wasnt awake enough to really engage with it fully. but of the others, i loved pretty much all of them, esp blood and bones with takeshi kitano. looking forward to seeing a rare seijun suzuki one on tuesday. theyre mostly more genre-y movies, but not formulaic, so its good to see stuff that isnt just arthouse fare for your berry eating snobs at curzon and isnt straight commercial popcorn fodder either. sort of slapping myself for not going to the japan touring programme's events before.

details here for the curious:

https://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/seasons/japan-foundation-touring-film-programme

Was toying with going to see Scattered Clouds yesterday. Love so much of Naruse but didn't get round to it.

Have been to the touring programme before. Kind of local, forgettable fare that costs way too much to see (see also the Polish/Spanish/Czech 'festivals' mounted at a cinema in London). xp

im not claiming theyre masterpieces (though takeshi kitano did make blood and bones completely unforgettable), but idk, i like seeing east asian genre stuff too. sometimes people only want to see 'foreign' movies if theyre exotic or presenting/doing something stylistically different to generic stuff from the US/UK, but i dont mind seeing the regular stuff too if it does it well. they did a reasonable multibuy offer too.

I'm not saying you are claiming they are masterpieces.

I just don't take much of a liking to this block of films of 'heart warming tales' or (in Japan's case) cartoons Anime that don't seem to be deemed interesting enough to sustain even a one week showing at a cinema in London (they aren't great judges of this, and I guess it doesn't work that way) although cultural instiutes (Japan embassy, Goethe, I think the Korea embassy also) in London can do a fairly good job with cheap one-off screenings.

i think a lot of films get passed over by distributors for cinema release tbh. they appear and go down well at festivals but no one picks them up after that. not always to do with their quality. but yes, i dont think half of these films *would* do well as theyre not really 'interesting' enough for arthouse audiences who often like international movies for their novelty aspect or a window into another world etc, or show you the most extreme part of the society theyre from (or a chocolate box version of it), but even something like trash humpers only got shown at the ica for idk, one week when it came out. the japan touring programme i would say is a bit like the indian film festival in london, mostly for the people the films are made by.

I looked at the films for that Indian film festival last summer and didn't appeal. People turning up to see faces they are more comfortable in seeing is not my thing.

I bother with films from other parts of the world to see different worlds and extremities and aesthetics, often tied to politics most people find boring - which gives them an internationalism. Or so that is the case for much of the time..

"People turning up to see faces they are more comfortable in seeing is not my thing."

this is not behaviour limited to any one group...

the indian film fest had some good stuff in there (eg - miss lovely, which even S&S seemed to like iirc). theres more to indian cinema than satyajit ray. and i imagine for a certain type of cinephile, the japan touring programme reminds that there is more to japanese cinema than idk, ozu.

anyway, i saw this last year at the terracotta film fest, and apart from over-using the intro of be my baby, it was a really good modern japanese micro budget movie.

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/thiwinfil-21/detail/B00SBS0B34

third window put out a lot of good stuff. if tartan was still around i imagine they would have picked some of this stuff up.

and actually its not just about the audience wanting to see people who look like them (as if white western audiences dont do this), i think its simply about films that dont seek to explain certain things to an audience; it assumes there is that understanding already. basically it assumes the audience is a domestic one, rather than international one.

Well Ray or Ghatak or Oshima didn't seek to explain their content to a foreign audience. Not sure many international auteurs do this.

"People turning up to see faces they are more comfortable in seeing is not my thing."

this is not behaviour limited to any one group...

Of course not. However this kind of programme tends to reinforce this behaviour.

perhaps not 'explain' but 'awareness of who is watching this on the international arthouse/festival circuit' i think cant help but have some effect

"However this kind of programme tends to reinforce this behaviour."

are you saying there shouldnt be ___ (insert country) cinema festivals?

I view these touring festival programmes with suspicion.

'awareness of who is watching this on the international arthouse/festival circuit' i think cant help but have some effect

That may come in, but actually it could just as easily be the case that the film might be analysing something that easily crosses borders.

