Museum Hours    

Running Time: 107 mins

Release Date: September 06^th, 2013 (UK)

Director: Jem Cohen

Writer: Jem Cohen

Starring: Mary Margaret O’Hara, Bobby Sommer, Ela Piplits, Marcus O’Hara

Regular readers (however few you are) will know that I work in an art gallery so it might not come as a surprise that I would be drawn to this title from New York based filmmaker Jem Cohen. Museum Hours is an Austrian-US co-production set in Vienna, Austria. It is less about the inner-workings of a museum (although the details caught are dead on in my experience) and more a naturalistic travelogue in Vienna all about art, people and observation punctuated with what I consider to be misjudged forays into some of the dull aspects of the city that exposes the weakness of slow cinema.

The story begins in Canada. A woman named Anne (Mary Margaret O-Hara) receives a call from a hospital in Vienna informing her that a cousin she hasn’t seen her in years is in a coma.

She heads to Austria but is immediately overwhelmed by the foreignness of it all. With little money and no sense of direction she wanders into and around Kunsthistorisches, an art history museum, struggling with a map and looking a bit confused. Getting to the hospital is going to be harder than she expected until she meets Johann (Bobby Sommer), a museum assistant who offers to be her guide.

With her cousin’s health in a precarious state, Anne can do nothing but wait for any sign of change and so she begins to while away the hours outside of her hotel, exploring Vienna and hanging out with Johann (Bobby Sommer) as the two talk about history, art and themselves.

Museum Hours is an unconventional romance and all about the art of observation and in a brilliant spin on things, Jem Cohen makes one of his protagonists a museum assistant, a profession where the observation and understanding of art and people is key to doing a good job.

A glib comparison to make might be with Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), a film that also took two different people, an American man and a French woman, and let them wander around Vienna together without forcing an elaborate plot on them. Here, the characters are different.

Anne and Johann are not young adventurers but two experienced souls who don’t realise how lonely they are.

Anne’s personal links are few and far between as her family has split apart and she survives on a few part-time jobs and the charity of a few friends. Whatever dreams she had are in the past and she is coasting along primarily alone. The news of her cousin’s dilemma seems to sharpen that loneliness and in a fit of familial loyalty she heads to a foreign land to visit her cousin with a few euros in her pocket and even less memories of times spent with her cousin.

Johann has led a varied and interesting life having experienced radical politics and various jobs that reveal he is a people person which is why he is a good fit for museum assistant. Unfortunately it seems that he has lost his joie de vivre as it is revealed that he spends more time in a dull, enervating routine of working and then retiring to his apartment alone, playing online poker.
The two are isolated without realising it. When they meet, Johann feels compelled to help Anne and from there they grow to realise how alone they are. It’s a naturalistic meet-cute as they stumble into each other at the museum. Anne being lost and Johann being a museum assistant, he has an opening to get to know her. His profession means getting a glimpse of a person’s life and the two find a spark with each other, their loneliness making them cross a line and take a chance most would never do.

It does not feel false in the least and the two feel like a good fit, maybe soul mates. Over the course of the film various romantic avenues are opened and closed but despite whatever lifestyle differences they might have the two open up and reveal more like intimate lovers who make each other see the world anew through their presence and opinions. At first they are hesitant and they offer nothing but terse dialogue to each other but their growing closeness becomes infectious as we listen in on their increasingly jokey and warm dialogue while witnessing the personal tours they take and observations they make.

Like a good museum assistant, Cohen knows how to pick out the details that aren’t so obvious.

This is slow cinema at its best in the sense that while it is minimalist and not much happens in so many long takes, this allows the audience to take in all of the details like a person would when looking at a painting in a quiet gallery.

The film proceeds at the slow pace of a museum visitor taking their time, the camera sliding along ancient artefacts and using close-ups to get details in paintings. It spares a quick glance to Johann and the other museum assistants and visitors, aware of their presence, before slipping back into observing the art and visitors. Amidst all of the history and splendour emerges the sense of the fleetingness of time, that Anne and Johann are playing a familiar game and best make the most of their time together.

Slow cinema is a double-edged sword, however. When there is something interesting to look at or listen to, then it is engaging but there are moments when the film grinds to a halt.

There are too many sequences where the camera records non-descript buildings or long drawn-out shots of traffic and public transport and many anonymous urban spaces and filthy flea-markets and skate parks. It was at points like these where the film felt interminable and I lost interest. It reminded me of how much I dislike slow cinema when it is done wrong. It is meant to serve the wider theme of the film, it’s interest in people, all part of picking out the details of Vienna in a similar way that Johann’s favourite artist Bruegel the Elder might. The interest in the earthy parts of Vienna just did not translate for me. Alas, I found that there’s nothing vaguely interesting these mundane places where nothing much happens and the analogy with Bruegel’s art and Cohen’s film falls flat.

Cohen is better with Anne and Johann. He has an intense interest in the two characters and there is a tenderness in the way he records them with long takes of the two together, smiling and laughing in each other’s company. Indeed, the film works better when his interest is focussed on the people and art in the museum. His observations on the guests in the museum, the way people look at things and the way that they act is fascinating. Couples hold hands, teens smirk at or are drawn to naked bodies people with audio guides are lost in a world of their own and when the focus is on them it is interesting.

There is the gem of a good idea to the film, an unconventional romance between Anne and Johann, but when the film deviates from them, and it does so too often, it slows down into a dull trudge through the slush filled back streets of Vienna in what amounts to a boring travelogue about the boring bits of the town. These moments are slow cinema at its slowest and least visually impressive and I yearned for a return to the museum. Those moments, the ones that expose humanity and I enjoyed the most.

3/5

I saw this on the Filmhouse Player a day after watching Rent-a-Cat, a film I’d recommend more.

Mary Margaret O’Hara is a singer-songwriter and a few of her videos are online:

The summer is here and I’m feeling a little drained of energy. I’m trying to remember how I coped with all of these previews last year… Wow, this time last year there was that awesome weekend with great films. This weekend? Not so much greatness at first glance apart from the Lupin the III.

It was a movie-rich week because I watched the J-horrors Fuan no Tane, POV: A Cursed Movie and the UK vampire flick Byzantium. I also watched Oculus which was a fun horror movie starring Karen Gillan who I almost met at the Doctor Who premiere four years ago. Expect reviews for the Japanese films.

As far as the blog goes, I reviewed Be My Baby and Museum Hours. Apologies for the brevity of the trailer posts (although I bet some are breathing a sigh of relief).

Fukushima (Town of Love and Hope)   

Japanese Title:あいときぼうのまち

Romaji: Ai to Kibou no Machi

Running Time: 126 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Hiroshi Kanno

Writer: Junichi Inoue (Screenplay),

Starring: Yoko Natsuki, Hiroshi Katsuno, Kohei Kuroda, Yoko Oike, Miku Chiba, Nao Seta, Yusuke Sugiyama

In 1945, a student named Hideo has been mobilized by the government to work at a uranium mine in Ishikawa, Fukushima Prefecture during World War II.

In 1966, Hideo lives in Futaba in Fukushima Prefecture and opposes the building of a nuclear power plant. His position alienated him from everybody else including his daughter Aiko who was in love with Kenji, a supporter of the nuclear power plant.

In 2011, Kenji and his son both work for the Tokyo Electronic company, but his son dies of cancer. Kenji meets Aiko again.

On March 11, 2011 the Great East Japan Earthquake occurs.

Website

Saint Seiya Legend of Sanctuary   

Japanese Title:聖闘士星矢 LEGEND of SANCTUARY

Romaji: Seitoushi Seiya Legend of Sanctuary

Running Time: 93 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Keiichi Satou

Writer: Tomohiro Suzuki (Screenplay), Masami Kuramada (Original Creator)

Starring: Ayaka Sasaki (Saori Kido/Athena), Kaito Ishikawa (Pegasus Seiya), Daisuke Namikawa (Aquarius Camus), Kenji Akabane Dragon Shiryu), Kensho Ono (Cygnus Hyoga),

This film adapts the popular Saint Seiya manga which was published in the 80’s. It focusses on Sanctuary arc from Masami Kuramada’s manga and is directed by Keiichi Satou (Tiger & Bunny TV anime, Ashura). The story starts with Saori, a girl with a mysterious power who finds out that she’s the reincarnation of the goddess Athena and she gets saved from an assassin by Pegasus Seiya who tells her all of the details about her destiny which involves heading to Sanctuary and waging a war against its Pope. To do this, she needs Seiya and his fellow Bronze Saints to battle twelve Gold Saints.

Website

Lupin the IIIrd: Daisuke Jigen’s Gravestone   

Japanese Title: LUPIN THE IIIRD 次元大介の墓標

Romaji: Lupin the Third: Jigen Daisuke no Bohyou

Running Time: 51 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Takeshi Koike

Writer: Yuuya Takahashi (Screenplay), Monkey Punch (Original Creator),

Starring: Daisuke Jigen (Kiyoshi Kobayashi), Arsene Lupin III (Kanichi Kurit), Miyuki Sawashiro (Fujiko Mine), Kouichi Yamadera (Koichi Zenigata)

Lupin fans get ready for more cat-burglary shenanigans as he’s back in a spinoff from the 2012 TV anime Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. Instead of focussing on Fujiko, this tells the story of Jigen and how he became friends with Lupin. The film is directed by Takeshi Koike (Redline).

Lupin and Jigen infiltrate East Doroa to steal a secret treasure called Little Comet. Queen Malta, a singer from East Doroa, was just assassinated in neighbouring West Doroa, resulting in a tense situation at the border. Despite the chaos the duo successfully steal the Little Comet, but a sniper tries to shoot Jigen during their getaway. The sniper is Yael Okuzaki, an assassin who prepares graves for his targets before executing his kills. It is said that no one has survived after Yael Okuzaki makes a grave for that target.

Website

Super High Speed! Alternate Attendance   

International Title: Mission Impossible Samurai

Japanese Title:超高速！参勤交代

Romaji: Chokosoku ! Sankin kotai

Running Time: 119 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Katsuhide Motoki

Writer: Akihiro Dobashi (Screenplay),

Starring: Kuranosuke Sasaki, Kyoko Fukada, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Masahiko Nishimura, Takanori Jinnai, Yasufumi Terawaki, Seiji Rokkaku,

 The Yunagaya Domain in the Tohoku region is small but it has a goldmine that some in the Shogun’s government want. Masaatsu Naito is ordered to perform Sankin-kotai which means that the daimyo visits the shogun in Edo. Unfortunately the cost is high and the time limit of 8 days is short. Could this be a plot to steal the gold mine? Masaatsu has to get the Sankin-kotai done!

Website

The Round Table    

Japanese Title: 円卓　こっこ、ひと夏のイマジン

Romaji: Entaku

Running Time: 113 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Isao Yukisada

Writer: Chihiro Ito (Screenplay), Kanako Nishi (Novel),

Starring: Mana Ashida, Ryuhei Maruyama, Misato Aoyama, Jingi Irie, Norito Yashima, Ayumi Ishida, Mikijiro Hira

Kokko (Ashida) has a loving family yet is dissatisfied with life and admires loneliness…

Website

Aibiki   

Japanese Title:逢いびき

Romaji: Aibiki

Running Time: 83 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Yukinari Hanawa

Writer: N/A (Screenplay),

Starring: Junko Maru, Shinsuki Akagi, Akane Yurika,

Yokohama is the location of a love affair between  freelance photographer named Tadashi (Akagi) and Yuko (Maru), a part-timer at a design company. Their boredom with family life propels them into each other’s arms but will their passion bring disaster?

Website

Uwakoi 2    

Japanese Title:うわこい 2

Romaji: Uwakoi 2

Running Time: 106 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Hitoshi Ishikawa

Writer:  Hitoshi Ishikawa, Chihiro Nakamura, Norihisa Yoshimura (Screenplay), Masahiro Itosugi (Original Manga)

Starring: Yurina Yanagi, Tomoyuki Ishida, Nami Motoyama

This is the second part of a trilogy which adapts an ecchi manga.

In the first film, Yukiteru (Ishida) burns his house down and he has to move into the house of his friend Yuno (Yanagi). As they have grew up they became known as a couple but a transfer student in Yuno’s class, Rena (Motoyama), became interested in Yukiteru and the two become intimate… And yet Yukiteru goes back to Yuno but cannot forget Rena and when the three are in the same room during a birthday party, sparks fly…

Website

Chichi no Kokoro   

Japanese Title:父のこころ

Romaji: Chichi no Kokoro

Running Time: 89 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Masaaki Taniguchi

Writer:  Masaaki Taniguchi, Toshiharu Hamamoto (Screenplay),

Starring: Masaji Otsuka, Airi Kaminishi, Takako Hinago, Miki Meiki,

Masaaki Taniguchi director of Signal and The Girl Who Leapt through Time casts the folk singer Masaji Otsuka in his first film at the age of 63. Otsuka portrays a man who flew the coop and left his family after getting fired from his job. She had to support her two children alone. The son, Kenichi, discovers his father and wants to bring him back because his sister Emi is getting married. It will be a surprise. Mother is not pleased.

Website

China / Japan My Country   

Japanese Title:中国・日本　わたしの国

Romaji: Chuugoku / Nihon Watashi no Kuni

Running Time: 108 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: N/A

Writer:  N/A

Starring: Shizuka Yamada

The documentary looks at kids of Japanese fathers and Chinese mothers who were left behind during the post-war period through the story of Shizuka Yamada who was raised in China and moved to Japan.

Website

Nothing Parts 71   

Japanese Title: Nothing Parts 71

Romaji: Nothing Parts 71

Running Time: 123 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Sento Takenori

Writer:  Sento Takenori, Yuki Yamada (Screenplay),

Starring: Shinichi Tsuha, Shoichi Yamada, Akira Nakao, Joe Torreson, Tomoji Yamashiro

Sento Takenori, producer of Eureka, makes his directorial debut with this film set in Okinawa. A teacher named Tomokazu gets sent to prison after a confrontation with an American soldier results in death. When he gets out, he is plagued by trauma and takes a job recovering war dead. He soon makes friends with a man named Shinji who also joins him in the job (after almost running Tomokazu over).

A Voyage of Bun-you: Vietnam and Okinawa  

Japanese Title:石川文洋を旅する

Romaji: Ishikawa Bun’yo wo Tabi suru

Running Time: 109 mins

Release Date: June 21^st, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Koichi Omiya

Writer:  N/A

Starring: Ishikawa Bunyo

Ishikawa Bunyo is a famous reporter who was stations in Saigon during the Vietnam war and stayed there in the aftermath, photographing battles and the transition to modern Vietnam. He has also documented the presence of US bases in Okinawa. This documentary looks at his work.

Website

Today is the day that Third Window Films release “Pluto”, an award-winning dark thriller that looks at the pressures facing kids in the South Korean school system. Here are the details:

Pluto

A film by Shin Su-won (Passerby #3)

Korea / 2012 / 107 Mins / In Korean with English subtitles / Colour

Starring: Kim Kkobbi (Breathless, King of Pigs, Greatful Dead)

Lee Da-wit (Poetry, War of the Arrows)

Sung Joon (Horror Stories II) 

On DVD & BLU-RAY June 23rd, 2014 

DVD/BLU-RAY Special Features: Director’s Cut, Interviews with director Shin Su-won and actress Kim Kkobbi, Trailer

Synopsis

Pluto is a story of the extremes elite high school seniors are prepared to go to guarantee entry into prestigious universities, and asks what could possibly turn an innocent boy into a monster.
June, a transfer student into an elite school, is driven to despair by the year’s first examination results. One day he discovers that a mysterious clique of fellow students are sharing secret notebooks, which contain important exam information. In order to get his hands on the notebooks he begs the members of the secret circle to include him. They task him with a series of missions to earn them, turning June into a monster in the process.

Winner: Crystal Bear – Special Mention – 63^rd Berlin Film Festival

“Consistently entertaining, captivatingly unhinged and expertly paced”
– Rob Dickie, Sound on Sight

“A tour-de-force…PLUTO signals the arrival of a brilliant new talent”
– Pierce Conran, Twitch

“One of the most hard-hitting Korean indies of the year”
– James Mudge, Beyond Hollywood

DIRECTOR BIOGRAHY

Director SHIN Su-won was born in 1967 in Korea. She graduated Seoul National University and started her career as a teacher in the middle school. During her teaching career she wrote and published two novels focused on teens’ lives. Finishing her 10 years career as a teacher, she entered Korea National University of Arts and studied scriptwriting. After graduating KNUA she started her career as a filmmaker.

Ping Pong   

Staff: 

Director: Masaaki Yuasa, Original Creator: Taiyo Matsumoto, Character Design: Nobutake Ito,

Voice Actors:

Fukujuro Katayama as Yutaka “Peco” Hoshino, Kouki Uchiyama as Makoto “Smile” Tsukimoto, Masako Nozawa as Obaba, Shunsuke Sakuya as Ryuuichi “Dragon” Kazama, Subaru Kimura as Manabu “Demon” Sakuma, Yosei Bun as Kong “China” Wenga, Yuusaku Yara as Jo Koizumi

Studio: Tatsunoko Production

Premiere Date: Spring 2014

Website

This is one of my rambly reviews with spoilers. Please watch this anime.

Ping Pong: The Animation is one of my favourite anime of the year.

It’s based on a manga by the influential and much-respected Taiyou Matsumoto (writer of Tekkonkinkreet) and it was adapted into a live-action film starring Arata, which is how I first encountered the story when it was screened on BBC Four back in the early 2000’s.

I loved it and bought the DVD. I never expected it to get an anime adaptation courtesy of a commission from Noitamina, but it did and they gathered together a talented team led by a very interesting director named Masaaki Yuasa, famous for the unconventional Mind Game and The Tatami Galaxy, two other anime with unique animation and designs, and lots of critical cache. Hopefully, Ping Pong: The Animation will join them to be remembered by more than just anime fans but also by people with a love for a good story.

Blood Tastes Like Iron

Ostensibly, Ping Pong: The Animation is a sports anime. The plot is simple and could be applied to any title from the genre – a group of characters find their fates connected through a sport and battle each other to be the best in a tournament!

That’s only a frame to hang a beautiful portrait of what it means to be human. The focus on characters, fleshed out so wonderfully by the writing, is what makes the show fun. The characterisation slowly evolves over the 11 episodes as we see main characters, childhood friends Peco and Smile battle rivals like an ace from China called Kong, and Japanese champ Dragon.

Starting with various levels and skills, they are all playing for different reasons such as love of the sport, friendship, financial gain, and family expectation. Unfortunately, along the way, they have lost sight of what made them love ping-pong for various reasons but through the sport and the challenge of rivals, they rediscover their joie de vivre and passion to live that defined their innocent childhood years when the sport was still new and playing it and making friends through it meant everything to them. By the end, everybody has grown into a better person.

It unfolds over the course of a year and a bit, and it advances through a lot of matches, training sessions, and flashbacks. Throughout the story there are many small scenes that show character development in a piecemeal fashion, a player accepting help from others, offering thanks and advice to people they had a problem with, and a smile emerging from a good match. Some anime take 24 episodes and throw lots of action scenes and melodramatic dialogue at you to make you realise this but Ping Pong takes 11 episodes. Some anime need a whole episode to make a viewer emotional, Ping Pong litters every episode with scenes that are a few minutes or less that will reveal a whole emotional galaxy and tug at a viewer’s heart-strings.

