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Obayashi 1980’s Kadokawa films

The teenage symphonies of Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020) are wound in a melancholy nostalgia for a period indelibly lost to time—that inexpressible gap between adolescence and adulthood. Braiding visually expressive fantasias with striking formal experimentation and pop-art boldness, Obayashi’s idiosyncratic cinematic language produced some of Japan’s most beloved seishun eiga (coming-of-age youth films) in the 1980s. Captivating generations of filmgoers with his earnest portraits of young love and vanished worldviews, Obayashi’s films were further bolstered by Kadokawa’s innovative tactics of popularizing dreamy pop idols like Hiroko Yakushimaru and Tomoyo Harada.

With a career overshadowed abroad by the oddball eccentricity of his electric 1977 debut House, the 1980s would prove to be the high-water mark of Obayashi’s popularity. Framed in 35mm viewfinders, against wildly ingenious chroma-key composites and characterized by his unflagging optimism for the youth of Japan, Obayashi’s youth passages are...

Due to Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi's directorial prowess within the samurai genre, crafting a list of the greatest samurai films of all time is essentially just assembling the best works by Kurosawa and Kobayashi. Nine of the 32 films Kurosawa directed were within the samurai genre and each of the nine is iconic enough to qualify as one of the genre's very best. Kobayashi's two seminal samurai movies, Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion, are also undeniable masterworks of the genre that arguably belong among the top five samurai movies ever made.

While Kurosawa and Kobayashi's samurai films are more well-known to Western audiences, the samurai genre has a plethora of other brilliant movies that are formative works of Japanese cinema. Auteurs such as Hiroshi Inagaki, Hideo Gosha, Kihachi Okamoto, and Kenji Misumi played an equally important role in the development of the samurai genre as Kurosawa and Kobayashi. Films such as The Sword of Doom,...

The bloody adventures of a swordswoman dedicated to murderous revenge provided Quentin Tarantino with a major inspiration. Director Toshiyo Fujita's impeccable images make the gorgeous Meiko Kaji into an almost abstract superheroine in beautiful cultured dress and hairstyles -- and soaked with sprayed blood. The Complete Lady Snowblood Lady Snowblood & Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 790 & 791 1973/1974 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 97 & 89 min. / "Shurayukime" & "Shurayukihime: Urami Renga" / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 5, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Meiko Kaji, Toshio Kurosawa, Noboru Nakaya, Eiji Okada; Meiko Kaji, Juzo Itami, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Yoshio Harada. Cinematography Masaki Tamura; Tatsuo Suzuki Film Editor Osamu Inoue Original Music MasaaakiHirao; Kenjiro Hirose Written by Norio Osada, Kazuo Kamimura, Kazuo Koike Directed by Toshiya Fujita

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

A worldwide revolution hit the movies in the late '60s, with the relaxing of censorship in the west and the collapse of foreign film industries with the rise of TV.

Lady Snowblood 1 & 2

Stars: Meiko Kaji, Toshio Kurosawa, Masaaki Daimon, Miyoko Akaza, Shinichi Uchida, Takeo Chii, Noboru Nakaya | Written by Norio Osada | Directed by Toshiya Fujita

There is a certain style to vengeance films and it’s arguable that Hollywood is losing the ability to make a truly good one. Kill Bill of course is a good example of a good vengeance story, but the truth is it’s more of homage to films that Tarantino is inspired by, and a damn good one. Lady Snowblood is the obvious inspiration for Kill Bill and of course Tarantino would never hide this, it’s his type of movie and quite honestly, what a movie it is.

Lady Snowblood also known as Yuki Kashima is described as a child of the netherworld, she was born for vengeance then educated in the ways to enact it. Her life has had one aim, even the way she was conceived.