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Japanese Horror Classics: GOKE, HAUSU at the Egyptian

House by Nobuhiko Obayashi (top); Goke, Bodysnatcher from Hell by Hajime Sato (bottom)

Schedule and synopses from the American Cinematheque website.
Wednesday, September 23 – 7:30 PM
Japanese Cult Classics Double Feature:
HOUSE (HAUSU), 1977, Janus Films, 87 min. This long-lost fantasy/horror masterpiece from director Nobuhiko Obayashi has finally surfaced in America. Oshare can’t wait to spend the summer with her father…until he informs her that he plans to remarry. She decides to go away with some friends to visit an estranged aunt…who, unbeknownst to the girls is immortal and can only remain that way by feeding on virgins. Her evil house, with its girl-devouring piano, does the killing for her. Based on an idea given to the director by his then 7-year-old [...]

TOKYO SONATA, I LOVE YOU, MAN Buzz

At GreenCine Daily, Vadim Risov on Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, which opened this weekend in New York (it’ll open in Los Angeles on March 27):
"Two-thirds of the way in, Tokyo Sonata is a nicely observed low-key drama just unnerving enough to keep you on edge: Kurosawa’s framing is always a bit cluttered and claustrophobic, and his willingness to sit and watch for a little too long makes it seem like violent disaster is always just on the verge of breaking out. And then suddenly it does and all hell breaks out."
***

At Cinematical, Eugene Novikov is enthusiastic about Paul Rudd’s star turn in the comedy I Love You, Man, directed by John Hamburg, written [...]

Japanese Academy Awards 2009

2009 Japanese Academy Awards
2009 Japanese Academy Award winners: Feb. 20, 2009
 

Yojiro Takita’s Departures, about an unemployed cellist who finds work as a professional corpse-beautician of sorts, was the big winner at the 2009 Japanese Academy Awards, bagging a total of 10 trophies (out of 13 nominations), including best film, best director, best actor (Masahiro Motoki), best supporting actor (Tsutomu Yamazaki), best supporting actress (Kimiko Yo) and best screenplay (Kundo Koyama), along with wins for cinematography, lighting, sound and editing.
In addition to winning this year’s best foreign-language film Oscar, Departures also took top prizes at the Montreal and Palm Springs film festivals, and, with a US$32 million gross, has turned out to be one of Japan’s [...]

RASHOMON: Monday Nights with Oscar

Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 classic Rashomon, which officially introduced Japanese cinema to the world at large, will be the next film presented as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Monday Nights with Oscar.” The East Coast premiere of the new digitally restored print of Rashomon will take place on Monday, November 17, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy Theater in New York City.
Though it revolves around the rape of a woman and the murder of her Samurai husband, Rashomon, co-adapted by Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto from Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s stories "Rashomon" and "In a Grove," is less a crime drama than an examination of the mind-boggling nature of truth. [...]

BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT

Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)
Direction: Shoijiro Nishimi, Futoshi Higashide, Hiroshi Morioka, Yasuhiro Aoki, Toshiyuki Kubooka, Jong-Sik Nam. Screenplay: Brian Azzarello, Alan Burnett, Jordan Goldberg, David S. Goyer, Josh Olson, Greg Rucka; based on Bob Kane’s character. Voices: Kevin Conroy, David McCallum, Gary Dourdan, Corey Burton, Jason Marsden, Jim Meskimen, Kevin Michael Richardson, George Newbern
 

 
Batman: Gotham Knight is a direct-to-DVD animated film in six segments, each directed by a different East Asian filmmaker. The animation quality, both in terms of character and environment detail, exceeds that of the animation found in all the Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, and all the other Batman animated films. The fore and backgrounds aren’t after thoughts; they have as much care [...]

SISTERS OF THE GION d: Kenji Mizoguchi

Gion no shimai / Sisters of the Gion (1936)
Direction: Kenji Mizoguchi. Screenplay: Kenji Mizoguchi and Yoshikata Yoda; from Aleksandr Kuprin’s novel. Cast: Isuzu Yamada, Yôko Umemura, Benkei Shiganoya, Fumio Okura
 

Business is contingent upon profitable commercial transactions. Exchanges that removed from human instigation are cold but necessary for survival. Success, no matter strategy or plan, is propelled or hindered by fate, though this variable holds no emotional consequence. Of course, companies are usually created to make money and are not breathing, feeling entities. Yet humans are behind these enterprises, and with or without this extension also pursue financial success — but those entail emotional risks.
Individuals are likewise driven to establish personal security and this basic idea is a primary concern of [...]

SANSHO THE BAILIFF d: Kenji Mizoguchi

Sanshô Dayû / Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
Direction: Kenji Mizoguchi. Screenplay: Fuji Yahiro; from the old legend and Ogai Mori’s 1915 short story “Sansho the Steward.” Cast: Shindô Eitarô, Kyoko Kagawa, Yoshiaki Hanayagi
 
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
One of the nostra about Japanese film director Kenji Mizoguchi is that he is ‘the most Japanese of all filmmakers.’ Another is that, compared to his two titanic contemporaries, Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa, Mizoguchi was the hardest to pin down in a style or genre. Having just watched Sanshô Dayû / Sansho the Bailiff (1954) I can agree with both of the above sentiments.
First, Mizoguchi excels at the jidai-geki (historical drama) genre. Second, whereas Ugetsu Monogatari (the only other Mizoguchi film I’ve seen) [...]

