Merry Christmas from Tokyo!

Ass-kicking Japanese film heroines of the 2000s

Just a quick link to a piece I wrote for the exciting CNNGo on some of this decade's toughest ladies of cinema.

Ass-kicking Japanese film heroines of the 2000s

It's a mixed bag but I think I covered different genres pretty well, though I know I'll probably get my own ketsu kicked for missing out on somebody or other. There was an extra paragraph at the end that had to be cut for length:

For more mayhem, Miki Mizuno has been punching up a lively action filmography with the likes of the "Hard Revenge Milly" films and "The Women of Fast Food" while 17-year-old karate master Rina Takeda made an impact in "High Kick Girl" this year.

Thanks to CNNGo editor W. David Marx, Twitch Film's Todd Brown, New York Asian Film Festival's Marc Walkow and Maboroshii Productions' Nicholas Rucka.

Gekidan Shinkansen x Kudo Kankuro x Cine = Kagerou Touge

Last Friday afternoon brought heavy rains and a press screening in Akihabara -- not typically where I find myself catching previews of upcoming films.

The venue was the state of the art Akiba Theater in the Fujisoft building. Definitely one of the better screening facilities I've been to.

Exhibitor-distributor T-Joy set up a showing of Kagerou Touge (『蜉蝣峠』, literally "Mayfly Pass"), a 167-minute stage play directed by Inoue Hidenori (いのうえひでのり) of Gekidan★Shinkansen fame and written by punk polymath Kudô Kankurô (宮藤官九郎), captured on high-definition video for cinema presentation.

The cast includes Furuta Arata, Tsutsumi Shin'ichi, Takaoka Saki (recently seen in The Harimaya Bridge, also T-Joy), idolish actors Katsuji Ryô and Kimura Ryô, Kajihara Zen, Takada Shôko, Awane Makoto and Hashimoto Jun.

For a bit of background on the outlandish brand of theatre that troupe Gekidan★Shinkansen produces see this interview in The Japan Times from earlier this year. Regular troupe writer Nakashima Kazuki brought a manga sensibility to stories based on characters from history and legend, creating a style now dubbed "Inoue Kabuki". Nakashima's film credits inlclude Takita Yôjirô's Ashura and animation series Oh! Edo Rocket, both adapted from his plays. Now Kudô Kankurô joins the Gekishin fold with this sprawling jidaigeki.

Furuta plays Yamitarô, a mysterious lone swordsman with a Blackie Lawless bouffant and a little memory problem as to why he's resided up in the titular mountain pass for a quarter century. When a cocky young traveller (Katsuji) convinces him to come down, they wander into a crumbling, lawless town right in the middle of a showdown between two rival factions (sound familiar?). As Yamitarô susses out the lead scoundrels (Tsutsumi and Hashimoto) on both sides, he re-connects with the girl (Takaoka) he left behind as an adolescent. As he pieces together the grim truth of his past a bloody finale looks inevitable.

Kudô Kankurô's script has all the hallmarks of his kitchen sink style -- heavy use of music, slapstick, characters that scream and mug a lot, and a supply of "touching" moments as protagonists come to terms with their failings. Combine this with the already hyperactive Inoue Kabuki style and you have a fun, if draining, experience. The violence ranges from cartoonish limb amputation to somber, crimson-soaked massacres that recall the more extreme samurai classics of the 60s and 70s. Toss in a karaoke interlude and a bubble-era musical number and you have all you ever wanted from Japanese entertainment, or more than you ever needed.

HD presentations of stage performances are nothing new. Those following Japanese cinema may be aware of Shochiku's Cinema Kabuki series (see here and there). Shochiku's famed Kabuki-za venue closes out this year ahead of its massive renovations with a 4K digital presentation of Franco Zeffirelli-directed Turandot. (On a Kabuki-za tangent, I was recently told by a Shochiku rep that the new office tower will be set back far enough that you'll still be able to take unobstructed photos of the old façade from the sidewalk.)

But the original techniques developed by stage-to-screen production company E!oshibai and the Geki x Cine label push the format further. Starting with a battery of 16 high definition cameras, they stitched together three different performances of Kagerou Touge from earlier this year.

Inoue Kabuki is already on stage steroids, with amplified sound effects during fights and animated visuals projected on a fine netting that descends during flashbacks in the story. The movie version both displays what's seen by the theater audience but also fully integrates animation sequences into the editing. The flashback to the hellish village slaughter of Yamitarô's childhood was particulary effective, with locals getting their heads lopped off in silhouette.

The soundtrack riffs on everything from Morricone (particularly Zamfir's pan flute work on M's soundtrack for Once Upon a Time in America) to Goblin's legendary music for Argento's Suspiria.

You can get a sense of the film's blending of media in the trailer. Click the seesawing 予告編 link on the right side of the official site's main page.

