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After several years of working as an assistant director for Suzuki Seijun, Hasebe Yasuharu finally got the chance to direct his own film with 1966’s Black Tight Killers. While Suzuki’s irreverent whatsit Tokyo Drifter went on to international fame that same year, Hasebe’s debut lurked in relative obscurity outside of Japan. It’s an understandable fate since Suzuki’s relentless abstraction of both narrative and action accounts for much of what still makes it feel vital and fresh nearly six decades later, and Black Tight Killers sticks more tightly to the type of mukokuseki akushon (“borderless action”) film that Nikkatsu Studios had been churning out since the late ’50s.

Still, Black Tight Killers is an immensely stylish film in its own right. And it functions as a fascinating time capsule of a post-war Japan at a time when its youth culture was embracing the spirit of the Swinging ’60s.

Exclusive: Cameras have started rolling in Tokyo on Akashi, the debut feature from Japanese and Canadian writer-director Mayumi Yoshida.

Yoshida, best known as an actor for her role in The Man in The High Castle, will also star in the film alongside veteran performers Hana Kino, Chieko Matsubara, Kunio Murai, and rising performer Ryo Tajima.

Described as a “coming-of-age love story,” Akashi follows Kana (Yoshida), an artist who is at a crossroads in her career. After finding out her Grandmother (Kino) has passed, she returns home to Tokyo for the funeral, where she rekindles a romance with childhood love Hiro (Tajima) and uncovers a family secret about her Grandpa (Murai).

Akashi is written and directed by Yoshida, who developed the script through the TIFF Writer’s Studio. The pic produced by Nach Dudsdeemaytha,...

When director Jeff Rowe (co-director of “The Mitchells vs. the Machines”) and producer Seth Rogen (“Sausage Party”) first talked about making their animated “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” edgier and scarier than the rest of the beloved franchise, they both seized on “Jurassic Park” as a touchstone.

“One of my favorite movies as a kid was ‘Jurassic Park,’ and I saw that when I was seven in a theater because I love dinosaurs,” Rowe told IndieWire. “And the opening of that film is terrifying — it scared the shit out of me. I was crying and immediately wanted to leave the theater, but I stayed through it all. It successfully established the Raptors as one of the coolest villains ever, and it established a world where bad things could happen.

“Seth had a similar experience and he said a great thing: ‘Jurassic Park’ is like a monster movie for kids.

How unhinged does a film have to be to get a director fired? Or, more to the point, how unhinged does it have to be to get a seasoned gonzo cyclone like Suzuki Seijun fired? After more than 10 years of cranking out perverse pulp bonanzas for Nikkatsu studio, Suzuki ran afoul of producers in 1967 with Branded to Kill, a cubist fusillade that swiftly got the filmmaker sacked on charges of “incoherence.”

Of course, accusing the auteur behind Tattooed Life and Fighting Elegy of being incoherent is akin to accusing the Pacific Ocean of being wet, and yet it’s easy to see what about the film’s jumbled spirit so infuriated the studio heads: While most of his earlier underworld sagas subversively stretched the skin of boilerplate yakuza thrillers this way and that while still functioning as commercial genre offerings, Branded to Kill is confrontational in its disdain for stylistic...

After “Carmen from Kawachi” had been one more unsuccessful attempt of production company Nikkatsu to get director Seijun Suzuki in line with the kind of movies they wanted him to make, they decided to reduce his budget even further for his next feature. In the wrong hands, “Tokyo Drifter” probably would have been just another gangster flick which the industry had produced a thousand times, but Suzuki created something truly special, widely regarded as one of his most interesting and visually arresting works. Instead of feeling ´restricted by the lack of financial support, the director relied on his skill of making ends meet and sticking to his creative vision, resulting in a much more abstract work which also fits perfectly in the age of pop culture.

Tokyo Drifter is screening as part of the Seijun Suzuki Centennial presented by Japan Society

In Tokyo, Tetsuya (Tetsuya Watari), nicknamed “Phoenix”, is the...

It’s no secret the connection between the worlds of cinema and video games has never been more blurred. The recent Ghost of Tsushima featured none other than “Kurosawa Mode,” while films like Hardcore Henry place you inside an Fps albeit one you can’t control, not to mention the number of movie adaptations of celebrated games and vice versa. However, it’s rare that a videogame developer would straight-up mine classic Hollywood cinema for a new project.

Such an occurrence has happened with the announcement of a new videogame “freely inspired” by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the most-acclaimed film of all-time. Directly borrowing the title of the 1958 classic itself, Gematsu reports the narrative adventure game is coming later this year from publisher Microids and developer Pendulo Studios. However, as afterglow reminds us, it’s not the first game to take from the Hitchcock canon as Arxel Tribe released the...

