Ijon's J-movie Impaction

[Ijon the Asano]

Whether coming back is a good idea I really don't know, nor if I'll stay long. But YouTube, Veoh and the like having so many Japanese films, I have a backlog of them to yammer on about.

If anyone cares. Submitted for your ignoration.


Firstly I have a sort of theme posting about movies with children as leads: Shounen which has been a favourite for awhile now and Ohikkoshi, which I only discovered last night.

Kids in movies are often a major red flag (Phantom Menace, anyone?). Now, we've all seen the Gamera films, but I actually think that Japanese movies less frequently implode when they crop up.

Shounen (「少年」, "Boy") is an Oshima Nagisa film from 1969. Based on a true incident a few years earlier, its unnamed grade-schooler protagonist drifts around Japan with his father, step-mother and half-brother, faking automobile accidents and then shaking down the drivers for the boy's "medical expenses." Oshima's films always have a strong element of social commentary, occasionally so polemical and arty as to feel overblown (I found Diary of a Shinjuku Thief to be so). This one is less preachy than it might look from the trailer, developing the characters of this exotically dysfunctional family and their interrelationships well. It occasionally uses very experimental techniques: some scenes being suddenly B&W or saturated with a particular color. In the scene where the father doffs his shirt to show his war wound, the room behind him gradually illuminates to reveal a huge stack of bone boxes. But these only season what is a fairly traditional narrative. Of the Oshima films I've seen, this one is my favourite.

Ohikkoshi (「お引越し」, "Moving") is a Soumai Shinji film from 1993. I thought it was the first Soumai film I'd ever seen, but looking him up this mornig I found that Sailor Suit and Machine Gun was also his. Renko is a fifth-grader whose parents are separating. This understandably creates considerable tension both at home and in school. Her sympathies, loyalties and goals are in considerable flux as she grapples with the situation. There isn't the polemicism of the Oshima film, but inevitably there are ruminations on the Japanese family; there's a sense that the mother's out-earning the father was a key in the breakup. Another very Japanese element is that the breakup is a secret. She only tells one friend, and another kid figures it out. This is obviously an element in Renko's isolation, but I don't think Soumai is bemoaning this, just representing the way things work there. The ending becomes very surreal, something I like for its own sake and which avoided a pat, simplistic resolution that would have hurt the movie.

The greatest similarity between the two is having grade-schoolers as the leading characters and risking so much on child actors. I think both of them carried it off beautifully. Shounen's lead was Abe Tetsuo, who seems never to have acted again but went on to become a screenwriter. Renko was played by Tabata Tomoko, who I'm pleased to see from imdb developed an acting career that continues up to the present day.

Both children find the families that should be nurturing them instead letting them down, even manipulating and exploiting them. The basis is different: in Shounen the father is a real piece of work, symbolizing the elements of Japanese society against which Oshima's films always rebelled, while the parents in Ohikkoshi are a more sympathetic pair. The sense is that they're doing the best they can but it just isn't good enough. You really feel for everyone in the film, and this can make it painful at times, especially if one has ever been through something similar. Neither kid has anyone else to whom they can turn. Neither can fix their family nor can they escape it. Each is thrown back upon themselves to sink or swim. Neither film cheats the situation by magically fixing families so thoroughly broken. Neither is a feel good film, but they're both excellent and highly recommended.

So, take that, Kenny! Sometimes good acting comes in small packages.

The Shounen trailer, showing just how powerful Abe's performance is. Even his three-year-old half-brother is very effective. I'm guessing that must have been almost more like working with an animal than an actor, but it worked:





The Ohikkoshi trailer. No subs, but this one uses titles that are easily translated below:



Renko, running.

Renko, laughing.

Renko, get angry!

Renko, cry. => Renko, don't cry.

Let's be cheerful.

[Torgo]

Welcome back Ijon! Good to see you around.

[Ijon the Asano]

Thanks. I have an elaborate password dodge which I hope will make drunken posting more difficult.



I'm sure everyone has had the experience of watching a movie where one's reaction to it changes over the run, perhaps disliking it initially but warming to it by the end. How much does it take, though, to give it a second look? A couple weeks ago I was wondering that when on subsequent nights I'd watched a pair of movies that each got ★★½ ratings from my favourite review sites. How much more middle of the road can you get? No wonder I'd spent most of my time with each undecided.


The first was Galaxy of Terror, AKA Mindwarp, the (in)famous giant maggot movie. Clearly picking up on Alien--but perhaps even more closely resembling Bava's Planet of the Vampires--the movie has surprisingly lush visuals for a Corman budget, some familiar faces and good pacing. That said, the apparent concept of the characters being killed off by their subconscious fears made manifest requires . . . like . . . um . . . that you actually develop them in some way. There's also a big reveal at the end, but this galaxy has never been back-filled sufficiently to know what to really make of it.

So, the evening didn't feel wasted, I'm glad that I can now say I've seen it and it might track better with another viewing with lower expectations . . . but I can't imagine giving it one.



The other was Aoi Haru 「青い春」. Note that while this is accurately translated as "Blue Spring," the Japanese draw the divider between green and blue a little differently. Traffic lights are called blue, as are Granny Smith apples. To the original audience the implication isn't of "blue" as in sadness but suggests the bright green of fresh spring growth, and that metaphor figures centrally.

Toyoda Toshiaki's 2001 film is part of Japan's popular juvenile delinquent genre (indeed, Mark Schilling suggests that it kills it by taking it to a level of self-parody and may have a point). Matsuda Ryuuhei stars as Kujo. The film opens with his entering the ritual that determines who will become the alpha male of his boys' high school. The contenders hang from a railing four stories above the pavement. On a call of "Hitotsu!" they let go, clap once and grab the railing again. On "Futatsu!" they do the same, clapping twice. Graffiti on a nearby wall is the Japanese for "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands." Kujo wins with a record eight claps.

Matsuda is an interesting choice to play Kujo. He's something of a pretty boy, enough that I couldn't quite see him in a similar Hollywood role. But when called on he definitely imbues Kujo with a toughness that makes him plausible as the king of this blackboard jungle. As an aside, I quite like some of the roles that Matsuda has taken against the pretty boy type (which he could safely play to forever in Japan with enough plastic surgery). He plays a crazy, street-person psychic in Tsukamoto's Nightmare Detective movies. In Miike's Izou he plays God, and not just a character nicknamed "God" like Groucho Marx in Skidoo! (what a ripoff that was).

Aoi Haru has a truly arresting visual sense. The teachers have abandoned this school to the boys, and they've covered the white walls with black spray-painted graffiti. Combined with their black uniforms, this gives the school a jagged, Lord of the Flies ambience. There's also a standout moment where one boy stands unmoving on the roof from midafternoon until morning the next day, while the sun and moon and life of the city revolve around him in time lapse.

I generally want to avoid spoilers of any signifcance, but I have to go into the plot a little more deeply to get what bothered me about the film. Kujo's only friend is Aoki, whom he's known since early grade school. It's early established that they realize the bleakness of their futures. Their grades don't make university an option, and low-level jobs will be a comedown, especially for Kujo who'll be falling from his big fish in a small pond condition.

