Tag: Japanese Film
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To the Distant Observer, Noël Burch
To The Distant Observer: Form and meaning in the Japanese cinema, Noël Burch Burch aims to do something akin to Bordwell/Thompson/Staiger in The Classical Hollywood Cinema, namely, a formally driven approach to constructing a system of standard narrative film within the bounds of a particularly nation during it’s so-called “golden age.” Burch notes…
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Vengeance Is Mine: New Wave of Blood
Shohei Imamura undoubtedly constructed the film Vengeance Is Mine precisely so that many critics would take a variety of readings on it. The Freudian reading is easy enough, and the social commentary, too. One thing that stands out about the film is its consistency between form and content. The film is very much about its…
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I Live in Fear, or, Record of a Living Being
It had been too long since a Kurosawa viewing, and certainly too long since a first-time viewing. Hadn’t seen the alternately titled I Live In Fear or Record of a Living Being on account of its exclusion from Criterion’s standard-disc collection and subsequent inclusion in the Eclipse set “Postwar Kurosawa.” Ultimately, this is probably more…
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Quickies, Vol. XVIII
An Education (2008, dir. Lone Scherfig) – Everyone seemed to love this one when it came out, and not without good reason. The positioning is what’s interesting about this one: the film offers the viewer a rather unique vantage point. The narrative doesn’t so much unfold as play out, more or less exactly the way…
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Yojimbo: An Itchy and Scratchy Show
Saw this one the other week at the Stanford Theatre during the wonderful Kurosawa run (which is not yet over). First time to have seen it in 35mm, which was pure joy. This may be the best thing I’ve ever seen on the big screen. (Contrary to today’s commonplace, it’s camerawork, not the appearance of…
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Sanjuro
So good, and, as old faithful Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto insists, not simply a sequel to Yojimbo! Rather, a totally different film in tone and style; different in kind and not just in degree – sorry, Stephen Prince. And David Desser, dang it, this is so not a “remake” of Shane! Am thoroughly inclined to take Yoshimoto’s…
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Tampopo
My introduction to the “noodle Western” genre was a most satisfying one. Tampopo is especially rewarding to the viewer who’s been blessed enough to watch John Ford films, then Kurosawa’s take on them, then Sergio Leone’s take on Kurosawa’s, before finally returning back to Japan to watch a semi-truck driver with saddle burn sashay into…
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Rashomon
There are so many views as to the “point” of Rashomon or what stands out most about it that it nearly seems a pointless enterprise to discuss it. The camera work is remarkably novel; Kurosawa’s hiring of Kazuo Miyagawa worked oh so well, with these tracking and panning shots that baffle the mind. During certain…
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Onibaba
Onibaba (Demon Woman) from Kaneto Shindo is uncannily similar to Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, released in the same year. These are “art films,” as the saying goes, rich with long, abstract shots of claustrophobic natural surrounding: long and thick reeds that form a dense carpet with little bald spots of huts (Onibaba), and…
Precious Bodily Fluids 