Marc Walkow posted on twitter that Arrow has some Sonny Chiba on tap for 2017. Hopefully they will not have FUBAR transfers.
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Sonny Chiba Mega Review Thread
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Karate Bullfighter (Japan, 1975) [35mm] - 4/5
Sonny Chiba portrays his own master, kyokushin karate founder Masutatsu Oyama, is this excellent karate biopic, which obviously takes some liberties from the facts. The film is a live action adaptation of the Oyama comic books written by Ikki Kajiwara. Apparently master Oyama did not mind being portrayed as a brute and an "accidental" rapist - all of which worked to the film's benefit.
Chiba is at the top of his game here. He portrays Oyama as a man who attends a karate tournament, beats all opponents, and then throws away the trophy because he thinks sportsman karate is for pussies! The fights are generally excellent and very physical, although they do suffer from some needlessly shaky camerawork (probably influenced by the documentary style yakuza films of the era). Chiba also fights a real bull - something Oyama also did.
Director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi was never much of a storyteller, and that's the film's biggest flaw. It feels very episodic, making the film sometimes feel longer than it is. There's a bit of love story, a bit of rivalry with nemesis Masashi Ishibashi, a bit of melodrama as Oyama kills a drunken man and then tried to make it up by taking care of his wife and child, and so on. One can sense the film tried to combine the juiciest parts of its source material without emphasizing coherence too much.
Chiba's brother Jiro Chiba (who later starred in the excellent The Defensive Power of Aikido, 1975) plays a major supporting role as Oyama's apprentice. Chiba returned later the same year for an even better sequel Karate Bearfighter.
* Original Title: Kenka karate kyokushin ken (ã‘ã‚“ã‹ç©ºæ‰‹ã€€æ¥µçœŸæ‹³)
* Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
* Chiba's role: Starring role
* Film availability: Adness DVD (USA), Toei DVD (JP) (no subs)
I don't have many screencaps for this, so please forgive me for not doing the film justice
Chiba
Chiba vs. Masashi Ishibashi
Jiro Chiba
Bull vs Chiba
Yumi Takigawa (School of the Holy Beast)
Ishibashi again
Original US poster
Japanese VHS
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The first part of this post has nothing to do with Chiba, buy anyway...
What a glorious screw up! I bid on a Which is Stronger: Karate or the Tiger (1976) poster. I thought it was a standard thin poster, but it turned out to be 4 times bigger than I expected! And it is bloody gorgeous!
I bought a couple of Sonny Chiba posters: Game of Chance 2 (1967) and Yakuza Deka 3: Poison Gas Affair (1971).
These are the small size posters I was talking about. Same height as standard Japanese movie posters but half the width.
I went all MacGyver to get them on my wall without causing any damage to the posters (remember, they are 40-50 years old). I made a hooking system using a girls' accessory pack I found from a 100 yen store and put small pieces of white paper between paper clips and posters. I even used an iron hair pin that my girlfriend forgot here on top of the poster with a small magnet behind the poster to pull the top and bottom half of the Tiger poster (it comes in two halves) together.Last edited by Takuma; 08-28-2016, 10:32 AM.
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Originally posted by Ian Jane View PostI went through a Chiba poster collecting phase, then I realized I'll never have all the wall space I need to display them, so I reeled it back a bit.
Originally posted by 47lab View PostTakuma, those are nice! :up: Are you eventually going to get those professionally mounted to prevent further damage from UV and humidity?
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I mentioned this in another thread, Marc Walkow is in Japan "...to interview six people about 11 Japanese films, dating from 1964-1978, all for Blu-ray release in 2017. Maybe more."
and he just tweeted
Viva Chiba
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Marc Walkow is interviewing Kazuhiko Yamaguchi and mentioned it was about a "film series", so I figure Arrow is going to release a set of either Karate Bullfighter, Karate Bearfighter, and Karate for Life (most likely) or the Sister Street Fighter movies (least likely)
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I wouldn't mind a Mas Oyama trilogy on blu ray but if I had my druthers, I'd pick the Sister Street Fighter movies. The BCI blu ray was a mess...both movies crammed onto a single layer 25gb disc with all kinds of compression artifacts and I won't even go into the audio. No extras to speak of either. :down: Sister Street Fighter is kind of hokey but it's just so OTT and Shiomi kicks so much ass, that it just screams for a better blu ray release.
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