Anchoring the story is the friendship between Peco and Smile, both naturally (and insanely) talented but coasting on their skills and so never really challenging themselves. Peco is resting on his laurels, having demolished all challengers, and so he spends time playing small fry until he gets humiliated by a rival and this shatters his world. His arc is all about finding his passion again and his redemption. Smile doesn’t have the drive to become a champ and is only in it for Peco’s friendship. Through flashbacks, we see how much his friendship with Peco means and it culminates in the last episode in one of the best sequences in recent anime where the dramatic match is replaced by this sequence which had me emotional (I bet there are a few people rolling their eyes at this because I get emotional a lot during films but this one sequence got me!).

Keep your eyes open for that victory photo where Smile, who is called a robot by his detractors and never smiles, has the biggest smile on his face as his ‘Hero’ returns.

Kong has travelled from China after being kicked out of his home league and exiled to a foreign team. He is in Japan to take up a post as a star to help a poor team improve their game. When we first meet him, he is a superior player and he shows disdain for his new Japanese colleagues, his mind constantly on beating his foes so he can earn a ticket back to China. He plays up his iron-man persona by refusing to play others and humiliating those who do step up. Scenes of him stoically leaving China and his mother behind are repeated and extended to reveal him crying as he goes through tough emotional times. Watching him lose and then come to terms with his position resulted in a wonderful character arc where he goes from indifference to his team to sharing Christmas with his mother and teammates and ends up becoming more Japanese than just by singing karaoke.

It’s a show more about the bigger existential questions surrounding the players such as how the pain of being talented or mediocre can affect a person, how working hard to be the best and maintaining that position can build a cage due to the crushing fear of failure or the expectations of others that traps people and how overcoming obstacles, living up to talent and shining on court can shape a person’s life and friendships.

Each character struggles to figure out what they are playing for, what they are living for and they are forced to grow and adapt. They realise that life is bigger than what they first thought and there are many paths to happiness, they just need to break out of the cages and realise what makes them happy and work for it.

The sport is thrilling stuff to watch and there’s lots of technical details but it’s mostly about these character developments, what with its fast pace and extreme turn-around and drama. Masaaki Yuasa’s style is perfect for the anime adaptation – okay, maybe the character designs he favours are a little less nice to look at than the manga’s but that’s a minor point. He’s perfect because he is willing to be unconventional and throw wild techniques at the screen and he is willing to blend the fantastical with the ordinary through his unique direction. Characters turn into robots, monsters heroes at the ping pong table and it never seems forced or odd. It makes beautiful sense and brings life to the anime.

Yuasa’s style is all dynamic action that sees the animation made exciting through his directing. It’s clear that the show has a low-budget since the animation lacks the beauty and fluidity of bigger titles but one forgets that in moments when the camera angles and the screen can be split between a dozen different perspectives in rapid succession or the way match-cuts can link intense sporting scenes together with human drama.

He can make a second between a serve and a crushing return that will decide the fate of a game stretch to three minutes of existential conversation when a character finds the strength to transcend their circumstances through some epiphany brought to them by playing the game.

The direction gets across the insane reflexes and reactions of the players and the stakes that they pin on their matches. As much as it’s about playing a game and the skill involved, it’s about people, how they come to understand their connections with each other and those around them. How they embrace their dreams and ultimately find fulfilment. Not just the competitors but the spectators as well. That’s why there are so many cuts to reaction shots from all and sundry, so many internal monologues, and so many matches which can be cut short by a scene change to the aftermath.

There are moments like a ping-pong ball zooming across a table that are match cut with another flying object like an aeroplane. None of these techniques break the action but heighten it as people respond to an awesome ping-pong game or discover some important personal truth.

I saw so much that I found to be true that watching Ping Pong has been a lot of fun and made so many connections with me. Visually fun, musically it’s on point, too as the soundtrack, from the brilliant opening theme all the way to the end theme, is synched to heighten emotions.

This is what Noitamina is meant to promote. The sort of works that may not be commercial hits but provide the sort of intellectual and soulful content that anime can achieve if only it left moe an ecchi shows behind. This is something that speaks to higher artistic ideals and humanity. Ping Pong is ultimately about life, all of the experiences we accrue, the wins, the failures, and the joy and fantasies, the friendships and the rivalries and the memories. The anime shows how these things matter to people. It’s the way that we prove that we’re alive.

5/5

Here’s a Tumblr dedicated to Taiyo Matsumoto.

OP:

ED:

Ah, I was very emotional on Wednesday. Since I had the day off work I went to see Belle in a cinema and I was bowled over by the film, the way it merged the issues of slavery together with a well-mounted costume drama and romance. It was a reminder that British film can hit so many right notes and so I will review it – it has been a few years since I have reviewed a British film here.

A few hours after that I completed Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and the ending bowled me over. If it could have ended with Zack and Cloud fleeing Shinra manor and riding off into the sunset with Aerith, I would have been happy but then there would be no Final Fantasy VII. Ah, there was that last set of battles and the way the digital mind wave was breaking down and the memories played… Then the final cut scenes… Tear fuel.

I don’t really have the time to play video games on home consoles but I do with my handheld consoles which I take on my daily commute to work or switch on if I wake up early in the morning. Next up is The 3rd Birthday, although I may want to try something funnier like Disgaea.

I did have a lot of time to watch films and so I watched the Korean con-artist thriller The Thieves (2012) and the Hong Kong film Unbeatable (2013), which was silly in parts but amusing and well-shot and had some great action. For some odd reason, took the best film award at the Terracotta Far East Film Festival. I also saw Godzilla (finally) and Edge of Tomorrow (lots of fun!) on Thursday at my favourite cinema.

In terms of blogging, I posted about the release of the South Korean classroom thriller Pluto via Third Window Films and I posted a season review for Ping Pong: The Animation, the first brilliant anime of 2014!

What’s released in Tokyo cinemas this weekend?

The World of Kanako   

Japanese Title:渇き

Romaji: Kawaki

Running Time: 113 mins

Release Date: June 27^th, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Tetsuya Nakashima

Writer: Tetsuya Nakashima (Screenplay), Akio Fukamachi (Novel),

Starring: Koji Yakusho, Nana Komatsu, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Joe Odagiri, Fumi Nikaido, Ai Hashimoto, Miki Nakatani, Jun Kunimura, Asuka Kurosawa,

When the trailer for this title was released, the internet went wild. By the internet I mean Asian cinema bloggers like Nihon Eiga, Okawa Shintaro, and me. There were probably more but those were the guys I was reblogging and retweeting from. There’s a reason for the hype-train picking up speed.

The guy in the director’s chair is Tetsuya Nakashima who was the director of school-drama Confessions.

The film stars awesome actors:

Koji Yakusho (Cure, The Woodsman & the Rain, Shall we Dance?)

Satoshi Tsumabuk (Judge!, For Love’s Sake)

Fumi Nikaido (Himizu, Why Don’t You Play in Hell?)

Ai Hashimoto (The Kirishima Thing, Another)

Miki Nakatani (Loft, Ringu 2)

Asuka Kurosawa (A Snake of June, Cold Fish)

Jun Kunimura (Vital, Outrage)

Joe Odagiri (Bright Future, The Great Passage)

I mean, whoa! Look at that talent!

The trailer also looks awesome, so action packed, colourful and exciting. It’s also very, very spoilery so I have only watched it twice since it premiered on the internet and haven’t been back since. I’m also keeping the plot synopsis vague to avoid giving anything away.

This is getting a release in the west thanks to Third Window Films!

All aboard the hype train!

Ex-detective Showa Fujishima (Yakusho) investigates the disappearance of his daughter Kanako (Komatsu), a girl who seemed to be a model student. What he finds leads him into a disturbing situation…

Website

Me & 23 Slaves   

Japanese Title: 奴隷区　僕と23人の奴隷

Romaji: Doreiku: Boku to 23 nin no Dorei

Running Time: 100 mins

Release Date: June 28^th, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Sakichi Sato

Writer: Sakichi Sato (Screenplay), Shinichi Okada (Novel),

Starring: Sayaka Akimoto, Kanata Hongo, Hikaru OSawa, Yuki Kubota, Miyuki Torii, Yuki Yamada,

24 people are engaged in a death game. Kanata Hongo (Gantz) and Sayaka Akimoto (AKB48) take the lead in the live-action adaptation of a manga/light novel.

Website

The Hole of a Woman  

Japanese Title:女の穴

Romaji: Onna no Ana

Running Time: 95 mins

Release Date: June 28^th, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Kota Yoshida

Writer: Kota Yoshida (Screenplay), Fumiko Fumi (Manga),

Starring: Yumi Ishikawa, Naoho Ichihashi, Yukichi Kobayashi, Toshiya Sakai, Keito Aoki

High school student Sachiko Suzuki (Ichihashi) claims to be an alien whose mission on Earth is to conceive a child with a man and so she seduces her teacher Mr. Fukuda (Kobayashi). After their encounter, Fukuda becomes convinced that Sachiko really isn’t human…

Another student, Kobato Hagimoto (Ishikawa) finds out that Mr. Murata (Sakai) likes high school boys and so she blackmails and abuses Murata…

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A Peephole   

Japanese Title:ノ・ゾ・キ・ア・ナ

Romaji: Nozoki no Ana

Running Time: 120 mins

Release Date: June 28^th, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Ataru Ueda

Writer: Manabu Fujita (Screenplay), Wakou Honna (Manga),

Starring: Chocolat Ikeda, Atsumi Kanno, Beni Ito, Su Suzuki, Ayumi Nijima,

Eeeh, based on some 13 volume hentai manga which has sold 300 million copies, this is a movie where a guy spies on a girl who spies on him through a peephole. The erotic implications are manifold which is probably why an anime was made.

My favourite peephole story is a Junji Ito one where a girl moves into a dirt cheap apartment after an irritating neighbour flees it. Why did he flee it? Could it be connected to the three silent women of different heights who always wear hats, sunglasses and trench coats regardless of the weather?

Tatsuhiko (Kanno) has moved from the country to Tokyo to study at a vocational school. He finds a peephole on the wall of his apartment and informs his neighbour Emiru (Ikeda). She proceeds to blow his mind by suggesting that they reveal themselves through the peephole and the two enter each other’s private lives through the hole… They both fall in love through this act of voyeurism.

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Blue Ray   

Japanese Title: 青の光線

Romaji: Ao no Kousen

Release Date: June 28th, 2014

Running Time: 70 mins.

Director: Takashi Nishihara

Writer: Takashi Nishihara (Screenplay)

Starring: Ryu Morioka, Mei Kurokawa, Asuka Morino, Tokio Emoto

Ryu Morioka is a Japanese actor and director who has appeared in films like Mitsuko Delivers, The Tale of Iya and The Great Passage. He takes the lead alongside Mei Kurokawa who starred in The Story of Yonosuke and will soon be seen in Fuku-chan of FukuFuku Flats. They play Sanji and Yoko, two people with difficult circumstances. Sanji lives with his mother and has lost a son. Yoko has a hikikomori for a sister. They meet by chance and through each other, they feel hope for the future.

Website

Gaki☆Rock   

Japanese Title: ガキ☆ロック

Romaji: Gaki☆Rokku

Release Date: June 28th, 2014

Running Time: 90 mins.

Director: Yuuji Nakamae

Writer: Kouki Yamamoto (Screenplay), Daiju Yanauchi (Original Work)

Starring: Taiko Katoono (Gen Shimura), Kouki Maeda (Makoto), Yosuke Kawamura (Jimmy), Ryouji Nakamura (Mattsun),

This is the live-action adaptation of Daiju Yanauchi’s manga and the film’s story sounds like some ludicrous male fantasy.

Gen is a Asakusa lad who, with his friends Makoto, Jimmy, and Mattsun,  helps out at his family’s strip club which operates under the name “England Theater” . One night, Gen is told by his father to pick up a woman at the train station. He finds a beautiful woman named Chōcho (lit. butterfly) waiting for him, and falls in love with her at first sight. Not only is she beautiful, she is the #1 strip girl in Osaka, and she’ll be living in “England Theater”. Alas, the poor girl is sad because she sees the happiness of Gen’s family and misses the feeling not least because her brother is missing. Turns out he is a yakuza and this is revealed when Gen saves him from a beating from a rival gang. Can Gen win Chocho’s favour by saving her brother and revealing his feelings to her?

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Ghost in the Shell ARISE border: 3 Ghost Tears  

Japanese Title: 攻殻機動隊

Romaji: Kōkaku Kidōtai

Release Date: June 28th, 2014

Running Time: 59 mins.

Director: Kazuchika Kise

Writer: Tow Ubukata (Screenplay), Masamune Shirow (Original Work)

Starring: Maaya Sakamoto (Motoko Kusanagi), Kenichirou Matsuda (Batou), Tarusuke Shingaki (Togusa), Ai Kayano (Emma), Ikkyuu Juku (Daisuke Aramaki),

The third episode of the GitS reboot sees a contract killer fall in love with his target, a cyborg while the Section 9 team assemble to deal with a terrorist bombing at a dam and a secretive “ultra-wizard-level hacker” known only as Fire Starter. The bombing may be linked to “Scylla,” the hero of the Carudisu War of Independence in the Republic of Kuzan.

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Hana no Okudo e   

Japanese Title: 花の億土へ

Romaji: Hana no Okudo e

Release Date: June 28th, 2014

Running Time: 113 mins.

Director: N/A

Writer: N/A

Starring: Michiko Ishimura

Michiko Ishimura is a poet/writer who suffers from Parkinson’s disease. She has won awards for publicising Minamata disease, a neurological syndrome caused by mercury poisoning which results in the loss of control in muscles. This film is about her and her work.

Website

Taiyou Kara Purancha   

Japanese Title: 太陽からプランチャ 

Romaji: Taiyou Kara Purancha

Release Date: June 28th, 2014

Running Time: 96 mins.

Director: Shoji Kubota

Writer: Shoji Kubota (Screenplay)

Starring: Ryoma Baba, Shiro Arai, Saree, Tsukasa Fujimoto, Masahiro Kuranuki, Kota Kusano, Hikaru Shida, Anna Tachibana,

Shoji Kubota has a lot of films to his name but little exposure in the west. His latest film is about a photographer who finds inspiration in getting to know and photographing some women who want to be wrestlers. In getting to know female pro-wrestling, he gets to understand a little about himself.

Website

Shōwa Gokudō Kai Ibun Jingaira Jin ga Inu Nishi   

Japanese Title: 昭和極道怪異聞ジンガイラ　仁我狗螺

Romaji: Shōwa Gokudō Kai Ibun Jingaira Jin ga Inu Nishi

Release Date: June 28th, 2014

Running Time: 80 mins.

Director: Keiji Kondo

Writer: Keiji Kondo (Screenplay)

Starring: Soji Masaki, Go Ibusuki, Aya Mizusawa, Katsumi Yamato

In what could be the greatest film ever known to man, gangsters, zombies and magic users clash in a dense forest! Actually, this reminds me of Versus.

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Sugisawa Mura Toshi Densetsu Gekijouban   

Japanese Title: 杉沢村都市伝説　劇場版

Romaji: Sugisawa Mura Toshi Densetsu Gekijouban

Release Date: June 28th, 2014

Running Time: N/A

Director: Torii Yasutake

Writer: Torii Yasutake (Screenplay)

Starring: Ito Nene, Soejim Shingo, Akitoshi Otaki

Nogizaki 46 x Horror movies… This is the third of a string of horror movies featuring the girls from the idol group Nogizaki 46. A woman heads to Aomori Prefecture to search for Sugisawa Village, a dark legend that she intends to prove is real by uploading a video to the internet. Bad things happen.

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Ju-on: The Beginning of the End   

Japanese Title:  呪怨―終わり　の　始まり

Romaji: Juon – Owari no Hajimari

Running Time: 91 mins.

Director: Masayuki Ochiai

Writer: Masayuki Ochiai (Screenplay)

Starring: Nozomi Sasaki, Kai Kobayashi Sho Aoyagi,  Miho Kanazawa, Haruo Takahashi,

Masayuki Ochiai, director of “Infection” takes on the Ju-On franchise in this decent looking attempt. I’m a big fan of the series and I expect this to be decent. Warning, lots of cute screaming girls in this trailer. LOL at the guy at 20 with his girlfriend. When the girls shriek, he just raises his eyebrows and smiles.

The story follows Yui (Nozomi Sasaki, lead actress in “Afro-Tanaka”), an elementary school teacher who visits the house of one of her students, Toshio Saeki, who has refused to go to school. As usually happens in the “Ju-On” series, she gets cursed and mysterious things start happening around her. She slowly uncovers the truth, the house is actually cursed due to a tragedy and that curse means that anyone who steps inside must die!

Website

Judge! (2014)   

Japanese Title: ジャッジ！

Romaji: Jajji!

Running Time: 105 mins.

Release Date: January 11^th, 2014

Director: Akira Nagai

Writer: Yoshimitsu Sawamoto (Screenplay)

Starring: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Keiko Kitagawa, Lily Franky,
KyokaSuzuki, YosiYosi Arakawa, Yoji Tanaka, Denden, Ryo Kase, Etsushi Toyokawa, Iyo Matsumoto,

What I am about to say is very important…

The final film I saw at the Terracotta Far East Film Festival 2014 was the international premiere of Judge! and it was a fantastic way to finish the event. Akira Nagai flew in to introduce the film.

Taking a break from an award-winning career in a Tokyo-based advertising company, director Akira Nagai makes his feature film debut with the 2014 comedy Judge! Both Akira Nagai and writer Yoshimitsu Sawamoto have careers in advertising which they both draw on to make a sleek, light-hearted, and hilarious satire on the international ad industry which made me roar with laughter.

Their experience and love for advertising is shown in the misadventures of Kiichiro Ota (Tsumabuki). He is an earnest kid who was inspired to get into the world of advertising after seeing an old shoe ad when he was a kid in 1981. He believes in the power of advertising to change a person’s world for the better. His mantra is, “I want to make ads that make everyone happy.”

With inspiration guiding him he has scored a job at an advertising agency but when we first encounter him he is dressed up like a fox and wiggling his butt in a tacky ad for noodles, reputedly the favourite dish of kitsune (foxes), overseen by his boss Ichiro Otaki (Toyokawa) who couldn’t be less interested in what Kiichiro is doing.

The clients who ordered the ad aren’t that taken with the results and request changes like turning the fox into a cat which Kiichiro finds tough to do because everything is fox-focussed. He simply ads on-screen text and shouts “Nya” in a recording session for new audio.

It seems that Kiichiro’s career is stalling and things get decidedly dicier when Ichiro sends him to the world’s biggest TV advertising festival in Santa Monica. Ichiro wants to skip out on judging the competition and sends his almost-namesake subordinate with orders to secure victory for their company’s ad by any means necessary. Like scheming, bribery and so forth.

Alas, Kiichiro’s English skills are awful and so he drags along his brilliant colleague Hikari Ota (Kitagawa), a girl with a gambling addiction.  What Kiichiro doesn’t know is that unless his company’s commercial wins a prize he’ll be fired and booted out of the ad industry. Can he do it and reinvigorate his love for advertisements?

