News

by Tiago Carneiro

Released in 1994 and preceding Gakuryu Ishii‘s more well-known “August in the Water” by just one year, “Angel Dust” represents a significant entry in Ishii’s career, showcasing his departure from his punk rock style as he transitions into the realm of psychological horror. While initially unknown outside of Japan, “Angel Dust” has since gained a little cult following and is now regarded as an essential and representative work of the Japanese horror genre, as well as an influencing piece for similar East Asian serial killer films.

“Angel Dust” offers a gripping detective/serial killer story that is as enigmatic as it is enjoyable. The story follows a female detective, named Setsuko Suma, investigating the connected murders of several young women who were all wearing red the night they were killed. It’s a mixture of goosebump-inducing moments and some more passive ones that are equally as unsettling.

Hideho Urata is a cinematographer based in Singapore, originally from Japan. He embarked on his career in the United States, where he honed his skills and artistic vision. Urata has garnered widespread recognition for his exceptional talent, notably through his work on acclaimed films such as A Land Imagined (2018), which earned the prestigious Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival. His mastery behind the lens has been lauded with awards such as Best Director of Photography at Valladolid International Film Festival and Achievement in Cinematography at Asia Pacific Screen Awards. His recent work Plan 75 (2022) received a Special Mention for the Golden Camera at Cannes Film Festival 2022 and Best Cinematography at Asian Film Awards 2023.

Further recent works include Last Shadow at First Light (2023), A Girl Named Ann (2024), The Box Man (2024), and Stranger Eyes (2024). In addition to his cinematic endeavors, Urata has been serving as a distinguished senior lecturer in...

Tadanobu Asano is set to receive The Hollywood Reporter’s Trailblazer Award at the upcoming 37th installment of the Tokyo International Film Festival next month.

The chameleonic screen actor has been a mainstay of Japanese cinema for nearly three decades while regularly appearing in prominent supporting parts in big Hollywood productions. But his swaggering recent performance as the irascible samurai Yabushige on FX‘s smash-hit series Shogun has given him an all-new level of global recognition over the past year. In the process of becoming an indelible fan favorite, Asano also received his first Emmy nomination for the part.

THR’s Trailblazer Award, whose recent honorees include six-time Emmy winner Jean Smart, David Oyelowo, Eva Longoria, Matt Bomer, Niecy Nash-Betts and America Ferrera, is given to artists whose work and careers illuminate stories and characters who have been traditionally marginalized in Hollywood. International editor Abid Rahman will present Asano with the award on Oct.

Comprising international premieres, short programs, and some of the country’s finest-ever films in new restorations, 2024’s Japan Cuts––running July 10-21 at New York’s Japan Society––is upon us. As one of North America’s sole festivals devoted to new voices in Japanese cinema, it’s likely your only opportunity to see many titles in a theatrical space. Though one can feel a bit dizzy looking through everything, we’re glad to distill it––from masters to nascent talents and, along the way, a few absolute classics given much-deserved restorations.

All the Long Nights (Shô Miyake)

Shô Miyake’s All the Long Nights is a film about small things: decency, kindness, why people help each other out, how those acts can inspire others. The first character we meet is Misa (Mone Kamishiraishi), a sensitive type who suffers from premenstrual syndrome. In the opening scene, this causes Misa to lose her cool at work,...

North America’s largest Japanese film festival presents two weeks of contemporary premieres, including new films from Kei Chika-ura, Takeshi Kitano, Gakuryu Ishii, Shunji Iwai, Sho Miyake and Shinya Tsukamoto. The program features 31 films, including 5 International Premieres, 10 North American Premieres, 4 U.S. Premieres, 2 East Coast Premieres and 7 New York Premieres, as well as the International Premiere of Shin Godzilla: Orthochromatic. Special guests include iconoclastic director Gakuryu Ishii, appearing for the East Coast Premiere of The Box Man as well as a retrospective screening of August in the Water; director Noriko Yuasa will appear at the International Premiere of Performing Kaoru’s Funeral, winner of the Japan Cuts Award at the 2024 Osaka Asian Film Festival; and actress Tomoko Tabata will appear...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

July 10–21, 2024 · Japan Society · New York, NY

North America's largest Japanese film festival presents two weeks of contemporary premieres, including new films from Kei Chika-ura, Takeshi Kitano, Gakuryu Ishii, Shunji Iwai, Sho Miyake and Shinya Tsukamoto

31 films including 5 International Premieres, 10 North American Premieres, 4 U.S. Premieres, 2 East Coast Premieres and 7 New York Premieres

Includes the International Premiere of Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic

Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic © 2016,2023 Toho Co., Ltd

New York, NY—Japan Society announces the full lineup of the 17th annual Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film, the largest festival of its kind in North America. Set for July 10–August 21 in New York City, this year's edition will present over 30 films spanning 12 days across Feature Slate, Next Generation, Classics and Short Film sections. Among the festival's lineup are five International Premieres, 10 North American Premieres, four U.S. Premieres, two East Coast Premieres and seven New York Premieres. Additionally, Japan...

