Noticias

One of the most famous Japanese ghost stories, Yotsuya Kaidan, or The Ghost of Yotsuya, saw two film adaptations in 1959 alone. The directors of those films, Nakagawa Nobuo and Misumi Kenji, respectively, used color to expressionistically convey the anger of the betrayed and murdered wife, Oiwa. To differentiate itself from those productions, Katô Tai’s 1961 adaptation not only was shot in black and white and went with the title The Tale of Oiwa’s Ghost, but it shifted the focus from feminine vengeance to the horrors of masculine power and insecurity.

When we first meet Oiwa’s (Fujishiro Ayuko) husband, Iemon (Wakayama Tomisaburô), he’s already accidentally murdered a man in a fight, which led him to be estranged from his wife and her family. Unlike the lead of Misumi’s 1959 adaptation, Wakayama’s Iemon is fully complicit in his wife’s downfall. And his consistently vile behavior is typical...

One really has to hand it to Keanu Reeves. The guy has a knack for starring in zeitgeist-defining action films, with him leading Point Break, Speed and The Matrix. Yet, perhaps his most iconic character, John Wick, is the most unlikely success story of them all. It was seen as an upstart indie flick which came close to going direct-to-video, only for it to become one of the most successful action franchises of all time, and a property that’s unlikely to die anytime soon, even if its own hero’s survival is kind of up in the air right now post John Wick 4. With Keanu Reeves reprising the role in Ballerina, now’s a good time to look back at how this little action franchise that could came to be.

Flashback to the fall of 2014. Keanu Reeves, while already a legend, was struggling to reinvent himself as a now middle-aged star.

“Why is it that only those who have never fought in a battle are so eager to be in one?” Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) asks at one point in FX’s Shōgun. It’s a question that resonates not only with the show’s characters but may strike at the heart of our long-standing fascination with samurai.

Its resonance is all the more profound because Shōgun is loosely — very loosely — based on real events from the end of Japan’s Warring States period that pushed the nation into a new era. Taking historical events and crafting drama from them is something the show has in common with many Chanbara or samurai films. The riveting and often bloody history has provided fodder for countless films, including Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai trilogy, Sekigahara, Samurai Assassin, and The 47 Ronin.

However, these narrative films can obscure the complex history behind the events. Fortunately,...

The legend of the 47 ronin executing their revenge on the man responsible for the suicide of their master has been told and re-told a myriad of times in Japan in various art forms so it became a genre with its own name: Chushingura. There were several movie versions, too, from the 1941 classic directed by Kenji Mizoguchi to the atrocious 2013 Hollywood version starring Keanu Reeves. The newest version, “The 47 Ronin in Debt” directed by Yoshihiro Nakamura that premiered at the last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival and is now screened at Toronto Japanese Film Festival, at least offers a new angle to the whole story – the financial one.

“The 47 Ronin in Debt” is screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival

The legend tells us that the feudal lord Naganori Asano of Ako had attacked his rival and court official Yoshinaka Kira for reasons believed to be of corruption. Kira survived,...

Ugetsu

Blu-ray

Criterion

1953 / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date June 6, 2017

Starring: Mitsuko Mito, Masayuki Mori, Kikue Mouri, Sakae Ozawa, Kinuyo Tanaka

Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa

Film Editor: Mitsuzô Miyata

Written by Matsutarô Kawaguchi, Yoshikata Yoda

Produced by Masaichi Nagata

Music: Fumio Hayasaka, Tamekichi Mochizuki, Ichirô Saitô

Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi

In 1941 Orson Welles was busy giving the film industry a hot foot with Citizen Kane, a bullet-train of a movie whose rhythms sprang from the ever accelerating hustle and bustle of contemporary American life. That same year one of Japan’s greatest filmmakers, Kenji Mizoguchi, was taking his sweet time with a four hour samurai epic set 240 years in the past, The 47 Ronin.

The story of a band of loyal soldiers seeking revenge on a corrupt landowner, The 47 Ronin plays out in a precisely measured, ceremonial style, its 241 minutes leading up to the moment when the fierce band of brothers...