Does anyone recommend Blind Woman's Curse?

anyone seen this or any of the other 'continental trilogy' propaganda films?

http://www.japansociety.org/event/china-nights

http://www.midnighteye.com/features/midnight-eyes-best-and-worst-of-2014/

I could have swore I was checking for this more recently than early February but here it is.

The japanese films I've seen lately - Still the Water, Tokyo Tribe, Over Your Dead Body - really hasn't been that good, though Tokyo Tribe is ok. Doesn't seem to have been a banner year to me. I really like that the list ends with They Have Escaped being named 'Best Finnish Film'. That is both a nice non sequiteur, but also very very true.

When was the last Japanese masterpiece? Tokyo Sonata?

Have you seen Fires On The Plain yet? I really want to see it because it's Tsukamoto. The only nearby cinema cancelled it due to tech problems.

The report last year was similarly bleak. It's really sad to hear that a lot of the 80s-90s generation of directors have not been able to continue making films.

I've tried to catch it at two festivals, but scheduling, man! But yeah, I want to watch it.

Anybody keeping up with Kiyoshi Kurosawa?

Kinda. 'Penance' had it's charms. 'Real' goes off the rails and the most spectacular fashion I've seen in a looong time. That is one batshit final stretch. Haven't seen 'Seventh Code'.

Tokyo Tribe is getting UK disc releases by Eureka in June.

Wonder if that's the guy from Schaa Dara Parr I can see

I found Tokyo Tribe pretty disappointing. It's very ambitious, has some impressive visuals and some funny stuff but I think the whole thing just didn't work often enough. The music too rarely took off and the bad guys were extremely tiresome.

ooh, upcoming dvd box sets:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battles-Without-Humanity-Blu-ray-Limited/dp/B013V721SC - 12 discs, £100

this is a bit more reasonable
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B013GM4KDG
THE SHOHEI IMAMURA MASTERPIECE COLLECTION - 5 BR, 6 DVD, 1 CD, £47

(would've liked Black Rain in that last one as well, been a while since i've seen it)

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/mikio-naruse-10-essential-films?utm_content=bufferac4f0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitterbfi&utm_campaign=buffer

Yearning is settling nicely into the Late Spring slot in Naruse's body of work. (In other words, it's a favorite among those who go beyond the typical headliner, e.g. Tokyo Story, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.)

Perhaps someone familiar with japanese can correct me, but I've been wondering about what on earth the title of Naomi Kawase's film Still the Water is supposed to mean. The japanese title is Futatsume no Mado, which for my limited understand of grammar I would thought have been adjective + noun as in 'The Still Water' or just 'Still Water'. So I checked it on google translate, and it said Still the Water. So then I became a bit suspicious, and went on AsianWiki, which told me the title literally means The Second Window. And now I'm wondering if someone somewhere has actually google translated a film title and made it nonsensical, and I'm wondering how much of the dialogue was mistranslated as well. There were definitely some weird quotes when I watched it.

Anyways, watching lots of Kawase, and I really like most of it. One of the most unique japanese directors at this moment, definitely, though Still the Water is not as good as the earlier stuff. Has anyone seen any of her documentaries?

"window of the second eye", i guess? or the second eye's cornea?

i've never heard of this film til now. i just googled it and the poster is of people under water.

this makes sense as the first refractive layer of the eye is the cornea. its refractive index is comparable to water's, so i assume the refraction in the water is some analogy to perceiving something at first sight?

to break down the title:

quickly though: in japanese, there are different ways to count. when counting things like eyes, they say futatsu. you can have futatsu of other things. in this case, it is of "me", which is eye. "mado" is window. "no" is used to express possession, pretend it is an apostrophe-s; e.g., "'s".

so you get:

futatsu: two/second
me: eye
no: 's
mado: window

there are so many ways to count in japanese, that not even japanese people remember the correct way to count. futatsu is just another way to count.

my confusion is, though, if the title is saying "the second eye" or "two eyes", because japanese doesn't have plural like english does.

i'll ask my (japanese) girl when i get home

whoops

futatsume means second (a way of counting like i said above)
no just shows possession, but it's not needed in the english
mado is window

sorry for the confusion

目_目

So mystery solved. Google Translate for some reason recognizes film titles. It also claims that 'Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi' means Spirited Away. Dang it, it would have been a good anecdote otherwise.

