Originally posted by Takuma
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Movie Going Madness in Japan
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Originally posted by tetrapak View PostMaybe Takuma can identify the film on the huge poster on the right?
Amazing photo!
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I found this photo and I thought to share it with you on this great thread: movie going in Japan circa 1974
Maybe Takuma can identify the film on the huge poster on the right?Last edited by tetrapak; 09-01-2018, 06:58 AM.
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Originally posted by Takuma View PostWhile I was in Tokyo, I also found time to drop by in Jinbocho Theater for Japanese 1970s retrospective. I don't know how to translate the title (七〇年代ã®æ†‚鬱 退廃ã¨æƒ…熱ã®æ˜ ç”»å²) well but basically the focus was on socially aware films mirroring the new gloomier era.
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While I was in Tokyo, I also found time to drop by in Jinbocho Theater for Japanese 1970s retrospective. I don't know how to translate the title (七〇年代ã®æ†‚鬱 退廃ã¨æƒ…熱ã®æ˜ ç”»å²) well but basically the focus was on socially aware films mirroring the new gloomier era.
The program is quite excellent with titles like Tanaka's Secret Chronicle: She Beast Market (1974), Kumashiro's Africa's Light (1975), Fukasaku's Cops vs. Thugs (1975), Terayama's The Boxer (1977), Hasegawa's The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979), and more, all in 35mm except Sachiko no sachi. I only had a chance to see two titles, Sadao Nakajima's Aesthetics of a Bullet (1973) (my second time in 35mm) and Toshiya Fujita's Did the Red Bird Escape (1975).
Aesthetics of a Bullet is a well done tale of a miserable wanna-be gangster (Tsunehiko Watase) getting his change act big while he's actually just being used by big shots. It was an ATG film made by Toei director and cast, and feels exactly that. Also features fantastic theme song and Miki Sugimoto is a supporting role.
Did the Red Bird Escape is a pretty fantastic "70s depression" zeitgeist about two small time goons (Yoshio Harada, Masaaki Daimon) and a girl (Kaori Momoi) living together and trying to make money with frauds and blackmails. The film is a bit of a slow burner, but the cast is great, Momoi spends half of the movie topless, cinematographer Tatsuo Suzuki does terric job and director Fujita was at his element with this kind of material. The 35mm print was so amazing it nearly blew my brain out.
Other pics
Africa's Light and The Boxer
Ryoma Ansatsu and Cops. vs. Thugs
Zeni geba, Take Care,Red Riding Hood, Sachiko no sachi
Last edited by Takuma; 06-26-2018, 04:53 AM.
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Meiko Kaji Film Festival in Shin Bungeiza
Full report in the Female Prisoner Scorpion thread:
http://www.rockshockpop.com/forums/s...893#post172893
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There is an all night film festival called "Pig in the Bag" (Finnish idiom) in Finland. The idea is that they screen 4 films back to back, but they don't announce the program in advance. You don't know what you'll be seeing until the title hits the screen, and if you doze off at the wrong moment, you might never discover what you saw.
Many moons ago, before the festival went 35mm, it started as an event to "select the best movie in the world", conducted by voting after a set of films had been screened. The film selection included movies like The Human Tornado, The Warrior and the Blind Swordsman, and Raiders of the Doomed Kingdom. Shogun Assassin won.
The reason I'm telling this story is that a few weeks ago on Saturday night, when "Pig in the Bag" was once again held in Helsinki, Finland, I sat in a movie theatre in Tokyo watching Teruo Ishii movies screened in 35mm back to back all night! And all night I kept thinking, "this is a strong candidate for the best movie ever!" Maybe not "really", but under those circumstances, breathing that amazing atmosphere, watching movies like Horrors of Malformed Men, Inferno of Torture, and Bohachi Bushido at 4am on big screen from pristine prints... yeah! I mean, Fuck Yeah!