Comprising international premieres, short programs, and some of the country’s finest-ever films in new restorations, 2024’s Japan Cuts––running July 10-21 at New York’s Japan Society––has been unveiled. It’s in the festival’s nature that numerous works and directors are lesser-known on American shores, though a cursory search has one regularly stopping: new films by Takeshi Kitano (Kubi), Shunji Iwai (Kyrie), Shinya Tsukamoto (Shadow of Fire), and Gakuryu Ishii (The Box Man) populate the selection. Meanwhile, Hideaki Anno’s modern classic Shin Godzilla debuts in a new, black-and-white cut Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic.

Its classics section is three-for-three: Ishii’s August in the Water, Shinji Somai’s Moving, and Toshiharu Ikeda Mermaid Legend, which is more or less one of the greatest films ever made. One can anticipate at least a couple of Japan Cuts’ current unknowns are tomorrow’s figureheads.

See the full lineup below:...

In the wake of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest Oscar win for “The Boy and the Heron” and the VOD dominance of “Godzilla Minus One,” Japanese cinema continues to be as vital as ever to American audiences. That should make the upcoming edition of Japan Cuts, the annual film festival celebrating Japanese cinema co-produced by Japan Society, one of the most exciting events on New York cinephiles’ summer calendars.

The lineup, which IndieWire can exclusively reveal, contains a mix of American and New York premieres alongside a curated selection of newly restored classics. Notable titles include “Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic,” a new black-and-white version of Hideaki Anno’s 2016 kaiju blockbuster; and “Shadow of Fire,” the war drama from “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” director Shinya Tsukamoto that premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.

“We couldn’t be more amazed by this year’s festival,” Peter Tatara, director of film at Japan Society, who...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

Our House of Tolerance 35mm presentation returns on Friday, while a print of the James Dean-led Giant shows this Saturday alongside prints of Twilight and Half Baked; Decoder also screens.

Paris Theater

A 1984 retrospective brings Body Double and a 35mm print of Love Streams.

Japan Society

A two-title retrospective of the legendary Directors Company brings one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s best early films, Bumpkin Soup, and Sogo Ishii’s The Crazy Family.

Anthology Film Archives

“Essential Cinema” brings two early masterpieces by Ozu, while the Quebecois cinema retrospective has its final screenings on Friday; Roy Cohn/Jack Smith shows on Saturday and Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day return.

Film Forum

As Le Samouraï plays in a new 4K restoration, an Alain Delon retrospective continues while a Ken Loach series starts.

Veteran Japanese character actor Tadanobu Asano is having a very overdue breakthrough moment. The chameleonic film star has been a mainstay of Japanese cinema for nearly three decades, while also regularly appearing in prominent supporting parts in big Hollywood productions. But his irresistible performance in FX’s period series Shōgun is giving him an all-new level of global recognition.

Asano co-stars in Shōgun as Kashigi Yabushige, the scheming lord of Izu, a rugged region of feudal Japan where much of the series takes place. Playing the character with lived-in swagger and a fatalistic sense of humor, Asano has become one of the show’s clear fan favorites, with Reddit and Twitter threads popping up to revel in his character’s antics. Asano announced himself early in Shōgun‘s run: As many have marveled, Yabushige makes his entrance to the show by boiling a man alive but then wins the audience...

In a cinema that is famous for its extremity and peculiarity, Sogo Ishii manages to stand out, with films like “Burst City” and “Tokyo Blood”. In that fashion, even when he directs a satire, the result is not the expected, to say the least.

on Terracotta by clicking on the image below

The Kobayashi family finally manage to buy a house, with the hard work of the father, Katsuhiko, a white-collar employee. Despite their happiness, there seems to be something wrong with its members, as Katsuhiko believes that they suffer from some kind of psychosis. His wife, Saeko is a bit extreme in the way she acts, a tendency that reaches its apogee when Katsuhiko's father, Yasukuni, comes to live with them, as she ends up even dancing sensually for him and his elderly friends. Furthermore, she keeps calling her husband, “father.” The son, Masaki has become...

Romantic drama 18x2 Beyond Youthful Days by acclaimed Japanese director Michihito Fujii has been sold to a raft of Asian distributors by sales firm Happinet Phantom Studios.

The upcoming feature has been acquired for South Korea (Media Castle), Hong Kong (Golden Scene) and Southeast Asia territories (Purple Plan) as well as for in-flight (Emphasis Video).

The romance is set for release in Taiwan on March 14 through Activator Marketing Company and in Japan on May 3 through Happinet, which will also be speaking to buyers about the feature at the European Film Market (EFM) in Berlin this month.

The cast is led by Hsu Kuang-han,...

