In this episode, the VCinema gang return to the Southeast of Asia to review one of the more recent actionfests out of Thai production house Sahamongkol Film International, Dynamite Warrior. Also included is Thai cowboys (and ladyboys), contest winners, Stan getting possessed by the spirit of Kim Jong-il, a gaggle of event announcements, and much more!
Email: vcinema@variedcelluloid.net
Direct link: Episode 39.
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It’s 1941 and Japan has just signed a peace treaty with the U.S. and the United Kingdom. A mysterious thief – a ‘man of many faces’ no less – by the name of K-20 has been committing a series of robberies, taking priceless objects and taunting the police who fail to identify him. When a young circus acrobat by the name of Heikichi Endo is hired to take some sneaky photographs he fails to realise that he is being set up until it is too late and the police assume that he is the mysterious criminal…
If you’ve ever fancied spending a couple of hours watching a Japanese superhero origin story with steampunk elements set in an alternative 1949 where World War II never happened and where the villain is intent on the world domination, then K-20: The Legend of The Black Mask (aka the equally long-winded K-20: The Fiend with Twenty Faces) is just for you. Actually, who wouldn’t want to sit through a film like that – I was sold from the second I saw a Police Zeppelin dropping helicopter-aeroplane hybrids into the sky in the opening credits.
K-20: The Legend of The Black Mask (referred to as K-20 for the rest of this review) is a nicely light-hearted action film – it’s kind of old-fashioned in its gentle pacing and manner of storytelling but none the worse for it. … Continue Reading
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Did Valentine’s Day burn you out on love? Or did it just leave you wanting for more? Either way, The Japan Society in New York City has put together “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, a film series including twenty two films from Korea and Japan about the things we do for and in the name of love, some of which are not very, well, lovely. The series will run from March 2nd to the 18th and most screenings are $12/$9 for Japan Society members, seniors, and students.
The centerpieces of the program are the U.S. Premiere of KOTOKO directed by Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo – The Iron Man, 1989), a film which has received rave reviews and already been picked up by Third Window Films for UK distribution. Also a premiere, Petrel Hotel Blue directed by Koji Wakamatsu (United Red Army, 2007) will be making its worldwide debut during the event. Wakamatsu, a long time provocateur in film, is famous for many of his ’60s and ’70s efforts (among them, 1969′s Go, Go Second Time Virgin and 1972′s Ecstacy of the Angels) which mixed pinku film with politics.
The remainder of the series films mainly hail from the last decade, many of which are the best from the period: Chang-dong Lee’s Oasis (2002, our podcast review here), Hideo Nakata’s Chaos (2000), Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976), and Hirokazu Koreeda’s Air Doll (2009) among many others.
Of course some special guests will be involved with the program and VCinema is proud that our very own John Berra will be present to introduce and possibly give post-screening Q&As for Air Doll, My Dear Enemy (2008), plus two other Shinya Tsukamoto films, Vital (2004) and A Snake of June (2003). Other confirmed guests include Japanese film historian Go Hirasawa and actresses Hyunri and Hitomi Katayama.
For more information about this program, check out the Japan Society film page here. Also, check out John Berra’s review of My Dear Enemy on our affiliate site, New Korean Cinema, here.
Funeral Parade of Roses was the seventh film to be produced – rather than just distributed – by the Art Theatre Guild of Japan and was the first feature to be directed by Toshio Matsumoto, who had been making shorts since 1955. Perhaps because Funeral Parade of Roses is frequently identified as an Art Theatre Guild production, and discussed in the context of the company’s development, it is less often discussed in the context of Matsumoto’s output, although the director was admittedly not prolific in terms of features. He would make just one further film for the Art Theatre Guild, the pessimistic jidaigeki Pandemonium (1971), and two subsequent films for other independent financiers. However, a background in experimental shorts made Matsumoto highly suited to working under the Art Theatre Guild banner, following in the footsteps of the multi-disciplinary artist Hiroshi Teshigahara by navigating from the avant-garde to the emerging independent sector. Funeral Parade of Roses is very much an exercise in deconstruction, a film that makes relatively few concessions to commercial narrative form, frequently calling attention to the artifice of cinema itself; Matsumoto utilises a range of cinéma vérité techniques, even breaking the fourth wall on occasion to comment on the manipulative nature of the medium. Still, these experimental urges do not detract from the fact that Funeral Parade of Roses is also a social record, a fascinating documentation of the Tokyo underground scene of the late 1960s that inspired much artistic activity but also attracted negative attention from the cultural mainstream. … Continue Reading
Third Window Films is having a charity screening of its latest acquisition Mitsuko Delivers (2011) at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. The screening will be held on March 11th, exactly one year from the disaster in Northern Japan and 100% of Third Window Films’ profits of the screening of Mitsuko Delivers as well as DVD sales during the event will go to a Fukushima-based charity.