But while they're the only buddies, their membership in the handful of dominant boys who run the school turns out to be the key. After establishing the above, perhaps the first half of the movie then turns to developing these other boys while simultaneously stripping them away through arrest, dropping out, etc. The problem here is that things feel rushed; we're barely getting to know them just as they're suddenly lifted from the story. Furthermore, we lose track of Kujo and Aoki, whose falling out constitutes the film's second half and actual plot.

This may be because the story was adapted from a manga, which generally have sprawling plots over tens of volumes. No doubt an American screenwriter would have pushed a lot of this into the background to make the K/A relationship more central, but perhaps this is where the culture notes come in. In Japanese society, one's individuality is far more subordinate to one's group memberships than in the West. The break between Kujo and Aoki arises not from anything personal between them but from how they react to the dissolution of their gang. I think there's a disconnect between the two halves of the film, but perhaps there must be. Probably the main reason I do plan to catch this one again someday is to get a sense of whether they could have been better integrated.

In a nutshell, Kujo is a complacent kingpin. If someone gets in his face he breaks theirs, if someone disses a member of his gang he smacks them down hard, but beyond that he mostly just wants to kick a soccer ball around. Aoki, especially as the gang dissolves, wants to kick people around. Power has to be demonstrated if it's to be maintained. Note that the film is quite violent. Not nonstop like Galaxy of Terror, but frequently and sharply. At one point Aoki puts a vending machine coffee into another kid's mouth and then kicks it. Those cans are steel, and the pool of blood and broken teeth that results seem about right. Inevitably Aoki can't continue down this road without expressly challenging Kujo.

There are a number of very good performances in the film. Aside from the boys, there's only one adult who figures prominently, the dwarf groundskeeper played by Yamada Mame. I'd only ever seen him in a non-speaking role in Strange Circus, but he has quite a meaty role here which he plays excellently. He convinces Kujo, Aoki and Yukio (one of the too rapidly removed others) to each plant a bulb in a planter he sets aside for them and watch how they bloom given care. He's the only person to whom Kujo can unbend at all once Aoki turns on him.

There's an interesting line in there. Speaking of Aoki, he tells Kujo, "Kawareba, kawatta hito da ne." This translates as something like, "If (a person) changes, they are a changed person." This sounds so tautological as to be meaningless in English, and I can imagine how the translator wrestled with it. Somehow it tracks better in Japanese. There's a sense of fatalism to it, and the accompanying visual is Aoki's withered flower.


So, since Galaxy tossed out a nice idea for developed characters but never developed any, I feel no particular need to revisit it. Aoi Haru, though, has well-developed and acted characters and a plot with some real interest, even if the structure feels off. This one seems worth another look, maybe next spring. Perhaps it tracks better if you already have the dramatis personae straight, and if nothing else it's worth it for the look of Dante High:




Kujo: "Teacher, aren't there some flowers that never bloom?"

Aoki: "Kujo, c'mon together with me."

[Ijon the Asano]

Women and Men


One criticism of the classic Japanese directors that I think does stick is that female characters get overshadowed in their output. The relative positions of men and women in Japanese society are a complex subject. There's a strong distinction between within the home and outside it, with men dominant in the latter but women moreso in the former. I suppose it's no surprise that with directors uniformly male, that predominated.

More recently, though, movies centered on strong female characters are frequent (though still made by male directors). In this post I want to talk about one film that is almost completely about women and compare it to another that bucks the trend and is all about men.



Kuwaietto Ruumu ni Youkoso 「クワイエットルームにようこそ」("Welcome to the Quiet Room") is a 2007 film directed by Suzuki Matsuo. He also wrote the screenplay and novel from which it was adapted. The common wisdom that novelists shouldn't adapt their own screenplays because they can't bring themselves to make needed cuts and changes makes sense to me, but it works here. It also avoids the sense of glossed over elements you sometimes get when a novel is rendered down to movie runtime.

Sakura Asuka is a magazine writer stressed by a tight deadline and a family crisis. The evening wears on, she cracks more and more drinks, adds a few pills, the screen fades to white . . . there's a vision of her standing on a piano in a desert, doctors and nurses watching from chairs . . . and then she's in the "Quiet Room," an isolation unit in a mental ward, under five-point restraint. Head Nurse Eguchi informs her that she's been there three days and is considered a suicide risk.

A lot of people seem dismissive of this movie because it's not an accurate portrayal of a mental ward. I've liked it from the first, and it grows on me with each viewing. At this point I'd say it's the most mainstream Japanese movie I actually love. Movies clearly aren't meant to be security camera footage, rather abstractions that suggest reality (as is any art, I suppose). Now, there's still a spectrum that runs from trying to portray events as accurately as clarity, budget, flow, etc will allow to another extreme where everything is wild, fantastic, surreal or dreamlike. I generally prefer my movies to be pretty close to one pole or the other. Considering war movies, Platoon would be an example of the first, while Kelly's Heroes or especially Oh! What a Lovely War would cover the second. Movies that just sorta plunk somewhere between generally don't work as well for me.

Quiet Room does, and sets the tone early on, as when Asuka grows hungry and is suddenly shown (still strapped to the bed) in her magazine's office while a parade of cooks and women in cheongsams serve everyone bowls of delicious, steaming ramen. The story could have been set in a realistic mental hospital, but it explores some very dark ground and likely would have come off oppressive. Treating the setting more metaphorically and adding generous dollops of color and dark humour avoids that.

Several of the other patients function as externalizations of elements of Asuka's own personality, while the nurses are the power structure. The men are a uniformly sorry lot: her ex-husband, her live-in boyfriend, his buddy . . . the only effective male in the film is actually a woman (you'll just have to watch it to see what that means (^_^) ). This is why some of the patients are implausibly well dressed and made up, I think. They're meant to epitomize aspects of modern Japanese womanhood and those are visual cues to it. Kurita-san, for instance, represents Asuka's ideal of Japanese female success: calm, elegant, understanding, helpful, married to an MD, but . . .

Elaborating on that ellipsis would be the mother of all spoilers.

Asuka has to come to terms with herself as symbolized by the patients and society as symbolized by the nurses. One key scene has her standing up to Eguchi and backing her down, to the amazement of all. There are whiffs of social commentary in some of this, but one thing that struck me about the movie from the first is how it sets up so many of the sappy, cliché resolutions that (not just) Japanese movies love only to demolish them. Getting married, finding a cool boyfriend, even motherhood doesn't solve underlying problems. This is, I think, the reason for the dance sequence everyone finds so mystifying. It doesn't end the film, it comes right before Asuka is slapped down and finds herself back in the Quiet Room.

I like a lot of the performances. Hiraiwa Kami as Nurse Yamagishi represents the friendly but firm authority figure (and looks so much like my wife it's uncanny). Head Nurse Eguchi is played by an actress called Ryou who's been around forever and is very good with outré characters in the like of Tsukamoto's Gemini or the TV drama Love Complex. Asuka calls her the stainless steel woman who wants to make the whole world as metallic as herself.






As it happens, Ryou is also in Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Akarui Mirai 「アカルイ・ミライ」("Bright Future"). This 2003 film comes from the director of such J-horror classics as CURE, Kairo and (my personal favourite) Sakebi. These are what get foreign release, but he also does yakuza pictures and dramas like Tokyo Sonata. I REALLY want to see that one.