Tetsuya Watari, the Japanese actor who worked with international cult favorites Seijun Suzuki and Kinji Fukasaku on some of their best-known films, died on Aug.10 of pneumonia at age 78. His death was announced Friday following a private family funeral.

Joining the Nikkatsu studio in 1964 after graduating from Aoyama Gakuin University, Watari soon became a mainstay of its action line-up, starring in Suzuki’s 1966 “Tokyo Drifter” and Toshio Masuda’s 1968 “Outlaw: Gangster VIP,” which became a six-part series. Both films have been widely screened abroad, and since rereleased for home entertainment.

After Nikkatsu turned over production to softcore porn in 1971, Watari left the studio and joined Ishihara Promotion, the talent agency started by Nikkatsu mentor and megastar Yujiro Ishihara in 1963.

In 1975 Watari starred in Fukasaku’s action biopic “Yakuza Graveyard,” playing a self-destructive gangster who was based on a real-life model. But he was prevented by illness from appearing in Fukasaku’s signature gangster series,...

By Omar Rasya Joenoes

“Are you married?”

“I hate men.”

“Then, you have no hope.”

“My hope is to die.”

The conversation in the search description takes place on a ride home, under the pouring rain. It is initiated by a man, who happens to be Japan’s no. 3 hitman, and answered by a woman, who is a suicidal femme fatale. Witnessing their first exchange is a dead bird, hung between them. And in this weirdest of all film-noir films, the scene belongs to a long line of surreal, mind-boggling, out-of-this-world scene after scene after scene after scene.

“Japanese films are weird” is surely a stereotype most of you, if not all of you, have heard at least once before. It is not entirely true and not entirely mistaken. With cult titles like Funky Forest (2005), Hausu (1977), Big Man Japan (2007), Versus (2000), Tokyo Gore Police (2008), RoboGeisha (2009), Tetsuo the Iron Man...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film at Lincoln Center

“Another Country: Outsider Visions of America” offers films by Raúl Ruiz, Straub-Huillet, Wenders, Verhoeven and more.

Eternal Sunshine plays for free Friday night on Governor’s Island.

IFC Center

The rather staggering Abbas Kiarostami retrospective continues, with screenings of the Koker trilogy, Ten, Taste of Cherry, Certified Copy and more.



Metrograph...

Stars: Tetsuya Watari, Ryûji Kita, Chieko Matsubara, Hideaki Nitani, Eimei Esumi | Written by Yasunori Kawauchi | Directed by Seijun Suzuki

It would be easy to assume that Seijun Suzuki’s 1966 crime thriller is a construct of a TV series. With its strictly-defined three-act structure, divided by subtitles, it has the feel of a succession of episodes stitched awkwardly together across 90 minutes. But it actually is a cheesy, kind of likeable, complete film.

Tetsuya Watari plays Tetsu “The Phoenix” Hondo, an ex-mobster trying to go straight. He and his avuncular old boss Kurata (Ryûji Kita) live in peace in a building owned by a kindly landlord named Yoshii (Michio Hino). However, Kurata’s old foe, Otsuka (Eimei Esumi) isn’t done with him yet. They force Yoshii to sell the building to them, triggering a fight between the Kurata and Otsuka clans. Tetsu can’t help but get involved.

To save Kurata from further conflict,...

Rather unfairly, we expect the Criterion Collection to define significant cinema, all on its own. When the company released Michael Bay's Armageddon on DVD, for example, I recall a great disturbance in the (cinephilia) force. How dare they cheapen Art with Commerce!!! Of course, Criterion had already released John Woo's The Killer and Hardboiled on DVD by that point, as well as Suzuki Seijun's Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter, but though those films displayed a populist bent, they were critically-acclaimed and above the fray, as it were. As time passed, and the Criterion Collection's releases grew into the hundreds, the disquietude about Bay's early representation on Criterion dissipated. On the Asian cinema scene, however, I believe there has been more consternation and/or disappointment that...

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“Dear God, please don’t erase that memory.”

History is full of examples of art and an artist’s motivation as the driving forces behind great works in any medium. However, it is rare to see the artist actually in motion, creating his work and to witness inspiration and creativity bringing something new to life. There are many famous examples, from the video footage of Jackson Pollock painting or Henri-Gorges Clouzot’s “The Mystery of Picasso” depicting the famous Spanish artist creating unique works of art. Whatever it is that drives these figures forward, whether we call it beauty, an inner voice or an artist’s spirit, it is a force which will not extinguish easily, and will also still be there in the works left behind.