The upcoming 74th Berlin Film Festival looks set to be its starriest edition in years with Kristen Stewart, Adam Sandler, Cillian Murphy, Lena Dunham, Sebastian Stan, Amanda Seyfried and Rooney Mara among the talent due to attend this year.

Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian confirmed the actors’ presence in an interview with Deadline following the festival’s official press conference on Monday.

“Yes. All the stars we have invited are expected to be here and have confirmed their presence,” he said, when quizzed on the above names. “I think the glamor aspect on the red carpet is a good one this year.”

Most are attending in movies due to be showcased in the Berlinale Special Gala line-up.

Stewart, who was at the festival last year as jury president, returns for the Berlinale Special Gala screening of Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding alongside Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Dave Franco and Jena Malone.

Festival will play upcoming Netflix series Supersex about pornstar Rocco Siffredi.

South Korean action title The Roundup: Punishment and Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart are among 12 additions to the Berlinale Special line-up, ahead of next month’s Berlin Film Festival (February 15-25).

Directed by Heo Myeong-haeng, Punishment will have its world premiere in Berlin. It is the fourth instalment in The Roundup action franchise, in which Don Lee plays detective Ma Seok-do.

Scroll down for the full list of new Special titles

Third title The Roundup: No Way Out took $69m in just three weeks at the...

Festival will play upcoming Netflix series Supersex about pornstar Rocco Siffredi.

South Korean action title The Roundup: Punishment and Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart are among 12 additions to the Berlinale Special line-up, ahead of next month’s Berlin Film Festival (February 15-25).

Directed by Heo Myeong-haeng, Punishment will have its world premiere in Berlin. It is the fourth instalment in The Roundup action franchise, in which Don Lee plays detective Ma Seok-do.

Scroll down for the full list of new Special titles

Third title The Roundup: No Way Out took $69m in just three weeks at the...

This year’s Berlinale Specials program, the out-of-competition gala section of the Berlin Film Festival, will include a pair of high-octane action movies: Rose Glass’ crime actioner Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart, and Korean thriller The Roundup: Punishment from director Heo Myeong-haeng.

Love Lies Bleeding, which co-stars Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, Katy M. O’Brian, Ed Harris and Jena Malone, will have its international premiere in Berlin after its bow in Sundance later this month. The Roundup: Punishment, starring Train to Busan breakout Don Lee, will have its world premiere in Berlin.

Other Berlinale Special highlights, unveiled Monday, include Shikun, the latest drama from Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai (Kadosh); the documentary project Turn in the Wound, from acclaimed New York auteur Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant), about life in Kyiv since the start of the war in Ukraine; and Supersex, an Italian Netflix drama based on the life of notorious porn star Rocco Siffredi,...

“Love Lies Bleeding” starring Kristen Stewart and Netflix’s “Supersex” series have been added to Berlin Film Festival’s Special lineup.

A romantic thriller centered on a bodybuilder and gym manager, “Love Lies Bleeding” is directed by “Saint Maud” helmer Rose Glass and will have its world premiere at Sundance this month. “Love Lies Bleeding” also stars Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov and Dave Franco.

“Supersex,” based on the life of porn star Rocco Siffredi, is created and written by Francesca Manieri. The series, which premieres on Netflix March 6, will look at how “Rocco Tano — a simple guy from Ortona [a small town in central Italy] — became Rocco Siffredi, the most famous pornstar in the world.”

Another standout is “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger,” a documentary by David Hinton that features rare archival material from the filmmakers and is narrated by Martin Scorsese.

Other additions include Nicolas Philibert’s...

The Berlin Film Festival today unveiled further titles for the 2024 edition of its Berlinale Special Presentations sidebar section alongside its classics program. Scroll down for the full list of titles announced today.

Highlights from the latest drop of Specials titles include Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, a feature documentary about influential British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger narrated by Killers of the Flower Moon filmmaker Martin Scorsese. The feature is directed by David Hinton and features rare archival material from the personal collections of Powell, Pressburger, and Scorsese.

Love Lies Bleeding, the latest feature from British filmmaker Rose Glass will debut in the Specials program. The feature stars Kristen Stewart alongside Katy O’Brian. A short synopsis describes the pic as “a romance fueled by ego, desire, and the American Dream.” The film will arrive at Berlin following it’s debut at Sundance.

Abel Ferrara is...

Screambox and Midnight Pulp are excited to unleash Visitors (The Complete Edition), Kenichi Ugana‘s Japanese anthology movie that opens with one of the goriest shorts we’ve ever seen.

In the 60-minute splatterfest…

“A rock ‘n’ roll band drop in unannounced on a friend and find themselves plummeting into a wackadoo reverie of monsters and mayhem.”

After premiering at this year’s Fantastic Fest, Visitors makes its way to VOD platforms Screambox before heading to Midnight Pulp at a later date.