In his introduction to the film Akira Nagai stated that he crafted it primarily for teens and young adults, extolling the beauty of ads whilst simultaneously pointing out the absurdity of the industry. It is all done through a fertile mixture of satirical scenes mocking the creatives and spoofing the ads by showing the surreal and absurd things they create.

When a director has had a career in advertising, film reviewers are legally required to state that working on adverts brings short-comings because, as a medium, advertising works when directors make shallow slices of short films full of visual fizz and sparkle designed to appeal superficially to those with low attention spans. When a film by an ad person does hit the mark, we then get to act surprised. This was a most welcome surprise, a laugh-a-minute and joyful comedy all about the artistry of advertising.

Nothing gets done without me

The film is not an overly intellectual deconstruction of advertising, more an affectionate look and through Kiichiro it delivers the message that in the commercial world of advertising, art is important.

The comedy is a mix of farce, culture clashes, screwball-comedy, satire, physical pratfalls, innuendo, and broad stereotypes of Japanese, gaikokujin  – Do you know karate? Is your wife a geisha? – an outrageously camp gay couple, and otaku. Played in a mostly un-ironic fashion, the culture clash elements are far from malicious because the film mocks everyone in a warm-hearted equal opportunities mockery way.

Sawamoto’s script seems formulaic but he plays a canny long game as he litters many memorable details, jokes, and characters that pop up again and again in call backs and long-running gags that bring about the sense of unexpectedness. The many delightful surprises make events funnier. On paper the characters may seem familiar but the writing and execution of the directing and acting ensures that these guys look and sound unique, with a strange or sympathetic elements.

KARATE KID!

With Kiichiro played by Satoshi Tsumabuki, we find a wonderfully good-natured lead that the whole audience can root for. As super -handsome as he is, it’s easy to relate to him as being a hapless put-upon ad man because he throws himself into the physical elements, the costumes, and gets chased around and shouted at and pulls all of the right faces.

He leads an awesome cast full of great actors who take on all sorts of small roles. He has excellent support from Atsushi Toyokawa who is side-splittingly funny as the long-haired pretentious rock star ad director who wears sunglasses indoors. He strides around his office with a harem of sexy assistants and has a run of empty phrases “the flipside’s the flipside” and “creation without creativity” – which work on people who nod sagely as they pretend to get what he means!

Kiichiro’s otaku and English lessons with Kagawa are hilarious and convince me even more that Lily Franky is a brilliant actor as he demonstrates to Kiichiro how to sway the jury through empty tricks.

The screwball comedy involving Kiichiro and Hikari functions along standard misinterpretation gags but has bite because Keiko Kitagawa can be blunt and aggressive. Pretending to be the husband of Hikari can be painful since she can unexpectedly mean and that usually dumps Kiichiro in even more extreme situations where the misinterpretations work all the better because Kiichiro is charmingly hapless and surrounded by a bunch of strange foreigners, all drawn in broad brush-strokes but still easy to relate to.

Bet he’s good at pitching

Nagai uses the language and techniques of cinema to craft an unashamedly funny film that has a broad appeal and is easily accessible but like Sawamoto, he employs many unexpected cuts or flashbacks to pull the rug out from under the viewer with something that upsets expectations and keeps them awake.

The sense of pace is astounding and makes the comedy pour forth in a deluge. It feels like every scene and sequence has the perfect rhythm and not a second is wasted. The sense of movement is maintained by the camera constantly panning around sets or cutting at opportune moments to, say, some bizarre reaction-shot lengthen jokes. In short, when things seem serious expect a smash cut to a funny scene that counters things or prepare for the camera zoom in and out of details so the film can flip from serious to comedic. From the fox noodle ad at the very beginning to the party at the very end, the film is pacey.A slide-cut doesn’t just slide across the screen, it rushes by at 1000 mph, usually bringing in some short and sweet sequence to illustrate a comedic point.

Judge! was the perfect way to finish the Terracotta Far East Film Festival. It had the audience laughing so much that I cannot think of a recent cinema trip to rival the levels of enjoyment that seemed to be had. A light-hearted and fast-paced comedy, it zooms along powered by a cast of actors having a ball. Everybody from Tsumabuki in the lead to Lily Franky and Yosiyosi Arakawa gives an amusing and warm-hearted performance and it was an absolute pleasure to watch.

4.5/5

I was tempted to weave some real ads into the review but thought it was meandering enough as it is. Here’s some Japanese ads plus a funny European one.

Fans of Asian films in America will be spoiled for choice in July because on the east coast of America there is the 8th annual Japan CUTS film festival which will be held at the Japan Society in New York City. Meanwhile, down south the 13^th Asian Film Festival of Dallas will run from July 10^th to July 17^th with a selection of titles from Japan and Korea, Hong Kong and elsewhere.

The programme for the festival has been finalised and a trailer revealing the films available for cinephiles who want some awesome Asian big-screen experiences has been released:

To see the trailers for the films, click on the titles. See something you like, then click here for the full programme where you can find out the times and how to buy tickets.  There are a lot on offer so here’s the run down with some comments from me!

Starting with Japan, we have a lot of titles that have been featured on this blog and some that I have seen. If I had to make recommendations then there are four titles here: The Castle of Cagliostro, Patema Inverted, Sansho the Bailiff, and Why Don’t You Play in Hell? while the rest look really strong.

We’ll start with Zombie TV (2013), a horror comedy from Yoshihiro Nishimura (Helldriver, Tokyo Gore Police), that looks so bad it’s good. The public in Japan really doesn’t have the level of zombie awareness that the west has where George A. Romero’s zombies have defined the game and so Japan pumps out weird little films like Tokyo Zombie and this which is a collection of sketches, short anime, instructional videos and more as we see the evolved face of zombies in the 21’s Century. See the moral, spiritual, and physical problems of people and zombies co-existing such as relationships between the living and the dead, zombie gods, zombie exercise, zombie pop idols and zombie sex.

Next up is Bushido (2013), a serious samurai film written directed and self-financed by former industrialist Yasuo Mikami and a remake of a 16mm film of the same title which he produced when he was 24 years old. It is set after a time of famine when the Shogunate was cracking down on potential unrest by sending warriors to different clans to check on their loyalty.

Why Don’t You Play in Hell? (2013) was the second best film I saw last year. It’s from the filmmaker extraordinaire Sion Sono (Cold Fish, Strange Circus). It’s an insane combination of yakuza wars, mad-cap chases, blood-shed, and crazy cinephiles filming everything, all with the ultimate femme fatale taking centre stage. It was a smash hit in Japan for Sono and it’s easy to see why because it is a hilarious and over-the-top love-letter to those violent genre pics from the 70’s and films at large.

Ku_On (2013), a neat little indie sci-fi film I saw at the Raindance Film Festival last year (here’s my review) which involves a cast of characters who have the ability to transfer their consciousnesses into different bodies. The only downside is that they are easy to track due to a unique mark and there’s a serial killer hunting them down. The focus is definitely on the action and not on character building but the plot is fun and the film is pacey so it remains fun.

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) is the classic anime from Hayao Miyazaki and it’s an absolute blast to watch. In short, it’s a fun adventure that the whole family can enjoy. Whenever it is aired on television in the UK I make tie to watch it. The story follows Lupin and best-pal/partner in crime Jigen as they search for a counterfeiter who has rendered their latest casino heist a waste of time. They discover that the counterfeiter is in the secluded country of Cagliostro and that he is a wicked count who is holding a beautiful and innocent princess prisoner in one of the towers of his castle…

Samurai Hustle (2014) or Mission Impossible Samurai is a historical comedy and it has only been released in the last few weeks in Japan and has become a box-office hit. The story starts in the Yunagaya Domain in the Tohoku region. It is small but it has a gold mine that some in the Shogun’s government want. Masaatsu Naito is ordered to perform Sankin-kotai which means that his daimyo, the feudal lord, must visit the Shogun in Edo. Unfortunately the cost is high and the time limit of 8 days is short. Could this be a plot to steal the gold mine? Masaatsu has to get the Sankin-kotai done!

Killers (2014) is a co-production between Indonesia and Japan and judging by a review on Twitch it’s a rumination on violence and death. It seems very violent and very serious. The film starts with Nomura, a wealthy ex-pat back from the US who is a serial killer who records a murder of a woman and places it on the internet. Bayu, an honest political journalist in Jakarta who finds his life wrecked by a corrupt politician stumbles upon the video and becomes attracted to what he sees as the beauty in the cruel visuals. When he kills a robber in self-defence he records the robber’s dying moments and uploads his own video. Nomura sees the video and a connection is made! A competition is initiated. It’s also screened at Japan Cuts.

Black Butler (2014) is the live-action movie adaptation of Yana Toboso’s hugely popular manga. It deviates considerably since the original was set in 19th Century England and this one is set in the present day but the characters are still the same. The year is 2020 and the place is an Asian city where western and Asian cultures mix. In this society exist the ancient English aristocratic Phantomhive family and it’s a very traditional one (especially for 2020!) where only men can run the family business. Alas, the only person available for the job is a woman named Shiori (Gouriki) who dresses as a boy and takes the name Kyoharu and takes on the job of solving cases for the Queen who now rules the Western nations and also wants to unify the world. Cases like a “Serial mummified murder spree” and the disappearances of women mean that Shiori is busy tracking down evidence and she links the two together but it means she’s put in danger and requires the help of her demonic butler Sebastien (Mizushima) who is awesome in every aspect from cooking to good looks but comes with the downside of devouring Shiori’s soul! 

Kenji Mizoguchi is one of the legends from the Golden Age of Japanese cinema. While not as famous as Kurosawa or Ozu, his films Ugetsu Monogatari and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), which screens at the festival, are two masterpieces that have to be seen. In fact, I’d rate them higher than anything by Kurosawa and possibly Ozu (but that’s just personal taste). It’s based on an ancient legend, as recounted by celebrated author Mori Ogai (in his short story of the same name, written in 1915) and it’s an utterly tragic tale about an aristocratic family torn apart due to feudal tyranny. We follow the lives of each family member including two children sold into slavery. Please watch it and take plenty of tissues.

It seems like a crime to go from something so perfect to something so silly but Danger Dolls (2014) is next. Japanese cinema is really diverse and has so many awesome aspects to it. Awesome aspects like Rina Takeda who kicks guys in the head and looks good doing it! It’s an action sci-fi about a group of girls who protect Earth from alien invaders with their martial arts and sword skills.

Kept (2014) is the directorial debut from Maki Mizui, a former protégé of Sion Sono and Yoshihiro Nishimura. It had its premiere at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival. Based on actual events in the director’s own life, Kept is dedicated to the unnumbered survivors of sexual assault and abductions every year who go unreported and tells the story of a woman who survived a brutal abduction and rape. It looks absolutely tough and seems to signal a new voice in Japanese cinema, perhaps the next Masahiro Kobayashi?

Reset (2014) is an indie film that tells the story of a guy who is losing interest in his girlfriend. When time starts running backwards, he approaches the moment he first met her. What will he think at that point? Such a simple premise could lead to a very unique film and the trailer points to a solid title at the very least.

Be thankful that the sky is above our heads because what would you do if your gravity were reversed and you could plunge into the blue? Patema Inverted (2013) has a simple story with much emotional depth and a bravura display of intelligent directing that thrillingly explores how two kids deal with this mind-blowing situation. It’s a lot of fun to watch and with lots of sweet emotional moments and one I would recommend for all of the family. The director, Yasuhiro Yoshiura (Time of Eve), is one of the most exciting voices in Japanese animation and this is a great calling-card.

Seven Souls in Skull Castle (2013) is the kick-ass looking stage production filmed live on stage in Tokyo and starring some of Japan’s best new actors. One of Japan’s leading theatrical troupes, Geikdan Shinkansen performs a story set in the year 1590, the 18th year of the Tensho era just after the demise of warlord Nobunaga. Toyotomi Hideyoshi wants to unify Japan but Tenmaoh (Mirai Moriyama) stands in his way. He and his troops, the Kanto Skull Clan, an armed group hiding in Skull Castle are prepared to fight. A man named Sutenosuke (Shun Oguri) gets caught in the middle when he rescues Sagiri, a woman who has been chased by Tenmaoh. To hide and shelter the woman, he meets Mukaiya Ranbe (Taichi Saotome) at a brothel district. Manipulated by magical fate, people congregate in the Kanto region. When the shared past between Sutenosuke and Ranbe, and their relation to Tenmaoh, come to light, the dark ambition of Tenmaoh is revealed. Without regrets, Sutenosuke and his seven souls head for Skull Castle, though it is surrounded by 20,000 soldiers, to destroy it and stop Tenmaoh’s dark ambition.

ーThe film runs at just over 3 hours and includes one intermission and this synopsis was taken directly from the YouTube video.

We now slide to other regions…

Korea is always good for great looking films and there’s a real diverse range on offer like the indie title Late Spring (2014), a romance that starts with a sculptor who is gradually losing control of his body and finds himself losing his will to create and even live. His loyal wife seeks to inspire him and hires a model, a widow with two children. The sculptor is inspired, alright. Inspired enough to fall in love.

Horror Stories 2 (2013) is an omnibus collection of weird and strange tales. I can’t say that Korea makes very many scary movies but they are usually intelligently written and well-shot. The wrap-around story for this movie is an insurance agent who works with a woman who has supernatural powers to detect fraud in mysterious cases such as two friends who are stuck on a mountain with only on candy bar and a schoolgirl who sends her teacher to hell.

Go, Stop, Murder (2013) sees the popular card game Go, Stop’ turn into a deadly dance with death as a group of players begin to die. Is the game haunted?

Boomerang Family (2013) is a hit comedy licensed in the west by Third Window Films. It’s all about a dysfunctional family, two brothers – one a failed director, the other a criminal – and a sister – who has a daughter – who find themselves living with their mother after their failed careers and marriages.

The King’s Wrath (2013), also known as The Fatal Encounter, is a big-budget historical epic about an assassin named of Eul-Soo who has been forced to stalk and strike the newly installed king of Korea. The person who wants the king dead just happens to be the queen! The stakes of his mission are high. If he fails, his love Wol-Hye will be killed.

If historical epics are not your thing then The Five (2013) might be the answer. It is a revenge thriller, something that the Korean film industry does rather well and this one looks gritty as heck. The main protag lost her family to a serial killer and is mentally and physically destroyed. The only thing that keeps her going is the thought of revenge and so she enlists the help of four outsiders including a North Korean defector, a former gangster and a person deeply in debt. All of them need organ transplants and it seems their best option is to fulfil the revenge mission!

There’s an animated Korean adventure film called Satellite Girl and Milk Cow (2014), astory about a satellite that transforms into a Girl and a shy songwriter who is turned into a cow and their battle against an evil machine known as Incinerator who chases them.

The Attorney (2014) is about an ambitious money-hungry tax attorney who suddenly gets a change of moral viewpoint when he meets a student activist and decides to free him from a prison where he’s being tortured.

Hong Kong and China are well represented with a variety of titles.

There is the world premiere of the Chinese film Fall in Love (2013) about Bei, a department store designer, who has never been successful in her search for love and Song, a dentist, who is an ideal boyfriend – handsome, compassionate, and supportive – whose girlfriend, Lily, leaves him when she is offered a job in France. Presumably the two find happiness together.

As the Lights Go Out (2014) offers an explosive story about firefighters who are gearing up for a party to celebrate their chief’s retirement when a fire in a liquor warehouse threatens to spread to a power plant that, if it blows, could take out a chunk of Hong Kong. The guys need to overcome the politics and rivalry in the station and on the island and learn to work together to save the day.

Rigor Mortis (2013) shows that Hong Kong can do horror and it comes from Juno Mak, a man who has appeared in Revenge: A Love Story (2010) and Dream Home (2010) some pretty horrific (as in scary) films about the dark side of human nature. Rigor Mortis is very much a supernatural treat that pays tribute to classic HK horror flicks like those hopping vampires. Produced by Takashi Shimizu (the genius behind Ju-On and Reincarnation) it looks like a lot of fun. The story is about a failed and suicidal actor who moves into a haunted apartment block where his neighbours are ghosts, ghouls, ghost hunters, and taoist exorcists.

Overheard 3 (2014) is about revenge and greed. It’s plot is full of complex and corrupt land dealings is very topical for the island state which is fast running out of space and it’s politicians and big business types are constantly in court for dodgy dealings.

Dante Lam has an impressive track-record of films and people get to watch one of his latest, That Demon Within (2014), which is all about the chaos that ensues when a police officer unwittingly saves the life of a psychopath and the guilt which sends him off into a world of madness of his own.

Taiwan is represented by three features all of which look to have different tones. 

Touch of Light (2012) tells the real life story of Huang Yu-Siang who stars also takes the lead as himself. We see his story he used his skill as a blind piano prodigy to escape from rural Taiwan and make a career for himself. He also starts a relationship with Xiao Jie, a young woman who dreams of becoming a dancer.

Stray Dogs (2013) sees heavyweight world cinema director Tsai Ming-Liang return to the big screen with a tough looking drama about an alcoholic man who works as a human billboard and his two young children who survive on free food samples from supermarkets barely surviving in the urban wilderness of Taipei, their home being an abandoned building with a strange mural that the father is obsessed with. When a woman enters their lives, it seems that her arrival signals that things might change…

If the heavy drama is a little too much then Sweet Alibis (2014) might be the thing. It’s a slick-looking police comedy where a cowardly and thus inefficient veteran detective named Chi-yi and his overzealous rookie partner (who just happens to be the daughter of the head of the National Police Agency) Yi-ping, are teamed up to fight crime. Alas, Chi-yi’s poor record and the possibility of anything bad happening to Yi-ping, means their chief gives the pointless cases such as one involving a puppy dying after eating chocolate… Investigating this leads to the duo uncovering a series of mysterious deaths…

The USA has a number of films with Asian themes such as the cultural changes felt between generations and genders but there are some really good looking genre pictures here as well. 

Man From Reno (2014) is an indie film fresh from a successful Kickstarter campaign and co-produced between America Japan. The story begins when a Japanese bestselling crime novelist visits San Francisco and finds herself embroiled in a real life mystery after a night with a handsome stranger, a Japanese man supposedly from Nevada, who disappears the next morning, after which increasingly strange and dangerous events begin to occur.  Said lady finds herself plunged into a noirish thriller… The trailer looks very intriguing.

Pretty Rosebud (2013) is a dark looking drama about the divide between an Asian-American woman and her husband, her traditional parents and the pressure she feels over the need to be the good wife and employee and also to become a mother.

The creators of Kumu Hina (2014) offer a documentary which explores LGBT issues. A transgender Hawaiian teacher who inspires a girl to lead the school’s male hula troupe.

Innocent Blood (2013) has a familiar premise – an academic with a law enforcement background turns into a sleuth to solve a crime, the kidnap of his son. He finds the police and criminals are going to oppose him as he desperately tries to rescue his boy.

White men going out with Asian girls is pretty familiar territory but with A Leading Man (2013), the trend is reversed as a Chinese American actor attempts to salvage his career by entering into a romantic relationship with a successful casting director. So, an Asian-American taking the lead in a sensitive drama that depicts him as a human being while commenting on entrenched cultural stereotypes. Hollywood, take notice.

Fresh from Vietnam is Funny Money (2014), a black comedy centering on a guy named Lucky Loc, a fraudster who makes his money producing high-end  fake ghost money. He soon runs into some bad luck which he believes came from giving a torn bill to a girl who had ransomed it, Loc must now go on a dangerous search to get back his luck with disastrous results.