Akarui Mirai too has a foot in both camps. It has fantastic elements: a double murder, a ghost, precognitive dreaming, but these are quick flashes in an otherwise prosaic world. Indeed, I've never seen Tokyo portrayed as a greyer, drearier forest of concrete and cable than in this film. In a different tack than Quiet Room took, K.K. embraces this drab atmosphere but punctuates it with moments of transcendent beauty and wonder.

Odagiri Jou plays Niimura, a young man who works in a dead end job with his friend Arita (Asano Tadanobu!). Arita tries to help Niimura get his feet on the ground, but shortly after giving him his pet jellyfish is arrested for something he does to save Niimura from himself, after which Niimura goes to work for Arita's father.

Mark SChilling said in his review that he rarely knew what Kurosawa K. was on about in his films but that he was always fascinated by them. I think I have an idea.

The jellyfish--a posionous and bioluminescent variety--is the focal element of the piece. It represents young Japanese men: shapeless, fragile, dangerous, magnificent. Arita has a scheme to gradually acclimate it to fresh water so that it can thrive in the canals of Tokyo.

I've long felt that Japanese men have a subtly beaten down aura that you don't see in their women. There are many social and historical possibilities for this, some unique to Japan and others not. The gist of this film is that they need some kind of mentoring, but that it's a difficult and even risky task. It's no accident that Arita senior is a junk dealer who specializes in gathering and repairing broken appliances, or that Arita junior's given name--Mamoru--is a pun on the verb meaning "safeguard" or "protect."

In an interesting inversion from Quiet Room, it's the women in this one that come off poorly. They're nagging older sisters, self-satisfied boss's wives. Ryou's attorney is probably the most supportive one, but it's her role to tell Arita Sr. that his son faces a capital offence and is unlikely to be acquitted. There is an interesting exit for a little girl minor character, wandering darkened streets in her pajamas and clearly in shock and never shown again, perhaps a little nod to the fact that women obviously have their own crosses to bear but that that's not the topic of this film.

There's one composition that particularly sticks with me, in shots where Niimura and Arita Sr. are driving around in the junk truck. The classic Adam-12 shot/countershot for people in a car alternates between cameras on the right fender shooting the guy in the left seat and vice versa. Kurosawa K. uses the same two shots, but simutaneously in split screen. It's an interesting effect, and really conveys a sense of isolation even in the midst of conversation.

Both films end on ambiguous notes, especially Akarui Mirai. Japanese culture has a very high tolerance for ambiguity (it's built right into the language), and while this can be very frustrating in other spheres, it's one of the things I quite like about their movies

I think Akarui Mirai is poised to become my favourite film, once I tease out another metaphorical thread or two.






Another tangential similarity between the two films is that their theme songs were both released with tie-in PVs, and the songs actually somewhat illuminate the movies (by no means always true). Quiet Room's is "Naked Me" by Higurashi Aiha, one of those J-pop girls who refreshingly actually plays an instrument. The song is mostly in English, though I think a few minor corrections might be needed to be clear to a native speaker (for instance, I'm pretty sure she meant the line to be, "I'm trying to be a perfect girl). Still, a good song, and the visuals essentially storyboard the movie:






Akarui Mirai's theme is "Mirai" (The Future) by The Back Horn. The band's name isn't a reference to jazz or anything, as I'd first assumed. Seems the leader used to work in construction and wanted to call it The Backhoe but screwed it up. (^_^)
All Japanese, I'm afraid, but all the imagery beside the singer and the band members by the canal are from the film:

[Ijon the Asano]

WHAT TO MAKE OF MIIKE?


Miike Takashi is a prolific Japanese director probably best known outside Japan for Koroshiya Ichi ("Ichi the Killer"):




Having seen the title written in Japanese, it looked like "Killer Number 1" would be a more accurate translation (English titles for Japanese films is a subject one could go on about at such length that even I'd get tired of it). Having finally seen the film awhile back, I find that it's both a name and a number, which is very Miike.

I've only seen it once, but like all of Miike's films I've seen, it's working on many levels. This one more than most it's easy to ignore that and wallow in the gore if you wish, and if that's what you're into that's fine. I definitely plan to give it another look someday, but along with Mark Schilling I felt a bit disappointed that Miike didn't put the talent (his own and the cast's) into something a bit less . . . exploitative? Lurid? I'll have to see it at least once more before settling on anything beyond a preliminary opinion.





Probably his next best known film overseas is Audition:




The premise of this one is intriguing: a widower feels that both for his own and his son's sake he should remarry, but finds it difficult to meet anyone. A friend suggests setting up a phony movie audition looking for the type of wife he envisions. It works really well . . . at first.

A lot of people speak very highly of this one--the late, great Rodger Swan calling it not just his favourite J-horror movie but his favourite movie. The one time I saw it I was very much onboard for about the first two-thirds. Ishibashi Ryo is an actor I quite like, and the plot was developing with a nice mix of warmth and unsettling eeriness, but . . . (mild spoiler alert)

At that point the movie doubles back and reruns a large part of itself, except that several events occur a bit differently. Now, Rashomon used that device effectively, and I love films like Strange Circus which interweave clearly conflicting realities and make untangling them the point of the film, but here it kind of felt like realizing you'd changed to the wrong train a few stations back. That and an ending I found a bit wanting kept me from liking this one, but I do plan to give it another shot someday.





But there's a lot of Miike uploaded, and I've checked out quite a bit. Even when I'm disappointed by a film of his or repelled by some elements of it (and Miike is a director who will certainly go some pretty repellent places, don't assume that children won't be bloodily murdered), I've never seen one that didn't have some element that was worth catching it for.

A few bits that stick in mind. Fudou: The Next Generation is a picture about the scion of a yakuza family who secretly organizes a new model gang around schoolkids. There's a scene in which a yakuza boss and his bodyguards are accosted by two grade school boys who point at them and shout "Bang!" Wordlessly, through tight editing and solid acting, you get a progression of:

Shock!: Someone just drew down on us!

Relief: Oh, just a couple of kids.

Shock!: With real guns!




City of Lost Souls was a fascinating take on foreign criminals (mostly Brazilian and Chinese) in Tokyo's underworld. The Japanese cops speak of them as "invasive species." The opening scene is a Brazillian man hijacking a deportation bus to rescue a Chinese woman. It's a high intensity action sequence where he flies in in a helicopter, firing full auto on the escorting Japanese police car. The twist is, all the action takes place on a highway in a Southern California desert, lined with Japanese traffic signs and billboards. Yes, it's Tokyo, but Miike has just decided to represent it that way.





But aside from these glorious failures and honourable mentions, there's a triptych of Miike films of which I'm quite a fan.

The first is Chuugoku no Choujin 「中国の鳥人」("Bird People in China") (1998). I'd have translated it "of China," but whatever. It's about a man sent by his company to survey a jade deposit in the hinterlands of Yunnan. He, his guide and a yakuza whose gang is owed money by the company head off into back country where:

"People haven't heard about Mao."

"That he died?"

"That he ever lived."

Japan's view of China is a tortuous one. They appreciate how much they owe them, but there's a suspicion (and frequently derision) laid over that. I remember taking my wife to San Francisco's Chinatown. We decided we wanted a quick snack and bought a pork bao to split. About to bite into mine, I noticed her holding her half up to her eyes like binoculars and scrutinizing it meticulously. "It's Chinese food, you never know what might be in it."