In the case of Japanese musician and painter Hiroki Morimoto, better known under his stage name Goma, this drive is not only the foundation for his work,...

Seijun Suzuki, The Early Years is now available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video

Youths On The Loose And Rebels Without Causes In The Unruly Seishun Eiga Youth Movies Of Japanese Iconoclast Seijun Suzuki

Making their home-video debuts outside Japan, this diverse selection of Nikkatsu youth movies (seishun eiga) charts the evolving style of the B-movie maverick best known for the cult classics Tokyo Drifter (1966) and Branded to Kill (1967).

The Boy Who Came Back (1958) marks the first appearances of Nikkatsu Diamond Guys and regular Suzuki collaborators Akira Kobayashi and Jo Shishido, with Kobayashi cast as the hot-headed hoodlum fresh out of reform school who struggles to make a clean break with his tearaway past.

The Wind-of-Youth Group Crosses the Mountain Pass (1961) is a carnivalesque tale of a young student who hooks up with a down-at-heels travelling circus troupe.

Teenage Yakuza (1962) stars Tamio Kawaji as the high-school vigilante protecting his...

Review by Roger Carpenter

After laboring for close to a decade as an assistant director for Nikkatsu Studios, Yasuharu Hasebe burst onto the scene as a lead director in 1966 with Black Tight Killers and 1967 with the more subdued but very good Massacre Gun. Retaliation, which starred some of Nikkatsu’s primary actors (called the “Diamond Line”), was an A-list film, in color, and was a return to a more violent yakuza tale than Hasebe’s previous Massacre Gun.

Akira Kobayashi stars as Jiro, a yakuza who has just been released from a long stint in prison. He returns to find his family dismantled, with only his ailing boss and one loyal yakuza member remaining. On top of this, Hino (Jo Shishido), brother of the man Jiro was imprisoned for killing, is tailing him and seeking revenge. Jiro reaches out to another family for help in rebuilding his gang and is...

The Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival - Nifff - has long been a favourite European genre celebration round these parts, and is warming up for its 17th edition, scheduled to run from 30 June - 8 July in the picturesque Swiss city. While the full line-up will not be unveiled until 15 June, the festival has announced that this year's festival will include a major 10-film retrospective of Japanese master filmmaker Seijun Suzuki, who tragically passed away on 13 February. Best remembered for his surreal yakuza flick Branded to Kill, which saw him unceremoniously fired from Nikkatsu Studos, Suzuki enjoyed a long and fruitful career that spanned 50 years and brought us such undeniable genre classics as Tokyo Drifter and Youth of the Beast. While the...

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Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This April will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Monday, April 3 The Chaos of Cool: A Tribute to Seijun Suzuki

In February, cinema lost an icon of excess, Seijun Suzuki, the Japanese master who took the art of the B movie to sublime new heights with his deliriously inventive approach to narrative and visual style. This series showcases seven of the New Wave renegade’s works from his career breakthrough in the sixties: Take Aim at the Police Van (1960), an off-kilter whodunit; Youth of the Beast (1963), an explosive yakuza thriller; Gate of Flesh (1964), a pulpy social critique; Story of a Prostitute (1965), a tragic romance; Tokyo Drifter...

“I make movies that make no sense,” Seijun Suzuki would often say, and he wasn’t being modest. The prolific director, who died earlier this month at the age of 93, was the Jackson Pollock of Japanese cinema, an irrepressibly creative artist who painted with gobs of color and geysers of fake blood in order to defy the strictures of narrative and remind viewers that movies are more than the stories they tell.

His hyper-stylized gangster sagas, which had a way of turning the most basic B-picture plots into unfettered symphonies for the senses, were born out of a rabid intolerance for boredom; audiences never knew what was going to happen next, and sometimes it’s tempting to suspect that Suzuki didn’t either. Few directors ever did more to fundamentally demolish our understanding of what film could be, and even fewer did so while working under the auspices of a major production studio.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveriesNEWSSeijun SuzukiThe great Japanese studio rabble rouser Seijun Suzuki, best known for his crazed remixes of pulp genre films in the late 1950s and 1960s (Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill) and also for his late career renaissance (Pistol Opera, Princess Raccoon), has died at the age of 92.On the other side of the industry, Time critic and documentary filmmaker Richard Shickel has also passed away.On a more positive note, the second film program for the great Knoxville music festival Big Eats has been announced, and it's a humdinger, ranging from a focus on directors Jonathan Demme and Kevin Jerome Everson to programs of new avant-garde work.Recommended Viewinga researcher in Quebec has identified the only known moving image footage of Marcel Proust, found in a 1904 recording of a wedding.Finally, a view at Terrence Malick's long-in-the-works drama set in the Austin music scene,...