Asian Film Awards – 2007 Winners

"It’s almost strange that it’s the first ceremony," remarked French director Luc Besson at the 1st Asian Film Awards presentation held this evening at Hong Kong’s Convention and Exhibition Centre, as part of the 31st Hong Kong International Film Festival which kicked off last night.
"Good films come from everywhere," added Besson. "Artists are like mushrooms, a little sun, a little water and they grow, they don’t need passports, visas to create."
The South Korean sci-fi-horror, political suspense thriller, and comedy-drama (yup, it’s all that) Gwoemul / The Host came out as the big winner of the evening, with a total of four awards: best film, best actor (Song Kang-ho, left, as the film’s ditzy blond), best cinematographer (Kim Hyung-goo), and best [...]

GODZILLA IV – Final

GODZILLA Review: Part III
The DVD set comes with an informative booklet, trailers for both films (though the Gojira trailer lacks subtitles), a "Godzilla: Story Development" featurette, a "Making of the Godzilla Suit" featurette, and commentaries on both films by Godzilla experts Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski. These commentaries are the best bonuses and make up for the rather skimpy extras because both are excellent, fully delving into the history and detailed making of the films.
Neither man is a film historian or critic, so they have an enthusiasm that many such commentaries lack. As a plus they are well informed, fast paced, and non-fellatric in their opining. The Godzilla commentary also features the son, Terry Morse Jr., of the American [...]

16 Animated Features Vying for a 2006 Oscar Nod

Press Release:
Beverly Hills, CA — With 16 animated features submitted for consideration in 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences anticipates that its Animated Feature Film category, for the first time since 2002, may include a full slate of five nominees.
The 16 features expected to compete for 79th Academy Awards® nominations are:
The Ant Bully
Arthur and the Invisibles
Barnyard
Cars
Curious George
Everyone’s Hero
Flushed Away
Happy Feet
Ice Age The Meltdown
Monster House
Open Season
Over the Hedge
Paprika
Renaissance
A Scanner Darkly
The Wild
Arthur and the Invisibles, Happy Feet and Paprika have not yet had their required Los Angeles releases. If any one of the group were not to meet that requirement, the field in the category would fall below 16, the number required to trigger the five-nominee slate. With 15 [...]

Emilio Estevez’s BOBBY opens AFI FEST 2006

The AFI FEST 2006, which takes off tonight at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, will screen Emilio Estevez’s Bobby as its opening-night gala presentation.
From the AFI press release:
AFI FEST 2006 presented by Audi: AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival announces that Emilio Estevez’s Bobby has been chosen as the Festival’s Opening Night Gala presentation. Written and directed by Emilio Estevez, Bobby revisits the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1968. This presentation will mark the film’s US premiere.
The film features a remarkable ensemble cast including: Harry Belafonte, Joy Bryant, Nick Cannon, Emilio Estevez, Laurence Fishburne, Brian Geraghty, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, David Krumholtz, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf, [...]

ICHI RAZORBLADES Controversy

Via the BBC: The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has ordered more than three minutes cut from Koroshiya 1 / Ichi the Killer, a Japanese film that depicts graphic scenes of "extreme sexual violence." That represents the BBFC’s biggest demand for an "editing job" in about a decade.
Described by its distributor, Medusa Pictures, as an "ultra-controversial piece of manga mayhem," Ichi the Killer includes scenes of naked women being sexually mutilated, beaten, and killed. "These scenes," stated the BBFC, "appear to the board to have no function other than the pleasure of the onlooker." When the film was shown at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival, organizers provided sick bags to the audience.
Directed by Takashi Miike (Ôdishon / Audition), [...]

Shohei Imamura

Two-time Palme d’Or winner Shohei Imamura died in Tokyo on May 30. The 79-year-old Japanese filmmaker had been suffering from liver cancer.
Born in Tokyo in 1926, Imamura entered a technical school in order to avoid being drafted into Japan’s Imperial Army. His studies at the renowned Waseda University were followed by work as an assistant director to the likes of Yasujiro Ozu (in Tokyo monogatari / Tokyo Story, 1953) and Kinuyo Tanaka (in Tsuki wa noborinu / The Moon Has Risen, 1955).
Imamura, often writing his own screenplays, began working as a full-fledged feature-film director in 1958. His socially conscious films frequently focused on those at the bottom of Japan’s rigid social structure, and featured sex as a major topic. Among [...]

PRINCESS RACCOON d: Seijun Suzuki

Operetta tanuki goten / Princess Raccoon (2005)
Director: Seijun Suzuki. Screenplay: Yoshio Urasawa. Cast: Ziyi Zhang, Jô Odagiri, Hiroko Yakushimaru, Saori Yuki
 

 
One of my two favorite films of the AFI FEST 2005 — Caché / Hidden was the other one — took me completely by surprise. Seijun Suzuki’s delightful musical fairy tale, Operetta tanuki goten / Princess Raccoon, consists of an eclectic mix of abstract and natural settings, catchy tunes ranging from mild rap to hot salsa, myriad plot twists and turns, special effects that are purposefully — and beautifully — simple (one such brings back from the dead veteran actress Hibari Misora), plus dialogue in a variety of languages. The result is a magical — if challenging — mélange perfectly [...]

Japanese Film Series at MoMA

This fall, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is presenting the film series "Early Autumn: Masterworks of Japanese Cinema from the National Film Center, Tokyo."
The series consists of fifty-three classic Japanese films made between 1929 and 1970, which have been loaned out by the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art for the first time in the history of that institution.
Every print screened in the series is in 35mm and has been newly struck from archival negatives, with new English subtitles created by the National Film Center.
Schedule:
Among the directors represented in the series are Kon Ichikawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, Teinosuke Kinugasa, Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Nagisa Oshima, Yasujiro Ozu, Heinosuke Gosho, [...]

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