Bird People is a good Miike film for those who would enjoy his lyricism without his ultraviolence, which he eschews for once. The characters journey through a landscape both ancient and magical, as well as their own souls. There are a couple of stumbles for me in the film (though I can't describe them without spoilers), but this is one I highly recommend:








The next up is Katakuri-ke no Koufuku「カタクリ家の幸福」("The Happiness of the Katakuris") (2001). I've only seen this one without subtitles, and while my comprehension was never great and has weakened further, I followed it pretty well. It's a musical comedy about the Katakuri family, who have opened a country inn. Their first guest suicides in his room, and knowing that bad publicity would spell ruin they bury him in the woods. Then the next guest also coincidentally dies, and, well, in for a penny, in for a pound . . .

There's also a subplot about their unmarried-mother daughter getting a boyfriend. He tells her he's a half (a member of the British Royal Family, in fact) as well as a USAF pilot. The first time he calls her he puts a tape of air combat on in the background and says, "I'm in a dogfight over Iraq but couldn't stop thinking about you."

Did I mention that it suddenly turns into claymation at points? Or the line dance the corpses do when they're exhumed? This is another one that might appeal to broader audiences than Miike's other stuff; the skulls are definitely grinning here:








For the longest time I couldn't quite decide whether Katakuris or Izou (2004) was my favourite Miike film. Perhaps if I ever get to see Katakuris with subs I'll pick up on some subtleties I'm missing and things will change, but I doubt it. There is just so much to Izou.

I could easily imagine people finding it a pretentious, overblown train wreck of a film, and indeed the first time I watched it I hated it for perhaps the first thirty minutes before I started to get it.

Okada Izou was an actual historical figure, a ronin/assassin who was crucified by the bakufu in the 19th century. The film opens with this (and some effects work that sorta drops the ball, but it gets much better). It then follows Izou's ghost through the spirit world as he seeks to fight his way through to God. His purpose? I have such a weird Japanese vocabulary. It's from this movie that I learned 「天誅」(tenchuu, "divine retribution").

This movie is intricate and layered even for Miike. If you're familiar with the comedy albums of The Firesign Theatre, you've probably found that even after many listens you're still picking up on things you never noticed, but once you do you can't imagine how they weren't obvious from the start. This movie feels much the same, with juxtapositions and metaphors coming so thick and fast it's overwhelming, but once you synch up with it, it ceases to assault you and instead sweeps you into the maelstrom.

I do want to avoid spoilers, but there's so much going on that recounting a representative sequence shouldn't hurt. Having come from an audience with his former master who tells him, "All human history is nothing but a sequence of bloody events," Izou materializes in a 21st century grade school classroom. He rushes out into the hallway. First to his right and then his left, women are suddenly filling both ends of the hallway and cutting him off (it's only this last time I realized that they're the moms, how could I have failed to realize that?).

Miike then cuts back and forth between the hallway, where the moms set up a low but rising howl and advance slowly from both sides, to the classroom, where the teacher asks students to define certain concepts. "Love is a word, words do not necessarily comport with their meanings . . . ," "Nation is an invention, used to control the masses who instinctively gather into flocks . . . "
As the moms press in upon him, Izou finally begins cutting them down, and by the end the hallway is a shambles with only Izou standing. The bell rings and the teacher walks past. Izou bows to her and then runs away.

There's another fascinating visual in there, but I don't want to telegraph everything.

One problem for non-Japanese speakers is that acid-folk guitarist Tomokawa Kazuki is a big part of the film, but his songs aren't translated. He delivers lyrics the way Joe Cocker danced, and it's not impossible that the people who did the subs weren't able to make them all out and had insufficient time to research them (I've heard native speakers say that even they have trouble sometimes). It's a shame though, and hopefully someday there'll be a release that fixes that.

On reflection I misspoke earlier. Even before Izou's crucifixion there's a quick bit of a sex ed movie on conception and an image of a birth. As Izou proceeds through the film, revisiting past lives in various epochs which bleed one into another, he becomes ever less human and more demonic. He picks up a mysterious female shadow. He is laughed at by flowers and pitied by the souls of aborted foetuses. The end credits roll under an ethereal whispering.

Recommending Izou is tricky. Wouldn't suggest it for a first date, certainly. But if you're into any of its themes, I'd call it a must-see on audacity alone. You might love it, hate it or just be snowed under by it, but it's worth finding out which:







So, what to make of Miike overall? He's a talented and imaginative director, and while there is a palpable Miike imprint on everything he does, his range of ideas and approaches is remarkable. So far I've never run into the sort of, "Oh, right, this is like that other movie of his but a bit less so," syndrome that many prolific directors hit at some point. True, he has a fascination with themes involving twisted violence, but Bird People has almost none, Katakuris makes it oddly light-hearted and Izou uses it to serve something greater than the sum of its components. I suppose my dissatisfaction with Ichi and Audition comes from not really getting that same sense, but perhaps I'm just missing it on single viewings.

Perhaps Miike's range works both for and against him. Comparing him to other directors, the odds that I'll be really blown away by any given film is actually pretty low, but they never feel like duds and the ones that succeed do so spectacularly. It's more than enough to keep me returning to him whenever the chance arises.

[Ijon the Asano]

ISHII SOUGO


Who changed his pseudonym to Ishii Gakuryuu in 2010, is a director whose name I'd heard but had no particular pre-conception of. I stumbled onto his 1994 Angel Dust among my YouTube recommendations.

It's the story of a psychologist assisting the police in investigating a serial killer. Each Monday at 6:00 PM, a woman riding a packed like sardines Yamanote Line commuter train is killed by an injection of fast-acting poison. While the psychologist is unable to come up with any particular angle on the killer, she determines that all three victims had strong but deeply repressed suicidal desires.

It takes a pretty poor Japanese director not to have good visuals--that esthetic being such an ingrained part of Japanese culture--but Ishii is especially good. At first I was irritated by several shots that I took to be lifted from other horror films, but then the fashions worn by the reporters (the carbon-14 of Japanese movies) made me realize that Angel Dust predated almost all of them, and any borrowing must have gone the other way.

As an aside, there was a movie called Casshern awhile back that I baled on after 30 minutes, one among many reasons being an overuse of blatant "homage" shots. The only one I can explicitly remember was the "sunset through a lowering shade" shot from Blade Runner. Now, Blade Runner itself visually references Metropolis, but Casshern felt like a kind of weird name-dropping, like there was this checklist of famous films the director wanted to make sure we knew he'd seen.

But back to Angel Dust. Ishii's sound design also has some neat tricks. The first murder occurs in a packed and noisy train, but just before the victim slumps to the floor it goes silent . . . except for the gentle creaking of the handhold she's hanging onto. A later murder occurs in a crowded street. There's traffic noise, crowd noise, pouring rain . . . and again Ishii loses everything but one tiny sound at the moment of attack.

What with Aum Shinrikyo and its infamous sarin attack on a Tokyo subway, it's no surprise that millenialist cults and mind-control are themes that crop up in a lot of Japanese horror movies. This one also has a fascinating element of gender ambiguity. Hardly a new observation, but this film really reminds one that while American horror tends to revolve around the fear of being physically dismembered and having your guts shown to you, Japanese horror tends more toward fears of being metaphorically dismembered and having your emotional guts shown to the world.