India is represented with Monsoon Shootout (2014), which tells the tale of a rookie cop who traps a dangerous killer in an alley and has to decide whether to shoot. What makes it notable is that it has a Run Lola Run quality to its script as the film explores three different scenarios that follow the decisions he could make.

There are two titles from Bangladesh, both from director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki.

Ant Story (2013) is all about a struggling graduate named Mithu who wishes to make it big in Dhaka but feels that he doesn’t have the skills to do so. He comes to the conclusion that, if the world won’t change to meet his expectations then he’ll fake, lie, and fantasize his way to the top. What starts out as fun becomes a dark game full of lust and danger…

Television (2012) takes place in a traditional rural community presided over by Chairman Amin, a deeply religious man who bans images and even claims imagination is sinful. He finds his grip on the people of the village and his own views changing with the increasing power of technology. The presence of a television brings colour and life to the populace and even saves Amin.

Aaaaand that’s it!

That’s a huge selection of titles on offer and with something for everyone, young and old, gorehounds and lovebirds. Entertainment and fun, important issues and some neat thrillers.

As well as the films mentioned here, there are shorts and special guests that have yet to be announced. This looks like an awesome festival.

• Here’s the website
• Here’s the full programme of films

I have watched more films in the last week than I have for many months. Only double-figures but that still counts frequent trips to my favourite cinema to watch things like Cold in July as well as a LOT of Korean films from 2012/13 and a smattering of Japanese films. Expect many reviews over the next few months. The summer anime season has started and I’m patiently waiting for my shows to launch but I’ll avoid doing first impressions and just do a series review when the dust has settled.

In terms of the blog, I posted a review for a hilarious feel-good comedy called Judge! and I posted about the Asian Film Festival of Dallas.

What’s released in Tokyo this weekend?

Documentary of AKB48 The Time Has Come   

Japanese Title: DOCUMENTARY of AKB48 The time has come 少女たちは、今、その背中に何を想う？

Romaji: DOCUMENTARY of AKB 48 The time has kamu shōjo-tachi wa, ima, sono senaka ni nani o omou?

Release Date: July 04th, 2014

Running Time: N/A

Director: Takahashi Eiki

Writer: N/A

Starring: AKB48,

This is the fourth in a series of documentaries about the super group and it looks at a period stretching from June 2013 to July 2014. Some of the things touched upon will be Yuko who graduated, a mega concert that was put off due to bad weather, and the AKB48 Senbatsu General Election. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the group as we see the changing dynamics play out in concerts and their home in Akihabara.

Website

Blue Demon   

Japanese Title: 青鬼

Romaji: Ao Oni

Release Date: July 05th, 2014

Running Time: 70 mins.

Director: Daisuke Kobayashi

Writer: Kozuru (Screenplay)

Starring: Anna Iriyama, Kenta Suga, Syo Jinnai, Seiya, Seika Furuhata, Riku Ozeki,

I never thought I would see the day when the Japanese entertainment industry would sink low enough to adapt a free PC survival horror game that I’ve seen in Let’s Plays by PewDiePie (Yes, I used to watch him on occasion when looking for horror games – here’s a Japanese Let’s Player) but that day has arrived… The story is about six high school students stuck in a house known as “Jail House”. Apparently a monster resides there (and he is pretty freaky in the game) and the kids have to escape. Meanwhile, film critics leave the cinema and predict the implosion of the Japanese film industry. Actually, this could be good. You never know until you watch.

It stars Kenta Suga who has appeared in Fuan no Tane (review next week). and AKB48 girl Anna Iriyama. If anybody should escape, it has to be her!

Website

Girls & Panzer This is the Real Anzio   

Japanese Title: ガールズ＆パンツァー　これが本当のアンツィオ戦です！

Romaji: Ga-ruzu & Pansha: Kore ga Hontō no Anzio-sen Desu!

Release Date: July 05th, 2014

Running Time: 38 mins.

Director: Tsutomu Mizushima

Writer: N/A

Starring: Mai Fuchigami (Miho Nishizumi), Ikumu Nakagami (Yukari Akiyama), Ai Kayano (Saori Takebe), Mami Ozaki (Hana Isuzu), Yuka Iguchi (Mako Reizei(, Maya Yoshioka (Anchovy),

The Girs Und Panzer franchise is getting a new installment in the form of an OVA which sees Miho and her classmates battle the girls of Anzio High School in a tournament. Fans get to see it at a cinema.

Website

Soreike! Anpanman Ringo Boya to Minna no Negai   

Japanese Title: それいけ！アンパンマン りんごぼうやとみんなの願い

Romaji: Soreike! Anpanman Ringo Boya to Minna no Negai

Release Date: July 05th, 2014

Running Time: 48 mins.

Director: Jun Kawagoe

Writer: Takashi Yanase (Original Creator), Shoji Yonemura (Screenplay)

Starring: Keiko Toda (Anpanman), Ryusei Nakao (Baikinman), Mao Inoue (Apple Boy), Keisuke Okada (Majora),

Small children get a treat at the cinema this weekend. Apple Island is the scene of a crime where the apples are being poisoned and Apple Boy (Inoue) must work with Anpanman (Toda) to solve the crisis! The 26^th movie in the Anpanman franchise has the wonderful Mao Inoue (Rebirth, Snow White Murder Case).

Also screened is the 21 minute shortTanoshikute Asobi Mama ni Natta Kokin-chan directed by Yuki Nichimaki and written by Yuka Aoki. Kids can sing and dance to the action.

Website

Children of the Revolution   

Japanese Title: 革命の子どもたち

Romaji: Kakumei no Kodomotachi

Release Date: July 05th, 2014

Running Time: 88 mins.

Director: Shane O’Sullivan

Writer: N/A

Starring: Ulrike Meinhof, Fusako Shigenobu, May Shigenobu. Masao Adachi, Bettina Rohl, Astrid Proll. Takaya Shiomi, Kyoko Ohtani

This is a British/Irish film released in 2010 that is getting a Japanese release because of the involvement of Japanese people.

 Inspired by the student revolutions of 1968, two women in Germany and Japan set out to plot world revolution as leaders of the Baader Meinhof Group and the Japanese Red Army. What were they fighting for and what have we learned? – direct from the IMDB page.

Expect interviews and footage. 4 minutes have been cut.

Website

Danchi no Yume Dreams of the Projects   

Japanese Title: Danchi no Yume

Romaji: Danchi no Yume

Release Date: July 05th, 2014

Running Time: 86 mins.

Director: Sam Cole, Jonathan Turner

Writer: N/A

Starring: ANARCHY, RUFF NECK, RYUZO,

This is an American documentary from 2012 about Mukaijima New Town, a low income housing project hidden in the south side of the historic city of Kyoto. In this project are immigrants, yakuza, drug addicts and low income families struggling to provide a life for their children. They are the forgotten since many residents of Kyoto ignore the place but ANARCHY, a rapper, is using Hip Hop to raise awareness. We see him record his album and release it and tour the thing. He’s no GZA but he’s cool. 90’s Hip Hop was so good.

Koudou no Kioku Tankou Eshi Yamamoto Sakube  

Japanese Title: 坑道の記憶　炭坑絵師・山本作兵衛

Romaji: Koudou no Kioku Tankou Eshi Yamamoto Sakube

Release Date: July 05th, 2014

Running Time: 72 mins.

Director: Yukiko Omura

Writer: N/A

Starring: N/A

Another documentary! Sakube Yamamoto was a coal miner and artist who captured the details of mining to leave memories to the descendants of the miners of Fukuoka prefecture so they can understand what life was like. There are interviews with people who knew the artist.

Website

Ogiwara Ikuzou, 63 Years Old   

Japanese Title: 荻原郁三、六十三才。

Romaji: Ogiwara Ikuzou, Roku Juu San-sai

Release Date: July 05th, 2014

Running Time: 82 mins.

Director: Hasebe Morihiko

Writer: Hasebe Morihiko (Screenplay)

Starring: Shiro Go, Hasebe Morihiko, Ko Inoue, Clayton Jacobson, Ronald Jacobson, Kaori Takakuwa,

First off, cool jazz soundtrack. That immediately gets a point from me. Jazz makes films sound better. Second, the story is about Ikuzo Ogiwara, a 63-year-old chef with a quiet sushi shop and a daughter. He’s suddenly head-hunted by a global sushi chain as head chef in their newest restaurant and he seems to be the ideal fit. They start throwing gifts his way to persuade him but he’s definite in his refusal. Can he afford to be when his sushi restaurant is on the brink of financial collapse?

Website

Hoso Dekinai Kindan Re Eizo: Gekijoban   

Japanese Title: 放送デキナイ禁断霊映像　劇場版

Romaji: Hoso Dekinai Kindan Re Eizo: Gekijoban

Release Date: July 05th, 2014

Running Time: 66 mins.

Supervisor (No Director, Apparently): Junichi Yamamoto

Starring: Eizo, Ryota Koyama, Misaki Momose,

The director of the awful Meatball Mmachine and even worse Slit-mouthed Woman Returns is back with a collection of horrible clips full of weirdoes, ghosts and loons. These clips aren’t suitable to broadcast on television, so cinema goers Cheap to produce and full of low-budget scares. It plays alongside Hontou ni Atta Toukou Yami Eizou 2 which does have a director – Satoshi Kamimoto.

Mount Navi

Japanese Title: マウント・ナビ

Romaji: Maunto Nabi

Release Date: July 05th, 2014

Running Time: 72 mins.

Director: Seiji Chiba

Writer: Seiji Chiba

Starring: Danny Trejo, Toru Katayama, Sakae Tomomatsu, Ayana Kaneko, Kida Tomokazu, Daisuke Noguchi,

There’s a lot going on in this trailer. Blair Witch, Versus, The Exorcist, Danny Trejo saves Japan. It looks like Seiji Chiba (Alien vs Ninja) s making a mockumentary that incorporates POV shots to make a horror film about a group of men and women who travel up a haunted mountain and disappear one by one as they head towards a forbidden zone….

Website

Pet Peeve (International Title) / Seeds of Anxiety (Japanese Title)   

Japanese Title: 不安の種   

Romaji: Fuan no Tane

Release Date: July 20^th, 2013

Running Time: 87 mins.

Director: Toshikazu Nagae

Writer: Masaaki Nakayama (Original Manga), Toshikazu Nagae (Screenplay)

Starring: Anna Ishibashi, Kenta Suga Koudai Asaka, Kanji Tsuda, Shimako Iwai, Kurea Mori, Hitomi Kurihara, Ryosuke Kawamura,

Pet Peeve is a really awful title for a film, any film, and it is best to pay attention to the Japanese one, Seeds of Anxiety (Fuan no Tane) which sums up the content perfectly.

Moving towns is something a lot of us go through and it can be daunting but spare a thought for a group of outsiders settling in the rather strange Funuma city.

Ryuuta is moving with his sister and parents to a nice house in the suburbs. Hauling boxes upstairs, he is greeted by the sight of a detached eyeball spying on him. This is the first of a number of strange things to invade his house…

In another suburban street, a 23-year-old named Daiich (Asaka) is making a delivery. He discovers the strange sight of a teen named Seiji (Suga) half sticking out of a bush following a motorbike accident.

Six months before their meeting, both Seiji and Daiichi were new in town. Seiji was attending university and he even had a hot twenty-year-old girlfriend named Yoko (Ishibashi) who has strange powers. She warns Seiji about the dangers lurking in town.

Meanwhile, Daiichi scored a job at a restaurant where Yoko works. During his first week, against Yoko’s advice, he serves a strange and menacing guest wearing a hat and face mask and trench coat who does nothing but sit and stare. That very guest begins to stalk him and Daiichi who soon discovers more terrifying sights.

All three are connected but in what fashion, few will be able to guess…

Fuan no Tane is a horror film adapted from the 3 volume manga of the same name created by Masaaki Nakayama. The manga is a collection of very short stories that favour creating atmospheric tales over outright scares, in effect a new set of urban legends for a new Japan. The manga never struck me as prime movie material because of its disjointed nature but it has been adapted for the big screen by director Toshikazu Nagae, a man responsible for two films I found rather awful Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night and Ghost System. He follows the manga by adopting a sort of omnibus style full of weird tales and people that can be found in the city of Funuma.

“This town is a weird place…”

The city looks like your standard urban sprawl. The film’s locations include anonymous suburban streets with quiet houses, apartments stacked up around restaurants and roads that stretch into the distance. Look carefully and you will see stranger things like clouds that form the shape of outstretched bodies that dance around each other, prosthetic hands in garbage bags, eyeballs slipping and sliding around the streets, and ghosts that peer out of those dull houses mentioned earlier. Overlooking all of this is a menacing gas refinery that spews a constant stream of noxious-looking gasses.

Roaming in the streets,lurking in the houses and wandering along the roads are a strange set of people and creatures… Worse than the eyeballs that wander around and spy on people. These creatures are a mixture of strange people with distorted bodies and twisted faces and are drawn from the manga: strange shadow people, a mysterious and hideous woman wielding a hammer, and other freakish denizens who wander around the town.

Why these places are strange, it is never explained, all we can do is sit back and watch the new-comers get terrorised.

“This town’s coming for me”

The film is heady stuff for horror fans who enjoy a weird atmosphere and a step up from Nagae whose previous films have been dull and flimsy. He neatly combines psychological horror with grotesque gore. There are a lot of interesting ideas and horror staples thrown in from body horror and time displacement and curses.

Nagae milks the most out of the fear of being observed by strangers with unknown motives, knowing that something is in your house that shouldn’t be there, all the things that cause us anxiety in our day to day lives.

His direction shows flourishes as he films things as he has yurei subjective cams tearing around the city, long takes where the use of darkness and lighting alters to conceal scares and reveal them at key moments and the mixing of high and low angles to generate the feeling of being watched and paranoia.

On top of the strange and horrific, there is black comedy as people get knocked off by the strange town. All of this is delivered in a narrative that houses a non-linear plot and characters taken directly from the manga. The film’s narrative makes little sense until the very end when everything is joined up in an enjoyably twisted tale of terror.

Toshikazu Nagae has made horror films that I found rather dull but he has redeemed himself somewhat with this title. It fits in the school of weird fiction and captures the manga perfectly. While not terrifying, it is fun and it transforms the urban landscape into a place of anxiety.

4/5

Here’s another review over at Sadako’s Movie Shack

Belle (2013)        

UK Release Date: June 13th, 2014

Running Time: 104 mins.

Director: Amma Asante

Writer: Misan Sagay (Screenplay),

Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Reid, Sarah Gadon, Emily Watson, Matthew Goode, Tom Felton, James Norton, Miranda Richardson,

Amma Asante’s Belle has the hallmarks of a costume drama thanks to the setting of Georgian England and its focus on relationships but due to the titular character it is different from other films of the genre. The inspiration for the film comes from a beautiful and lively painting (attributed to Johann Zoffany) of a mixed-race girl and a white girl, both recently revealed to be half-cousins, both given flattering portrait treatment and both depicted as equals. What makes it strange is that this was painted at a time when Britain was a colonial empire and a centre of the slave trade and both people have equal prominence. The mixed-race girl in the picture is Belle. At a time when the voice of slavers was a loud one in the British Empire because the country derived a massive amount of income from the slave trade, Belle lived the life of an aristocrat and would find herself connected to a court case which would decide the fate of the British slave trade. Assante takes this as a starting point to craft a costume drama with a civil-rights edge that tackles race and gender.

We are in 18^th Century England, Kenwood House to be precise. It is like many a stately home seen in many costume dramas, a place where the walls are adorned with lavish oil paintings of men in full battle regalia and women in beautiful dresses, candelabras glimmer in the bright light of richly furnished rooms with tall windows that gaze out onto landscaped gardens. This is the place of aristocrats and the servants who attend them but there’s one thing that makes this place different, one aristocrat who stands out from the rest.

Her name is Dido Elizabeth Belle (Mbatha-Raw) and she is a young mixed-race woman. She is the illegitimate daughter of Captain Sir John Lindsay (Goode), a captain in the Royal Navy, and a Caribbean slave. Years earlier, after the death of her mother, Lindsay, in an act that could only come from love, has done the unthinkable and rescued her and recognised her as the heir to his name and fortune. “What is right can never be impossible.”

With this in mind, he sends her to live with his uncle Lord Mansfield (Wilkinson) and his wife (Watson) at Kenwood House, securing her from a life of slavery after he persuades them to make her a ward and grants her an annuity.

Lord Mansfield is the most powerful judge in Britain overseeing the Court of the King’s Bench, and is at a critical juncture in his career as he presides over the Zong case which involved an insurance claim from a slave ship which threw its entire cargo of slaves overboard when water apparently ran low. His ruling will have massive implications for Britain and the nation is on edge as it awaits his verdict and Belle finds herself at the centre of everything.

The law is to be interpreted not merely administered

Mixed-race leading characters are very, very thin on the ground but thanks to the real life figure of Dido Elizabeth Belle one more can be added to the movie world. Despite being such a striking figure in the painting sources on Dido Elizabeth Belle are not exactly overflowing and so Amma Assante and writer Misan Sagay have taken the known facts of Belle’s life and background and mixed it with a costume drama romance that did not quite happen the way it is sold in the film. This allows them to turn the costume drama genre on its head as they turn Belle into a proto-feminist and campaigner for human rights, criticising various genre tropes and historical realities in one go.

Belle, as a mixed-race female, finds herself subjected to the racial and gender mores of the time and the story ably exposes the harsh realities by showing Belle’s gradual awakening to the inequalities of society as she ventures beyond the safety of society in Kenwood House. She is regarded with fondness perhaps love, by her adoptive family and she is free to order the servants around. In a sign of the wider issues of her colour and societal status she finds herself too good to eat with the servants and when guests arrive for formal dinner, she must make herself scarce and can only show her face after formalities are over. Those same guests regard her with a mixture of racism and curiosity when they do see her. The older she gets, the more she recognises how unfair it is and these moments shock her.

Her insecurities about her race are ones that she has lived with but has been able to ignore due to living in the bubble of Kenwood House with the protection of Lord Mansfield. Now, facing the choice of pursuing a good match or romance like most female protagonists (and women of the age), or growing into a spinster she finds herself venturing further into the society of adults, men, and the law and begins to discover more about the slave trade and the mistreatment of blacks. The film portrays her gradual awakening to her “blackness” influencing Lord Mansfield’s work with the Zong trial and something of the slave abolitionist awakens in Belle.

Belle’s position as a female is also a most vexatious issue to her as she and her cousin Elizabeth find themselves on the marriage market and their freedoms limited. They soon start to make comparisons between slavery. By having Belle as a protagonist and surrounding her with strong female relationships with her cousin and their great aunts’, the film allows comment to be made through their relationships with men and the constant discussion of marriage. Ceaseless marriage negotiations and talk of dowries hammer home the position of women as little more than commodities for men mixed and an analogy between marriage and slavery seems to be made when such conversations are couched between the business talk of insurance value of the slaves.