Just finished Kawase's Hanezu. Brutal. Weird. Two men vying for one girl, but it's told from the viewpoints of two mountains of legend vying for another mountain, or it might be told from one of the men in the afterlife, and there's also a dead soldier from ww2 wandering around, and one of the men is an archeologist excavating 'the birthplace of japan' or something and he might be disturbing long dormant souls, and that might be what's going on. It's really really weird, especially considering most of the film is people eating soup and looking at birds...

I like Kawase more and more, the more I think about her. Still the Water is still bad, though.

Angel Dust by Sogo Ishii. Psychological detective murder mystery with a very sedate style. I couldn't follow it very much but very nice atmospheric style, sorta triphop(?) soundtrack.

Oh man, just finished Kohei Oguri's Muddy River, and most of it is just ok, but a few scenes near the end, man. Two small boys with few friends find each other, but bad luck and bad neighborhood might drive them apart again.

Movie about children realizing that the world is shit and that people are shit and that they themselves are shitty, and there's nothing to be done about it :(

Really good film, though. Will be checking out more of Oguri.

i used to watch a lot of japanese movies and anime since i was a boy and my interest in the country grew in large part because of the motif that kids realise the world is shit and people are shit

will check that one out

anyone besides Frederik seen Tokyo Tribe?

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/tokyo-tribe

I found Tokyo Tribe pretty disappointing. It's very ambitious, has some impressive visuals and some funny stuff but I think the whole thing just didn't work often enough. The music too rarely took off and the bad guys were extremely tiresome.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 20 June 2015 01:47 (4 months ago)

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/25/tokyo-storys-setsuko-hara-dies-at-95

:-(

Looked to see if they had another year's roundup but their last update was half a year ago

http://www.midnighteye.com/features/reflections-in-a-midnight-eye/

Which directors are moving their films overseas? Are they moving house overseas or just getting financed from other countries?

Best Japanese film I've seen in ages: Chasuke's Journey by Sabu. Check out the colors, the light, the parades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9_Gmj4G7BI

this, posted by Ward on the criterion thread, bodes well for more japanese dvds in the UK
http://variety.com/2016/film/global/criterion-collection-u-k-sony-1201724067/

i've had my eye on the criterion version of Human Condition trilogy for a while but it's expensive and could attract import costs. now Arrow are releasing it here, combined dvd and br, 6 disks in total, £48 though (down from £65!!).

Cool. I hope it isn't long until they get to the films I want.

Saw Naomi Kawase's An this morning, and it's far better than it's reputation. Admittedly, that doesn't say much, but I really liked it. It's celluloid, thank God, which helps a lot. Great use of light and shadow. It's uneven, as is every film by Kawase, but seriously, go give it a chance.

human condition dvds have been put back 2 months... and i've had them on pre-order since march...

human condition now put back another 6 weeks to mid september...

but the criterion collection version of samurai trilogy is coming to the uk earlier in september...
Samurai Trilogy [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

however:
Price: £47.99

that's £16 a disk.

Is there a similar 50% kind of sale on Criterions over there? We're enjoying that right now in the US.

Tsukamoto's Fires On The Plain finally getting a disc release in November.

Looks good!

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=tearsandlaughter&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=

Finally watched Tsukamoto's Fires On The Plain, it came out in 2014 and taken this long to get a disc release. It's good, he makes a lot of a small budget, it contains a particularly impressive landscape shot.

I normally don't bother with "making of" documentaries but this extra was very good. He's been trying to make this film for 20 years, he had lots of different ideas about how it might be (he toyed with making it an animated film), he wanted a much bigger film with a megastar.
There's footage of him going on a trip to collect the bones of Japanese soldiers. He wants the film to be a part of helping Japanese soldiers to speak about their experiences before they're all gone.

