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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 7, 2012 10:29:45 GMT -5
This thread fills a perhaps needless niche. The more I think about it, the more I think MJ intended his trailer thread to be about current movies, so I really oughtn't to clutter it up with older, obscure movies that few people have seen. I tried to think of a worthwhile topic that would include the trailers I've found this morning. They all happen to be Asano Tadanobu films, an actor whom I quite like, but I don't know that he's enough on the US radar to support a thread. Japanese movies might be worth a thread, though there have already been various ones on Kurosawa, Miyazaki, anime, kaijuu, and anyway some of these are Thai. Foreign? Once you get that vague, might as well call a spade a spade and just label it "Ijonity."
First, a film I've seen and wrote up at the time, Pen Ek Rantanaruang's Last Life in the Universe, the story of a deeply alienated Japanese expat in Thailand who ends up staying with a Thai woman whose sister has just been killed in a traffic accident. The following trailer is washed out and a bit grainy, but really catches the poetic nature of the film. I see that it's back up on YouTube and plan to catch it again while it lasts.
Rantanaruang, cinematographer Christopher Doyle and Asano teamed up again for a film called Invisible Waves, which also looks like something I really want to catch.
Stumbled onto the trailer for Cha no Aji, "The Taste of Tea," of which I'd never heard but looks fascinating.
Sad Vacation is apparently one in which Asano plays a man who meets the mother that abandoned him as a child. Sorry, can't find a version of this with subs.
Lastly, Gohatto is a jidai movie with both Asano and Beat Takeshi, directed by Oshima Nagisa and scored by Sakamoto Ryuichi. That's like a Holy Grail for me.
So, just kind of my "boy, I'd like to see these" list of the moment. Any thoughts?
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Jun 7, 2012 13:34:48 GMT -5
This thread fills a perhaps needless niche. The more I think about it, the more I think MJ intended his trailer thread to be about current movies, so I really oughtn't to clutter it up with older, obscure movies that few people have seen. Trail away. We all want to be exposed.
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Torgo
Moderator Emeritus
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Posts: 15,420
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Post by Torgo on Jun 7, 2012 14:02:13 GMT -5
Thats not what you say when I expose myself to you.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 7, 2012 16:28:46 GMT -5
What happens in Poobah World stays in Poobah World . . .
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 7, 2012 17:58:33 GMT -5
Here's another one I found awhile back. I've only seen one Wakamatsu film, Erotic Liaisons, and while good it didn't really knock my socks off. But for subject matter alone I'd really like to see Rengou Sekigun ("United Red Army").
Apparently a sort of parlour pink communism was popular on Japanese campuses around that time, with most students happily dropping it all once they graduated to Japan, Inc. But one side-effect of Japan's generally conformist mindset is that if someone really does turn anti-establishment, it's often radically so.
Some of its former members were the nucleus of the group that later carried out the Lod Airport massacre.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 10, 2012 10:07:32 GMT -5
It's been interesting lately, watching films just because they pop up on YouTube with no expectations about them whatever. It makes me think a bit about the dilemma of making a trailer: you have to catch the viewer's interest while avoiding spoilers or false expectations. Well, maybe the latter doesn't always apply. Corman supposedly used to say, "Just give me two good minutes for the trailer." I usually include a trailer with my "just viewed" writeups if I can find one. As I was writing up Suna no Onna though, it felt like I should say nothing about the plot at all, as there were surprising developments very early in it. I was pleased to see that whoever designed the trailer seemed to have thought along the same lines, as it primarily focused on the visuals, the small amount of dialogue only giving the broadest idea of the events. I've always thought the Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence trailer gives away too much, though I can see why they wanted to include that particularly arresting moment. I'd like to see the Japanese trailer and whether it also includes it. Sometimes the domestic and foreign trailers are interestingly different. May have to watch Lawrence again soon, especially if the weather turns hot. It's really a movie one should watch in a hot and sticky environment.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 10, 2012 13:25:49 GMT -5
This one certainly looks intriguing. Sorry, can't find a subbed version. The title, Kokuhaku, means "confession." The teacher, played by Matsu Takako, is saying that she is a single mother with a daughter named Manami, but that Manami is now dead. But that isn't all. Her death was no accident, and students of this class killed her. Her last line, " Kore ha watakushi no fukushuu desu" is an interesting pun. If fukushuu is interpreted as 復習 it means, "This is my lesson review." If interpreted as 復讐 it means, "This is my revenge." Japanese is great for this kind of wordplay. They're also big on revenge stories. Look how many times Chuushingura has been filmed. The film also has Kimura Yoshino, another really elegant actress that I quite like. The fact that she and Matsu are playing mom aged characters now makes me feel the passage of time . . . Oh, that " Dokan!" is Japanese onomatopoeia for being hit by something heavy. Edit: Should have known Mark Schilling would have a review. It really cements this as one I want to keep an eye out for. Edit 2: Scroll down for a subbed trailer.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 11, 2012 10:27:49 GMT -5