Assante pulls no punches in showing the racism and sexism and even the pitfalls of class that the characters navigate. She does it through introducing some villainous suitors who are racist and violent, upsetting the normally chaste costume drama formula with two short but vile scenes of physical threat and the toying of emotions. Behind the gentlemanly façade of the suitors lies the avaricious, misogynistic and racially prejudiced realities of the time. Basic stuff but it lays bare the unfairness of gender and race relations of the time. Thankfully Belle is a strong protagonist who overcomes her problems and the film, following genre convention, also allows another male character to become a romantic object only he actually notices the worth of her character rather than the annuity or property that may be gained. He happens to come in the form of the rather handsome, honest, and passionate Sam Reid.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw does sterling work as a mixed-race girl confronting the issues of race and gender. She is strikingly beautiful and brings a great sense of pluckiness to the role, starting off innocent and gradual awakening to the world’s inequalities. Unlike the society that surrounds her she does not judge people on appearances and while she does look at a person’s reputation, as a woman of the day would, she comes to see that what is most valuable is a person’s character through the tribulations she face on the marriage market and this forms a natural romantic plot that allows the costume drama conventions to work. It is also with these qualities that she captures the hearts of those closest to her and influences Lord Mansfield’s actions.

She is not alone in providing a great performance because there are a great cast of characters like Tom Wilkinson who brings gravitas and the steely sense of justice as a judge who will make history. His rich voice and stern manner convinces one of the moral uprightness of the man. More than that, he shows the heart and affection a man in his position can have and his relationship with Belle is a beautiful one that borders on father and daughter as the two enrich each others lies.

For those who think that history is made by great men making tough decisions, this is a reminder that the solution to histories problems come from within us and those who care for us.

I do not want to see her diminished

Belle’s situation is one that could only have happened in Britain, a place where class trumps everything, even race, where interracial marriage was not completely uncommon and colonial adventurers brought back children fathered in foreign lands. Much of this history has been whitewashed or ignored by costume dramas making this film one of the strongest assertions of the growing racial complexity of the west at the time.

Due to the lack of source material outside of housekeeping accounts and letters from people who visited Kenwood house, the true story of Belle may end up never being fully told. What she, as a mixed-race person, really thought about the slave trade and white/black people, her position in life and a society that was heavily codified and looked down upon people for so many reasons may never be known but her mere and unique existence has opened up a world of possibilities that the writer and director explored. What evidence there is reveals a woman who did live the life of an aristocrat, who was regarded as talented and took up responsible duties at Kenwood House and became Lord Mansfield’s secretary and close friend, and eventually married, had children and lived a comfortable life in a house in Pimlico, seemingly retaining a degree of freedom that many at the time didn’t have. As much as I would like to hear a mixed-race voice, I think I like the movie version which intelligently dissects a genre and so many complex issues and, most importantly, makes her a pivotal figure in world history. A true hero.

4/5

I watched fewer movies this week… well, only one, Library Wars (2013). A review is inbound for the week after next week alongside one for Godzilla (2014). The reason for the few movies watched is because of the new season of anime! Barakamon, Zankyou no Terror, Space Dandy Season 2, Aldnoah.Zero, and Tokyo Ghoul all had tremendous opening episodes and I will have to write first impressions of them for next week as well as a series review for Knights of Sidonia.

Movie reviews dominated the blog this week with Belle (2013) and Fuan no Tane (2013) both getting published and both films really impressing me.

What Japanese films are released today?

Say “I Love You”   

Japanese Title: 好きっていいなよ

Romaji: Sukitte ii nayo

Release Date: July 12^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 103 mins.

Director: Asako Hyuga

Writer: Kanae Hazuki (Original Manga), Asako Hyuga (Screenplay),

Starring:  Haruna Kawaguchi, Sota Fukushi, Tomohiro Ichikawa, Rika Adachi, Tasuku Nagase, Rima Nishizak, Ryosuke Yamamoto, Arisa Yagi

High school student Mei Tachibana (Kawaguchi) suffered a traumatic incident as a child and has cut herself off from other people. When she injures the most popular male student in school, Yamato Kurosawa, she attracts his attention and tries to win her over but she’ll have none of it until he saves her from a stalker with a kiss…

Website

Uzumasa Limelight    

Japanese Title:太秦ライムライト

Romaji: Uzumasa Laimulaito

Release Date: July 12^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 104 mins

Director: Ken Ochiai

Writer: Hiroyuki Ono (Screenplay),

Starring: Seizo Fukumoto, Chihiro Yamamoto, Hiroki Matsukata, Masashi Goda, Hirotaro Honda, Hisako Manda.

 A moving, nostalgic portrait of the men behind the golden age of chanbara (sword-fighting dramas and films), Uzumasa Limelight goes behind the scenes of the distinctive film genre for which Japan is famous. A professional extra named Kamiyama (real-life kirare-yaku Seizo Fukumoto) has devoted 50 years of his life as a kirare-yaku in sword-fighting movies produced at Kyoto’s Uzumasa Studios. A master of the art, he lives to die–or more exactly “to be cut”–and show a beautiful, spectacular death on screen. Now an elderly man, Kamiyama lives very modestly but has earned immense respect from his peers, some of them movie stars. When the studio where he works decides to discontinue its chanbara productions, Kamiyama finds himself at a loss. Hope arrives in the form of a young girl named Satsuki, who soon becomes Kamiyama’s disciple. Will the art of dying by the sword live on?

Website

The Next Generation Patlabor Chapter 3    

Japanese: THE NEXT GENERATION ‐パトレイバー第3章

Romaji: THE NEXT GENERATION ‐PatlaborーDai 3 Shou

Release Date: July 12^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: N/A

Director: Mamoru Oshii

Writer: Mamoru Oshii, Kei Yamamura (Screenplay), Masami Yuki (Original Novel)

Starring: Erina Mano, Toshio Kakei, Seiji Fukushi, Rina Ohta, Shigeru Chiba, Yoshinori Horimoto, Yoshikatsu Fujiki, Hinako Saeki, Daisuke Takashi,

This is the third in a seven-part series of films that act as a continuation of the Patlabor series with a brand new set of characters. Kenji Kawai is returning to the franchise to compose the music. There’s a lot of humour as the original anime/manga stories are re-worked for the live-action title. In this one, terrorists hold members of the Special Vehicle Division hostage. Noake Izumi will have to rescue the guys. The next episode loos like the thir Patlabor movie with a water-based monster.

Website

Gift       

Japanese Title: ギフト

Romaji: Gifuto

Running Time: 01 mins

Release Date: July 12^th, 2014 (Japan)

Director: Taro Miyaoka

Writer: Yukari Nakamura (Screenplay),

Starring: Kenichi Endo, Rena Matsui,  Yuko Nishimaru

Zenzo Shinozaki (Endo) is retiring from his role as a company president but there’s nobody waiting for him since his bad temper alienated his wife and daughter. He wants to go on a journey but has a bad leg and so he recruits Saori Yaane (Matsui) who is a hostess who killed her mother to protect a sibling. Zenzo pays Saori 100 million yen for 100 hours of her time for a journey they take together…

Website

K: Missing Kings    

Japanese Title: 好きっていいなよ

Romaji: Sukitte ii nayo

Release Date: July 12^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: N/A

Director: Shingo Suzuki

Writer: GoRA x GoHands (Original Manga/Screenplay),

Starring:  Daisuke Namikawa (Yashiro Isana), Daisuke Ono (Kuroh Yatogami), Kenjiro Tsuda (Mikoto Suoh, Mikako Komatsu (Neko) Tomokazu Sugita (Reisi Munakata), Jun Fukuyama (Misaki Yata), Yui Horie (Anna Kushia), Satomi Satou (Kukuri Yukizome)

K: Missing Kings is the continuation of the franchise which has grown in popularity so much that it will be getting/has got international premieres in France and the US. The synopsis reveals spoilers for the story so highlight the text:

    The “Academy Island Incident” in which all four “kings” cross paths… Since then, Silver Clansmen Kuroh Yatogami and Neko have been searching for their master, Shiro. Without finding any clues to Shiro’s whereabouts, the two became disheartened. However, one day, they see HOMRA members Rikio Kamamoto and Anna Kushina being chased by someone.

Website

Cinema Kabuki classic temple solicitation book / Benkei Ship / Mikawa Zen Meditation    

Japanese: シネマ歌舞伎　クラシック　勧進帳 / 船弁慶 /身替座禅

Romaji: Shinema kabuki kurashikku kanshinchō / Funa Benkei / Mikawa Zazen

Running Time:  80 mins. / 70 mins. / 60 mins.

Release Date: July 12^th, 2014

Three entries in the Cinema Kabuki series get released today and the trailer reveals little about them so here’s a slice from Kanshinchou, the first of the three so you can get an idea:

Website

Southern Winds   

Japanese Title: 南風

Romaji: Minami kaze

Release Date: July 12^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 93 mins.

Director: Koji Hagiuda

Writer: Mika Ogita (Screenplay),

Starring:  Teresa Daley, Mei Kurokawa, Eisei Shu, He Huang, Gayu Kou, Daisuke Sasaki

This is directed by Koji Hagiuda, the man who helmed the wonderful adaptation of Akira Saso’s novel Shindo. The story is markedly different in the sense that it’s a road trip that two girls, one Japanese and one Taiwanese, go on. It looks a bit like a tourist ad for Taiwan and Japan and stars Mei Kurokawa as a 26-year-old magazine editor who has recently been dumped and has to visit Taipei for an article. While there she meets a sixteen-uear-old Taiwanese girl who dreams of becoming a model The girl senses this as her big opportunity and lies her way into Aiko’s company by pretending to be older and a guide. The two gradually overcome their differences on their journey and connect as they cycle together.

Website

Mayonaka kimi wa kiba o muku   

Japanese Title: 真夜中きみはキバをむく

Romaji: Mayonaka kimi wa kiba o muku

Release Date: July 12^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 60 mins.

Director: Yumi Yoshiyuki

Writer: Yumi Yoshiyuki (Screenplay),

Starring:  Yugo Mikawa,Koichi Tamura,Ryuhei Kawasaki

Yumi Yoshiyuki brings yaoi vampires to the Meguro Cinema to celebrate t’s 60^th anniversary. It’s about a man named Saeki who frequents the cinema and meets a beautiful college student known only as the midnight companion. When everybody had left the cinema, the two would stay behind but this suddenly stopped when the midnight companion disappeared. Three years later, he has returned but a darkness inhabits him. Their love is rekindled but…

Website

Naniwa Kinyuudo    

Japanese Title: ナニワ銭道

Romaji: Naniwa Kinyuudo

Release Date: July 12^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: N/A

Director: Sadaaki Haginawa

Writer: Ko Oikawa (Screenplay), Yuuji Aoki (Original Manga)

Starring:  Masataka Kubota, Koji Matoba, Taro Suruga, Ryoji Morimoto, Ren Osugi, Mizuki Tanimura,

Yuuji Aoki was a manga artist famous Naniwa Kinyudo (The way of Osaka financing) which won numerous awards. The film seems to adapt the manga. The story is about a bo who moves from Osaka to Kanto with dreams of becoming a cartoonist. He gets work at a cabaret club and finds help from a hostess who has connections to the yakuza. Those connections could come in useful.

Website

Knights of Sidonia   

Staff: 

Director: Kobun Shizuno, Series Composition/Screenplay: Sadayuki Murai, Character Designer: Yuki Moriyama, Original Creator: Tsutomu Nihei

Voice Actors: 

Ryota Ohsaka as Nagate Tanikaze, Aki Toyosaki as Izana Shinatose, Atsuko Tanaka as Samari Ittan, Eri Kitamura as Honoka Series, Nanako Mori as Eiko Yamano,

Studio: POLYGON PICTURES

Premiere Date: Spring 2014

Website

When it comes to adaptation of favourite manga I am willing to forgive a lot if I can get a big-screen or TV anime version. The film version of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki wasn’t totally faithful to the source, rather a greatest hits of weirdness and yet it still managed to capture the atmosphere of the twisted tale. Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack made significant changes to the story and characters and yet the hopeless despair and ugly deaths and black humour were enough to sway me. Knights of Sidonia does a good job of adapting the manga. With great use of CGI and a story that built up a lot of mystery, I’m hooked and I cannot wait to watch season 2.

After re-reading my first impression the anime clearly lived up to the early promise I saw. I like Nihei’s dystopian apocalyptic sci-fi manga and this one had so many interesting aspects that appeal to my dark imagination and a lot of it makes it through to the anime.

There are things that make certain anime fans roll their eyes such as harems and hot spring episodes which are present. Even in space, on a ship which is falling apart and with humanity on the edge of extinction, Knights of Sidonia managed to get these things but with Nihei’s lovely twists like the lead character Nagate’s harem consisting of two sexes – female and intersex (characters who are both genders and can reproduce asexually) – and discovery of ancient laboratories underneath the hot spring.

His art work is pretty detailed and so is his depiction of society which the anime manages to capture whether it’s the genetic engineering that has created a unique set of characters or the way shifting gravity and inertia would affect the ship.

Nihei’s story has a lot of potential and thanks Sadayuki Murai’s adaptation, it played a smart game of teasing things and leaving the viewer gasping for more from season 2 and using the setting to cover up less than graceful characterisation. Origin stories surrounding the history of Sidonia and its crew and Gauna were opened up, the various political factions like the anti-war protestors are all given a moment in each episode to plot and scheme and play media wars and the constant detail really brought the idea of the age of the conflict.

The reveals for the intriguing stuff is set for the next season but what season one made clear that the fact that humanity was on the brink of destruction and that every life lost was a blow. More intriguing were the Gauna and that the majority of people on Sidonia did not know all that much about what they were fighting.

From the very opening episode with its view of a society fracturing the story threw into doubt the military bombast and need for alien destruction that other sci-fi shows typically peddle and allowed a swamp of conspiracy theories to take root. This is what Nihei does so well although the plots and narrative of his manga are usually messily revealed. Some theories are only beginning to sprout while others are blossoming. The most promising stuff seems primed to be in full bloom next season with the big questions – what are the gauna and are they some malignant race of monsters bent on the destruction of humanity? – forming the centre.

As much as the audience questioned things, so did the pilots.

Hoshijiro, a nice but fay love interest became fascinating as she was caught by the Gauna and warped into a strange placenta that, in scenes both surreal and touching, was trying to make contact with Nagate through some scrawled hiragana.

Mere echoes of the recently absorbed Hoshijiro’s human personality or the actual person? It was signalled that the Gauna could take the shape of a person earlier in the series and the glimpses of humanity’s first encounter with the Gauna was of a human shape descending upon a city from the stars.

Hoshijiro had already sown the seeds of doubt as to whether the Gauna were trying to destroy humanity. What if they are trying to communicate and their way of contact just happened to be enveloping everything in a protruding mass of flesh? Okay not in those words, it was put more enigmatically. The corrupt form of Hoshijiro presented an interesting spin on things and made me remember that Nihei creates villains and creatures who match the main protagonist for being memorable.

Izana’s character grew tremendously in the final few episodes, transitioning from firm friend to the almost archetypal romantically frustrated character, who just happened to be intersex, in Nagate’s harem to becoming more of a well-rounded human and incredibly sympathetic. In the build-up to the climactic battle, the shortage of pilots meant that less able ones like Izana were being rushed through to the front-line to make up numbers and Izana voiced how scared of having to go into combat he/she was.

In the final fight, through the power of intercutting between perspectives, the viewer was given Izana’s perilous predicament as he/she was sandwiched between the scenes of controlled chaos of command and Nagate’s relentlessly aggressive and agile piloting on the battlefield. Seeing things from Izana’s perspective made the fights more intense because you could see that it would be easy to be swept away in the confusion and fast pace of the battle and Izana was barely coping with the fluid and deadly situation. Brilliantly, Izana’s path was clear when Nagate was in trouble and a brief moment of skill and determination saved the main character.

One of the major highlights of the anime was that the combat was thrilling to watch.

Despite deciding to stop writing first impression posts for anime, part of my reasoning for the first impression for this anime was that I wanted to praise Sidonia’s use of CGI (I even posted about it on my much neglected Tumblr account), animation and editing which I found did an impressive job with the action sequences.

The mecha battles were fast-flowing and the final few episodes had an insane series of battles where humanity was really pushed to the edge of destruction. From the command centre to the battlefield, there were tense and excellently choreographed battles and dialogue that really brought across the idea that Nagate and his fellow pilots were fighting a desperate battle.

I loved the way the commander would calmly be giving orders and rolling with the battles changing pace as she heard soon-to-be-dead pilots crying in panic over com-links and their status flashed from green to red. Close-ups caught the commander having to make tough decisions on the fly and the monitors listed all sorts of information.

Out in space, things were even more hectic as mecha streaked about giant globular flesh-balls, all bright colours and twisting movements in the depths of space and had to content with a massive planet busting missile launched from Sidonia bearing down on them. It was all tense, edge of the seat stuff.

The contrast between the lumbering and polymorphous corpuscular creatures is well made as swarms of mecha battle the seemingly malignant and gigantic foes. The sense of scale and speed works so well thanks to the CGI and the pace is kept up at a nerve rattling rate with POV shots from inside the cockpit that seamlessly joined together scenes of chaos.

The excitement of the battle, the developing mystery and the growing characters make me anticipate the second season even more and I know that cooler pilots are waiting in the wings to take flight. With season 2 schedules for the winter season, I have something to look forward to.

4/5

OP

Terror in Resonance (Zankyou no Terror)   

Staff

Director: Shinichiro Watanabe, Character Designer: Kazuto Nakazawa, Music: Yoko Kanno, Main Theme: Yuuki Ozaki,

Voice Actors

Soma Saito as Twelve/Touji Hisami, Kaito Ishikawa as Nine/Arata Kokonoe, Atsumi Tanezaki as Lisa Mishima,

Studio

Mappa

Synopsis

On a quiet summer day Tokyo was rocked by a massive terrorist bombing. Nobody knows who did it but a strange video uploaded to the internet was trending online before the attack and provides the only clue. The grim truth is that the culprits were two high school boys who go under the codenames Nine (real name Arata Kokonoe) and Twelve (real name Touji Hisami), both of whom have an agenda against the state that is fuelled by a tragic background. They become known as “Sphinx” and start to play a deadly game with a nation that was once complacent but now lives in terror of them… One girl, mercilessly bullied by classmates, finds herself becoming close to them as she finds resonance in terror.

This was the last of my selection for the Summer 2014 and probably the one that I liked the most that isn’t Tokyo Ghoul and doesn’t have the words Space and Dandy in the title.

It certainly had the most hype out of all of the series in the season what with Shinichiro Watanabe and Yoko Kanno reuniting at Studio MAPPA. The last time the three got together was in the well-received Kids on the Slope but I was expecting more from this because of the story and the look of the animation witnessed on the PV and I was not disappointed.

The visuals are excellent, the art was detailed and the animation was fluid. I was wowed enough by the robbery conducted in the snowbound nuclear reprocessing plant in Aomori in the pre-credit sequence.

I was impressed by the details when the story was brought into the heart of the city of Tokyo which started off in a school that Twelve and Nine infiltrated and ended in a terrorist attack in Shinjuku.

Nobody could accuse Shinichiro Watanabe of lacking style and he gets the animators at MAPPA to do some of their best work yet. The settings may not be unique but his direction is strong enough to was establish a strong and fast moving. That combined with the sort of contemporary setting gave off the sort of Christopher Nolan (Inception) vibe, all shiny and sleek and technical.