Cult Japanese filmmaker Suzuki Seijun has died at the age of 93. Best known for avant-garde yakuza masterpiece Branded to Kill, the director made his name turning out features for Nikkatsu studio throughout the 1960's. Starting his career at Shochiku, Suzuki moved to Nikkatsu in 1954. Stepping into the director's chair in 1956, he was highly productive over the next decade, putting out several titles a year, including such classics as Youth of the Beast, Gate of Flesh and Tokyo Drifter. The relationship between director and studio would eventually turn sour, with Suzuki earning the ire of his employers for his surreal and wildly imaginative takes on the studio's B-movie and yakuza material. Eventually he was fired and found himself struggling to get work for...

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Seijun Suzuki, the celebrated Japanese director behind such cult films as Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill, has died at the age of 93. He died February 13 in Tokyo, with the cause of death given as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Suzuki was largely famed for matching pop art visuals and pulp stories and his work influenced directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Baz Luhrmann and Wong Kar-Wai. Born in Tokyo in 1923, Suzuki served in Japan's…...

Film-maker who paired pop art visuals and yakuza hitmen in Tokyo Drifter leaves behind a singular, surreal body of work that gained international acclaim

Celebrated Japanese film director Seijun Suzuki, best known for cult 1960s yakuza films Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill, has died at the age of 93. Suzuki died on 13 February, with the cause given as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in a statement from Nikkatsu film studios.

Born in 1923, Suzuki served in Japan’s meteorological corps in the second world war, and then in 1948 joined the Shochiku studio as an assistant director. Despite spending his time there as “a melancholy drunk”, as he described it, he was hired by the newly reopened Nikkatsu in 1954, again as an assistant director. Two years later he graduated to the director’s chair with Victory Is Mine, a pop-song movie credited under his given name, Seitaro Suzuki.

Continue reading...

Japanese director Seijun Suzuki died Feb. 13 at a Tokyo hospital after a battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which affects the lungs. He was 93.

His death was announced by Nikkatsu, the studio that famously fired him in 1967 after 12 years and 40 films, for what is now seen as his masterpiece, Branded to Kill. The film was made in black and white as a punishment for his work on Tokyo Drifter — now also considered a classic — the year before. Both films were intended by Nikkatsu to be straightforward, B-movie yakuza gangster flicks, but Suzuki’s experimental style,...

To mark the release of Outlaw Gangster VIP: The Complete Collection on 18th April, we’ve been given 1 copy to give away on Blu-ray. In 1968, acclaimed director Toshio Masuda (Rusty Knife, Tora! Tora! Tora!) and rising star Tetsuya Watari (Tokyo Drifter) teamed up for Outlaw: Gangster VIP. The series offers up a depiction of

The post Win Outlaw Gangster VIP: The Complete Collection on Blu-ray appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.Chantal Akerman's Je tu il elle"She was a gay woman – proudly, unabashedly – who refused to be placed in either category, would not show her work in “gay” or “women’s” festivals, (“I won’t be ghettoized like that”) but never refused the ghetto of Judaism, and would always show in Jewish festivals. She was, it sometimes seemed, a Jew before she was anything, even before she was a person, and she was more of a person than anybody I’ve known."...from "Our Lives With (and Without) Chantal Akerman," by Henry Bean.Another Chantal Akerman tribute done proper: Janus Films is making its Akerman films—News from Home, La chambre, Je tu il elle, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Hotel Monterey, and Les rendez-vous d'Anna—available to stream for U.

By 1967 the dictatorial Nikkatsu studio president Kyusaku Hori had had enough. He approached filmmaking like an auditor going over a company’s finances, there were boxes to be ticked and conventions to be adhered to. His corporation was a factory, mass producing entertainment for the cheaply exploitable youth market. The constant spanner in Hori’s assembly line was Seijun Suzuki. Over the previous twelve years, he had directed thirty-nine films and in that time had developed a canon of hysterical, hallucinatory and heretical works. With each production, the insanity became more liberated, excessive and frenzied. He was the enfant terrible of Japanese cinema and Hori was done with his shit.

As a warning shot, Suzuki’s next film would be given only a shoestring budget with the cautionary note that he was ‘going too far’ and needed to ‘play it straight’. Suzuki responded with Branded to Kill, an expressionist fantasia...

There comes a point in each country’s film history when the filmmakers seem to collectively create a cultural and formal renaissance of film at the same time. Out comes a film movement that cinematically defines the country’s culture, and iconography emerges from those films that go on to influence future filmmakers. The Japanese New Wave was one such movement, and Seijun Suzuki was one of its most noted and iconic filmmakers.