In The Overlook, A.V. Club film critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky examines the misfits, underappreciated gems, and underseen classics of film history.

Miyamoto Musashi, one of a slew of patriotic films about swordsmen produced in wartime Japan, is the closest thing to a B-movie that survives from the work of the great director Kenji Mizoguchi. In it, a brother and sister ask the famous rōnin Miyamoto Musashi (subject of countless films, many of them also titled Miyamoto Musashi) to help defeat their father’s killers, the Samoto brothers, who in turn seek out the master swordsman Kojirō Sasaki. Both Musashi and Sasaki—played by Chôjûrô Kawarasaki and Kan’emon Nakamura, respectively, the stars of Mizoguchi’s two-part wartime masterpiece, The 47 Ronin (1941-42)—are real historical figures, and the consensus is that they really did duel on the beach of a remote island and that Musashi did in fact come armed...

Director Robert Montgomery's last is a war movie like no other, a study in leadership and command with no combat scenes. James Cagney uses none of his standard personality mannerisms; the result is something very affecting. And that music! You'll think the whole show is the memory of a soul in heaven. The Gallant Hours Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1960 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date April 5, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring James Cagney, Dennis Weaver, Ward Costello, Vaughn Taylor, Richard Jaeckel, Les Tremayne, Walter Sande, Karl Swenson, Leon Lontoc, Robert Burton, Carleton Young, Raymond Bailey, Harry Landers, Richard Carlyle, James Yagi, James T. Goto, Carl Benton Reid, Selmer Jackson, Frank Latimore, Nelson Leigh, Herbert Lytton, Stuart Randall, William Schallert, Arthur Tovey, John Zaremba. Cinematography Joseph MacDonald Art Director Wiard Ihnen Original Music Roger Wagner Written by Beirne Lay Jr., Frank D. Gilroy Produced and Directed by Robert Montgomery...

So, last week I watched the Keanu Reeves abomination that was 47 Ronin and this week I took it upon myself to watch the 1941 original, The 47 Ronin, available on Hulu Plus and it's rather astonishing the differences between the two. Of course, the original doesn't have magic, monsters or the Reeves character and those are the immediate differences, but what's even more fascinating is to compare the way the two films approach the story and what is considered important. The first difference is in the approach to the story. Even though the '41 film runs 223, versus the 118 minutes that make up the 2013 remake, it wastes no time getting started. A little on screen text and immediately we see Lord Asano attack the court official Kira Yoshinaka. Due to the injection of Reeves' character into the remake it takes forever to get to this moment and by that time it's already...

I was never invited to a screening of 47 Ronin prior to its Christmas Day release and, to my knowledge, the majority of critics around the Us were similarly ignored. This is, and isn't, a surprise considering the majority of the press surrounding the feature has focused on its troubled production and ballooning budget, which is being reported as $175 million while everything suggests it was nothing short of at least $225 million or so. No matter, a film isn't defined by the amount of money spent to make it, but instead the end product. However, when a studio is unwilling to even screen a film for critics it says something about its quality and Universal isn't exactly a studio known for hiding its films, no matter how bad they may be. I have no personal interest in seeing 47 Ronin in theaters, but I am interested in hearing some thoughts on the film.

Collecting Masters of Cinema spine numbers 52 to 59 this new box set features eight films from the late period in Kenji Mizoguchi’s career, the years 1951-1956. Mizoguchi passed away in 1956 and this selection of films represent a wonderful selection of Mizoguchi’s most widely acclaimed work.

Each film is given its own disc and there are four highly detailed booklets offering information and essays on the films. Each film also has an introduction by the respected critic Tony Rayns and an accompanying trailer. The introductions are informative and offer a good introduction to the significance of each film but are perhaps best viewed after the film rather than before (if you have not already seen the film in question) as they tend to reveal a lot of details about the plots.

The transfers are mixed but all impressive considering the difficulty in acquiring pristine prints of some of these films.