Oddly enough, if the movie has anything to do with PCP I missed it.

I must admit that the film's ending felt just a bit soggy to me, but I'd still recommend it. The trailer, now (and YouTube has made me see trailers as almost an art form in themselves), is a standout. Too bad the quality of this upload isn't a bit better:





I went looking for more Ishii and found Yume no Ginga 「ユメの銀河」("Galaxy of Dreams") (1997). Hmm . . . for some reason they call it "Labyrinth of Dreams" in English. Not a bad title either way, but that sort of change always mystifies me.

The film is set in the '50s and shot in black & white. That was kinda trendy around that time, but Ishii keeps it from ever feeling contrived. For myself at least, it came across feeling like a movie that could almost have come from the real '50s in a time warp.

Tomiko is a conductor working for a rural bus service (apparently this was a women's job at that time). She gets a letter from a friend working for a different company. The friend says that no doubt they'll be laughing about it soon enough, but she's developed a sneaking suspicion that her fiancé is a rumoured driver who drifts between companies seducing his conductors and then killing them in staged accidents.

She also receives her invitation to the friend's funeral.

From the description, she believes the new driver at her company (played by Asano Tadanobu, yay!) is the same man. Though so shy as to never have had a boyfriend, she initiates a "fatal romance."

This is a great movie. The plot and characters unfold elegantly, the ending is a perfect fit, the visuals are to die for and there are a number of stellar scenes. My favourite involves the two of them sitting down for a glass of wine. I highly recommend this one:






Asano Tadanobu (not me, the real one) seems to like best the sequence where his character is introduced, and who could blame him? Note again the use of silence.






These are the only two Ishii films I've yet seen. Reading up a bit, these '90s films seem to have been a new direction for him, his earlier films looking a bit more frenetically weird. His earliest hit seems to have been Koukou Dai-panikku ("The Great High School Panic") . Burst City is apparently about mutant punk rockers:






Asano was also in 2001's Electric Dragon 80,000 Volts. Hmmm . . . 80,000 is pronounced hachiman, which sounds like a pun on the old god of war . . . :






Don't know how these compare, but they're definitely on my list.



Edit:
Just found this compilation trailer for a boxed set. Wow, I have got to see some more of this guy:

[Ijon the Asano]

MONTY PYTHON IS ASTONISHINGLY DIFFICULT TO TRANSLATE SOMETIMES



Watched one last night called Postman Blues[/i]. Not bad, but certainly didn't jiggle any of my top movies from their pedestals. It's an early film from actor/director Tanaka Hiroyuki (AKA Sabu), the first I've seen. It's the story of a mailman at the end of his rope who's mistaken for a big time criminal by the police. It has a plethora of really solid second string actors (I like Ohsugi Ren's hit man, "A hit man has to look good, stylish hair and clothes; you're the last person your victim will ever see, and no one wants to get killed by a bum"). But it also suffers from the sappy aura the Japanese can easily fall into, and while I did sorta like the ending, it had been feeling its length just before.

I haven't seen a review for it, but I'd bet it would get pigeonholed as a "dark comedy." That seems to be what Western reviewers call Japanese films that they can't quite make out. I wouldn't tag this one a comedy, as actual jokes are quite rare. I guess I'd plunk for the word "farcical," as it's more things that drive the plot down roads that make you smile and shake your head at humanity at the same time.



But if anyone's read this far, they know that I like movies with phantastic, surreal elements, and that means that I love absurdist comedy in the Monty Python vein. I was watching the Flying Circus episode where "Fledelico Ferrini" was directing a movie about "Flancis Dlake," in the course of which Queen Elizabeth the First (or, at any rate, a reasonable facsimile) says, "You, sir, are a Nip!"

The subtitle read 「あなたは日本人です」, which is the most vanilla "You are Japanese" possible. Perhaps just as well, but pretty juiceless.

Thankfully there is a rich vein of home-grown absurdist hunour in Japan, and I'd like to talk here about three such movies.



The first is Ishii Katsuhito et al with 2005's Funky Forest. The original Japanese is Naisu no Mori: The First Contact, ("The Nice Forest: etc"). There's a vague suggestion that all the weirdness is stemming from contact with aliens from Piko-Riko Planet, but it's pretty plotless so who really knows? It compares with Monty Python and the Meaning of Life, perhaps, in that regard, but with an additional dose of delightful WTF? Think of it as a comedic koan.

The cast is pretty familiar if you're Japanese, and they remain individual (if highly malleable) characters who roll through a series of recurring skits: "Home Room," "Babbling Hot Spring Vixens," "Guitar Brothers" and so on. The bits stand alone well and are all over YouTube (I've posted a fair few here over the years).

As an aside, some complain that it's a bit long at 150 minutes, but it has an intermission and is readily watched in two sittings. I love this one.

Trailer:





"The Volume" is over seven minutes and I know I've posted it before, but it's just so cool. (^_^)





I suppose this "Guitar Brother" bit is mostly just for me, but I love that Masao, the youngest, is played by a pudgy white kid who was given just enough coaching in delivering his lines phonetically to be understood:








I finally managed to catch Ishii's 2004 Cha no Aji 「茶の味」("The Taste of Tea"). I'll say right off that while I liked this one, I didn't like it as much as I expected to from that trailer. It differs from Mori in that it has an actual plot and characters, complete with arcs. There's plenty of weirdness--how many other movies have you seen where a character is shadowed by a gigantic version of herself?--but it's not anything like as wall-melting, and the movie could probably have been done without it. Mind you, it would then have been pretty much a standard family drama, enjoyable but not really memorable and a bit too sentimental for its own good.

Perhaps its a case of what I was saying in an earlier post about preferring my movies to stick fairly close to either the realistic or phantastic ends of the spectrum, with things falling in the middle being more problematic. Perhaps that's the issue here, the two being intermingled but not in a way that really ends up making them complementary. On the other hand, I might just have had expectations of what the film was about that simply weren't the ones it was trying to meet. I'll certainly watch it again one of these days.





And lastly we have Sekiguchi Gen's 2004 Survive Style 5+. This one too has a plot, indeed five of them. Of course, so did Mønti Pythøn ik den Hølie Gräilen and Life of Brian, but what those films neither have nor need are actually developed and complex characters. Taste of Tea does, and this one even moreso. But Sekiguchi's film also cubes it bigtime, nonetheless managing to integrate five disparate plots in such a way as to reach an actual resolution, one that indeed has great emotional resonance. Brazil is probably the most similar Western film I can think of offhand. And unlike Tea, you really couldn't tell this story without the weirdness.

It's a far darker story, yet cheerfully so. It opens with Asano Tadanobu burying the wife he just murdered. He returns home to find her there, and boy, is she pissed. There's also a TV commercial director and her stage hypnotist lover, the head of the Katagiri Killer Service and his imported Cockney hit man, some lame-brained kid thieves led by Jai West (an interesting actor who specializes in playing delinquent halves, his polyglot native level English and Japanese is a kick, and I quite likes him in Hazard and a weird one called Worst Contact). Lastly, there's the Kobayashi family, whose father (Kishibe Ittoku in a role that will surprise you, if . . . y'know . . . you've heard of him).