Suzuki made a name for himself in how he rewrote the formulas of the gangster film in his work, and no film of his was more pioneering in his resistance to conformity or structure than Tokyo Drifter. Tokyo Drifter is all over the place, and I mean that as a compliment. It is absolutely nuts in the most captivating fashion.

Tokyo Drifter follows Tetsu, otherwise known as “Phoenix”, a reformed yakuza member in a group that has been disbanded.

There are always new corners of cinema history to explore, and one very much worth investigating is the '50s and '60s output of Nikkatsu. The popular Japanese studio unleashed a wave of genre films, many of which are still unknown on this side of the ocean —"Retaliation," which has just arrived for the first time on home video, is ripe for discovery. Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe ("Massacre Gun," "Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter") before he made his name as a sexploitation director, the film stars the great Jo Shishido ("Tokyo Drifter," "Branded to Kill"), Akira Kobayashi and Meiko Kaji. The gritty tale follows a yakuza lieutenant recently released from jail only to find his old boss dying and a rival who wants him dead. Things get up close and personal in this clip in which a knife fight gets bloody. "Retaliation" is on Blu-ray right now, but you better get on it fast.

Fandor, the premiere streaming service for independent, classic and critically-acclaimed films, shorts and documentaries, in a partnership with the Criterion Collection and Hulu Plus, is currently home to a rotation of uniquely curated bundles of Criterion films available to watch instantly via desktop, set top and mobile devices.

Every Tuesday, Fandor rolls out a new collection of films that share a common theme, genre, time period, film style, etc. These films are available on the site for 12 days before being replaced by a fresh new batch of featured Criterion masterpieces.

Fandor’S Criterion Picks For March

March 17-28: The Sixteenth Century

Carnival in Flanders(1935, Director Jacques Feyder): A small village in Flanders puts on a carnival to avoid the brutal consequences of the Spanish occupation. Ivan the Terrible(1944, DirectorSergei Eisenstein): As Ivan ascends to lead Russia, the Boyars are determined to disrupt his rule. Ivan’s relationship...

The Weekend Watch is an open thread where you can share what you’ve recently watched, offer suggestions on movies and TV shows we should check out (or warnings about stuff to avoid), and discover queue-filling goodies from other Fsr readers. The comments section awaits. I’ll get the ball rolling with the movies/TV my eyeballs took in this weekend. I’ve had the Criterion Blu of Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter on my shelf for over a year now, and I finally decided to open and watch it this weekend. The film follows a Yakuza tough guy left to the wind after his particular clan disbands. Rather than becoming a ronin-like tale though of a warrior without a master this particular enforcer is just looking to drift away into retirement. His fellow Yakuza have other plans though. The story is just engaging enough, but what makes the film a delight are the stylistic choices in...

Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2013—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2013 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.

How...

This week, Michael Bay did something that I thought was only possible if you were named Joel Schumacher: he apologized for a loud, bloated late-’90s summer stimulus-athon. In an interview with the Miami Herald promoting his Florida-set Pain & Gain, Bay said, “I will apologize for Armageddon, because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked ‘What do you do when you’re doing all the effects yourself?’ But the movie did fine.” It’s unclear exactly what Bay’s problem is with the third act of Armageddon that isn’t also characteristic of the film as...

Having showcased works by a number of lesser known directors - at least in this part of the world - it's time to break out the big guns at the Twitch curated Tokyo Drifters: 100 Years Of Nikkatsu screening series. Yep, it's time for some Seijun Suzuki, with a rare big screen showing of his classic Tokyo Drifter!The Nikkatsu brass imposed strict budget limitations on Tokyo Drifter as a means to curb director Seijun Suzuki's eccentric tendencies; instead, the renegade director employed his relative lack of resources to push his already bizarre aesthetic even further towards the avant-garde and surreal, creating a pop-art masterpiece that only got him in hotter water with his bosses. (Nikkatsu subsequently punished Suzuki by forcing him to shoot his next...

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Feature James Clayton Jan 11, 2013

With Gangster Squad out in UK cinemas, James assembles his own fantasy gang of movie mobsters...

Rat-a-tat-tat! Gangster Squad has hit town! This is great news for cinemagoers seeking sparks in the middle of grey, grim January. Slick mobster style! Machine gun-blastin’ action! Hollywood pizazz! Retro chic and period detail!

Gangster Squad also appeals with a stellar cast and the presence of Ruben Fleischer - an assured hand when it comes to directing high-octane entertainment - behind the camera. Nevertheless, the film has let me down slightly right from the start in that its title is misleading. “Gangster Squad” is not a ‘squad of gangsters’ but rather, less alluringly, ‘a police squad to tackle gangsters’.