What makes it different is that there were numerous shots which stirred the imagination, some beautiful,

others very ugly.

This last one with its graininess and desaturated nature hints at the sort of trauma that the kids suffered in some “institution” where children perished. It’s something that has traumatised the central characters and gives them a reason to commit terrorist acts.

One gets the sense that these two may be escapees from some sort of school for the super-gifted like in Akira – why else would kids be killed in such a manner? How could teens be so driven to commit an act of terror and so skilfull at doing it if not for being powerful in some manner?

They are still kids physically and the way they react to the world – using social media, playing with toys – but they have the standard behaviour of sociopath (Nine) and psychopath (Twelve). It’s probably too early to start throwing labels like these around and pretending I’m clever but the sense of detachedness and self-centred and pretentiousness is one I recognise from my teen years.

Kazuto Nakazawa’s character designs coupled with the writing and seiyuu lived up to expectations and the cast were definitely memorable if not totally original.

Arata Kokone (Nine) is definitely the cold as ice guy who seems to be the brains of the operation. Kaitou Ishikawa voices him in a dry, almost monotone way that gets across the cool and calculating nature of the character but he is plagued by the nightmares which his partner seems to have overcome.

Touji Hisami (Twelve) is the live-wire of the duo as could be told from his intro where he storms into the reprocessing centre in a police van listening to rock music and then crashes out of the back of the van with a snowmobile.

He’s definitely charismatic and  prone to doing and saying odd things but one can sense that this must be a front as he always seems aware of his situation and how others feel, his goofing around is an act.

Nevertheless, it manages to hook Lisa Mishima who we first meet being bullied by a gang trying to get her to jump into a pool with her school uniform on.

Bullying is a subject  that has been growing large in Japan over the last few years due to some suicides and it has popped up in multiple dramas and films than is normal. It is pretty starkly depicted here.

She’s the complete outsider, seemingly ignored by all and keeping the bullying to herself. She seems to have a mother who smothers her. Perhaps there’s a dark history – maybe a connection to the institution that Arata and Touji escaped from.

Despite knowing that Touji is a budding terrorist, one feels sympathy for her and when he and Arata offer her a way out of the bombing and her mundane bully-blighted life,

Probably, the most interesting character is Shibasaki, a former police detective who looks like he. He watched Arata and Touji’s YouTube video warning and twigged that they were going to pull off the terrorist act. He definitely has a grizzled look that reminded me of Koji Yakusho in The World of Kanako.

Perhaps all former detectives look like this in Japan…

Another aspect to mention is the strong OP and music from the episode. Yoko Kanno is in form (I don’t think she ever loses it) with the music which is a combination of haunting electro themes mixed with drum n bass, jazz piano and drum scores and haunting vocals. It’s beautiful stuff and I’ve already ordered the album (as well as some video games) from Japan.

Overall this one has a lot of potential for a great story about contemporary times. The use of social media, high school kids with very real trauma of bullying and the characters finding some understanding of what each and every one is going through thanks to the resonance of terror that they have all seemingly suffered. That, and there’s a cool looking detective who will ferret out the connections. It’s not the most beautiful show of the season – that award goes to Tokyo Ghoul – but I cannot wait for the rest of the series!

Tokyo Ghoul      

Staff 

Director: Shuhei Morita, Original Creator: Sui Ishida, Series Composition: Chuuji Mikasano, Character Designer: Kazuhiro Miwa, 

Voice Actors and Characters 

Natsuki Hanae as Ken Kaneki, Kana Hanazawa as Rize Kamishiro, Toshiyuki Toyonaga as Hideyoshi (Hide) Nagachika, Sora Amamiya as Touka Kirishima, Mamoru Miyano as Shuu Tsukiyama, Takahiro Sakurai as Uta, Sumire Morohoshi as Hinami Fueguchi, Takayuki Sugou as Yoshimura, 

Studio

Studio Pierrot

Website

Synopsis

Reports have it that “Ghouls” roam the streets of Tokyo and are devouring humans. Nobody has seen these things and lived until a bookish college student named Ken Kaneki encounters them. 

We first meet him chilling at his favourite coffee shop with his friend Hide, he sneaks quick looks at a beautiful girl sat across from him and talks about his dream of winning a date with her. It seems that he is too shy to act. 

Hide mocks his friend’s guileless and naïve love and tries hitting on the silent waitress Touka but fails miserably and decides to fly the coop and leave Ken for the night. With Hide’s departure it seems that Ken’s luck takes a change as he attracts the attention of the girl. Ken discovers that her name is Rize and she is obsessed with the same writers that he is. He also discovers more, darker things about her as he hangs out with Rize and from that very moment he met her at the coffee shop his life takes a dark and ghoulish turn…

Tokyo Ghoul comes from Studio Pierrot and the director is Suhei Morita who is most famous for his work on the omnibus movie Short Peace which was nominated for an Oscar in the best animated short category. They pull out the stops with an animation that is vibrant, bright and colourful like the blood that pulses out of the torn and shredded bodies of ghoul victims and a great set of characters and strong writing and world creation that promises a lot of meat for the viewer to get their teeth into.

The story takes place in contemporary Tokyo. It is recognisable, a place of cafes and college but this Tokyo is one where ghouls roam the streets and everybody knows about it and aren’t sure how to deal with it. News of the ghoul’s presence is all over the airwaves and in episode one, newscasters and guests discuss the problems of ghouls and we find out that the government are investigating them. I guess people just have to deal with it like a troublesome social group such as yakuza – if you know you’re on the same side of the road as a ghoul, cross over and try not to attract their attention.

Problem is, nobody quite knows what these creatures look like and that’s because people who encounter ghouls ends up getting eaten. Ghouls look like us, although once they reveal their true form, a powered up form of the human physique, the major giveaway is a kagune, a “predatory organ that functions as weapons and claws”.

Apart from that it is still hard to tell them apart from humans and so the ghouls find it possible to live in our world undetected and restrict their ghoulish active to the twilight hours where they find their human prey are least aware of threats.

This scene setting is evocatively brought to the screen through great art direction and backgrounds which brings to life the various settings and the way people fit in.

While Ghouls co-exist with us in open society, in secret there is a mirror world that the ghouls inhabit, one with rules and factions, a familiar concept from other monster genres like vampires and werewolves, and Ken Kaneki finds himself plunged into this new world.

Thrown into it might be a better way to describe it because his dream date with Rize takes a nasty turn when she reveals her true nature.

Fortunately an untimely construction site accident means Ken no longer has to have his liver chewed on but leaves him in critical condition. In order to save his life, a surgeon transplants Rize’s organs into Ken which is the start of his descent into the ghoul’s shadow world.

Through the organs he develops into a half-ghoul as his humanity slowly becomes overtaken by Rize’s unwanted influence. It seems that her psychic presence clings to her organs as well as her ghoul persona and powers and she lurks in a dark corner of his mind, popping up to torment Ken when he’s faced with the horrible changes his new organs are creating. This is where Tokyo Ghoul goes into overdrive as it balances extreme violence with heart-rending character development and spends a lot of time focussing on his struggles to adapt and not lose his humanity.

Ken is first presented as a bookish guy with a bit of a pure soul, one who blushes at the thought of girls and is a complete gentleman. After his new life-saving operation he has to devour the limbs and livers of others and he finds it truly horrific.

A lot of time is spent on his battle with the concept of having to eat flesh to survive, something he finds repulsive and decides to try and avoid but he faces starvation which is extremely painful for a ghoul.

There are many scenes where nothing but his struggle not to eat flesh is on show and he voices his objections and moral dilemmas and doubling over from the pain his hunger gives him.

He tries isolating himself from others but his best friend Hide refuses to leave him alone. It really is impossible to drop out of a highly connected society and Hide tracks Ken down when he sees him at college. Ken’s presence places Hide in great danger not only because of his taste for human flesh but the presence of other ghouls and this inevitably leads to violence as Ken has to protect Hide.

The body horror that goes on is startling and hideous and it’s meant to be so we understand Ken Kaneki’s emotional journey as he finds his humanity undergoing repulsive changes and it’s sold so well here. Limbs are torn apart, bodies thrown across streets and hands tear into chest cavities. However most of the violence is heavily censored in TV anime and the black fog covers many of the worst aspects of the violence but in the second episode director Suhei Morita and anime studio Pierrot go all arty and use a startling array of colours for the peak of the goriness and carnage.

It’s a move that reminded me of Bakemonogatari and making a relationship between that and Tokyo Ghoul makes me view this favourably.

I was genuinely impressed by the scene on an artistic level because the level of savagery and brutality was translated well without having to cut away or censor anything and it was beautiful to look at.

What impressed me more was that after dealing with moments of intensely horrific high-stakes combat or scenes of human flesh being consumed, Tokyo Ghoul goes into dealing with the psychological effects of it on Ken and the world he has entered. The juxtaposition with his innocent and upstanding earlier self and the feral creature he becomes is stark. His world view is slowly coming apart at the seams and it seems that he will lose his humanity and the ghost of Rize (who likes to grope and taunt him) will have her way and get him to consume people.

I respect the time spent on showing his troubles and it goes a long way in building up his character.

Fortunately he is always saved by another character and the world of Tokyo Ghoul opens up even more as Ken encounters other ghouls, some of whom are friendly and some who are downright evil and if the first two episodes are indicative of the rest of the series, seeing how these characters integrate is going to be cool.

I’ve done it again, a long rambly post with lots of images that gives too much away but I like the anime a lot.

A great start which has a strong character in Ken Kaneki, We follow his journey into a shadow world where there are many deliciously twisted elements such as horror, loss of humanity and disturbed people who are all mixing together to create some thrilling drama. There’s also the prospect of encountering some ghoul-hunting corporation named CCG and chap called “Jason” who we have not seen yet but must be awesome. Like me!

Following the first two episodes, I would rate this one of my favourite titles of the last few years, never mind the summer season. I rate it so highly that I’m going to start reading Sui Ishida’s original manga which this is based on. The anime has had a tremendous start with fantastic animation

Tokyo Ghoul has my favourite ED from the season and I’ve pre-ordered the CD that the track Seijatachi can be found on:

Third Window Films are one of the leading distributors of Japanese films in the west, if not the leading distributor, and they have a massive catalogue of titles ranging from big budget pictures to the tiniest of indie films that would rarely be picked up by other labels. I have met the man in charge of Third Window Films and he is very passionate and knowledgeable about the titles he brings to the west and probably one of the best advocates for Japanese cinema in any film industry. Just to prove this point, Third Window Films announced an innovative Kickstarter project that will allow backers to get a dual format 3-disc limited edition release full of indie films which will be region free and open to everyone in the world.

I’ve written about some of these and I am very excited… So excited that I’ve already backed the campaign and pre-ordered my version!

Here are the details!

NEW DIRECTORS FROM JAPAN

Third Window Films have always tried hard to bring a wide variety of films from the Far East to the West, from big studio productions to minor indie masterpieces, and this project is another step in our goal to open up the West to what’s so great about Asian cinema!

This project, hopefully the first of many (depending on its success!), is focusing on young and unique directors from Japan whose films have not received any sort of distribution in their own or any other territory. We want to focus on supporting young talent and making their names recognisable so decided to create this ‘NEW DIRECTORS FROM JAPAN‘ release which focuses on individual directors and their work.

Third Window Films has always tried to find directors and films that are both ‘unique’ and ‘entertaining’ and we feel that these three directors fit into the Third Window Films brand perfectly, so we are incredibly happy to present:

Nagisa Isogai (磯谷渚 – Aged 28) – 2 films:

My Baby (わたしの赤ちゃん - 16mm / 16mins) /

Heavily pregnant Hatsumi and her sister Chika visit a shrine to pray for a safe birth, but in a tragic turn of events, Hatsumi tumbles down the stairs and loses the baby.

6 months later, Chika’s baby is safely born and when Hatsumi visits Chika she finds out that Chika named her daughter Aoi, which happened to be the name Hatsumi chose for her own baby…

What terrible secrets are hidden from their past and what lies ahead for these two?

The Lust of Angels (天使の欲望 - HD / 40mins)

Saori, a school girl, is molested on the notorious “molester train” of the Hanagawa line and rescued by another school girl who witnesses the act. The girl who rescues her turned out to be a new student of Yamashiro Gakuen high school, which Saori also attends. The mysterious new student Yuriko, is rumoured to be a “parent killer”. Yuriko then leads Saori and her friends to hunt molesters on the Hanagawa line…

Hirobumi Watanabe (渡辺紘文 Aged 31)

 And the Mud Ship Sails Away (そして泥船はゆく - HD / 88mins)

Takashi is 36 years old, unemployed and completely aimless. He lives with his grandmother, repeating the same routine – game centre, bowling center, watching TV – day after day. This suddenly changes when Yuka shows up, claiming to be his half-sister. Confronted with a new situation, Takashi decides to change his life…

KosukeTakaya (髙谷監督 – Aged 27)

Buy Bling, Get One Free (シャレ番外地 - 35mm / 27mins)

The trailer comes from one of my old trailer posts and the film is part of a compilation. You can get a glimpse of it from 0:20 :

After being dumped by his girlfriend while on a date Kamono Naoto gets really down. ‘What’s wrong with my fashion?’ he wonders as he’s told off for being embarrassingly over-the-top with his see-through jacket, feather shorts and patterned pantyhose. Nobody understands his fashion. Neither his friends nor even a writer for a fashion magazine he likes.
One day though a man offers him to become a fashion model exclusively for one brand and to become a fashion leader, a dreamlike opportunity. In a trance Kamono follows this man to enter a strange and unimaginable world…

This release will be a limited edition set of only 1,000 copies. To cover both our blu-ray and DVD customers, the release will be a DUAL FORMAT release and include BOTH a BLU-RAY and a DVD of the films, as well as a separate extras disc (on DVD) which will include interviews with all the directors involved.

This KICKSTARTER campaign is to setup the initial costs of creating this release. Due to the number of films, interviews as well as the fact that we are putting both a blu-ray and 2 dvds into the box with a slipcase it is a very expensive project, so we want to raise the initial funds by pre-selling the first 250 copies at £16 each (the retail price will be £22.99) and the added bonus of pre-ordering is that each of the 250 copies will be signed by all 3 directors!

Visual Industry Promotion Organization (VIPO) / New Directions in Japanese Cinema

VIPO operates ndjc were commissioned by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as part of its policy to promote Japanese film and film-making. The project focuses on talented young film-makers to give them the real film-making skills through workshops, imparting the necessary knowledge and techniques to polish their film-making techniques and creativity. The long-term goal is to discover and foster the next generation of feature-length film directors. Since 2006 to 2013, there have been a total of 43 film-makers.

Here’s the Kickstarter page again!

Long intro with pictures from this week’s posts. Feel free to skip over it. If you want to read it then listen to this track and bore yourself to tears. I’m going to watch anime now.

What’s in a trailer?

Usually too much of a film’s plot but a trailer’s two minute slices of the film are meant to advertise what a viewer will get when they plunk down hard-earned cash for a cinema ticket, a difficult choice for some considering the prices involved.

Every weekend I publish a list of Japanese films scheduled for release in cinemas across the nation or, in the case of many smaller films, in Tokyo. The selection is usually diverse with documentaries and low-budget indies battling for space with anime and big-budget studio pictures. For a recent trailer post I had a comment:

most of these films are so low quality you can’t never shake the feeling that there’s a camera in front the actors. They are very amateurish.

That’s not really fair.

Indie films are a hard sell made even harder by trailers with their reductive nature. The fragmentary form is perfect for some films since they can play like a highlight reel for glossy and stylish titles full of explosions and car chases and whatnot. If you’re familiar with the filmmakers and the franchises you know what you’re getting. To wit, one can feel an immediate adrenaline rush watching the visual and aural craziness and excess in the trailer for Sion Sono’s forthcoming Tokyo Tribes movie, an adaptation of a hit manga series and anime, and know that the film will maintain that feeling.

For indie titles with no hype or background? The trailer has to perform a miracle in convincing viewers with the content that they have a lot to offer and since it’s not the big-budget spectacle that immediately grabs a viewer it is harder to gauge. Perhaps there will be the impression of a lack of incident, the cheap looking nature of digital video and sets may jump out, and viewing a host of unknown actors who lack J-pop idol looks may underwhelm many and yet my own experience with the sort of Japanese films, the type that were criticised, is markedly different.

At a small screening of Shady at last year’s Raindance Film Festival, I was gradually sucked into the lives of the protagonists, enjoying the newfound friendships and feeling like I was embraced by their world and not just a voyeur. I was emotionally invested in a way that was deliberately orchestrated by the film and left me open for a final third which had me leaning forward in my seat, teeth clamped shut and fingers tensing, a reaction to the emotional roller-coaster and feeling  strong desire to talk to someone about the film even if they were a complete stranger, something that has happened with cinema screenings of big budget titles like Spirited Away, Inception, and Battle Royale.

Shindo which had a story that was so familiar one might want to dismiss it but the actual experience of watching characters who were portrayed with so much life and emotion opened up an epic vista of love and maturity in the confined space of a small town and the ending had me in its grip.

The other indie films which I have seen through screeners, film festivals and the releases of Third Window Films, the only film label out there releasing titles that give a real snapshot of what is happening in the Japanese movie industry, and indie movies. Indie films take narrative and aesthetic risks that make me sit up and pay attention or are anchored by strong performances by a cast of unknowns that sway me. Sometimes it’s easy to see in a trailer, other times you need to experience the entire film to understand why it’s important.

There are so many experiences that I have had with indie films that make me glad that I am a cinephile, the most recent being the exhilaration of the bike ride in Shady which will forever remain one of the most memorable movie moments, another being the end for Shindo remains rooted in my memory.

Of course, a person’s response to a trailer is a highly individual thing and not everyone is going to be pleased but that’s what reviews are for. My aim with the blog and the trailer posts is to show what is released and report on what I watch, to explore the cult and indie films that we rarely see in the west and shine a light on all sorts of films missed by other English language websites and meet like-minded people. The blog has helped me do this.

My top film from last year was Shady, beating the bigger and brasher Why Don’t You Play in Hell? which was helmed by my favourite director! If you doubt independent Japanese cinema then start paying attention because there are many titles showing assured and stylish direction with great stories and characters, something that trailers rarely get across.

Coincidentally Third Window Films have launched a Kickstarter to showcase the latest in indie Japanese cinema which I posted about on a couple of website and here. I trust the label to bring me a great set of titles and I know the indie scene is buzzing with ideas. I’m so confident that I’ve already backed it and the project looks set to meet its goal which shows that there are others who feel the same way.

End of ramble. Im done invalidating my trailer posts -_-

For all this talk about film, I didn’t watch a single one this week. I spent most of my free time watching anime and writing about it, posting about trailers on different news sites and spending more time on social media. On the blog this week I published a review for Knights of Sidonia, first impressions for Zankyou no Terror and Tokyo Ghoul and the aforementioned post about Third Window Films’s Kickstarter.

I also started watching Psycho-Pass Redux which reminded me what a great show it is.

I’ve started talking about anime to work colleagues again and getting them to watch shows.

What’s released in Japan this weekend? Look away if you don’t want to see indie pictures… Or anime, soft-core pinch and tickle porn, super sentai shows, documentaries, and girls with guns. This is why I love Japanese films, so many ideas.