So . . . let's see . . . Kobayashi gets hypnotized into thinking he's a chicken . . . Asano keeps killing his wife, finally hiring the Katagiri Agency in hopes they can do it so more lastingly . . . Jai and his friends are hiding in the Kobayashis' closet . . . then . . . like . . . . Oh spit! You just have to see it.

The look of the movie is distinctive. Many locations and sets are mundane ones, but everything is in weird colors or otherwise slightly off. Lots of fun performances, with Vinnie Jones as the hit man clearly having a blast, "Wot's yore function in loif?" And as I mentioned before, it actually manages to inject real drama into its borderline hallucinatory happenings, involving various characters repairing broken relationships.

I think people who like MST are pretty likely to enjoy the cracked sensibilities of this movie. I see someone posted it with subs. Even though I followed it pretty well without, I should check it out that way, but it's a Christmas movie so I sorta want to wait. Anyhow, highly recommended!:






You know, while writing this up and comparing these films to Monty Python and its relations, I kept finding myself trying to somehow say, "It's like that except that it's different." Perhaps I'm doing something akin to what I initially complained of when people sweep Japanese movies into a "dark comedy" catch-all. I think it has come to me, though, how these movies can also be called absurdist comedy yet feel different on some basic level.

Classic Pythonicism tends to revolve around an intellectual absurdity. "Well, of course it's not as if I have to precisely bisect an imaginary line connecting your eyeballs, if I were to shoot you anywhere in that general area it would do, but I'll bet I could . . . ."

The Japanese, though, (odd as it may sound about a country famous for high tech engineering) aren't really an intellectual people. They're very emotional, and what's more very crypto-emotional, with many tides and currents under an often smooth surface. Looking back over these movies, I'm struck by how it's more of an emotional absurdity. Consider this clip from Naisu no Mori:




It's bizarre emotional reactions and progressions that are the joke here. Hmm . . . maybe I should give Cha no Aji another look with that in mind. The weather's getting about right, might be just the ticket . . . what're you lookin' at!?


Oh, my avatar is from 5+, by the way. The little bit of milk in the beard is from a winning spit take:

[Ijon the Asano]

WHAT A SAP


So, I've mentioned many times here and in the past that I feel the trap Japanese TV and movies most easily fall into is sappiness. You see it a lot in their TV dramas and more mainstream movies. Even brilliant directors fall into it when they get older. Achilles and the Tortoise was my favourite of Kitano's "creative self-destruction trilogy," but the mawkish ending surely hurt it. Similar charges have been levelled at Kurosawa's Mada Da Yo!, but not having seen it, I really can't say.

What does sappiness entail, exactly? Sentiment is defined as:


2 . . .

b : refined feeling : delicate sensibility especially as expressed in a work of art

c : emotional idealism


Worthy stuff, this, and both features that the Japanese have in spades. Indeed, the difficult adjective shibui 「渋い」indicates the characteristic of 2b (though it can also mean "astringent, bitter, rough, harsh"; gotta love this language). But next up:


d : a romantic or nostalgic feeling verging on sentimentality


Which gives us:


1: the quality or state of being sentimental especially to excess or in affectation


It's a matter of taking something genuine and using it as a cheat or cheapening it into a cliché, which is unfortunately also a widespread Japanese trait. Thus our use of "saccharine" to describe it in English. Of course, individual tastes will differ. I like processed cheese from time to time myself. Baking might actually be a good analogy for making a movie of this sort. How much sugar do you put in? Too little and you have a bun rather than a cake, too much and your guests make faces like a dog eating peanut butter.

As an aside, I got so used to Japanese cake and sweets in general that I can't stand American ones anymore. Too damned sweet! Funny how the movies reverse that.

However, three Japanese movies that got it right stick in my mind. I might have discussed one earlier on the board but I don't thnk so, and the other two I certainly haven't.




Hmmm . . . to avoid spoilers, I'd better suck this bit out as a general rather than a specific observation. Often, though not necessarily, American movies which fall into the sap-trap will do so in making everything come out OK. Sayounara anyone? Read the novel, skip the movie. We in the US are an optimistic people. The Japanese, however, are fatalistic. Japanese heroes back to Yamato Takeru and Yosh(i)tsune go down to ultimate defeat. Thus Japanese movies have less problem with the lovers not getting together or the puppy dying, But you can still pitch a downer ending as sappy. Everyone has a good, cathartic, safe cry and then leaves the theatre to go giggle over parfaits.




The first is Itsuka Dokusho Suru Hi 「いつか読書する日」("Someday a Day for Reading"). While I usually prefer literal translations of titles, calling it The Milkwoman for English release is understandable. This 2005 movie from director Ogata Akira is about a middle-aged woman who makes extra money by working for a milk delivery company. One of her customers is her high school sweetheart and his terminally ill wife.

This movie really illustrates that characteristic of the Japanese I mentioned before: placid on the surface, emotional riptides and cross-currents beneath, and even those closest to them may only be guessing at them. The husband, played by Kishibe Ittoku (see, I told you you'd be surprised if you only knew who he was) works for the Japanese equivalent of CPS and is terribly stressed by being unable to help profoundly neglected children. But on returning home he has to take up his wife's elaborate in-home care and suppress his torment so as not to further burden her.

The wife has the best developed feelers, the subtle ability to read others that the Japanese use to cope with everything in their lives being a secret. She senses that her husband and the milkwoman love each other and tries to set them up to get back together after her own death. This then plays out, but picking up after decades of separation and the unresolved issues that broke them up in the first place is far from smooth.

I suppose it's a matter of touch. Heavy-handedness would sink this plot like a stone in the ocean, but everyone brings the needed light touch to make it work.

As an aside, I also like that it's set in Japanese suburbia. Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto are wonderful cities and great backdrops for many directors, as is the vanishing Japanese countryside. But these tightly squeezed suburban houses and apartments are where most of them actually live:







Next up is Ichikawa Jun's Tony Takitani from 2004. It's the life story of an illustrator whose jazz musician father--fresh out of Soviet detention in Manchuria--figures that in postwar Japan his son will benefit from having a Western name. The blurb says something about his wife's obsession for designer clothes leading to tragedy. That isn't really accurate. It's a problem between them, but (mild spoiler) it's more what her collection becomes after she's gone that's the point.

This movie is very slow paced. Indeed, I told a friend after seeing it that it's the most moving paint you'll ever watch dry. That isn't dinging it, but you do have to be in the right mood. Sakamoto Ryuichi's soundtrack complements the cinematography beautifully. Not a lot more I can say on this one; it's almost more of an experience than a story. Sort of the deep-emotional obverse of a roller-coaster action movie?

I'll use the US trailer. The Japanese one has no subs, and I know that must be frustrating:







I'm sort of structuring these group presentations from least favourite to most, though it's tenuous. Often my recommendation would vary depending on what I knew of someone's particular likes, and even for myself mood could be determinative. But the one I'd most like to toss in right now is Adrift in Tokyo (2007)

Miki Satoshi's film is called Ten-Ten in the original, which is one of Japanese's oddly pseudo-onomatopoeic words indicating something circulating sort of randomly, like a serving dish at a banquet. That pretty well had to be renamed, and for once I think it was done fairly well.