The squad - Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Anthony Mackie, Michael Peña, Gio Ribisi and Robert Patrick - are indubitably a very cool bunch. Furthermore, watching the Lapd come down hard on...

The Masque of the Red Death

Written for the screen by Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell

Directed by Roger Corman

USA/UK, 1964

While the British Hammer studio mined European gothic staples in its horror cinema revolution, their American counterpart, albeit one less blood-soaked, could be found in a series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations directed by Roger Corman. The Masque of the Red Death is one such example, presenting Poe’s piece of the same name, while also incorporating other short stories as subplots. The content of those shorts doesn’t allow for the most elaborate story structure, but the narrative framework of the film, still perfectly decent and concise, matters little as this is a film chiefly about atmosphere and macabre visuals, the latter coming from future director Nicolas Roeg’s marvelous cinematography.

The film is set in this traditional gothic castle, acting as a fortress from the “red death” plague,...

Exciting news in the world of film for Montrealers as the two most exciting film festivals come together to present their first collaboration. The Fantasia International Film Festival and The Festival du Nouveau Cinéma will be presenting a much sought after retrospective on the 100 Years of the Nikkatsu production and distribution studio from Japan. Montreal joins New York, Paris, Tokyo and Hong-Kong as being among the few international cities able to host the event.

In part a response to the lingering budgetary cuts which have been hitting the film community hard, this is the first project meant to create a link between the previously independent festivals. They similarly wish to establish Montreal as being an international player in film, their combined efforts hopefully bringing more attention and notoriety to the local film community. Though currently, they have no future plans, the success of this event has huge potential for the city.

DVD Playhouse—February 2012

By Allen Gardner

To Kill A Mockingbird 50th Anniversary Edition (Universal) Robert Mulligan’s film of Harper Lee’s landmark novel pits a liberal-minded lawyer (Gregory Peck) against a small Southern town’s racism when defending a black man (Brock Peters) on trumped-up rape charges. One of the 1960s’ first landmark films, a truly stirring human drama that hits all the right notes and isn’t dated a bit. Robert Duvall makes his screen debut (sans dialogue) as the enigmatic Boo Radley. DVD and Blu-ray double edition. Bonuses: Two feature-length documentaries: Fearful Symmetry and A Conversation with Gregory Peck; Featurettes; Excerpts and film clips from Gregory Peck’s Oscar acceptance speech and AFI Lifetime Achievement Award; Commentary by Mulligan and producer Alan J. Pakula; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 2.0 mono.

Outrage: Way Of The Yakuza (Magnolia) After a brief hiatus from his signature oeuvre of Japanese gangster flicks,...

Tokyo Drifter defies expectations of the Japanese gangster film, but no just because of its prevalent use of music, but because its editing and structure make it absurdly difficult to follow the first time through. The narrative seems to jump indiscriminately halfway between one scene and the next and the viewer has to make an effort to connect the events as the film clips along. The story is certainly linear in its telling, but how it’s presented by Director Seijun Suzuki comes closer to a rock skipping over the surface of a pond with each jump a little shorter until it becomes a rapid series of small cuts and finally sinks into its ending. Luckily the story that the viewer pieces together, about a gang attempting to turn legitimate and leave their underhanded ways behind them with a real estate deal, affords them the chance to reconcile the film...

Branded to Kill Directed by Seijun Suzuki Written by Hachiro Guru Starring: Joe Shishido, Koji Nanbara, Isao Tamagawa Like 'Tokyo Drifter', Seijun Suzuki's 'Branded to Kill' is a strange, quirky, moody gangster picture that goes out of its way to poke holes in the tropes of this sub-genre while also indulging in some sixties pop cinema. While the film's characters and plot are sometimes tough to penetrate, Suzuki's sense of style and his gleeful mocking of genre conventions is the real draw here. The plot of 'Branded to Kill' is rooted in simple genre beats yet still comes across as characteristically over-complicated. To simplify; hitman Goro Handa and his wife Mami catch a taxi after arriving in Tokyo. The driver, Kasuga, is a former hitman and asks Goro to help him out on a job in order to break back into the business.

During an interview feature on the new Criterion Blu-ray of 1966’s Tokyo Drifter, assistant director Masami Kuzuu discusses some of his favorite visual motifs in the film, and debates their possible symbolic significance. The interview then cuts to Seijun Suzuki, director of Drifter, 1967’s Branded To Kill, and a number of other fever-dream confections. Suzuki dismisses the idea of symbolism entirely. What’s important to him, he says, is that the films are “interesting.” Any artistic statements of intent should be taken with a healthy amount of salt, especially coming from the elusively impressionistic Suzuki, but as an ...