Get ready for Evil Dead-esque gory mayhem in Visitors. Dig the trailer…

Also recently added to Screambox is Door, an extremely rare home invasion slasher movie from 1988 that has never been screened outside of Japan and has just been remastered. The final 20 minutes are bonkers!

In the film…

“A lonely housewife is held hostage in her own apartment by an increasingly deranged door-to-door salesman in this forgotten home invasion masterpiece.

Screambox and Midnight Pulp are excited to unleash Visitors (The Complete Edition), Kenichi Ugana‘s Japanese anthology movie that opens with one of the goriest shorts we’ve ever seen.

In the 60-minute splatterfest, which hits Screambox tomorrow…

“A rock ‘n’ roll band drop in unannounced on a friend and find themselves plummeting into a wackadoo reverie of monsters and mayhem.”

After premiering at this year’s Fantastic Fest, Visitors makes its way to VOD platforms and Screambox before heading to Midnight Pulp at a later date.

Get ready for Evil Dead-esque gory mayhem in Visitors. Dig the trailer…

Also recently added to Screambox is Door, an extremely rare home invasion slasher movie from 1988 that has never been screened outside of Japan and has just been remastered. The final 20 minutes are bonkers!

In the film…

“A lonely housewife is held hostage in her own apartment by an increasingly deranged...

Door, an extremely rare home invasion slasher movie from 1988 that has never been screened outside of Japan and has just been remastered, is now streaming exclusively on Screambox!

In the film…

“A lonely housewife is held hostage in her own apartment by an increasingly deranged door-to-door salesman in this forgotten home invasion masterpiece.”

The final 20 minutes are bonkers!

Directed by Banmei Takahashi, the story behind Door is extremely interesting.

Many of you may remember Director’s Company, a Japanese production company from 1982-1992 that was made up of many legends of Japanese cinema including Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sogo Ishii, Shinji Somai, and others.

They made many amazing Japanese films but also broke ground for genre cinema in Japan including the cult classic Evil Dead Trap. Before Evil Dead Trap they made the first Giallo film in Japan… Door. Interestingly, Kiyoshi Kurosawa directed the film’s sequel!

Halloween is almost here and Screambox‘s October has been jam-packed,...

Door, an extremely rare home invasion slasher movie from 1988 that has never been screened outside of Japan and has just been remastered, is making its way to Screambox tomorrow!

In the film, “A lonely housewife is held hostage in her own apartment by an increasingly deranged door-to-door salesman in this forgotten home invasion masterpiece.”

Directed by Banmei Takahashi, the story behind Door is extremely interesting.

Many of you may remember Director’s Company, a Japanese production company from 1982-1992 that was made up of many legends of Japanese cinema including Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sogo Ishii, Shinji Somai, and others.

They made many amazing Japanese films but also broke ground for genre cinema in Japan including the cult classic Evil Dead Trap. Before Evil Dead Trap they made the first Giallo film in Japan… Door. Interestingly, Kiyoshi Kurosawa directed the film’s sequel!

The final 20 minutes are bonkers… trust us!!

Halloween is almost...

On October 24th, Screambox is premiering the highly sought-after Door, an extremely rare home invasion slasher movie from 1988 that has never been screened outside of Japan and has just been remastered. The final 20 minutes are bonkers!

Following its premiere on Screambox, Door will make its way to Blu-ray this November from Terror Vision. You can pre-order it here.

In the film…

“A lonely housewife is held hostage in her own apartment by an increasingly deranged door-to-door salesman in this forgotten home invasion masterpiece.”

Directed by Banmei Takahashi, the story behind Door is extremely interesting.

Many of you may remember Director’s Company, a Japanese production company from 1982-1992 that was made up of many legends of Japanese cinema including Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sogo Ishii, Shinji Somai, and others.

They made many amazing Japanese films but also broke ground for genre cinema in Japan including the cult classic Evil Dead Trap. Before Evil Dead Trap...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSPoor Things.The 80th Venice Film Festival concluded last weekend. The jury, chaired by Damien Chazelle, awarded the Golden Lion to Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest, Poor Things; in his latest dispatch, Leonardo Goi calls it "joltingly alive, a film that crackles with the same restless curiosity and lust of its protagonist." See a summary of all the awards, plus a roundup of our coverage.San Sebastian Film Festival has announced who will serve on their festival juries for their 71st edition: Claire Denis will be the president for the Official Section, while Hayao Miyazaki will receive an honorary award for career achievement. His latest film, The Boy and The Heron, will open the festival.Recommended VIEWINGFor their 50th anniversary, the Film Fest Gent have commissioned 25 new short films inspired by new musical compositions. There's...

Screambox is once again heading to Fantastic Fest (September 21 – 28), bringing two brand new Japanese horror films that are going to absolutely blow your collective minds.

