tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264553012024-02-20T02:00:49.790-08:00EROS PLUS MASSACREUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-72006253844383267902010-12-31T13:17:00.000-08:002010-12-31T13:25:53.110-08:00R.I.P. Takamine Hideko, 1924 - 2010Her beauty and wry smile are on FULL display as Carmen in this clip from Kinoshita Keisuke's Carmen Comes Home, from 1951, with her Shochiku approved late-occupation challenge to traditional patriarchal values.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-30520311416190643172008-03-20T07:22:00.001-07:002008-03-20T07:23:04.364-07:00The Girl Who Leapt Through Time 時をかける少女 (Hosoda Mamoru 細田守, 2006)Hosoda Mamoru's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is an imaginative story about a girl who accidentally becomes able to go back in time to replay her day's events with a simple leap (its never made explicit, but it seems the harder she leaps, the further she goes back in time, but you never know.) Its basically a shojo style anime where the girl takes center stage and faces tough questions about Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-30552236866355913882007-08-03T08:46:00.000-07:002007-08-03T09:43:57.463-07:00A Bloody Spear on Mt. Fuji 血槍富士 (Uchida Tomu 内田吐夢, 1955)A Bloody Spear on Mt Fuji's plot is basic; a group of travellers (Samurai and two servants, shamisen player and daughter, highway policeman, thief, miner) interact and become closer through stressful and comedic situations (also, some tragedy). Ostensibly a road movie, a lot of the interaction and activity takes place in inns and city streets, very little on roads (though what does is memorable,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-51379709598675152022007-07-30T19:07:00.000-07:002007-08-03T09:30:20.388-07:00Age of Assassins 殺人狂時代 (Okamoto Kihachi 岡本喜八, 1967)We begin with exposition as a lunatic asylum "mad scientist" ex-Nazi played by Amamoto Eisei discusses (he and his pals switch back and forth between menacing Japanese and scary German the whole film) how a massive diamond was lost and a young Japanese (Nakadai Tatsuya) has it in his possession- within his body, actually. A league of professional, and would-be, assassins make comedic attempts at Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-68154944065979810462007-07-29T15:49:00.000-07:002007-08-03T09:31:00.021-07:00Coup d'etat 戒厳令 (Yoshida Kiju 吉田喜重, 1973)Firstly, apologies for being so long out of touch.Yoshida "Kiju" Yoshida (whose Eros Plus Massacre this blog is named after) directed his last film for some time in 1973. This was a strange biopic about a military obsessive and nationalist socialist named Ikki Kita, somewhat in the style of Hitler, who encouraged a coup against the Japanese government in 1936 (infamously known as the "February Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-51892734423161558682007-04-07T07:54:00.000-07:002007-04-07T08:02:03.475-07:00Battle Royale バトル・ロワイアル (Fukasaku Kinji 深作 欣二, 2000)I've been lagging a bit in posting, for a number of reasons, but they are all extremely boring (family, work, sickness, and laziness among them.) I did manage to catch something truly bizarre and interesting out of left field the other day, a film that I had written off a few years ago without having seen it (usually a good thing), but went looking for it after having it recommended in a couple Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-42484070514128080222007-03-24T09:24:00.000-07:002007-03-24T09:56:12.622-07:00Charisma カリスマ (Kurosawa Kiyoshi 黒沢清, 1999)Charisma is easily described as "bizarre", and I believe it warrants such a claim more than many other films which are described as such. The storyline follows an ex-cop named Yakuibe (which translates as "grove" and "pond", and is played by Yakusho Koji) as he seeks redemption, or understanding, for why he seemingly caused the death of a hostage earlier in the film. Most of the plot is Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-49546580412087038902007-03-21T08:36:00.000-07:002007-03-21T08:52:23.648-07:00The Harp of Burma ビルマの竪琴 (Ichikawa Kon 市川崑, 1956)Since this is a relatively well known, and much discussed, Japanese film, I'm going to concentrate more on what's been written about it, and what I've found the most valuable or interesting. I'll start with a quote from Donald Richie and Joseph Anderson's The Japanese Film: [The Harp of Burma] was based on a novel originally written to introduce children to certain Buddhist tenets, which was Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-39372712003474862252007-03-19T12:07:00.000-07:002010-12-31T13:41:18.143-08:00Japanese Most WantedHere's a relatively short list of some films that I'm trying to locate, with or without subtitles. I keep lists for a lot of things. It's a great way to organize my thoughts, and if you toss this sort of thing out there enough someone might bounce one back. I'm leaving off the films that I know are available on DVD, which I might eventually purchase.I Want to be a Shellfish (Hashimoto Shinobu,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-13660017010333045512007-03-18T11:46:00.000-07:002007-03-18T11:56:26.738-07:00Tales of Chivalrous Women: The Chivalrous Geisha 日本女侠伝 侠客芸者 (Yamashita Kosaku 山下耕作, 1969)In this film a Fuji Junko plays the extremely popular, principled, and extremely attractive geisha Shinji, who rejects the advances of coal baron, played sleazily by Kaneko Nobuo (perhaps best known as Boss Yamamori in Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity.) As she spurns his advances, as well as an early Meiji era imperial army general's, she begins to fall for a local mine owner named Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-26430173640027237282007-03-17T07:59:00.000-07:002007-03-17T08:48:50.198-07:00Myth and Masculinity in Japanese FilmI recently finshed reading Isolde Standish's Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema (available for a large sum of money at amazon.com), and I gained quite a bit from it. It went after three main periods and types of filmmaking in Japan during the 20th century: the Kokutai within chushingura movies, films about the Special Attack Forces (AKA Kamikaze Pilots) and War Crimes Trials during WWIIUnknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-65338847005861856842007-03-15T21:29:00.000-07:002011-08-03T16:39:33.286-07:00Revenge 仇討 (Imai Tadashi 今井正, 1964)Imai's Adauchi (AKA Revenge) is surely one of the best samurai films to come out of Toei, (a prolific company that didn't seem to mind if it's product devolved into mediocrity) and maybe one of the best period. Toei has done much less to impress me than the other major studios of the 50s and 60s, yet they did give many amazing directors shots at high gloss period pieces, including the somewhat Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26455301.post-49199512349832464252007-03-14T19:17:00.000-07:002007-03-14T19:28:06.196-07:00IntroductionThis is a blog dedicated to Japanese film. Hopefully I can find the time to update this regularly, for mainly my own benefit, because if I can't, it probably means I'm too busy to watch and meditate on some of the many rare and interesting films I've been lucky enough to have a chance to view. I plan on doing mostly reviews, either of films or DVDs, though I may often write about scholarly (or Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1