Hideaki Nitani and Yujiro Ishihara

in Toshio Masuda's Red Handkerchief (1964)

Via Cinema Strikes Back

"Sad news the weekend for fans of Nikkatsu action films of the 1960s," writes Chris MaGee at J-Film Pow-Wow. "Actor Hideaki Nitani, best known for his supporting roles in such films as Underworld Beauty and Tokyo Drifter, died of pneumonia on Saturday, January 7th at a Tokyo hospital. He was 81…. In 1954 Nikkatsu had finally begun to produce films again after having temporarily shuttering itself during the post-war Us Occupation. Joining Nitani during this hiring blitz were stars like Akira Kobayashi, Yujiro Ishihara and Jo Shishido. Nitani made his screen debut in 1956 in Takumi Furukawa's The People of Okinawa. This would begin a string of roles, mostly as tough guys and gangsters, in the films of Seijun Suzuki, Yuzo Kawashima, Ko Nakahira, and Koreyoshi Kurahara, amongst others."

From the Mainichi Daily News: "Nitani shifted his...

0:00 - Intro 6:25 - Review: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn 42:45 - Review: War Horse 1:14:45 - Feature: Best and Worst of 2011 2:29:40 - Other Stuff We Watched: Warrior, Project Nim, Senna, A Christmas Carol, Tokyo Drifter, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Carnage, A Lonely Place to Die, Another Earth, Quatermass and the Pit, 1941, I Saw the Devil, Knuckle, Metal: Evolution, The League 3:18:45 - This Week's DVD Releases 3:20:35 - Outro

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Happy New Year, I hope your day is going better than mine as I am holed up watching football with a sinus infection, but there is still work to be done as I am putting together my top ten of 2011 for publishing this coming Tuesday. But this week was more about older films than newer ones as on top of the couple of films I mention below I also watched Criterion's Blu-ray editions of Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill and Traffic, all of which I will be discussing in full this coming week, but for now... Zodiac (2007) After watching Traffic I got an urge to pop in David Fincher's Zodiac and as I watched the opening scene I noticed something I hadn't ever before, or at least had never contemplated. When the first couple is shot, the girl appears to think she may actually know who the shooter may be.

Tokyo Drifter Directed by Seijun Suzuki Written by Kouhan Kawauchi Starring Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Tamio Kawaji Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter is a colourful, energetic blast of 1960's Japanese pop culture wrapped in a complicated, satirical take on the Yakuza gangster film. Packed with wild imagery and some amazing art design, Suzuki's unusual brand of crime film is more Warhol than Kurosawa and a definite treat for genre fans. The plot of Tokyo Drifter seems to be intentionally over-complicated, but let me try my best to summarize. Our hero, Tetsu Hondo, and his boss Kurata have given up the gangster life and gone straight. They're ex-Yakuza with an eye on opening a night club and making legit money. When a rival gang boss, Otsuka, fails to recruit Tetsu into his own club, he sends his men to rub him out. Kurata, a father figure to Tetsu, suggests he leaves town and become a drifter.

Leo Goldsmith introduces Late Hitchcock, a series running all week at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "The border between guilt and innocence is fuzzier than ever in this phase, as is the line that separates sex from violence. The formation of the couple, the overriding principle of Hitchcock's work from the very start of his career, is especially embattled throughout Hitchcock's later films, challenged in the most shocking fashion in Marnie's marital rape scene, all but totally ignored in smothering political endgames of Topaz, and brutally cut short through violent sex-murder in Frenzy." Not Coming will be presenting Marnie at 92Y Tribeca on Friday.

In other news. At Film Studies for Free, Catherine Grant alerts us to a new issue of Screening the Past, "Screen Attachments," edited by Catherine Fowler and Paola Voci: "The obvious highlight is a brilliant article by Francesco Casetti ["Cinema Lost and Found: Trajectories of Relocation"], but a quick glance at...

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It's the holidays so I'm going to continue featuring some deals you can get at Amazon right now as there are some really good ones either for yourself or as gifts for movie lovers among your family and friends. Deal Of The Week Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection [Blu-ray] only $39.99 Planet of the Apes Beneath the Planet of the Apes Escape From the Planet of the Apes Conquest of the Planet of the Apes Battle for the Planet of the Apes Blu-ray Deals The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (Extended Editions) ($49.99) Inception ($7.99) The Ultimate Matrix Collection ($32.99) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 ($9.99) The Dark Knight ($7.99) Batman Begins ($7.99) The Social Network ($11.99) Sherlock Holmes ($8.49) 300 ($10.49) Seven [Blu-ray Book] ($10.99) The Departed ($7.99) The Town (Two-Disc Extended Cut) ($9.99) DVD Deals It's a Wonderful Life (60th Anniversary Edition) ($10.49) The Wizard of Oz...