Hmm . . . the trailer actually lays out a bit more of the story than I would have, but again, the strength of this film lies less in the plot itself than the presentation of it by cast and crew. Odagiri Jou plays a young man who is an orphan, aimless and in debt. The movie opens with an enforcer showing up to tell him to pay up most ricky tick or face the consequences. Soon thereafter, though, the same man comes to him and offers him enough money to pay his debt and then some for accompanying him on walks around the city. It turns out that the enforcer is planning to turn himself in to the police afterwards, but before doing so they spend the last days with a woman friend of his, pretending to be father and son because the woman's ditzy niece isn't privy to what's going on.

There are a lot of fine performances in this one. For me, Asano is still the man, but Odagiri is a very close runner up. I've already mentioned his movies Akarui Mirai and Hazard, but he also turns in extraordinary supporting performances in Kuuki Ningyo and Sakebi. The "auntie" they stay with at the end is played by Koizumi Kyouko, who was also in Survive Style 5+, Aoi Haru, Tokyo Sonata, Onmyouji and loads of others back to playing a teenager in Mosquito on the Tenth Floor. She's one of those classic talents that never makes it big but does solid work year after year. The ditzy niece is played by Yosh(i)taka Yuriko, and it's the best such character I've ever seen. She comes across as so totally air-headed you feel like you should want to just slap her, but at the same time there's an ingenuousness to it such that you don't. I mainly know her from Noriko's Dinner Table, my favourite Sono film, in which she plays the younger sister. I've seen her in a few other bit parts where she was criminally underused. I'm pleased to say that YouTube suggests she broke out a few years ago to become a full blown talent, doing loads of TV commercials (in these they're playing with her name being "Yuriko" and the company's "Glico," pronounced "Guriko") and guest appearances on variety shows. She deserves it, even if the roles that brought that success don't look that interesting to me.

"Can't you stick to the point, general!?"

There's also a comedic subplot with some people conducting an investigation that ends up with their meeting Kishibe Ittoku playing himself. Some of this is a bit broad but didn't bother me as much as it might have. Indeed, Ten-Ten is more bittersweet than the other two, with elements of humour accenting the melancholy story. The trailer calls it "heartwarming," a word I'm always leery of (especially when rendered as the Japlish "heartwarm," which makes me think of "heartworm"), but yeah. This is one time when it works:






So remember, sap is for making maple syrup or knocking out someone you intend to shanghai, not for cloying up good stories.

[Ijon the Asano]

I'd thought of starting a thread about movie . . . scorers? Is there a specific name for composers who do incidental music? Anyway, they seem an unsung lot, in that their work is a crucial aspect of most movies but something you generally only really notice when it fails. It's rather like a picture frame, it must complement the painting yet never distract from it. Indeed, I only even came to think of scoring as a specific movie element after becoming a fan of the late lamented scifilm.org review site.

While a thread honouring the likes of Jerry Goldsmith, Lalo Schifrin or John Williams would be worthy,* Mitchell's doesn't seem to be all that hopping lately. Where the heck is MJ? And anyway, my schtick is talking about Japanese minutia, so I'll just do a post on classic Japanese movie composers.



Now, I'm not talking about popular songs that get picked up for a movie, like the Back Horn and Higurashi Aiha ones I linked earlier, but composers who come in and do the incidental. Now there is no one else with whom we can begin but Ifukube Akira.

If you've never seen the original, de-Burred Gojira, you really should. Not to take anything away from Honda, but Ifukube's score is a huge part of why that movie works, giving that lump of latex a true aura of unstoppable menace. That little march that always played as the toy tanks gathered to be stepped on is still used by Japanese news shows when showing construction projects and such, and it's the schoolgirls' chorus that convinces Serizawa to use the oxygen destroyer, a major plot point. Even after the series went campy, those that were scored by Ifukube seem to track just a bit more respectably.

Here's the opening theme from Gojira vs Desutoroiaa, played over Goji "catching a plane" at Kai Tak Airport. Personally I thought they should have put the Big G to bed after that one, especially once Ifukube was dead.

As an aside, I was the one who launched his obit thread, one of the rare times anyone beat Chuck:






Far less well known is Hasegawa Tomoki. Apparently mostly doing anime, he also scored several of Sono Shion's early movies, including his breakout Suicide Circle. Sono is a very music oriented director, and the movie has several inset songs attributed to a fictitious girl group that drive a lot of the plot (too bad they're incomprehensibly mis-translated in the subs). I believe these were all Momoi Halco songs but could be wrong. Kuramoto Mitsuru also wrote a song used toward the middle of the film and not subbed because there was too much dialogue over it (possibly just as well).

But the music that opens the film and plays in various arrangements under the key scenes is, presumably, Hasegawa. It plays over my favourite ever Sono sequence (better even than Yoko's screamed 1Corinthians13 from Love Exposure): Detective Kuroda taking the late train home and, for the first time, looking at the faces around him. That sequence is up on YouTube, but they ruined it by cutting away from his homecoming to another scene that just ruins the flow.

It's called: "The Love Theme":






From obscure to J-pop star, if one of yesteryear at this point. Sakamoto Ryuichi was very big both as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra and solo in the '70s and '80s, so much so that I even stumbled onto his CDs in the States and became a fan. I was thus very excited when Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence was released to find that he both starred in it and scored it. Later he would do the same for The Last Emperor (though with a bit part only; he's said his acting was bad but he's not cutting himself enough slack). He later also scored Oshima's Gohatto and Tony Takitani, among many others. Indeed, it was his music for that being stuck in my head all day that led to this post.

Just to be different, I should use Gohatto or Tony Takitani, but Bowie's character from Lawrence was my avatar for ever so long, and this is just so beautiful:




Heh heh . . . I miss the '80s more than I'd have thought at the time.




But the prize ultimately must go to Hisaishi Jou. His music graces countless Miyazaki movies from Tonari no Totoro through Mononoke Hime to Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi. Ironically perhaps, he was also Kitano's composer of choice in his best period, doing the music for Hana-bi, Dolls, Kikujiro no Natsu and others. Sadly, they had a falling out and will no longer work together.

Hard to pick one representative piece for him, or even whether to go with his Miyazaki or Kitano work . . .

OK, I'm going to break my pattern here and post "The Painters" from Hana-bi in the context of the film. Former detectives Horibe (crippled) and Nishi (cashiered) both take to painting, Horibe of pictures (Kitano's own, actually) and Nishi to disguise a cab as a patrol car (I love how he puddles the paint mercilessly in that shot). Excellent movie--Kitano's best--and still officially my favourite all time film. This sequence is immensely powerful in context:




D'oh! The shop girl speaks German. ( -_-)\

Hmm . . . maybe Akarui Mirai won't supplant Hana-bi after all . . .



Edit:
*How on earth did I forget Gil Mellé in there? He did Night Gallery too.

[afriendlychicken]

Conjunction junction what's my function? Hopefully to get you singing that School House Rock song...

I read this because I have a fascination with Japan, which I guess is pretty common for someone living in Hawai'i. So many cultures have influenced our life style here, but none more than the Japanese culture. From taking off our footwear before entering a household, eating rice with our meals to calling people we respect uncle or auntie, which I think comes from the 'san' and 'sensei' honorifics, the culture of Japan is just about everywhere here.

And of course I also happen to love Japanese films. TCM showed Ozu films every Sunday in May. All of them about a woman/daughter that wouldn't marry with a nosy relative trying to fix her up. And all those one shot close-ups of characters talking and looking just over the camera because Ozu loved the tatami level shot. I was in heaven.