He says it's kind of a spiritual sequel to Bullet Ballet, uses some of the same cast. Expands on things he'd previously said about the young Japanese knowing far too little about war.

Imdb says he's making a samurai film right now. I can't wait.

wtf at this thread title

There's other threads for different countries with this title

why are 'british' films shit?

French films are shit. Porquoi?

I'm sure there was more

I must tell Pete next time I see him - if I can be bothered - that people go on about this little series of titles.

(I have probably said this before)

This is a nice piece on a Naruse film that won't be playing at the BFI melodrama fest. Will torrent.

went to give K(w)aidan a spin last night (hallowe'en and all) but the disk had discolouration over 10% of the surface and half of it wouldn't play (that's a MoC disk). the same thing is true of one of my BFI Ozu melodramas discs. they are stored in the original cases in a darkish room. and it's probably too late to send them back given that i've had them 4 years.

anyone seen any Yuzo Kawashima? Restorations in NYC:

https://www.japansociety.org/page/programs/film/yuzo-kawashima-x-ayako-wakao

went to give K(w)aidan a spin last night (hallowe'en and all) but the disk had discolouration over 10% of the surface and half of it wouldn't play (that's a MoC disk). the same thing is true of one of my BFI Ozu melodramas discs. they are stored in the original cases in a darkish room. and it's probably too late to send them back given that i've had them 4 years.

yeah, i will. found another eureka disk with the same thing (Oni Baba), so that's 3 now. i should go through the others.

Bit of a shame that all the ILX world cinema threads (Japan, France, Italy) have why-are-these-films-shit titles.

why are these thread titles shit?

Sword Of Doom - I really liked this until the ending because I've seen too many films where it ends with a haunted samurai freaking out and lashing out; such an interested situation is set up and feels kind of wasted. Nakadai's creepy smile is hilarious.

New Tsukamoto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ISetFZ3-fI

This YT site has quite a good selection of movies from the 1920s-40s.

http://www.youtube.com/user/modernrocksong/

amazon uk has the BluRay version of The Human Condition trilogy for £15 at the moment (i paid £40 for the dvds a couple of years ago). it's 9.5 hours in total and i enjoyed it, same director as Kwaidan and Harakiri.

this is one of those classic ilx thread titles *chef kiss*

I watched Sakuran by Mika Ninagawa yesterday, which is about a delinquent courtesan in 18th century Japan. The plot’s a bit eh but the visuals were stunning - lots of red, lots of beautiful goldfish and gorgeous clothes and hair. It’s based on a manga series which can be difficult to translate into a film.

I watched this a few weeks after watching Helter Skelter, a later film by the same director. I’d read the manga this one was based on and it’s a favourite so I really enjoyed it. Again, it’s visually stunning but it handles the themes of the source material really well and it’s a better piece. It’s not quite as full-on on the body horror as the book, but it’s a really faithful adaptation. It’s got a great cast as well and is well worth your time.

I'm looking for recommendations for some good, gritty 70s cinema, Action/Thriller/Yakuza/Crime/Avant/Samurai, that kind of thing, thanks!

not really my era but...

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2011/12/the-25-best-yakuza-movies/26

that last one, Yakusa Papers, is the one i see recommended most frequently.

dang, 25 yakuza flicks and no seijun suzuki! i've only seen tokyo drifter and branded to kill by him but i recommend if you're ok with something a little weird! (that list def doesn't have a problem with "weird" if it has fuckin dead or alive on it)

oh fuck there is a suzuki film my bad. i'm new to reading

anyone know these '58-61 'new wave' films in a NY retro?

https://www.japansociety.org/page/programs/film/the-other-japanese-new-wave

Can we do something about this lousy thread title, or start a new one?

