Slash And Burn

NY Film Festival

A number of classic Japanese films will be screaned as part of the New York Film Festival, currently underway. It's to celebrate 50 years of Janus Films, the distribution company that brought many foreign films to the US.

Films include:
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
The Makioko Sisters (Kon Ichikawa)
Sansho The Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi)
High And Low (Akira Kurosawa)
Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi)
Fires On The Plain (Kon Ichikawa)

Also showing as part of the series is 400 Blows, Viridiana, Walkabout, Cranes Are Flying, and tons more.

Ashura

Japanese Title: Ashura-jo no hitomi
AKA: Ashura The Demon Slayer
Director: Yojiro Takita
Actors: Somegoro Ichikawa, Rie Miyazawa, Kanako Higuchi
Year Released: 2005
Genre: Action, Samurai
See Also: Onmyoji, Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis

What happened? It all looks great on paper: film adaptation of a kabuki play about demons taking over the earth, with a kabuki actor (Somegoro Ichikawa) playing a demon slayer-turned-kabuki actor-turned demon slayer. Hottie Rie Miyazawa as the love-interest/emerging demonic power. Director Yojiro Takita has a pedigree that includes both Onmyoji movies and When the Last Sword Is Drawn. Special effects. Lavish sets. Green demon blood. So what happened?

That's difficult to say. Ashura has so much going for it, it's confounding as to why it should be so, well, boring. Perhaps it's that the movie takes itself so seriously. Perhaps it's the kabuki content, but contrast Ashura to Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis, a similarly over-the-top special affects extravaganza about demons. Last Megalopolis may not be a great movie but it's still a hoot, and this is largely due to its anything-goes tone and its willingness to not really give a shit. Ashura has way too many expectations for itself (Important actors! Eye candy effects! Thrilling action!) and never quite succeeds with any of them.

I hate to say it, but this is probably due to the direction. I like Yojiro Takita. Onmyoji is another of his films with a stage actor in the lead, but there the actor's seriousness is undercut with a winking playfulness. By contrast, Somegoro Ichikawa just seems pleased with himself, and that grows tiring fast.

Next time: a different director, different actors, and really, no green blood, OK?

—Adam Douglas

Otaku Alert: Rie Miyazawa has appeared in tons of movies, including Twilight Samurai and Tony Takitani, but she's still largely known (at least outside Japan, and on the Internet) as a topless model.

Availability Note: Import only, though readily available region-free on the Internet and at specialty shops.

Learn About Breasts

I was just checking my stats to see where people are coming from (that would be for all four of the random people who've come here in the past day). One person came over from a blog search. Apparently their search was for "busty Japanese girls," always something worth looking into. My Kamikaze Girls review came up second. First up was a site with this beautiful bit of text below the URL:

Learn about Breasts Japanese Big Boobed Girls and its significance in past years and what it may mean to you today. It is very Swordfish Movie Breast Photos and will help increase your Cartoon Boobies in many ways. ...

Well, as long as it's very Swordfish Movie Breast Photos then it's OK.

That Face/Tokyo Ga-ga

I recently picked up the Criterion release of Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring. I had put off buying it because I already owned a Hong Kong copy of the DVD, but after passing on it for something flashier in the store so many times I finally broke down and bought it. And boy, am I glad I did. The transfer is incredible, the new translation adds so much more to the film, and Setsuko Hara has never looked better.

I admit it: I have a HUGE crush on Setsuko Hara. I first discovered her in Tokyo Story and was moved by her performance. Next I saw her in Early Summer and that's when my little heart started to flutter. The whole time I was watching, I kept thinking, "My God, I'll marry her!" But seeing her in Late Spring, well, that clinched it for me. I was hooked. I've since watched the movie probably 10 times and every time I fall in love with her all over again.

Actually, I fall in love with Noriko, her character. Something about her easy smile, her petulance, her ability to ride a bike… Well, maybe not so much that last part, but certainly her smile. I just want to climb into my TV and live happily ever after with her in an Ozu film. Apparently I'm not the only man to have had these thoughts. I think it was Donald Ritchie that said that a lot of men at the time wanted to marry her. It's not hard to see why: imagine that face smiling at you your whole life. (Even in Late Autumn, Ozu's remake of Late Spring with Setsuko Hara now in the parent role, she still looks great and gives her daughter a run for her money in the looks department, and Yoko Tsukasa is quite the bijin.)

Apparently Setsuko Hara never married. Setsuko, you know my email.

And speaking of Late Spring, the good people at Criterion have been kind enough to include Wim Wenders' early-80s filmic diary of Tokyo, Tokyo-Ga, in with the main Ozu film. While watching it I was reminded of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil. To my surprise, Wenders meets up with Marker at a Tokyo bar and discusses seeing that just-finished film. So there you go.