DVD Links: DVD News | Release Dates | New Dvds | Reviews | RSS Feed

It's the holidays so I'm going to continue featuring some deals you can get at Amazon right now as there are some really good ones either for yourself or as gifts for movie lovers among your family and friends. Deal Of The Week Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection [Blu-ray] only $39.99 Planet of the Apes Beneath the Planet of the Apes Escape From the Planet of the Apes Conquest of the Planet of the Apes Battle for the Planet of the Apes Blu-ray Deals The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (Extended Editions) ($49.99) Inception ($7.99) The Ultimate Matrix Collection ($32.99) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 ($9.99) The Dark Knight ($7.99) Batman Begins ($7.99) The Social Network ($11.99) Sherlock Holmes ($8.49) 300 ($10.49) Seven [Blu-ray Book] ($10.99) The Departed ($7.99) The Town (Two-Disc Extended Cut) ($9.99) DVD Deals It's a Wonderful Life (60th Anniversary Edition) ($10.49) The Wizard of Oz...

Directed by Takeshi Kitano

Featuring Beat Takeshi, Kippei Shiina, Soichiro Kitamura, Tetta Sugimoto, Renji Ishibashi, Jun Kunimura and Ryo Kase

Takeshi Kitano returns to his yakuza-themed roots with a rollicking, violent, entertaining black comedy about gangster family values.

Gangsters are, and always have been, part of international cinematic language. From The Public Enemy to The Departed, via the likes of Rififi, Tokyo Drifter, Foxy Brown, and Two Hands, audiences over the decades have engaged enthusiastically with criminal anti-heroes whose goals don’t get any more complicated than blowing each other up. Bloody, internecine warfare unleashed across a cityscape is guaranteed to fill seats. Kitano’s specific goal with Outrage was this brand of genre entertainment – he started the script process by outlining a series of violent kills, then figured out how to weave them into the plot – and from the start this is a tale of action, not redemption. Don’t expect any moral framework,...

Below you will find a list of movie that Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright has never seen. Not long ago Wright went out and asked his friends and fans to recommend some movies they thought he may have missed over the last thirty years of his life. He got recommendations from Quentin Tarantino, Daniel Waters, Bill Hader, John Landis, Guillermo Del Toro, Joe Dante, Judd Apatow, Joss Whedon, Greg Mottola, Schwartzman, Doug Benson, Rian Johnson, Larry Karaszeski, Josh Olson, Harry Knowles and hundreds of fans on this blog.

From these recommendations, Wright created a master list of recommended films that were frequently mentioned. The director now wants the fans to choose which of the films on the list he should watch on the big screen.

Wright is holding a film event at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles called Films Edgar Has Never Seen.

Edgar Wright's latest epic project [1] has him partnering with Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow, Joss Whedon, Bill Hader, Guillermo Del Toro, Joe Dante, Greg Mottola, Harry Knowles, Rian Johnson and, probably, several of you. Like all of us, Wright has a bunch of classic and cult films he's never seen. Unlike all of us, he has the means to see them for the first time on the big screen and will do just that in December [2] at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles during Films Edgar Has Never Seen. The director of Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World asked both his famous friends (some of which are listed above) and fans to send in their personal must see lists and, from those titles, Wright came up with one mega list from which he'll pick a few movies to watch December 9-16. After the jump check...

Velvet Bullets and Steel Kisses: Celebrating the Nikkatsu Centennial was a sidebar at this year's New York Film Festival that Dan Sallitt, writing a couple of weeks ago, found "so exciting that it threatens to overshadow the main slate: a retrospective of the Japanese studio Nikkatsu, whose opportunistic shifts of focus always seemed to open doors for some of Japan's most creative filmmakers. Compare film magazine Kinema Junpo's 1999 and 2009 lists of all-time greatest Japanese films to the Lincoln Center series schedule, and count the overlaps." Last year in the Notebook, Dan reviewed one of the 37 films in the series, Tomu Uchida's Earth (1939).

"The sidebar is peppered with nearly impossible to see rediscoveries," notes Steve Dollar at GreenCine Daily: "early silent films like 1927's A Diary of Chuji's Travels and harshly realistic World War II dramas like Mud and Soldiers. Shot on location in China in 1939, the latter film blends...