The program was:
22:30 Inferno of Torture (1969) (35mm)
0:25 Horrors of Malformed Men (1969) (35mm)
2:20 Porno jidaigeki: Bohachi Bushido (1973) (35mm)
3:55 The Executioner 2: Karate Inferno (1974) (35mm)
I attended the night with a good friend of mine, whom I got into quality cinema about 7 years ago when I met him in a Japanese university (I borrowed him the first 2 Tetsuo films, which he watched alone in a classroom!). By pure chance we were both wearing Hard Core Chocolate T-shirts... me The Return of the Street Fighter and he Girl Boss: Escape from Reform School.
The night finished at 5:20 am, after which I headed to my capsule hotel for some sleep. There wasn't much time to sleep since Sex and Fury (1973) and Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs (1974) were screening in 35mm in the same theatre the next day (well, technically speaking the same day). And then I needed to head to Cinema Vera for Shogoro Nishimura retrospective in the evening, but I have already covered that event before in this thread...
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Thanks. This was the second time I got trapped in Tokyo overnight because of cancelled flight. Last time it happened I spent the night in Shin bungeiza theatre watching clown movies all night...
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Re-Evaluating Shogoro Nishimura
Cinema Vera kicked 2018 off big time with the most interesting retrospective in a while. Not only did the 14 film Nishimura series include 8 pink films by the notorious Roman Porno vending machine, but also 6 mainstream movies from his early years. And indeed, it's time to re-evaluate one of my most hated Roman Porno directors!
I watched all 6 of the mainsteam movies screened, and loved half of them and liked most of the rest! The films included the biting drama comedy The Gambling Monk (1963) based on a Shohei Imamura script, the fantastic Sun Tribe film Kaettekita ookami (1966), the gritty and stylish moral corruption drama Burning Nature (1967), the lame post war yakuza flick Tokyo Street Fighting (1967), the mediocre ninkyo yakuza film Biographies of Killers (1969), and the excellent ninkyo/jitsuroku hybrid Yakuza Native Ground (1969) with Tetsuto Tamba!
For those interested, I (quicly and hastily) wrote an article with reviews of the 6 films in my blog:
https://sketchesofcinema.wordpress.c...a-early-films/
I only wish they had screened more of his mainstream films. He made 14 of them in total, before Roman Porno begun.
Festival poster
Crimson Night Dream, Apartment Wife: Affair In the Afternoon, Tokyo Eros: 1001 Nights
Crimson Night Dream, Apartment Wife: Affair In the Afternoon
Tokyo Streetfighting, Kaettekita ookami
Kaettekita ookami
Kaettekita ookami was my favourite of the bunch, and it was pure luck that I got to see it. I had a flight scheduled for Monday night, but then this happened...
Yeah, not a common sight in Shibuya! My flight was cancelled and I had to go capsule hotel hunting. On the positive side, I could attend Tuesday screenings as well because I figured that if I gotta stay an extra night I might as well go see some more films next morning.
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Days 5-8: Part 2
My day in Tokyo had started with some less than impressive films and I needed a sure hit for the night, so I headed to National Film Center for the endlessly re-watchable Evil Dead Trap (1988). While the film makes little sense, it's such a fast paced mix of spectacular Fulci inspired kills, Argento esque camerawork and a fantastic "bootleg Goblin" score that I never get tired of it. This was my second time seeing it in 35mm. A bit of trivia: two of the three female leads are 80s AV stars (Hitomi Kobayashi and Eriko Nakagawa). The English title is faithful to the original (Shiriyo no wana = "Trap of Evil"), which is indeed a reference to the JP title of The Evil Dead (Shiryo no harawata = "Guts of the Evil"). Co-produced by Japan Home Video, which did the later Guinea Pig films and some Riki Takeuchi action, and Director's Company, a small arthouse firm formed by Ikeda, Shinji Somai, Sogo Ishii, Kichitaro Negishi and a few other young filmmakers to produce their own films.
I attended the screening with a friend who lives in Tokyo. Last time I saw him I gave him a Wolfguy BD as present. This time he had bought me a present: "Oppai zukan: The only existing full-scale oppai visual dictionary in the world". Hmmm, thanks, I guess.