Mitsuko Delivers is the latest film by Sawako Decides (2010) director Yuya Ishii and starring Riisa Naka (Zebra Man 2, 2010), Aoi Nakamura (Beck, 2010), and Ryo Ishibashi (The Grudge, 2004; Audition, 1999). Third Window Films, who recently acquired the film for UK distribution, describes the film as a “…story of a thirtysomething woman (Naka) who’s at a delicate juncture in life; alone, flat broke and to top it all nine-months pregnant. Her folks think she’s in California living the high life with her baby’s GI father. In fact she’s in Tokyo, searching for a purpose, and eventually finding one in the ramshackle working-class alley where she grew up. The place reeks of destitution and bone idleness, but Mitsuko’s infectious get-up-and-go attitude soon compels the locals to roll up their sleeves and restore the alley to its former glory. Mitsuko Delivers is original, fanciful and adventurous – quintessentially Japanese.”
Tickets for the event are £10 and can be purchased on the ICA home page here. For more information about this event, including a note from Third Window’s Managing Director, Adam Torel, visit their page here.
It must be the season because we have yet another appearance by your friendly neighbor Asian film blabbermo…podcasters on a show that’s not their own. This time, I guest hosted on Podcast On Fire Network’s latest season of Japan On Fire, a series that focuses on (surprise) Japanese cinema. This season is focused on animator/filmmaker/basset hound lover Mamoru Oshii, which was initially a surprise for me, but a pleasant one since I hadn’t had a chance to take in all of his work.
The first of the two episodes that I’m on looks at his 1985 indie OVA Angel’s Egg. During the second of the two, a bonus episode by POF’s reckoning, we discuss In The Aftermath: Angels Never Sleep, a New World Pictures oddity that wasn’t directed by Oshii, but used footage from Angel’s Egg mixed with a live-action post-apocalyptic story. Sound weird? Check out both episodes and find out more.
The Angel’s Egg episode can be downloaded from Podcast On Fire here or iTunes.
The In the Aftermath bonus episode, on the other hand, is only available on Podcast On Fire here.
The 1980’s were a harsh time in Philippine history. Not to say that the previous decades weren’t difficult for the country and its people, but during the Martial Law years (1972-1981), when Ferdinand Marcos rewrote the country’s Constitution to install himself as the de facto leader, the veil of calm serenity and economic prosperity gave those living in the country at least the illusion of law and order. Of course, that sense of safety and security was achieved by a nationwide curfew which curtailed the power of the press and media from any serious reportage. By the start of the 1980’s though, there was a political shift as the nation was in the midst of an economic tailspin and although Marcos had either imprisoned, exiled, or killed those he deemed threats, the quality of life for a majority of the population that he professed to champion had not improved one iota. As the new society he had sought to build began to crumble around him, Marcos lifted martial law in 1981 though he still had unlimited control of government resources. At that time, he promptly called for a new election which he, to no one’s surprise, won with 88% of the votes. The opposition boycotted and in 1983 prompted Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino to return and help organize and rebuild the political party he began in a jail cell in 1978 dubbed Lakas ng Bayan or People’s Power Movement. Aquino never got the chance to fight Marcos. An assassin’s bullet took his life moments after his plane landed in Manila International Airport. After his death, the opposition movement exponentially grew. The upper middle class, the poor and impoverished, wealthy businessmen who chafed under Marcos’s rule and even the Catholic church and military rallied behind their martyred saint. … Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day leave you out in the cold, chocolates and roses-less? Japan Flix has you covered! To show they have their hearts in the right place, Japan Flix is having a half off sale of its catalog from Saint Valentine’s Day through the following Monday, February 20th.
This deal includes their entire catalog, from their own offerings to the Media Blasters, Well Go USA, and Pink Eiga titles (which will get you back in that Valentine’s mood) they’ve recently acquired.
For more information on how you can shop to your heart’s content, check out Japan Flix’s blog.
One of the best Japanese directors you may or may not have heard of, Yasujiro Ozu began his career in 1927 working as an assistant cameraman for Shochiku Studios and he directed his first film in the same year. He has been called the “most Japanese” director because his films have virtually no Western influence. In fact, until his death in 1963 most of his films had never been seen outside of Japan.