The first is Door, an extremely rare home invasion slasher movie from 1988 that has never been screened outside of Japan and has just been remastered. The final 20 minutes are bonkers!

In the film…

“A lonely housewife is held hostage in her own apartment by an increasingly deranged door-to-door salesman in this forgotten home invasion masterpiece.”

Directed by Banmei Takahashi, the story behind Door is extremely interesting.

Many of you may remember Director’s Company, a Japanese production company from 1982-1992 that was made up of many legends of Japanese cinema including Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sogo Ishii, Shinji Somai, and others.

They made many amazing Japanese films but also broke ground for genre cinema in Japan including the cult classic Evil Dead Trap. Before Evil Dead Trap they...

The dark fantasy “Flashback Before Death” is the directorial debut of composer Hiroyuki Onogawa, who is best known for his collaborations with Sogo Ishii, and his wife Rii Ishihara. Set in 1930s Japan, the director tells an eerie story about death and sorrow.

Flashback Before Death is screening at Japan Cuts

After completing his studies in France to become a translator, Kikuo, played by Masatoshi Kihara, returns home to his sister Tsuruha (Hanae Seike). It is a stormy and gloomy night as she embraces him at the door and leads him to a dinner table with a creepy doll. The audience is also kept in the dark about the main plot points and has to gather hints to make sense of the events. The doll used to be Tsuruha's child and was named Hinano. Due to a disability, she had to suffer a lot and was longing for death. Hinano's...

Inspired since childhood by the Heisei Kamen Rider series, Yoshiki Matsumoto held a superhero show and made a movie for his high school festival, and found himself becoming fascinated by the world of film. After studying filmmaking under Gakuryu Ishii at Kobe Design University Department of Image Arts, he has made films while working full-time. He moved from Nara to Tokyo in 2022 to form the filmmaking unit Setagaya Sensemans, where he has worked on various films, mainly as an editor. “Alien's Daydream” is his feature debut, for which he also holds the roles of writer, editor, production designer and cinematographer.

Alien's Daydream is screening at Skip City International D-Cinema Festival

Reporter Uto writes for a magazine that deals with occultism and unusual phenomena for the most part. He also has a strong sense of justice and hates lies, and he retains a blog that allows him to write his opinion without any restrictions.

Happinet Phantom Studios to launch the project at the Cannes market.

Japan’s Happinet Phantom Studios is to launch sales at the Cannes market on an adaptation of The Box Man, directed by influential filmmaker Gakuryu Ishii and starring Masatoshi Nagase.

The 1973 novel was written by Kobo Abe and follows a nameless man who gives up his identity to live with a large cardboard box over his head, encountering a range of characters as he wanders the streets of Tokyo

Filming will begin this summer in Japan with a cast that includes Nagase, whose credits include Jim Jarmusch’s Cannes 2016 Competition title Paterson,...

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month, including David Easteal’s The Plains (one of the best films we saw on the festival circuit last year), Christophe Honoré’s Winter Boy, Koji Fukada’s 10-part series The Real Thing, Bruce Labruce’s Saint-Narcisse, and more.

Additional highlights include three films by Joan Micklin Silver, additions to their Lars von Trier series, Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville, Sally Potter’s Orlando, Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms, and more.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

April 1 – Henry Fool, directed by Hal Hartley

April 2 – Waltz with Bashir, directed by Ari Folman

April 3 – The All-Round Reduced Personality – Redupers, directed by Helke Sander | What Sets Us Free? German Feminist Cinema

April 4 – Saint-Narcisse, directed by Bruce Labruce

April 5 – Jaime Francisco, directed by Javier Rodríguez | Brief Encounters

April 6 – Hester Street, directed by Joan Micklin...

Stars: Tadanobu Asano, Masatoshi Nagase | Written and Directed by Sogo Ishii

Electric Dragon 80.000 V’s opening narration, delivered by Masakatsu Funaki, informs us that dragons are not mythical creatures, they exist with the bodies of men. That’s followed by scenes of a young boy climbing an electrical pylon only to get a massive shock from the high-tension wires.

This does something to the part of his brain that “we inherited unchanged from lizards” and results in Dragon Eye Morrison frequently getting in trouble for fighting. Attempts to cure it with electric shock therapy only make it worse, turning him into a walking battery. Now an adult he collects lizards and plays guitar to work out his aggression. As the narrator puts it “what saved him from ruin was…The Electric Guitar” as we watch him play.

But ruin in the form of Thunderbolt Buddha has come looking for him.

Stars: Go Ayano, Koen Kondo, Masahiro Higashide, Jun Kunimura, Etsushi Toyokawa, Masatoshi Nagase | Written by Kankurô Kudô | Directed by Gakuryû Ishii

”It was a somewhat gloomy day”. Thus begins Punk Samurai, director Gakuryû, formerly Sogo, Ishii and writer Kankurô Kudô’s adaptation of Kou Machida’s supposedly unfilmable novel.