When Marnie Was There    

Japanese: 思い出のマーニー

Romaji: Omoide no Mani

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 103 mins.

Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi

Writer: Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Keiko Niwa, Masashi Ando (Screenplay), Joan G. Robinson (Original Novel)

Starring: Kasumi Arimura (Marnie), Sara Takatsuki (Anna), Hitomi Kuroki (Hisako), Susumu Terajima (Kiyomasa Oiwa), Yo Oizumi (Dr. Yamashita), Nanako Matsushima (Yoriko), Kazuko Yoshiyuki (Baaya),

With the retirement of Hayao Miyazaki, a new generation of Studio Ghibli directors must make take the reins of the studio’s output. First up is Hiromasa Yonebayashi, director of Arrietty (2010). He is in charge of the adaptation of British novelist Joan G. Robinson’s book originally published in 1967. He has taken the bold decision of shifting the setting from Britain to Japan, a small coastal town in Hokkaido. This is the location for a strange tale involving a twelve-year-old girl named Anna who travels from Sapporo to the village to cope with her asthma. She is staying with relatives and leads a solitary existence because she finds it hard to deal with other children due to a dark incident in her past. One day, she sees a western-style house that the villagers refer to as Marsh House and spies a mysterious blonde girl named Anna in the windows. She heads over there and the two become friends but Anna has a dark secret…

Website

The Torture Club /  Chotto Kawaii Iron Maiden   

Japanese: ちょっとかわいいアイアンメイデン

Romaji: Chotto Kawaii Iron Maiden

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: N/A

Director: Kota Yoshida

Writer: Kota Yoshida (Screenplay), Makoto Fukami (Original Novel)

Starring: Noriko Kijima, Haruna Yoshizumi, Yuki Mamiya, Mika Yano, Reiko Hayama, Shungiku Uchida,

This is based on a manga about a torture club at a prestigious girl’s school which trains members to enter the military/police as interrogation experts. The film follows Yuzuki Muto (Kijima) who has joined the club and falls for her sempai Aoi Funaki (Yoshizumi)m a girl who loves to torture others.

Website

Right, apologies for my lack of knowledge on the next two film entries and super sentai shows in general.

Ressha Sentai ToQger: The Movie – Galaxy Line SOS   

Japanese: 烈車戦隊トッキュウジャー THE MOVIE ギャラクシーラインSOS

Romaji: Ressha Sentai Tokkyûjâ Za Mûbî Gyarakushî Rain SOS

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 29 mins.

Director: Noboru Takemoto

Writer: Yasuko Kobayashi (Screenplay),

Starring: Jun Shison, Jin Hiramaki, Riria Baba, Ryusei Yokohama, Ai Moritaka, Shin Nagahama, Tsutomu Sekine, Kappei Yamaguchi, Yui Horie, ao Ochimichi

Ressha Sentai ToQger: The Movie – Galaxy Line SOS is a super sentai show involving a flying train. I have no idea what is going on and only know that it has been double-billed with the next film.

Website

Kamen Rider Gaim the Movie: The Great Soccer Match! The Golden Fruit Cup!                

Japanese: 劇場版　仮面ライダー鎧武（ガイム）　サッカー大決戦！黄金の果実争奪杯！

Romaji: Kamen Rider Gaimu Soccer Daikessen Ohgon no Kajitsu Sôdatsusen

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 65 mins.

Director: Osamu Kaneda

Writer: Jin Hagenaya (Screenplay), Shotaro Ishinomori (Original Manga)

Starring: Taketo Tanaka, Minami Tsukui, Gaku Sano, Yutaka Kobayashi, Yuki Kubota, Metal Yoshida, Yumi Shida, Saku Momose,

Kamen Rider Gaim has worked with J-League stars to bring together a football match involving the other Kamen Riders but there are some mysterious players also on the pitch. And something about horses.

Website

The Yasukuni Shrine, Earthquakes and the Emperor   

Japanese: 靖国・地霊・天皇

Romaji: Yasukuni Jishin Tennô

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 90 mins.

Director: Nobuyuki Ohura

Writer: N/A

Starring: Ayumi Abe, Manri Kim, Akihiko Ohguchi, Shinichi Tokunaga, Aiko Utsumi

The Yasukuni Shrine is seemingly always on the news due to the heightened tensions between Japan, Korea and China and this documentary seeks to examine what the shrine actually represents by discussing it with a variety of people from right-wingers to anti-war protestors and some notable politician’s wives. The shrine represents the spirits of the war dead and many are buried there including war criminals. What are some of the responses to the issues surrounding it? Try watching this documentary.

Website

Everyday is Alzheimer’s 2 Director Sekiguchi Goes to England   

Japanese: 毎日がアルツハイマー2 関口監督、イギリスへ行く編

Romaji: mainichi ga arutsuhaimā 2 Sekiguchi kantoku, Igirisu e iku hen

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 51 mins.

Director: Yuka Sekiguchi

Writer: N/A

Starring: Yuka Sekiguchi

Yuka Sekguchi’s mother Hiroko was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease four years ago and since then she has had to care for her. Yuka has been able to document the emotional ups and downs of caring for her mother and has even started to explore how people elsewhere deal with dementia. She travels to Britain which as state-of-the-art dementia care and talks to people who deal with the subject and attends the dementia care academy to discover how dementia is handled in the UK. It’s great that films can cover subjects as diverse as this. Check out the YouTube channel to see more videos that Yuka Sekiguchi has created.

Website

The Palace of Ryugu, When Day Breaks   

Japanese: 竜宮、暁のきみ

Romaji: Ryugu, Akatsuki no Kimi

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 94 mins.

Director: Katsunari Aoki

Writer: Katsunari Aoki (Screenplay)

Starring: Risa Taniuchi, Hoshi Ishida, Akiko Matsumoto, Koji Nishiyama, Yukichi Kobayashi,

When Taro (Ishida) returns home to Kagawa Prefecture from Tokyo University, he reunites with his best friend but tragedy soon strikes as he nearly drowns off the Shonai peninsula. He survives but he loses his friend who tried to save him. The beautiful mountains and scenery do nothing to dull the pain of his loss but when Taro encounters a mysterious young girl named Mizuki, he begins to reconsider the meaning of life. A tale of loss and recovery ensues. Based on ‘Urashima Taro’ (the Ryugu legend), one of the most famous old tales that every Japanese person knows, the film is interweaved with the Japanese traditional puppet performance forming a modern day adolescent fantasy. – Adapted from the IMDB synopsis and film website details.

Website

I’m Ten, Then I’ll Catch Eleven    

Japanese: 僕はもうすぐ十一歳になる。

Romaji: Boku wa mousugu juu ichi sai ni naru

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 75 mins.

Director: Jimbo Yoshimasa

Writer: Jimbo Yoshimasa (Screenplay)

Starring: Hibiki Hamada, Shion, Kohsho Karmula, Airi Ichikawa, Toshiaki Torii, Hiromasa Kawamura

This got its premiere at the Osaka Asian Film Festival and the page for the film has all sorts of interesting info on the director and the film’s genesis which is where I got the synopsis from. Anyway, the story is about an elementary school boy named Shogo (Hamada) who catches and collects insects every day during his school’s winter break. Shogo knows there is a much larger insect collection in his father’s room, which is always locked. But when his father Toru (Kawamura) comes back from his job overseas, where he is touched by the reincarnation philosophy of India and Bhutan, he tells Shogo that he doesn’t want to collect insects anymore. Shogo’s grandfather, Tadashi, treats his dead wife’s ashes as a living figure, but the noodles Tadashi gives her remains in a bowl. “Has grandma reincarnated into something else?” Seeing adults’ different views of life and death, Shogo wonders what death is all about.

Website

Chasing song reading the real drama of “Night on the Galactic Railroad”   

Japanese: ほんとうのうた　朗読劇「銀河鉄道の夜」を追って

Romaji: Hontou no uta roudoku geki `gingatetsu dou no yoru’ o otte

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 100 mins.

Director: Jimbo Yoshimasa

Writer: Jimbo Yoshimasa (Screenplay)

Starring: Hideo Furukawa, Keijiro Suga, Motoyuki Shibata, Keitaney Love Kojima, Izumi Aoyagi

In 2011, playwright and poet Hideo Furukawa joined forces with other creative like Keijiro Suga, Keitaney Love Kojima, the actress Izumi Aoyagi, and Motoyuki Shibata to stage an interpretation of the novel, Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa. They did so through a variety of mediums such as theatre, music and went on tour across Japan for two years taking it to Tohoku in North East Japan where the earthquake and tsunami struck hard. The film features performances and interviews. This looks fascinating!

Website

Pokémon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction   

Japanese: ポケモン・ザ・ムービーXY『破壊の繭とディアンシー』

Romaji: Pokemon za Mubi XY “Hakai no Mayu to Dianshī”

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 100 mins.

Director: Kunihiko Yuyama

Writer: Satoshi Tajiri (Original Concept)

Starring: Ikue Ohtani (Pikachu), Rica Matsumoto (Ash/Satoshi), Marika Matsumoto (Dancie), Mariya Ise (Eureka), Mayuki Makiguchi (Serena)

In the underground Diamond Domain the Mythical Pokémon Diancie serves as ruler but the Heart Diamond that sustains the land is beginning to fall apart and Diancie is not yet strong enough to create a new one. Worse still, a group of thieves who want to steal the diamond awaken the Legendary Pokémon Yveltal from its cocoon during their heist. Fortunately Ash and his friends enter the picture and help Diancie discover its true power, stop Yveltal’s rampage, and save the Diamond Domain.

Also screened is the short Pikachu, what is this Key? (ピカチュウ、これなんのカギ？) with AKB48’s Mayu Watanabe acting as narrator.

Website

Gun Woman    

Japanese: 女体銃　ガン・ウーマン GUN WOMAN

Romaji: Nyotaijuu Gan Uuman Gun Woman

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 86 mins.

Director: Kurando Mitsutake

Writer: Kurando Mitsutake (Screenplay)

Starring: Asami, Kairi Narita, Noriaki Kamata, Toshiya Agata, Matthew Floyd Miller, Dean Simone, Tatsuya Nakadai,

Director Mitsutake stars as a doctor who abducts a woman and turns her into a perfect assassin so she can eliminate the man who murdered his wife. She will be dropped into an underground facility where the killer goes to fulfil his sexual fetishes. What makes her the ultimate gun woman is that all of the parts for the weapon are inside her body and she must assemble the weapon and kill the man before she bleeds to death.

Website

Goddess with a Gun   

Japanese: かくて女神は笑いき

Romaji: Kakute Megami wa Waraiki

Release Date: July 19^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 83 mins.

Director: Kanji Tsuda, Yusuke Hatai, Atsushi Muroga

Writer: Kurando Mitsutake (Screenplay)

Starring: Asuka Kurosawa, Aiko Kato, Rumi Hanai, Chiharu Konno, Yuko Ito, Hideo Sakaki, Kenichi Yajima, Shinjia Kasahara,

For all of my talk about indie films… I wanna see bad-ass women with guns! This is a film of three parts directed by Atsushi Muroga (Score – 1995, Junk – 2000), Yusuke Hatai (assistant director on How Selfish I Am!) and Kanji Tsuda, the actor. It stars a bunch of beautiful ladies like Asuka Kurosawa (Cold Fish, A Snake of June), truly doing it for themselves and getting revenge on rotten men! I’m game for this!  

Website

Godzilla (2014)   

UK Release Date: May 15th, 2014

Running Time: 123 mins.

Director: Gareth Edwards

Writer: Max Borenstein (Screenplay), David Callaham (Story)

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn,

Godzilla is massive. Not just in scale (which he is) but also as a franchise. Ishiro Honda’s nuclear powered lizard has starred in 28 films and a number of cartoons since the world first saw it in the original 1954 film. It launched a whole genre of movies known as kaiju eiga where there is now a whole roster of weird and gigantic creatures that battle each other and destroy cities. Hollywood was quick to recognise the power of Godzilla and released a re-edit of the original film in 1956 with an English dub and Raymond Burr as an American reporter. Appearances in the west died down until 1998 with a poorly received and rather risible attempt at making a big-budget spectacle.

Fast forward to 2014 and enough years have elapsed that people have forgotten that misfire and there is a new generation whose only encounter with Godzilla is probably a reference in reviews of Pacific Rim (2013). It was time for another attempt at a reboot and to lead it they hired Gareth Edwards, a man with only one major movie credit to his name, the indie monster movie Monsters (2010). It was a canny hire that has worked well because this movie revitalises the monster as far as western productions go, and establishes firm ground for the final two episodes of the planned trilogy.

The year is 1999 and the place is Janjira, Japan. Joe Brody (Cranston) and his wife Sandra (Binoche) both work for a nuclear power plant. After their son, Ford, heads to school they get to work investigating seismic activity and its effects on the plant. A disaster happens and the plant goes into meltdown.

2014, Ford Brody (Taylor-Johnson) is a US navy ordnance disposal officer back in San Francisco after a long deployment. His family time with wife Elle (Olsen) and son is interrupted by a call from the police in Tokyo. His estranged father has been arrested after trespassing in Janjira, which has now been quarantined. Ford bails his father out and accompanies him to the abandoned city to recover files that will prove the disaster had a mysterious origin.

They succeed in infiltrating the city and retrieving the data but are arrested by Monarch, an international organisation that has monitored Godzilla since the 1950’s and is holding a mysterious creature known as a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) that poses a massive threat to humanity.

The two come to the attention of Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Watanabe) and his assistant Vivienne Graham (Hawkins) and just in time, because the thing wakes up and causes massive destruction as it heads across the Pacific to the west coast of the US for a rendezvous with another creature…

This alpha predator of yours, doctor, do you really think he has a chance?

Everything about this film is large including the titular titan. The budget came in at around $160 million and it can be seen on the screen because the creature, based on the original design, is brought to life by amazing CGI, set construction, and art design which manages to believably place Godzilla and his monstrous foes in a contemporary setting and creates a string of scenes featuring massive battles and large-scale destruction.

Intelligent use of CGI and visuals shouldn’t come as a surprise if one knows about the director. Gareth Edwards has a background in making CGI for documentaries before he had his hit with Monsters where he proved adept at combining subtle spectacle and a believable story of a world where monsters and humans co-exist. This, however, is a step up in terms of scale and shows an amazing scope of imagination.

Also reminiscent of Monsters is a script which has a narrative about humanity having to understand the creatures. The script for Godzilla creates creatures that are following instinctual patterns. Despite looking evil and scary (as giant insects would), the MUTOs’ aren’t malign creatures actively seeking to destroy humanity, they just want to mate and humanity just happens to be in the way. Rather menacingly, if the MUTOs’ are allowed to breed then it is game over for the world and this allows the production team to call back on Godzilla’s friendlier appearances in movies as the defender of humanity. Godzilla is recast as something of an eco-warrior striding across the Earth whenever the balance of nature is threatened by the appearance other monsters and blasting stuff with radioactive breath. This is the subtle lacing that holds together an action-packed spectacle.

The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in their control and not the other way around. Let them fight.

Through a simple pattern of building up tension as a monster approaches and then letting loose with destruction, a lot of which reminds a viewer of natural or man-made disasters like a tsunami.

The opening gambit of the film is a truly terrifying nuclear meltdown at a power plant that reminds one of the crisis at Fukushima in 2011 and this is the set pattern of action, quiet moments where relationships between people and places are established in scenes of normality or military build-up which are then shattered by the slow and devastating appearance of monsters lumbering through cities. It is stunning and gut-churning because the interaction between the humans and monsters is perfectly done.

The creatures have that sense of awe-inspiring scale that is brought out through a combination of intelligent direction and editing and the great CGI and art. It is hard not to be intimidated when viewing the creatures from low-angle and POV shots and seeing the creatures lumbering across the landscape or brushing over skyscrapers. Ensuring that people are in the same scene, tiny figures swept aside by the monsters and the devastation that they bring in their wake, adds brilliantly to the sense of size difference.

Godzilla’s design is based on the original only bulkier but while a giant lizard, it is easier to cheer him on when fighting against the MUTOs’ which are definitely alien thanks to their metallic insectoid look. The sound of the creatures emitting their clicking noise and the sight of their spindly limbs is enough to make one’s skin-crawl and the moment when Godzilla lets loose it’s full-throated roar is both intimidating and joyous as it signals the beginning of an epic fight, a sluggish and brutal battering that sees the creatures constantly crashing into buildings and gouging holes into each other. Thrilling stuff!

The film has a large and starry cast amidst all of the carnage with great actors like Juliette Binoche (Certified Copy), Bryan Cranston (Drive), Ken Watanabe (Inception), Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine), and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass) but despite their presence, the focus is on establishing the monsters in a real world setting and making them a force of nature. It seems that the actors hired to play the roles are much too large for the limited screen-time but, and this is crucial, they sell the roles that they inhabit and create something of an emotional baseline that allows the terror of the monsters to be more effective.

Overall, this is a fun and exciting visual spectacular that brings Godzilla back to life for a new age. The focus is on the creatures and the sense that they are a force of nature which is brilliantly relayed by the visuals. This takes the first step in establishing the franchise.

4/5

Third Window Films will release the star-packed meta-comedy, Behind the Camera next week Monday. It’s a bit of a meta-comedy. The film is funny but funnier still if you know who most of the cast is. I watched it last week with a broad smile as famous actors, actresses, directors and others poked fun at themselves parodied the Korean film industry in a sly comedy based on the making of an innocuous ten-minute film. The only problem is that director isn’t on set, rather, he’s in Hollywood and directing over the internet and with his absence the production threatens to burst into chaos!

My highlights? Big personalities clashing and Kim Ok-Vin, who I first saw in the vampire film Thirst and who is so gorgeous and adorable in this film she’s returned to my number one Korean actress spot replacing Ha Ji-Won who I saw in Duelist. And with that comment, I return to number one creepiest movie blogger…

Here are the details:

Behind the Camera

A film by EJ Yong (Untold Scandal, Dasepo Naughty Girls)

Korea / 2012 / 90 Mins / In Korean with English subtitles / Colour

Starring:

Yoon Yeo-jeong (The Housemaid, In Another Country, Taste of Money)
Kim Ok-vin (Thirst, Dasepo Naughty Girls)
Oh Jeong-se (How to Use Guys with Secret Tips, Petty Romance)
Out on DVD July 28th, 2014

DVD Special Features: Interviews with director EJ Yong & actress Yoon Yeo-jeong at the London Korean Film Festival, Trailer

Synopsis 
Seoul, the present day. Director E J-yong, commissioned to make a promo for a new smartphone, has the idea of making it the world’s first film directed remotely via internet link-ups rather than in person on set. While she is still shooting Im Sang-soo’s The Taste of Money, he invites veteran actress Yun Yeo-jeong to take the lead role alongside a cast of other well-known actors. As the cast assembles in the studio, E addresses them on an internet link from Los Angeles, saying he needs the help of all his friends for him to break into Hollywood. The film, How To Fall In Love In Ten Minutes, is to be shot in only two days and will be only 10 minutes long. Some are excited to be part of the experiment, others are more dubious. As everyone struggles with the process and mounting technical problems, people start listening to E less and less, and an air of mutiny starts to spread through the disgruntled set.

