Thursday, July 26, 2007
Biennale e yuku!
Just a short note to say congratulations to the Japanese films selected for this year's 64th Venice International Film Festival.
Kudos to Stylejam on the selection of Aoyama Shinji's Sad Vacation for the opening film of the Horizons section, Office Kitano on the selection of Kitano Takeshi's Glory To The Filmmaker (aka Kantoku Banzai!, also see here) for the Out Of Competition section and Sony Pictures Japan for the selection of Miike Takashi's Sukiyaki Western Django (also see here) for its Competition slot! Sukiyaki is accompanied by an amazing 32-film sidebar “The Secret History of Italian Cinema 4 -- Spaghetti Westerns". Sounds like one hell of a lineup this year.
Edit: It should also be noted that Sukiyaki Western Django and Sad Vacation are world premieres. Festival director Marco Müller seems to pride himself on competitions that feature only WPs. Glory To The Filmmaker is an international premiere.
10 comments:
I'm hoping Toronto picks up those three films as well. They've already selected Dainipponjin for the midnight madness program already. It would be a pretty strong showing for Japanese cinema if Sad Vacation, Kantoku Banzai, Sukiyaki Western AND Mourning Forest gets picked by Tiff. And I don't see any reason why they wouldn't.
Wow Sukiyaki in competition? Very nice.
A rare Eiichi Kudo's film is part of the Spaghetti Western retrospective:
"Gonin no shokin kasegi (The Fort of Death, 1969)"
Just to remember, this guy has made The Great Duel and The 13 Assassins. ouch ! I'm wondering if this Fort Of Death is also amazing. :p
Is that a good "ouch!" or a bad "ouch!". I haven't seen any of Kudo's films, surpringly -- he has an interesting filmography filled with genre titles and the titles you mentioned are highly rated.
SPM -- I'm sure you know about this director?
Hi Ian,
If anybody can make Sukiyaki happen in Toronto, it's my brother Colin. Enjoy Dai Nipponjin!
No, that's a very good ouch.
Kudo is definitely a must-see director, along with Gosha or Misumi.
His "samurai revolution" trilogy is filled with the rage of his characters, he brings a realistic point of view with the handheld camera, filming this samurais fighting in the mud without any moral values.
There's a lot to say about his work, and so much to discover. And this Fort Of Death seems to be a great forgotten masterpiece, maybe someone will write an article about it (i really hope so).
(here is a beautiful polish poster of this movie)
jason, what's your opinions on aoyama's previous things...? i was a little disappointed by the performances in 'eli eli', but impressed by the narrative structuring, the visuals and the sound usage. i've belatedly ordered artsmagic's three aoyama releases because of todd brown's insistence i don't give up on the man yet... my main interest in 'sad vacation' is actually, at this time, asano.
I've only seen 4 or 5 Aoyama films plus Sad Vacation next week hopefully so I'm not that well-versed, but he strikes me as a thinking man's genre filmmmaker. He's written novels and books on film criticism.
Shura,
Thanks for the info. That is a nice poster -- Polish posters are fantastic.
Go Mr. Geddes!!!!!
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