Junoshin Kake wanders into the domain of the Kurokaze clan and promptly kills a beggar who approaches him. He tells Shume Nagaoka a low-level official in the clan, that the man was a member of a dangerous religious cult that only he can save them from. That’s enough to create the opening he needs to find a permanent position in Lord Kuroae’s employ.

Kake plans to exploit the rivalry between two of the clan’s top retainers Shuzen Oura and Tatewaki Naito to rise through the ranks. The only problem is, the cult, The Bellyshaker Party no longer exists and Naito knows it.

A delinquent from birth, ‘Dragon Eye Morrison’ has been subjected to electro-shock therapy to help quell his anger. However, the years of shock treatment have turned him into a living conductor. Unable to interact with society, Dragon Eye makes a living finding lost reptiles and has channeled his aggression through his electric guitar. Meanwhile, a vigilante named ‘Thunderbolt Buddha’ has been gifted the same powers through a childhood accident, and is set to challenge ‘Dragon Eye’ to a duel.

by clicking on the image below

“Electric Dragon” can almost be summarized by listing different things included in the film, since it takes various inspirations from everything to anime to punk, with an emphasis on taking the more ‘masculine’ aspects of those mediums and presenting them at a rapid pace. Listing a few of the attributes; Tadanobu rocking out on the guitar, lizards, boxing, an over animated narrator screaming over bold text,...

“A rebellious high school student is brought back to life in a strange underground facility after committing suicide. Now, she must piece together not only how and why she has been resurrected, but also confront the fragmented memories of her past and the horrors of the laboratory that want to send her back to the afterlife.” (Ablaze)

on Amazon by clicking on the image below

“Zombie Makeout Club” is the brainchild of Peter Richardson, notable for the clothing design site whose sleek aesthetics and admiration of Japanese counter-culture have made it a recognizable and sought-after brand. Spinning out of this concept came an original webtoon to compliment the work, while further expanding on the lore behind the brand. In the footnotes of this release, Richardson notes that the work was inspired by Japanese Cyber-punk features like “Tetsuo The Iron Man” and “Rubbers Love”. This much becomes obvious in the final product,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSJeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.At last, Sight & Sound have released the results of the 2022 Greatest Films of All Time critics’ poll. 1,639 ballots later, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) has risen to the number-one spot, accompanied by a new piece from Laura Mulvey. The New York Times offers a useful interactive feature to unpack how the rankings have evolved over time.The American documentarian Julia Reichert—best known for Growing Up Female (1971), Union Maids (1976), and the Oscar-winning American Factory (2019)—died last week of cancer at age 76. Eric Hynes wrote an elegant appreciation of her work in a 2020 piece for Crosscuts, published by the Walker Art Center: Consistently through half a century of filmmaking, Reichert spends time with people.

Sitting at approx 50-minute runtime, “Isolation of 1-880000” marks the first film from cult director Gakuryu Ishii (previously known as Sogo Ishii). The production follows a student cramming for school, who spends what little spare time he has consuming porn or spying on a woman in her apartment. Still determined to pass despite the time wasted on deviant distractions, the pressure builds, causing the student’s physical and mental capacities to degrade. Now feeling rejected by society due to its pressures pushing him to illness, the young student has one last revolt against the culture he feels has abandoned him.

“Isolation of 1-880000” is Playing as part of Metograph’s Hachimiri Madness: Japanese Indies from the Punk Rock years

“Isolation of 1-880000” is an intriguing entry into the filmography of Gakryu Ishii, and not just because it is his first film. Largely stripped of the high-octane, punk-rock aesthetic...

An Electric Selection of Early, Shot on Film Shorts & Features From Some of Japan’s Most Daring Directors

Metrograph presents Hachimiri Madness: Japanese Indies from the Punk Years, an electric showcase of restored early works from some of Japan’s boldest filmmakers, beginning December 2, 2022 at Metrograph in Theater.

At the same time that the Japanese studios were going into tailspin decline at the end of the 1970s, a rude burst of amateur cinematic anarchy was erupting from the underground. This new jishu eiga, or “autonomous film,” was a cinema by and for outsiders, many of them shooting run-and-gun-style in the streets on cheap 8mm film (hachimiri in Japanese). The jishu film movement, which found a home after 1977 at the Pia Film Festival in Tokyo, was the cinematic analog of the experiments in extreme independent music happening in Japan at the same time, and would act as the incubator...

If there was ever a region that included themes, characters and motifs that occasionally surpassed even the borders of the surreal, that would be Asia, with the titles that can be easily described as absurd coming out in scores. Maybe it has to do with a particular type of idiosyncrasy, maybe that in a number of countries, particularly in Japan and India, filmmakers feel the freedom to express themselves in any way they want, away from any kind of political correctness or even cinematic “rules”. A number of these movies have already garnered the title of cult, but as we are about to see in this particular list, titles from the whole spectrum of cinema can be found here. Without further ado, here are 40 movies that definitely deserve the title of weird, in alphabetical order.