Anyway, what a series in NYC, Oct-Nov

https://filmforum.org/series/shitamachi-tales-of-downtown-tokyo

https://www.diabolikdvd.com/product/solid-metal-nightmares/
Brilliant Shinya Tsukamoto box set for americans/region A viewers

The UK equivalent is smaller as Third Window already has a bunch of his films on bluray
http://thirdwindowfilms.com/films/tsukamoto-killing-haze-denchu-kozo/

I’ve no idea which geographies this will work for but the travelling Japan Film Festival has some Japanese indie movies streaming for free. Haven’t watched any of them yet.

https://www.japanesefilmfest.org/streaming/

I feel like this thread title is a classic early-ILX challop, we deserve to be reminded of it

anyone seen any Yuzo Kawashima? Restorations in NYC:

https://www.japansociety.org/page/programs/film/yuzo-kawashima-x-ayako-wakao🕸

The UK Shinya Tsukamoto set from Third Window

Adventure Of Denchu Kozo - I think this is his second officially released film and I wasn't sure I'd ever see it. It's about a boy with an electric pole in his back time traveling and fighting vampires in the future. It's very of its time, lots of goth and cyberpunk imagery, post-punk soundtrack and the techniques used in the first two Tetsuo films.

Haze - Nice to know more people will be seeing this now. I've seen it a few times and this time I watched it with commentary (trusting that the normal audio probably works). It's a claustrophobic nightmare and I wonder why more people haven't attempted things like this. Probably his most ambiguous film, Tom Mes helps us by pointing out clues about buddhist hell (if I remember correctly) and japanese folklore. I never guessed any of this but always loved it anyway.

Killing - Some are calling it a deconstructionist Samurai film. Think about the samurai recruiting from Seven Samurai being much smaller, bleaker and leading straight to disaster. It's a normal length film but feels like a short film; pretty good.
Musician Chu Ishikawa died during the making of the film so Tsukamoto explored his unreleased archives and found appropriate pieces to complete the soundtrack and it completely works. Sad that this will be their last film together, unless Tsukamoto decides to keep utilizing what Ishikawa has left behind.

Region A only, hope that means a UK release because I have an old Region 1 dvd

https://www.mondo-macabro.com/mondo-macabro-blu-ray-limited-edition/gemini-limited-edition.html

https://thebedlamfiles.com/film/the-enchantment/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo3cxt3D89o
Pretty good, one scene particularly reminiscent of Hitchcock's Marnie. The whole channel is worth checking out, I've always wanted to see Tokiwa and Crazy Family (which might have a chance on bluray in the coming years but I'd probably buy it) and I'll probably watch them in the next two weeks.

The Crazy Family is okay, it's quite funny, the soundtrack is good and I'm almost certain that it was a big influence on Visitor Q, but it seems longer than it should be to me.
I've found Ishii a very diverse director and my enjoyment of his films has been very variable. Some of his fans seem to really dislike Isn't Anyone Alive? but that was probably my favorite, surprisingly enjoyable for a film with so much dicking around and the hilarious cassette message justifies the whole thing.

I need help, film experts! I'm remembering a movie that has a crane shot of an old fashioned movie palace early in the movie. A sort of omniscient narrator is addressing the audience as a character outside of the movie theater. I think that this introduction is a frame and a pretext to go back in time to begin the story. I'm not sure if the metacinema motifs continue.

The movie might be Japanese. It shares some of the style of certain movies directed by Juzo Itami or Nobuhiko Obayashi. To me, it looks like it's from the late 80s or the 90s, recalling movies from an earlier time period.

I might have the decade and the country wrong, but I don't think I do.

I think it's Sada!

Definitely Sada! This old Variety review confirms it. I liked this movie and you should watch it if you haven't.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Obayashi's Labyrinth of Cinema on Mubi, which is why the opening from Sada got stuck in my head in the first place!

why are Mizoguchi Blu Rays so hard to come by in UK, I want to watch Genroku Chushingura :(
just look at this shit https://www.amazon.co.uk/Late-Mizoguchi-BLU-RAY-Masters-Cinema/dp/B00EZT3KYA

i have the dvd version of that, was £36 in 2011.

also have the 47 Ronin thing you mention, again dvd, bought on eBay from Korea, based on the packaging. it was quite cheap but looks legit.