I'm not always as fixated on Japanese films as currently, but right now this thread looks almost like a coming attractions annex to my blog. Nakashima Tetsuya has really caught my eye. The wrtiteup on Kokuhaku makes it sound sort of like A Clockwork Orange with a Japanese twist and from a different internal viewpoint. Another of his, Kamikaze Girls, is a film I was vaguely aware of but never thought of as something I particularly wanted to see, but I'm now very pleased to find it on YouTube. I'll probably check it out tonight. Hopefully it won't be one of those with a random piece in the middle blocked. Ichigo (which phonetically could mean "strawberry") talks wayyy tough girl, using a lot of male forms. Some things are tough to translate. By the way, her style is called "Yankee'" Memories of Matsuko is also up, but with what look like Vietnamese subs. I have made it through unfamiliar J-movies without subs--I was pleased to find how much of Man Who Stole the Sun I followed--but it's problematic. Maybe if Kamikaze Girls is just drop dead great I'll try. The Beautiful Sunday trailer has no subs, I'm afraid. The fact that the movie includes a black half alone puts it on my "wanna see" list. Her line at the end is hard to precisely translate without more context but is something like, "How to put it? This makes me sick." Oops! Embedding disabled.The first two films above are clearly of the flamboyant and wild visuals school of Japanese film-making. Visual sense is such a strong aspect of Japanese culture that a movie has to get pretty bad before it isn't great to look at, and these add that WTF? vibe that is often so fascinating. But as someone noted in the comments, they can sometimes distract foreign viewers from the fact that sometimes there really is something serious below that layer of Japanity. Not always, though. Takeshis' carried itself on the first viewing with visuals and a sense of "wow, what next?" but fell flat for me on a second viewing. The kicker trailer I found is another from that school, Survive Style 5+. This trailer is everything I know about it. It's another with Asano Tadanobu, whom I always like. My least enjoyed movie of his was Mongol, and the failings there weren't his. Kishibe Ittoku (the guy in that still, acting like a chicken) is another good sign. I've lost track of it now, but I saw a trailer the other day that had a character saying that to catch a glimpse of him (as the actor, he apparently played himself in this other movie) while wandering around Tokyo is good luck. Edit: Stumbled on a slightly different Kokukaku trailer, this one with subs:
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 15, 2012 9:27:36 GMT -5
I'd never even heard of Ramen Girl. I'll keep an eye out for it, as it's clearly more actually about being gaijin than something like Lost in Translation was. I'll admit that I get a vibe of "seen the trailer, seen the movie" and also wonder if it's Hollywood's obligatory Tampopo remake. The best gaijin movie I've seen is still Mr. Baseball, and it would take some beating. I also ran across an interesting upload of a 1971 TV interview with Anthony Burgess and Malcolm McDowell about A Clockwork Orange: While watching that, the picture of my son on my desktop caught my eye. "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Jouji, Pitto and Baka-chan."
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 16, 2012 10:09:04 GMT -5
I hunted up Ebert's review of Twilight Samurai. He gave it a deserved four stars, but disregard his explanation of the historical background. The film does not take place during the Meiji era, missing it by decades. But then Rog also places The Seven Samurai in Meiji Japan when it's actually set in the Sengoku era, three centuries earlier. So we'll let his confabulation of the Boshin War and Satsuma Rebellion pass . . . he's a movie critic, not a historian!
But he does know film history, and I was interested to learn from his review that director Yamada Youji helmed the famous "Tora-san" series. I've never seen one of these, but just for the fact they were so immensely popular in Japan I'd like to. Ebert passes them off as pretty lightweight and formulaic, and that wouldn't surprise me. My impression is that they're very sappy, which is a really common Japanese failure-mode in my book.
This trailer for 「男はつらいよ」(Otoko ha Tsurai yo, "It's Tough Being a Man") is interesting. I rather like Atsumi's rapid fire delivery, and you've got to love that gaijin extra:
The YouTube connections pulled up the trailer for 「日本のいちばん長い日」(Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Hi, "Japan's Longest Day"). This is the story of the day Japan surrendered to the Allies, 15 August 1945, and the difficulty with which its leadership reached this decision and carried it out. Elements of the Imperial Guard actually staged a coup d'état, attempting to seal off the Imperial Palace, assassinate those who favoured surrender and seize the Emperor's recorded speech before it could be broadcast.
They weren't suicidal maniacs . . . quite. But even after the atomic bombings and Russia's declaration of war, many officers felt that they had husbanded enough men and equipment that they could destroy the first US invasion of the Home Islands. While the US would have enough resources to mount another, their hope was that such a bloody nose would weaken US resolve sufficiently to allow for a negotiated armistice.
This trailer is impressive:
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 19, 2012 21:48:23 GMT -5
It's a tad too late and I've already taken in a tad too much to pop in Dark City, mush as I love it.
But, truth be told, what I really want to see is City of Lost Children, from which I suspect it borrowed some of its best licks:
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 19, 2012 23:11:07 GMT -5
If Lingo is whom I think, he's no anime fan . . .
. . . but, broadly speaking, neither am I. His posting his adaptation of The Penal Colony (one of my favourite bits of K.) led me to this adaptation of "The Country Doctor":
Has anyone ever adapted "The Horla"? Or any Maupassant? We really out to have some candidate for a good double-feature with Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 20, 2012 0:26:50 GMT -5
Of course I meant in English, man. French ain't a language it's a speech impediment.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 20, 2012 9:58:22 GMT -5
This version of The Trial makes an interesting comparison with Welles'. I quite like both.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 30, 2012 9:25:03 GMT -5
I've already described how underwhelmed I was by Kitano's Glory to the Filmmaker in the "Just Watched" thread, but this morning I decided to go check out Mark Schilling's Japan Times review. He confirms that it's part of Kitano's announced "creative self-destruction of his directorial career" and that it literally was Kitano working through a directorial block. Schilling enjoyed it more than I did and has strengthened my intent to give it another look one day, especially the bit so antithetical to the sappy nostalgia of the Always films.
But Schilling's review mentioned that Matsumoto Hiroshi's directorial debut, 「大日本人」(Dai Nipponjin, "Big Japanese Guy") opened at the same time. "Mattchan" is half of a comedy duo called "Downtown" which is all over Japanese TV. If you've looked at many of the clips I've posted over the years, you've probably seen him. I deliberately didn't read the review so as to avoud spoilers but instead went to YouTube. I found the trailer for its US release under the name "Big Man Japan," and it looks like something I really want to catch one day:
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