Ps. The focus on Japanese films was inevitable…

1. A Man Vanishes

This is the closing...

Michiro Endo is a cult icon in Japan. Born in 1950, in Fukushima, he formed the former punk band “The Stalin” in 1980, a group with radical performances and methods of expression, which featured in Sogo Ishii’s “Burst City.” “The Stalin” were disbanded in 1985, and Michiro Endo started his solo career in 1993, giving, mostly, acoustic folk performances. In 2011, he begins the “Project Fukushima!” with various activities to support the restoration of the area after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The same year starts his Kanreki tour, to celebrate his 60th birthday. He films this tour from January 23 to September 16, and the footage becomes the backbone of “Mother, I’ve Pretty Much Forgotten Your Name.”

The film will screen at the 18th Japan-Filmfest Hamburg, that will be on 31.05-04.06.2017

The film starts with a performance by “The Stalin” (Endo reunited them for this tour), that highlights the band’s, but mostly his,...

In a cinema that is famous for its extremity and peculiarity, Sogo Ishii manages to stand out, with films like “Burst City” and “Tokyo Blood”. In that fashion, even when he directs a satire, the result is not the expected, to say the least.

A truly crazy family

The Kobayashi family finally manages to buy a house, with the hard work of the father, Katsuhiko, a white-collar employee. Despite their happiness, there seems to be something wrong with the members of the family, as Katsuhiko believes that they suffer from some kind of psychosis.

His wife, Saeko is a bit extreme in the way she acts, a tendency that reaches its apogee when Katsuhiko’s father, Yasukuni, comes to leave with them, as she ends up even dancing sensually for him and his elderly friends. Furthermore, she keeps calling her husband, “father.”

The son, Masaki has become obsessed with passing...

North America’s largest festival of new Japanese cinema, and pound-for-pound one of the most consistently rewarding film festivals on the planet, Japan Cuts grows more vital with every passing year. In part, that’s because Manhattan’s Japan Society has done a stellar job of cultivating a local audience, pouring resources into the annual celebration, and programming their slates in a way that appeals equally to cinephiles, otaku, and people who just want to see a movie about a guy who falls in love with his goldfish.

Unfortunately, Japan Cuts also grows more vital with every passing year because the domestic market for foreign film is withering away at a terrible rate, lowering the odds that you’ll ever get a second chance at seeing any of these exhilarating dispatches from the Land of the Rising Sun on the big screen.

This year’s fest, which runs from July...

The series includes I Am Sion Sono!!.

The Forum strand of the Berlinale (Feb 11-21) has completed its programme with a series of Special Screenings.

Artist Ulrike Ottinger’s 12-hour film Chamisso’s Shadow (Chamissos Schatten) opens this year’s Forum with a mammoth screening at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele on Feb 12. At the end of the festival, it will be repeated in three separate parts at CineStar at Potsdamer Platz.

Under the title “Hachimiri Madness – Japanese Indies from the Punk Years”, the Forum is showing a series of newly digitised and subtitled Japanese 8-mm films from 1977 to 1990.

Many of the highest profile directors Japan has to offer today made their debut features in this format but very few of them have ever been shown internationally. The series was jointly curated by Keiko Araki (Pia Tokyo), Jacob Wong (Hong Kong Film Festival) and Christoph Terhechte (Berlinale Forum).

The series includes Sion Sono’s I am Sion...

With today's announcement of a series of special screenings, the Berlinale Forum completes its lineup. There's be world premieres of Ulrike Ottinger's 12-hour Chamisso's Shadow, Serpil Turhan's portrait of Rudolf Thome and Dominik Graf and Johannes F. Sievert's Doomed Love - A Journey through German Genre Films. Then the program of "Japanese Indies from the Punk Years" will feature work by Sion Sono, Shinya Tsukamoto, Nobuhiro Suwa, Katsuyuki Hirano, Macoto Tezka, Sogo Ishii, Shinobu Yaguchi, Masashi Yamamoto and Akira Ogata. » - David Hudson...

With today's announcement of a series of special screenings, the Berlinale Forum completes its lineup. There's be world premieres of Ulrike Ottinger's 12-hour Chamisso's Shadow, Serpil Turhan's portrait of Rudolf Thome and Dominik Graf and Johannes F. Sievert's Doomed Love - A Journey through German Genre Films. Then the program of "Japanese Indies from the Punk Years" will feature work by Sion Sono, Shinya Tsukamoto, Nobuhiro Suwa, Katsuyuki Hirano, Macoto Tezka, Sogo Ishii, Shinobu Yaguchi, Masashi Yamamoto and Akira Ogata. » - David Hudson...