In 1934 Yasujiro Ozu directed A Story of Floating Weeds, a black and white silent film made in the era of sound. Similar to Charlie Chaplin, Ozu didn’t jump into sound when it first came to the movie industry. He wanted to wait until the sound technology improved from its infancy. Twenty-five years later Ozu would remake his own film, simply titled Floating Weeds.
Floating Weeds (1959) is about a troupe of traveling kabuki actors that have returned to perform in a small seaside village for the first time in twelve years. The leader of the troupe, Komajuro (Ganjiro Nakamura) goes to visit his former mistress Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura) with whom he has a son. Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) does not know that Komajuro is his father, having been told that his father died, and Komajuro wants to keep it that way. However the troupe’s lead actress and Komajuro’s current mistress Sumiko (Machiko Kyo) discovers the family’s secret. Sumiko shows up to Oyoshi’s sake bar and attempts to speak to Kiyoshi. … Continue Reading
Kudanshita, Tokyo
On the back of the DVD packaging for Screwed, Teruo Ishii’s late-period manga adaptation, it says in big block letters: “The ultimate Japanese cult film!” So just how “ultimate” is Screwed? For a film by a man in his late 70s, it’s pretty raunchy. Right from the start, it’s a strange ride. Under the titles we get a beach full of naked women, upside-down crab-walking men, and some kind of bloated red person-thing. It turns out that this is all in the mind of Tsube (Tadanobu Asano), a failed manga artist whose cartoons are apparently too weird for paying customers. Tsube’s financial failure has led to separation from his wife. They eventually get back together, but it turns out she’s pregnant, and not by Tsube. This revelation begins Tsube wandering, searching possibly for peace of mind, or maybe just someone like him.
Tsube’s motivations are never made clear, Ishii keeping the narrative purposefully vague. In this, the film mirrors the manga on which it was based, Yoshiharu Tsuge’s groundbreaking Neji-shiki (excerpts are included on a .pdf with the DVD). … Continue Reading
Happy first anniversary to our friends (well, friend, there’s only one host, Jake) over at Podcast Without Honor and Humanity! Joining Jake during his celebratory episode, VCinema co-host Josh also celebrates a first, his first guest hosting gig on another podcast. Join Josh and Jake (say that six times quickly) and a plethora of other guests as they talk about the first three films in the Lone Wolf and Cub (aka Baby Cart) series, the first in a two-part series.
This episode is available via direct download on Podcast Without Honor and Humanity’s site and their iTunes feed.
Third Window Films, in association with The Coventry University East Asian Film Society, is holding their second annual East Winds Festival, which will be held at Coventry University during the weekend of March 2nd to the 4th.
Heading up the line-up of screenings at the festival are mini-retrospectives of two of the more accomplished directors in Asian cinema, Satoshi Miki from Japan and Herman Yau from Hong Kong.
Miki’s mini-retrospective will include three of his best works including In the Pool, Adrift in Tokyo and Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers In addition, Miki and his regular actress Eri Fuse, who has also starred in Hana and Alice (2004) and Boiling Point (1990), will be in attendance for post-screening Q&As.
Yau, famous for ’90s CAT III shockers The Untold Story (1993) and Ebola Syndrome (1996), will also be in attendance for a double-bill of his more recent Woman Knight of Mirror Lake and True Women for Sale.
Also screening during the festival:
Starry Starry Night - Director Tom Lin has worked on recent Taiwanese hit films such as Monga (2010, our review here) and The Wayward Cloud (2005). Lin will also be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A.
Mitsuko Delivers – Yuya Ishii’s follow-up to the delightful Sawako Decides
The Yellow Sea – Big-budget Korean film from the director of The Chaser
For more information, visit the East Winds Festival page.
For the past year or so, I have made it my personal goal to track down every possible Hong Kong “Girls With Guns” film that I can. I have developed a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on your point of view) obsession with this Hong Kong genre staple. The title for this genre “Girls With Guns” is a total misnomer in actuality. It is about the closest thing that I can come up with to describe these highly intense action titles, which feature all-female leads, but guns are hardly the only tools at their disposal. Usually featuring leading ladies such as Yukari Oshima, Moon Lee or Cynthia Khan, these movies have a very special atmosphere to them that is beyond the generic Hong Kong action titles that flood the marketplace. Featuring wild stunts, insanely fast/acrobatic fight choreography, as well as brutally violent bloodshed, these are movies that pull few punches. In the case of Fighting Madam, this proves to be both an ideal piece of evidence to demonstrate why these movies were so great, but it also presents a fair warning for the negatives that litter the genre. Although the film isn’t always upbeat, Fighting Madam is the sort of party movie that can’t be shut off once it has started. … Continue Reading
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