Official Selection – Panorama – 63^rd Berlin Film Festival

Director  – E J-yong
Since his successful debut in 1998 with An Affair, director E J-yong has proven his knack for capturing shocking or controversial material in an elegant, innovative style, in films such as Asako in Ruby Shoes, Untold Scandal, and Dasepo Naughty Girls. The modern, minimalistic melodrama An Affair told the story of forbidden love between a woman and her younger sister’s boyfriend. The provocative Joseon Dynasty piece Untold Scandal captivated audiences worldwide with its elegant visual aesthetic, and Dasepo Naughty Girls’s brilliant art and musical performances resulted in a delightful interpretation of taboo sex talk. His most recent film, The Actresses, provided full disclosure of the deepest thoughts and secrets of some of Korea’s most renowned actresses, leaving audiences bewildered about the boundaries of truth and fiction within the film. Known for just this kind of innovation in each of his films, E J-yong returns with Behind the Camera, capturing a director’s unprecedented attempt to direct a film entirely from an off-set location. Behind the Camera reveals the true behind-the-scenes nature of actors who find themselves without a director to guide them on set, as well as the chaotic and unforeseeable circumstances that arise as a result.

Director’s Note
Inspiration for a film always comes suddenly and unexpectedly in my case. I received an offer to direct a short film for an electronics company and began toying with some concepts. On one such day, a long cruise through the Web left me convinced that all sorts of information could readily be available to anyone with access to the Internet. With such well-established and convenient systems of communication, couldn’t a director make a film without having to be physically on set? It would mean refuge from the hectic film set, where all eyes are fixed on the director. It meant that I could direct away from the multitude of problems that would arise in the comfort of a warm, heated room. I found no reason to refuse such favorable conditions, especially in sub-zero temperatures. These thoughts were how Behind the Camera came to be. Although copious words depicting “innovation in filmmaking” or “experimenting with film conventions” were not spared to those who asked. And so the project began, and I experienced something truly new and utterly unexpected. This film is the account of that experience

A review will be posted next Monday. Here’s a picture of Kim Ok-Vin so we all know who I’m talking about. Now bask in her beauty and radiance which shine with such intensity I am brought to tears.

;_;7

One of my newly discovered favourite songs found in a week filled totally with anime and no films.

This trailer post was quick to write considering that there are only ten Japanese films (and Hollywood’s Godzilla reboot which I reviewed earlier this week) released this weekend. The quality is high for all of the releases with many interesting stories and some good looking cinematography (so no complaints!). I managed to get my hands on Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest film and I also ordered a few films/books/manga from Japan like The Snow White Murder Case. I also ordered some stuff connected to Tokyo Ghoul which remains my favourite anime this season although Zankyou no Terror and Space Dandy are equally as good.

It has been a very hot and sunny week as the UK is experiencing its best summer in recent memory. I have spent more time outside with my cat drinking milkshakes and watching Hataraku Maou-Sama.  When not doing that, I have posted about the Godzilla film and the latest release from Third Window Films, Behind the Camera (2013). There’s a review for that due on Monday. Staying on the subject of reviews, I finished one for the first two episodes of Zankyou no Terror for AUKN and it reads better than my First Impression (but with far fewer images).

What’s released in Japan this weekend?

Eight Rangers 2   

Japanese: エイトレンジャー2

Romaji: Eitorenjā 2

Release Date: July 26^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 103 mins.

Director: Yukihiko Tsutsumi

Writer: Yuya Takahashi (Screenplay)

Starring: Yu Yokoyama, Shota Yasuda, Subaru Shibutani, Shingo Murakami, Ryuhei Maruyama, Ryo Nishikido, Tadayoshi Okura, Atsuko Maeda,

This is the sequel to last year’s super sentai parody and directed once again by Yukihiko Tsutsumi. Five years after saving Eight City from crime, the Eight Rangers are on the slide, living dissolute lives and it isn’t until a journalist named Jun Saigo (Maeda) discovers evidence about the mysterious disappearances of 100 citizens a year that the gang start to get their acts together.

Website

Z – Zetto    

Japanese: Z -ゼット～

Romaji: Z – Zetto

Release Date: July 26^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 109 mins.

Director: Norio Tsuruta

Writer: Norio Tsuruta (Screenplay), Koji Aihara (Original Manga)

Starring: Mayu Kawamoto, Noriko Kijima, Miharu Tanaka, Koji Aihara, Shoichi Matsuda,

Z is adapted from a manga by Koji Aihara and directed by horror veteran Norio Tsuruta, the man who helmed the dramatic horror Ring 0: Birthday (2000), and the entertaining POV – A Cursed Film (2012). Just like POV, Tsuruta uses characters with video cameras to show a myriad of people meeting up with a mysterious sword-wielding girl who saves people from zombies.

This looks like a step-up from the usual Japanese zombie movie, the nadir being Rape Zombie (2012) and the best being Junk (2000) but if producers were looking for a Zombie manga to adapt, they could have chosen I Am a Hero, the latest volume was recently released in Japan and maintains the high quality and adds freakish monsters.

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Time Trip App / Bakumatsu Kokosei   

Japanese: 幕末高校生

Romaji: Bakumatsu Kokosei

Release Date: July 26^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 108 mins.

Director: Toshio Lee

Writer: Atsuko Hashibe (Screenplay), Taku Mayumura (Original Manga)

Starring: Hiroshi Tamaki, Satomi Ishihara, Akira Emoto, Tokio Emoto, Haruna Kawaguchi, Yudai Chiba, Mitsuki Tanimura, Yo Yoshida, Koichi Sato,

Ah, this is a comedy which plunders a popular piece of Japanese history, the late Edo period, the time when Japan transitioned from a society dominated by samurai and into the modern nation state that we recognise today.

The year is 1868 and Japan watches as the new government gathers its forces and battles a shogunate on its last legs. One such battle will take place in Edo. Katsu Kaishu (Tamaki) wants to prevent the battle and sends a peace envoy to Takamori Saigō, but despite waiting, no response is forthcoming. One day, Katsu Kaishu meets high school teacher Mikako (Ishihara) and her student Masaya (Tokio Emoto) who is captivated by the shogunate. The two tell Kaishu that they are from the future and that things go well but an unexpected event occurs and Katsu Kaishu has to look out for the time travellers who hope to go back to the future where they came from!

The film stars the charismatic Hiroshi Tamaki (Watashi no Kirai na Tantei) and Satomi Ishihara. It is directed by Toshio Lee (Detroit Metal City).

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Still the Water                         

Japanese Title: ２つ目の窓

Romaji: Futatsume no Mado

Release Date: July 26^th, 2014

Running Time: 120 mins.

Director: Naomie Kawase

Writer: Naomie Kawase (Screenplay),

Starring: Nijiro Murakami, Jun Yoshinaga, Tetta Sugimoto, Miyuki Matsuda, Makiko Watanabe, Jun Murakami, Hideo Sakaki, Fujio Tokita

Still the Water was at this year’s Cannes film festival where it got mixed reviews, some praising its beauty and atmosphere while others lamenting the heavy handed symbolism used throughout the film.

It is the full-moon night of August and on Amami-Oshima traditional dances take place. A 14-year-old boy finds a dead body floating in the sea. With the help of his girlfriend, the two set about trying to solve the mystery. As they investigate the two grow into adults by experiencing the interwoven cycles of life, death and love.

Koppa Mijin    

Japanese: こっぱみじん

Romaji: Koppamijin

Release Date: July 26^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 88 mins.

Director: Yuji Tajiri

Writer: Naoko Nishida (Screenplay),

Starring: Miwako Wagatsuma Mukau Nakamura, Tatsuki Kobayashi, Yoshino Imamura, Miki Hayashida, Yumek Sasaki

Miwako Wagatsuma is a Japanese actress I am interested in seeing in action. She has been picked as a lead of a series of interesting looking projects like Kuro (20120, Shing Shing Shing (2011) and The End of Puberty (2011) and this drama.

Kaede (Wagatsuma) and her brother Ryuta (Kobayashi) are friends with Oda (Nakamura) and Yuki (Imamura). Kaede is in love with Takuya who has influenced her decision to become a hairdresser after years of being indifferent to life but when Takuya sleeps with Yuki, the four become split apart.

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NMB48 Geinin! THE MOVIE Returns   

Japanese Title: NMB48 げいにん！

Romaji: NMB48 Geinin

Release Date: July 25^th, 2014

Running Time: 95 mins.

Director: Hidemi Uchida

Writer: Yuko Matsuda (Screenplay),

Starring: Sayaka Yamamoto, Miyuki Watanabe, Nana Yamada, Mayu Ogasawara, Riho Kotani, Shu Yabushita, Yuko Yagura, Kei Jonishi, Kendo Kobayashi, Ritsuko Tanaka

This is the sequel to NMB48 Geinin!! The Movie Owarai Seishun Girls which was released last year. The girls must get laughter by any means necessary regardless of their acting skills and these hijinks are what delight idol fans and non-idol fans alike. It was screened at last year’s Okinawa International Movie Festival which is where I got the synopsis from.

Namba Girls’ School is one of the top private girls’ schools in Kansai and the school Comedy Club has a top selection of students played by members of NMB48, Sayaka, Miyuki, Nana, Mayu, Riho and Shu.

The manzai double-act Nana and Miyuki who won the Jury’s Special Award in the previous Manzai Competition, lose in the preliminary round. The other members completely lose heart, threatening the club’s disbandment at the same time as a mysterious beauty named Fuko joins the Club. No one knows that she is an earthbound spirit and she will make the members of the club work together again!

Website

Little Finger Rhapsody    

Japanese: 小指ラプソディ

Romaji: koyubi rapusodi

Release Date: July 26^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 30 mins.

Director: Satoshi Tanaka

Writer: Satoshi Tanaka, Jun Hatano, Masataka Kato (Screenplay),

Starring: Yasuhi Nakamura, Toru Miura, Tsuyoshi Maekawa, Kaoru Okunuki, Tetsu Watanabe, Koichi Ueda, Hiroaki Morooka, Takashi Tago

This short movie takes place in a busy public bath run by Yuriko (Kaoru Okunuki) and is about the interactions between a group of several patrons who are discussing who would be a good love match for Yuriko. It all culminates in a competition to see who can stay in the sauna the longest.

Website

Tsugunai Shinjuku Gorudengai no Onna   

Japanese: つぐない　新宿ゴールデン街の女

Romaji: Tsugunai Shinjuku Go-rudengai no Onna

Release Date: July 26^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 87 mins.

Director: Shinji Imaoka

Writer: Minoru Sato, Haruhiko Arai (Screenplay),

Starring: Yuya Ishikawa, Kyoko Hayami, Takeshi Ito, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Kanae Mizuhara, Yuya Takayama, Shoko Kudo, Makoto akeda, Yukari Kabutomushi,

Pink film director Shinji Imaoka (Underwater Love, writer on The Drudgery Train) directs a film about four people who meet at a bar in Shinjuku. They are all tied together by Toko (Kudo), a woman who is reunited with her lover Gunji (Ito) who is hiding a dark past…

Website

Hoete mo Todokanai    

Japanese: 吠えても届かない

Romaji: Hoete mo Todokanai

Release Date: July 26^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 80 mins.

Director: Kenzo Matsumura

Writer: Kenzo Matsumura (Screenplay),

Starring: Keisuke Tomita, Nana Rokusha, Jiro Sato, Taro Kamakura, Shinya Kaneko, Keisuke Nomura, Masakazu Sato,

This has unexpectedly become the film of the week next to Time Trip App. Keisuke Tomita stars as Yuji, a young and lonely man who works part-time at a tavern and but tries to limit his contact with others. Then he meets a woman named Shaki (Rokusha) who reminds him of his mother and he also meets a dog. The two make a change in Yuji’s life… The music on the website was so nice that I left the tab open and let it play while finishing this post off. So relaxing.

Website

Living with Feral Cats   

Japanese: みんな生きている　飼い主のいない猫と暮らして

Romaji: Minna ikite iru kainushi no inai neko to kurashite

Release Date: July 26^th, 2014 (Japan)

Running Time: 91 mins.

Director: Etsuko Izumi

Writer: N/A

Starring: Stray cats and the people who rescue them, ;_;7

Here’s the decription for the film from the English portion of the website. It’s more eloquent than I could be and it’s worth heading there through the link to find out more about the film and the director:

While domestic cats are loved and protected as part of the family, feral cats live and die neglected and unnoticed.  But why is there so much difference?  Feral, stray or tame, they are　all cats.  They are all alive.

Feral cats are pet cats abandoned by their owners, or descendants of pet cats who are free to go around without being spayed or neutered.  They are cats forsaken by people.

First, my daughter brought home Evi, a kitten her friend found abandoned in a parking lot.  Nine years on, I now have four cats at home, because I have taken in more and more feral cats that wandered into our garden.  In this documentary I tried to chronicle my days with those cats as they grew from kittens to adults; I also went visiting with a video camera in hand government facilities and workshops, volunteer groups, and vets—and my quest even took me to animal shelters in Germany and the U.S.A.

Website

Behind the Camera (2013)    

Release Date: February 28th, 2013 (South Korea)

UK Release: July 28^th, 2014

Distributor: Third Window Films

Running Time: 90 mins.

Director: E J-Yong

Writer: E J-Yong

Starring: E J-Yong, Youn Yuh-Jung, Kim Ok-Vin, Jung Eun-Chae, Kim Nam-Jin, Kim Jee-Woon, Kang Hye-Jung

E J-Yong is a daring director but his reputation is mixed having directed a big hit with the pretty and pretty vacuous historical drama Untold Scandal (2003) and the more contemporary Dasepo Naughty Girls (2006), a  colourful musical school comedy based on a lurid webcomic whichavoided being too raunchy, something which may have led to it flopping at the Korean box-office. In 2009 he tried his hand at mockumentaries with the title Actresses where he gathered a six of Korea’s great actresses and filmed them playing themselves at a Vogue photo shoot and having outrageous conversations in a satire of the world of Korean film.

It is this last film which Behind the Camera follows closely, as E J-Yong turns the camera on to the world of Korean movies once again and reveals what goes on behind-the-scenes of a film shoot which lacks a director on set. The results of Behind the Camera is not total carnage, more an interesting and warm-hearted look at filmmaking and what use a director on set may be.

“I’m shooting a short film and I had a shocking idea.”

Director E J-Yong is hired to shoot a short film for an electronics company. While toying with some concepts and browsing the internet he suddenly finds himself inspired by the idea that the director does not have be on the set, that he can direct the film using the internet and various communication tools available like Skype and smartphones. This becomes the premise of his film, a director absenting himself from the set so he can pursue his lover.

It is a premise that E J-Yong extends to the actual shoot he will oversee when he decides to jet off to Hollywood. From a hotel in Los Angeles, E J-Yong directs a cast of Korean stars with helpers on set relaying his orders, filming the results and keeping him in contact with the set while his presence hovers over everyone thanks to laptops and televisions that show his broadcast via Skype.

The film rapidly turns into a meta-comedy as reality and fiction soon begin to merge and the actors and crew mirror the script they are working from.

 “This is filmmaking circa 2020.”

“You should have waited until then!”

It starts off promisingly enough with the A-list cast assembling for E J-Yong’s advert, mostly as a favour to the director and producer who some have worked with before, but when they get to a cold and dark set at 7:35 in the morning they are surprised to discover that there is no director to be found and are told that he will not be present on the set. Instead, while the actors are freezing ad working hard, in a nice bit of salt being rubbed into the wound, E J-Yong pops up on a television screen from his hotel room in sunny LA via the power of Skype with a butler feeding him.

The comedy begins as the personalities react differently to the unique situation they are presented with, a world first which will see the director give orders to his cast and crew but over the internet and not in person. The helpers with handheld camera catch the sort of candid moments that make a great mockumentary as everybody takes in the news with faces registering disbelief and bemusement and for some of the big stars, a degree of irritation that they have been stood up by the director, while from the younger actors and actresses there is some horror and nervous laughter as they find themselves pushed outside of their comfort zone.

“I’ll be here the whole time,” E J-Yong claims but before he can explain his vision for the film his video call cuts out because Skype loses its wireless connection.

The actors are stunned and know that they only have two days to get the film in the can. Some sense a disaster brewing but get on with things.

Everything that can go wrong with the internet does as connections fail and the actors, director and crew find it hard to communicate their visions. It is evident that working together over smartphones and through grainy video calls is hard and pretty soon tension mounts due to the inconveniences. The value of having a director give precise directions on set is seen in something simple like a costume designer put through her paces by the online visage of E J-Yong to get coat looking just right but the job is made harder without the director physically there to explain what he means exactly. Clashes soon emerge as E J-Yong gives someone a dressing down for not giving him adequate communication and the actors are not impressed by the sense of the loss of control.

Adding flames to the bonfire of egos that the director has initiated, he has a habit of demanding that actors and actresses redo their lines dozens of takes more than is sane in what seem like minor changes that would best be explained in person. It is absurd and ensures that the actors are pushed to boiling point so they react in a way calculated to garner comedy moments with people taking things badly and storing up vitriol for a series of off-the-set complaints.

With the director in America, a fed up bunch start to ignore him as cast and crew focus on the personnel on set and the film looks set to turn out much more differently than intended as egos vie for control of the directors chair. Funnier still are the moments when the cast and crew dodge E-Yong’s presence and secretly share frustrated conversations about working with the director.

There are even more delicious scenes of conflict when actors have open arguments with his image on a laptop screen as he sits in his hotel in LA, his bored-looking face removed from the drama on set.

It sounds like a disaster is brewing but what occurs is a testament to the skill and dedication of Korean filmmakers as Behind the Camera then charts everybody working together to make sure that the show gets finished regardless of the absurdities of the shoot and bruised egos.

There is a cavalcade of genuine top talent gamely playing themselves and everybody is unique.

Venerable veteran actress Youn Yuh-Jung (The Taste of Money, The Housemaid) is quick with the rather playful and good-natured vituperative and verbally bashes E J-Yong and anybody else who stands in her way but provides her whole-hearted support. She works up a good double-act with the earnest and broad-faced musician Kim C who is a little sensitive about his looks and seems to be emotionally tone-deaf. Experienced leading man Park Hee-Soon (Hansel and Gretel) proves to be a good sport and goes with the jokes while younger actresses Kang Hye-Jeong (Old Boy) and Kim Ok-Vin (Thirst) show their versatility and professionalism by getting on with things while other actors moan about the problems or ferment rebellions.

Indeed, the adorable Kim Ok-Vin in her red coat recaptured my heart with her presence as she is seen either quietly munching on sweets between scenes or acting her socks off and playfully teasing the director.

While not laugh out loud hilarious, the film is funny, warm-hearted and a brave title that maintains a fast pace. A lot of the comedy translates beyond the culture but works even better if you are familiar with the cast. More interestingly, it forces the viewer to acknowledge that while it is possible to direct a film in such a manner, it is better for it to be done in person. Something as simple as making appearances and greeting people to establish relationships to working with people to get precise performances and looks require the director’s personal touch. There is also something sad seeing director E J-Yong isolated from others emotions in his hotel room, a grainy portrait on a Skype call, entirely alone unable to experience the anger, irritation and joy of the filming and collaborating with a group of talented and good-natured people. Film is a collaborative process so to miss out on it is to miss an important part of the job. It’s a strange feeling for a comedy to evoke but one with experiencing.

4/5

More Kim Ok-Vin pictures…