What's the market for content like this? Distributor T-Joy, a pioneer in the territory in terms of digital projection, is a big believer in ODS ("Other Digital Stuff"), namely rock concerts, live sporting events and special animation contents. They previously distributed other Geki x Cine productions such as SHIROH. As a Toei group company T-Joy manages and co-manages nationwide multiplexes including Shinjuku's Wald 9 and Umeda Burg 7 in Osaka.

Kagerou Touge opens on February 13, 2010. Fantastic fest programmers might want to take a look but I'm not sure whether this 3-hour beast will get subtitled for export.

Brief Thoughts on Three World Premieres at TOKYO FILMeX

Now that the 10th edition of TOKYO FILMeX has wrapped (see my closing story on Screen) and several post-fest parties were enjoyed, I thought I'd get down some very brief thoughts on the three Japanese films that had world premieres.

I'll start with what I tweeted about each one and expand a little from there. Mild spoilers.


First up was Ômori Tatsushi's A Crowd of Three (Kenta to Jun to Kayo-chan no Kuni, 『ケンタとジュンとカヨちゃんの国』).

Tweet: Omori Tatsushi's A Crowd of Three a road trip into the dark heart of today's lost youth

Tweet 2: Omori's Whispering...was trangressive - A Crowd of Three was neither art nor mainstream. Hard sell. I liked perfs, incl. Matsuda.

An overlong, glacially-paced nihilistic road movie stuck at a fork in the road. Is it an art film with genre trappings or a mainstream drama with indie stylings? Neither, really, though from talking to a few Japanese audience members its depiction of dead end delinquents seemed to strike a chord. Solid performances by indie stalwarts Andô Sakura and Kôra Kengo. Idol Matsuda Shôta does his best in what could probably be considered the lead role. I haven't seen Ikigami and don't watch terebi dorama (especially not the likes of Hanadan) so I had little to go on other than what he delivered, most of which was good. He has an interesting face. Everyone in the film does, actually.

A Crowd of Three starts off well, setting a tone as Kôra and Matsuda pointlessly jackhammer away at cement walls at their dead-end construction jobs. They decide to take off for Hokkaidô, where Matsuda's pedophile brother is imprisoned at Abashiri, eventually heading right off land's end. Despite the rage, sadness and fleeting moments of happiness along the way (a bus ride with a group of mentally challenged people is a highlight) the proceedings feel as flat as a pancake. The film does give off some sparks when Andô and Ômori Tatsushi regular Arai Hirofumi are on screen.

After Ômori's uncompromising Whispering of the Gods I was expecting much more.


Second was Toyoda Toshiaki's comeback film The Blood of Rebirth (Yomigaeri no Chi, 『蘇りの血』).

Tweet: Toyoda's Yomigaeri no Chi visually and aurally beguiling but felt only like the first act of his rebirth as a director.

Mark Schilling's Japan Times review, which also puts The Blood of Rebirth in the context of Toyoda's career, just went up here. It details the film's synthesis of music and imagery well but relates little about the plot or story -- that's because there isn't much there. But that's OK. Even on a shoestring Toyoda is a supreme stylist.

At a brisk 83 minutes with very little dialogue (only about 400 subtitles according to translator Gotô Tarô, with one reel sans any) Toyoda's The Blood of Rebirth is more fecund than most directors can manage at their randiest. The final scene really twisted my melon, man.

Toyoda stretched his legs nicely with this film, the most well-realized of the three. Looking forward to where he wanders next. Best seen on the big screen.


Thirdly was competition title Doman Seman (Horikawa Nakatachiuri,『堀川中立売』), directed by Late Bloomer's Shibata Gô.

Tweet: Doman Seman (Horikawa Nakatachiuri) a sprawling socio-slapstick redemptive urban fantasy. In all that footage lies a great movie. I think...

I generally don't harp on what a film should've been but in this case I will because of the obvious creativity Shibata and his band of collaborators possess.

The background info I posted in in November in combination with the promotional imagery/teaser led me to believe Doman Seman would be a much more somber, enigmatic affair. In fact, it's a humorous, hyperactive hoot surfing on dark undercurrents. As we follow the film's two goofball heroes through various machinations, the film touches on J-issues such as the vicious cycle of money-lending, fatal juvenile crime, corporate cults, internet privacy and the growing homeless population.

Doman Seman could've been this year's Love Exposure (one of the characters is even dressed like Sono Sion in one scene). If only the pieces of this very unique jigsaw puzzle were connected more carefully instead of glued together in haste. As Nippon Connection's Alex Zahlten said, the film does have an internal logic to it but like listening to an astrophysicist lecture on black holes you feel "Wow!...Erm, what?"

I really dug Doman Seman's eye-popping colours and the clarity of the HD images. However, the sound mix seemed off with dialogue lost under layers of music and sound. Like Toyoda, Shibata is a music maestro who gets a lot of mileage out of the bands he's closely associated with.

I can appreciate that the Doman team was cutting the film's 130 minutes right up until the screening -- I hear it will go through further editing ahead of its 2010 release. Best of luck to them.

More than the other two titles, I'm interested to hear other opinions on this film.