The second edition of the Transmissions ’13: A Festival of Independent Cinema organised by the Lightcube Film Society will be held in Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication, New Delhi from November 14-18, 2013.

The festival will showcase experimental films, short films, feature films and student films. The festival will also host panel discussions, video sessions, lectures, post-film discussions. Film literature, film criticism magazines, posters will also be up for sale during the festival.

Some of the films to be screened are 23 Winters by Rajesh Jala, City of Photos by Nishtha Jain, Chitrasutram by Vipin Vijay, Riyaaz by Gurvinder Singh and Ekti Naadir Naam by Anup Singh.

The pass to the festival will cost Rs 500 for general public and Rs 300 for students. Buy tickets from here. For more details call at 7838340196 or 9910161947 or write to lightcubefilmsociety@gmail.com / anuj.malhotra@lightcube.in

Schedule:

14th November 2013

4:30 Pm – 5 Pm: Opening

6:30 Pm: 23 Winters (2013)

Dir.

Tiff’s Midnight Madness program turned 25 this year, and for two and half decades, the hardworking programers have gathered some of the strangest, most terrifying, wild, intriguing and downright entertaining films from around the world. From dark comedies to Japanese gore-fests and indie horror gems, the Midnight Madness program hasn’t lost its edge as one the leading showcases of genre cinema. In its 25-year history, Midnight Madness has introduced adventurous late-night moviegoers to such cult faves as Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. But what separates Midnight Madness from, say, Montreal’s three and half week long genre festival Fantasia, is that Tiff selects only ten films to make the cut. In other words, these programmers don’t mess around. Last week I decided that I would post reviews of my personal favourite films that screened in past years. And just like the Tiff programmers,...

★★★☆☆ Maverick Japanese film director Gakuryu Ishii returns after a ten-year hiatus with the unsettling farce Isn't Anyone Alive? (2011), which receives a UK DVD release this week. Ishii remains somewhat of a revered filmmaker in Japan, responsible for a series of genre defining youth dramas in the late seventies and early eighties, his innovative visual style was matched by his biting social commentary of the disenfranchised Japanese youth culture. Isn't Anyone Alive? comes with a certain degree of anticipation - therefore, it comes as somewhat of a disappointment that he has so little of a subversive nature to actually say.

Read more »...

Welcome back to This Week In Discs… now on Mondays for your reading pleasure one day early! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Isn’t Anyone Alive? It’s afternoon on a college campus, and as the students chat about urban myths, employees go about their business and strangers pass through the area something begins to happen. They all begin to die. One by one they fall to the ground coughing and writhing in pain, but the conversations continue on around them. Director Gakuryu Ishii and screenwriter Shirô Maeda (adapting his own play) have delivered a film guaranteed to turn off 90% of viewers with its shifting tones, slow pace and lack of easy answers, but the 10% who stick with it will find a surreal gem exploring the things we share with each other and the things we keep secret. Dark, absurd humor exists alongside moments of real beauty...

An apocalyptic comedy from director Gakuryu Ishii, adapted from the play by Shiro Maeda, Isn't Anyone Alive chronicles the final hours of the human race from the perspective of eighteen Japanese citizens coming to terms with an inexplicable deadly plague, and how they choose to spend their last ten hours alive. 'Chosen by God,' these friends, family members, lovers and pop stars wander adrift amongst the dead and dying around a large college campus - some seeking forgiveness and comfort, others a scientific explanation and cure, and in one case simply a string of half decent last words. Featuring a cast of first timers and running at a little under two hours, cult director Ishii's new film is a patchwork of apocryphal urban myths, far-out imagery, lofty philosophical ideas and oddly misplaced scatological comedy, but is far too long and not nearly centered enough to warrant recommendation. In the...

★★★☆☆

Japanese cult director Gakuryu Ishii's Isn't Anyone Alive? (2012) has already been picked up for distribution from renowned purveyors of high quality Asian cinema, Third Window Distribution, although this sadly means that the film is unlikely to get a UK theatrical release. A high-concept, apocalyptic comedy, Ishii's latest is yet another example of his unorthodox style and aptitude for installing a punk rock ethos into otherwise formulaic genres. Read more »...

Isn’t Anyone Alive? (Ikiterumono wa inainoka)

Written by Shirô Maeda

Directed by Gakuryu Ishii

Japan, 2012

Set around a university and its campus hospital, veteran director Gakuryu Ishii’s play adaptation follows several groups of students, and the occasional older presence, who go about their everyday lives against the backdrop of a series of mysterious public transport accidents. They are each then inconvenienced by their deaths through sudden, unexplained internal failure, as human life around them seems to slowly be succumbing to a version of the apocalypse. A premise that seems ripe for a horror imagining by someone like Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Ishii’s film does not cater to any specific genre or narrative formula, instead following its characters as they wander the campus knowing and waiting to die.

The film’s strength is its farcical look at aspects of the human condition, where image is often valued over life. Characters...