Charisma

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Actors: Koji Yakusho, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Jun Fubuki
Year Released: 1999
Genre: Horror, Drama
See Also: Cure, Seance

Ascribing the qualities of charisma to a tree is a strange notion, doubly so when that tree is scrawny and not much to look at. This paradox is at the heart of Charisma, the 1999 film by Japan's moodiest horror director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. And while it's hard to tell where things are going sometimes, it's always an interesting ride.

Koji Yakusho (Shall We Dance?), Kurosawa's repeated choice for leading man, plays Goro Yabuike, a cop who's starting to lose it on the job. An unfortunate hesitation during a tense standoff with a gunman and a hostage leads to both of them dying, and to Yabuike being sent on leave. Inexplicably and seemingly without purpose, he wanders into a forest and gets lost.

Kurosawa is a master at mood, bringing to his films an overpowering sense of dread, and Charisma is no exception to this. Even with most of the film shot during the day, there's an oddness and otherworldliness to it that's remarkable. The most mundane things, like driving in a car, are given a sheen of strangeness through tricks like having the reflections of the trees passing overhead move at different speeds, so that the reflection on the front window is out of sync with the back. It's a subtle (and possibly unintentional) effect but one that adds to the overall surreality of the film.

The forest, as depicted by Kurosawa, is genuinely creepy, and the earlier scenes offer the most of what we could call traditional horror elements: a decomposing body hanging from a tree, a terrifying night visitor who steals Yabuike's soul, an overpowering sense of dread in the forest itself. When daylight breaks, we find things aren't as creepy as they seemed the night before, yet they're no less puzzling. Yabuike is caught in a sort of struggle between different groups living in or near the forest, all intent on controlling that tree, a sick, scrawny thing supported by scaffolding, propped up in the middle of an empty field.

Here Kurosawa changes course. Charisma becomes something of an eco-thriller, with the different groups—an environmental group working in the forest, a botanist and her strange sister, a former patient of a now-abandoned mental hospital—each having their own reason for wanting the tree. The tree does indeed have some sort of charismatic hold over them. Kiriyama, the former patient and caretaker of the tree, goes so far as to name it Charisma. Desire for control of the tree soon comes to a head, but that's not the end of the film. Kurosawa is after something else here than clear-cut (it's a tree joke—get it?) explanations. It's the journey rather than the destination that interests him. Indeed, the ending seems haphazardly tacked on, as if someone woke him from his reverie and told him he should wrap things up. A puzzling, surprising and thought-provoking film.

—Adam Douglas

Otaku alert: Kurosawa was a creative consultant on Ju-On: The Grudge.

Get On The Train

Viz has released Densha Otoko ("Train Man") to theater in New York and plans on hitting a few other cities in the US before, presumably, putting it out on DVD. While any Japanese film release in the US is cause for at least minor celebration, you have to wonder who Viz thinks its audience will be.

Densha Otoko was more than just a movie, it was a phenomenon. First it was a series of real-time online posts. These posts were collected and released, almost verbatim, as a book. Although the posts were archived online, tons of people bought the book, enthralled with the fact that it was jitsuroku, a true account. A movie was quickly turned out, followed almost as quickly by a TV show.

For those not privvy to the Densha Otoko scene, here's a rundown of the story: otaku rescues beautiful woman from a drunk lecher on a train. Beautiful woman sends otaku a gift, so otaku asks her out. As he's an otaku, he has no experience in these matters, so he turns to an online message board for help. A few dates later, they're in love, and the hearts of a nation are gladdened that true love has conquered debilitating social awkwardness.

Throughout, the most ardent fans of Densha Otoko were housewives, Japan's biggest movie-going audience. The movie reflects this: it's classic romantic-comedy fare, designed to appeal to a specific demographic (pessimistic online posters have argued that the entire phenomenon was orchestrated by the media to generate interest in the film and TV show). Densha Otoko isn't the usual type of Japanese film that gets released here. Shall We Dance? is a notable exception, but an exception nonetheless.

Perhaps Viz is hoping that the film's otaku angle will rope in amime fans. A glance at its screening schedule (Anime Expo, Otakon) for the film reveals this is certainly the case. Will American otaku connect with the film's otaku? Apparently Japanese otaku did, sitting down side-by-side with shufu (housewives) in theaters. Maybe American otaku will connect with Densha (his name in the film—the TV show actually gives him a real, non-anonymous Internet name) and his nerd quest for true love. Or maybe the blandness of the film will short-circuit Viz's hopes.

The film really is pretty bland (Midnight Eye has done a great review of the film, saying just this). The TV show is much better, with a more complex story line and much more of the kind of wackiness that American anime fans could connect with. It's the TV show that hooked me. Actually, it was Misaki Ito, who played the woman on the show, that hooked me. But then I got into the story and genuinely enjoyed it, even without the benefit of subtitles. Yes, I admit it. I cried at the end. Even better than the show, however, are the original posts. This is what should be released here. Publish it as a book. It'll make millions. I cried constantly while reading this thing, really.