Next day I headed to Laputa Asagaya, who had a series for Rentaro Mikuni. I caught two films, the pretty good 1959 Toei docudrama Seven Bullets (七ã¤ã®å¼¾ä¸¸) (about a bank robber in Osaka, documenting the daily lives of him and his victims prior to the incident) and Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp (1956), which I had never seen before. Needless to say 35mm in cinema was the way to experience it, even if the print was rather damaged. Seven Bullets in turn looked absolutely pristine.
Top and bottom left: Rentaro Mikuni retro. Bottom right: Yukiko Todoroki retro and Shintoho Pink series
I initially wasn't too happy to see Laputa Asagaya dedicate their Late Show to semi-recent Shintoho pink films. I wasn't even going to attend any screening but the curiosity got the better of me when I 1) realized I'd never seen a Shintoho pink film in 35mm and were curious about how it would look like in comparison to the worn out home video releases, and 2) I was already there since I had just finished Seven Bullets.
I was glad to have been proven wrong as, at least in the case of this film, someone had done fine programming job exposing one of those small semi-gems a casual viewer would otherwise never discover. Hidden beneath the fleshy premise and ridiculous title, Aching Wives: Continuous Adultery (ã†ãšã人妻ãŸã¡ 連続ä¸å€«) (2006) turned out to be a rather beautiful film set in two time periods. A young single man and middle aged woman with troubled marriage first meet and have a brief affair in 1995. In 2007 they meet again by chance in a small hot springs hotel where he, now married, has escaped his troubles, and she, who has managed to fix her marriage but not forget him, arrives with her husband. Effectively minimalist and sad film with surprisingly fine performances. Oh, and the 35mm print was just beautiful.
Aching Wives: Continuous Adultery
Chirashi
I also visited Shin Bungeiza's Nobuhiko Obayashi retro (held in advance of his upcoming film Hanagatami), despite my irritation over the fact that all the films I wanted to see played at inconvenient dates. This marked the 4th time I've missed House in 35mm in Tokyo (each time the screening was a few week before or after my stay, or sold out). What I saw was the rare 1983 TV film called Reibyo densetsu (麗猫ä¼èª¬) (in 16mm) that no English language website has ever heard of. It's about an old actress who may be a ghost. I thought the film was pretty boring, but then again I often dislike the "standard Obayashi" films and only love the masterpieces (Futari, Tenkosei, House).
On my last day I was supposed to go to Shin Bungeiza to see School in the Crosshairs, but after realizing it's a DCP and not 35mm I decided to sleep late in my capsule rather that waste my money on that screening. Once I got up, I headed to Cinema Vera who had just started a new retrospective for Tooru Abe. Toei fans know him best as the regular bad guy in ninkyo yakuza films. Cinema Vera did a cleaver move and omitted all of those films, and chose to screen movies that don't play in other retrospectives so often. I only had time to see one film before my flight, Wrath of Daimajin (1966), which I enjoyed a fair bit thanks to its fantastic special effects and a nice sense of adventure.
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Originally posted by AngelGuts View PostAmazing account of your trip, Takuma.
Originally posted by AngelGuts View PostYakushima forest looks stunning, too.
Originally posted by AngelGuts View PostI've wanted to see TWO BITCHES for ages as I once read a sterling review. I don't suppose it's subtitled on video anywhere?
I discovered to my surprise that it played theatrically in Finland back in the mid 60s and early 70s. I spoke to a Finnish veteran critic online and he said he reviewed it for a newspaper in the early 70s (because all the older critics refused!). It was called "Yí¶n naiset" (Women of the Night) in Finnish.
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Amazing account of your trip, Takuma.
Yakushima forest looks stunning, too.
I've wanted to see TWO BITCHES for ages as I once read a sterling review. I don't suppose it's subtitled on video anywhere?
Shame ABOUT MILITARY COMFORT WOMEN.
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