I'm also the same with noticing 'white faces,' especially anyone with blonde hair. At least 80% of everyone living in Hawai'i has some Asian blood, whether that's Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean or Filipino, so I'm very used to dark hair and the Asian look. When others on this board share images of themselves I usually do a double take.

As for others responding to the posts? I think that's because you pack so much information in your posts that's there really very little questions that can be asked. So reading them is enough to fill in all that, at least I, need to know.

[Ijon the Asano]

Heh heh . . . thanks, though a few Japanese are bleaching themselves blonde (kinpatsu) these days, though brown (chapatsu) is way more common.

Just watched a pretty good one called Unagi with Yakusho Kouji, 'mongst others. Since Kurosawa Kiyoshi gave him at least a bit part in all his horror movies I've seen, maybe there's a post there.

Just nudge me if I start footnoting a treatise on how many angels can dance on the head of a Japanese pin.


Edit:
Hey, friendly, we kinda complement each other, because you're into the classic directors while I tend toward the newer ones. Feel free to post on them. I promise not to call Kurosawa A. complacent if you won't call Oshima a hedonist. (^_^)

And Torgo knows kaijuu and heroes, angilasman knows his anime and more, and Mad Plumber has admitted to a knowledge of etchi. Join in, folks!


Edit 2:
Friendly, you should really check out Yume no Ginga. It has an old school feel I think you'd like, and I hafta share the wine sequence with someone! It's up on YouTube here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb2pl80TSO0



Edit 3:
Oops! Deleting my previous post leaves friendly's response kinda hanging. Oh well.

[Ijon the Asano]

Stumbled onto an online version of the book Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan, which I suspect will be my next read. Pages 72~74 discuss the sad state of Japanese film in 2001, when it was published. Interesting read if you're into the topic.

Interestingly, the overseas J-horror boom was just about to hit. From what I've heard about the US industry, horror is a common entry point for new filmmakers because it's comparatively easy to get financed. I imagine that's similar in Japan, and many of the modern directors I most like have worked in the genre.

Which isn't to say that a lot of J-horror doesn't suffer terribly from the "autopilot" syndrome the book describes.

[Ijon the Asano]

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING INCOMPLETELY DIFFERENT



These are technically from TV, but they have a movie connection.

SMAP is a pop group that has dominated Japanese pop culture for decades now. Their show SMAPxSMAP includes music, sketch comedy, cooking and a panel at the end where each member plugs all their other TV apperances in the coming week.

At some point they had a number of directors make short films for the show. The only one I've seen subbed is Nakashima Tetsuya's (Shimotsuma Monogatari, Memories of Matsuko) Rolling Bomber Special, a spoof where SMAP member Shingo meets some Tokumei Sentai type heroes. Pretty darned funny:






This one isn't subbed, sadly, but it's Hiraiwa Kami (my wife's double) in Yukipon no Oshigoto: Working Cat A-Go-Go! She's Akemi-chan, who tells her cat, Yukipon, that she's sick of his lying around the apartment all day, and if he wants to eat he can get a job!

"Knock off the barfing and feed me!"




Heh heh . . . thankfully my wife would never be drunk like that. She'd pass out first.

This was a TV filler short. Segment 4 is pretty easy to follow even without subs.

[Ijon the Asano]

OH NO! IJON'S FIGURING OUT HOW TO POST AGAIN!


So, how about foreign movies about Japan? Hollywood is fascinated by them, but until not so long ago I could count its good movies about Japan on one finger (guess which). 1992's Mr. Baseball is deservedly loved by gaijin.



"It looks a lot like Cleveland, only I can't read the signs."




I mentioned Sayounara earlier. Taken in isolation this movie has some things going for it. It was shot in Japan in glorious technicolor, and while even Brando fans seem to think he was sleeping through it, I find it hard to completely hate any movie with James Garner in it.

However, the film guts Michener's story by tacking on a happy ending. Sayounara doesn't mean "bye-bye," it's more like "farewell," and Michener (who really seemed to get Japan) named it that for a reason. The movie also wants to showcase the pageantry of Japan, and who can blame it? But the novel is about a celebrity MiG-killer fresh from Korea rejecting all that to live with the Japanese woman he loves in what's described as a "chicken coop" house. Making it into a palatial villa that would do justice to a Toshiba VP sorta removes the point. Who wouldn't move in there? I'm guessing it's a step up from BOQ.

I could forgive a lot if they'd changed the name, but that's just me.



But, thanks to Spackle, I was put on to a far better movie from 1957 called Escapade in Japan. There seems to be no trailer up, but the whole movie is on YouTube. It's about a boy who survives an airliner ditching and then is rescued by Japanese fishermen. The son of this family speaks some English and--overhearing his parents calling the cops--tells the American boy that they'd better make a break for it. It ends up being a kind of buddy/road picture, which sends its young heroes on a technicolor tour of Japan's grandest sights as well as workaday villages and railyards. This one is a really nice example of charming '50s movie-making and well worth catching. If you're paying close attention, you'll even snag a glimpse of Clint Eastwood.



I think it's Karate Kid 2 that I've seen listed as best worst movie about Japan, one that gaijin can get a laugh out of for really ineptly trying to pass Hawai'i off as Okinawa. Never having seen it I can't say, but my wife has mentioned several times hearing Japanese audiences burst into laughter when some scene in a US movie is supposed to be Japan. I guess it's like watching one of those cheesy Italian movies that's trying to look like the U S of A and failing miserably.

I recollect a trailer for some movie that seemed to be trying to remake Tampopo but with a blonde American bimbo learning to make ramen. It was clearly shot in Japan and even had some Japanese talent, but looked pretty bad. For one thing there was no suggestion that she learned any Japanese at all. True, it's way too easy to get by over there with nothing but English, but not if you expect some sensei to teach you his art. Still, just out of curiosity I should catch it, I suppose. Can't remember the name, though.

I should catch Lost in Translation again someday too. It disappointed me because I was hoping for a movie about Japan rather than just set in Japan, but I should give it another chance on its own terms. I did love the one sequence where Bill Murray is sitting in the hospital waiting room and the old lady tries to ask him where he's from, resorting to increasingly incomprehensible gestures.



But I discovered awhile back that Mr. Baseball had been preceded in '88 by a seemingly forgotten film called Tokyo Pop. It's about a singer who moves to Japan on a whim and becomes an overnight sensation when she starts singing with a local band. The theme is plausible, though exaggerated, and the story has a lot of insight into the experience of being gaijin. It's wise to set its story in the music industry where English is more common, thus able to avoid subs without having to cheat. Carrie Hamilton gave a very nice performance (it was a real loss that she died so young). Well worth a look!




Full movie here.

[Ijon the Asano]

Yeesh! This page takes forever to load since the upgrade.


As a postscript to yesterday's topic, I stumbled onto this awhile ago:




Cameron Mitchell and Marie Windsor? I'd buy that for a dollar!

Seriously, though, I would be curious to see it, especially as another poster I found has a "not suitable for children" warning. Say . . .


For some reason, though, I can't upload the other image to photobucket. Keeps telling me it's done so, but the image never shows up in the library. But, I guess you have to expect issues when running a steam-powered mac . . .