So what have we learned here, other than I'm a big baby? That Viz may have a tough time recouping its investment in Densha Otoko. Viz, if you're taking suggestions for future licenses, how about Last Quarter? The goth kids will love it.

Ultraman Vol. 2 Announced

Twitch reports that volume two of the original Ultraman series will be released on November 7. I've got volume one and it's great. I guess this is another $30 I'll have to spend!

Legend Of The Eight Samurai

Japanese Title: Satomi Hakkenden
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Actors: Shinichi "Sonny" Chiba, Hiroku Yakushimaru, Hiroyuki Sanada
Year Released: 1983
Genre: Samurai, Action
See Also: Shogun's Ninja, Samurai Reincarnation

When I was 10 my dad took me to see Conan The Barbarian. He thought it was pretty much the best movie ever made. At the time I was in full agreement, but had I seen Legend of the Eight Samurai when it came out, Conan would have been knocked from its top spot. It seems that Kinji Fukasaku has also seen Conan, judging by all the fantasy elements that he's worked into the normally formalized jidai geki (period picture), least of which is a giant attack snake. But more on that later.

Legend of the Eight Samurai is based on material culled from the massive, Edo-period novel Nanso Satomi Hakkenden ("Eight Dog Warriors of the Satomi Clan"), the same source for Fukasaku's Star Wars-rip-off, Message From Space. In amongst the 98 volumes of novel was a back-water story about a princess in distress and her roguish love interest. Sound familiar? It undoubtedly sounded perfect for an audience still hungry for anything Star Wars and a production company (the now megalithic Kadokawa) trying to compete with television and the burgeoning home video market.

Our princess in distress, Shizu (Hiroko Yakushimaru), is on the run from the evil (and when I say evil I mean like undead, skin-flaying evil) clan Hikita. They want Shizu's skin to help restore the face of Motofuji (Yuki Meguro), the clan's leader, who's been waiting for a graft ever since his clan was burned alive by Shizu's ancestors, the Satomi clan, one hundred years ago. On board to add extra evil is Motofuji's mom, a scary-ass high priestess MILF that it appears Motofuji really does, um, you know, F. On the road, Shizu comes across Dosetsu (the ubiquitous Sonny Chiba) and Daikaku, descendents of Satomi retainers from back in the day. They were each born with a mystical crystal in hand, and they're looking for the possessors of six more crystals. Together they will be able to defeat the Hikita and their lax morals.

Don't get too hung up on the plot. It's hard to know if the things the movie pulls out of its ass, like a bad guy-killing flying scroll, are from the original text or just splashy ideas Fukasaku and co-writer Toshio Kamata are coming up with as they go along. It's better to sit back, relax, and enjoy the sets and costumes which are, admittedly, fantastic. Legend of the Eight Samurai had a budget of $1 million, a huge sum for Japanese film at the time, and it's all up on the screen. The Hikita castle is especially outstanding, jammed with multiple pools of colored water and a throne room that puts Indiana's temple of doom to harakiri-inducing shame. The special effects are, surprisingly enough, kept to a minimum, but when the movie gets ambitious, watch out. There's an old woman who claws off her face, revealing a giant centipede (William Burroughs would undoubtedly approve), and of course that giant attack snake I mentioned earlier. Hey, it may require the actors to gather it up themselves and roll around with it, but what other samurai flick is going to go that extra, giant-snake mile?

Where the movie obviously didn't blow its budget is on the music. Frankly, it stinks. Weedy and thin, it rarely goes with what's happening on screen. A smooth jazz sax solo at a climactic moment is particularly cringe-inducing. And the faux-Toto ballad (sung in English, no less!) that accompanies the turgid love scene between Shizu and Shinbei (Japan Action Club regular Hiroyuki Sanada) has to be heard to be believed.

All in all, a fine samurai epic with Conan and Star Wars overtones that contains scenes with a giant snake and centipede, and has bad '80s music. Shall I order your copy for you now, or would like to wait until you find one used?

—Adam Douglas

Otaku Alert: Toshio Kamata, who co-wrote Legend of the Eight Samurai with Kinji Fukasaku, also penned G.I. Samurai and the epic (and frustratingly unavailable) Heaven and Earth.

Densha Deep

At some point I plan on doing a whole piece on the Densha Otoko (Train Man) phenomenon. Briefly: Akihabara otaku saves attractive girl on the train from a drunken masher, starts posting about it online, begins dating said girl, life-transforming romance ensues. From Internet boards to movie to TV show, you just can't get enough! But until I get around to writing that, get prepared by reading this translation of the original online drama.

Fukasaku Mayhem

The good people at Kaiju Shakedown have posted a double review of Kinji Fukasaku's Cops Vs Thugs and Yakuza Graveyard. I haven't seen Cops Vs Thugs but Yakuza Graveyard is a great piece of celluloid, an examination of the fine line between policeman and criminal, told in Fukasaku's usual sledgehammer style.