News

Hayao Miyazaki is a celebrated name in the Japanese film industry. To say he is popular would be an understatement, considering his massive impact on artists. His views alone have stirred the pot frequently.

From technology to AI, the Ghibli animator has opened up about his qualms. One of the most notable controversies is his stance on anime and action shows. But there is a director so esteemed that he’d put the Ghibli animator to shame with his stance.

Chihiro in a still from Spirited Away | Credit: Studio Ghibli

Among the likes of Akira Kurosawa, Takeshi Kitano holds a ground-breaking record. But that is not all considering his disdain for the Ghibli Director and anime on the whole.

Interestingly, his beliefs and ideas are resounding about the reality of the Japanese film industry. The auteur, artist, and creators are treated differently as the Director points out.

Legendary Japanese Director...

Fielding questions about Kubi, a period piece chronicling a few years of internecine feudal wars in 16th-century Japan, Takeshi Kitano dismissed some rumors he’d stoked. The film wasn’t going to be his last, as he’d previously suggested. In fact, he was already working on the next, a parody that would explore “the theme of comedy within violent movies.” I have no way of knowing when exactly the director will choose to put an end to a career that’s spanned four decades––the man is so prolific and allergic to stasis you’d expect him to keep working till the very last breath. But there’s something about his latest, Broken Rage, that makes it an apt summation of his cinema, and a farewell-of-sorts; hidden behind its farcical facades is the specter of a filmmaker revisiting his entire canon, leitmotifs, and style.

In the months between Kubi...

Quentin Tarantino is known for many things in the film industry. He has gained a reputation for his excellent films that feel immersive in every way. His storytelling methods have become well-known in every corner of the world. And his dedication to his vision is truly commendable. While these traits of the filmmaker are extremely well-known, there is one very big part of his life that many of his fans often overlook; his love for cinema.

Quentin Tarantino via Channel 4 News

Tarantino’s raw passion for cinema and film is truly unmatched. Over the years, he has watched nearly every movie in existence and curated expertise in everything surrounding the field. There is no better example of this than when he talked about the beloved Japanese film, Sonatine.

Quentin Tarantino Has Nothing But Praise for Sonatine

Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine has been regarded as a masterpiece for a film.

Takeshi Kitano, the filmmaker and star of such classics as Violent Cop, Sonatine and more, is currently making an untitled film for Amazon MGM.

One of the most famous stars in Japan, Takeshi Kitano, is making a movie for Amazon MGM Studios. At present, nothing else is known about what Kitano’s making; a statement from the production published by Variety simply says that Amazon “will produce globally acclaimed Japanese director Takeshi Kitano’s feature film.”

It also adds that Kitano will star, continuing a tradition that stretches back 35 years. The multi-talented actor, director, comedian, writer and occasional game designer has written, directed and starred in such classic films as Violent Cop (1989), Boiling Point (1990), Sonatine (1993) and Hana-bi (1997). More recently, Kitano made the Outrage trilogy (2010-2017) of gangster films, and the samurai drama Kubi, which made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023.

Kitano has also starred in other filmmakers’ movies,...

Within the vast landscape of Asian cinema, the works by Takeshi Kitano, as director and actor, have always been highly anticipated by many. However, when news spread he would retire from filmmaking after making one more feature, fans already thought this one might be the samurai epic he had been developing ever since “Sonatine”. Based on the infamous Honno-ji incident, the story portrays a time of political and social upheaval in Japan and is following the footsteps of directors such as Akira Kurosawa who made countless classics and established the historical samurai movie. “Kubi”, which translates to “neck”, also features a cast of many renowned actors, for example, Ryo Kase, Tadanobu Asano, Susumu Terajima and Kitano himself in one of the leading roles.

Kubi is screening at Nippon Connection

The story begins in 1582 after the uprising by lord Araki Murashige (Kenichi Endo) has been brutally beaten down by the forces...

It takes a lot for a cinematic creative to do multiple jobs on one production. Many directors work closely with their actors over many years, building a rapport, maybe even a second language that allows them to develop and improve with each new work. It's tough to get closer than an actor and director being the same person, however, and a rare case across Asian cinema. Nevertheless, there are directors out there who have proven to be a cut above the rest by turning the camera on themselves and expanding their range in the process. Here are ten of the most striking self-directed performances Asian cinema has to offer.

1. Bruce Lee

Action stars don't get much more iconic than Bruce Lee, the Hong Kong superstar taken far too soon at the age of 32 and the height of his powers. His sole directorial effort is “The Way of the Dragon”, a...

Mubi’s retrospective Takeshi Kitano: Destroy All Yakuza—featuring Violent Cop, Boiling Point, and Outrage Coda—is now showing in the United States, Canada, and select countries.Kubi.The presidential suite of the Grand Hotel Yerevan sits at the end of an amber-lit, carpeted corridor. The door comes fitted with its own CCTV camera, the concierge proudly gloats as an elevator slingshots us several floors above the ground, “so guests can feel safer.” Not that the current occupant has much to worry about. Guarding the suite on this exceptionally hot July afternoon is a small platoon of suit-clad Japanese men, looking equally stern and jet-lagged. The lucky few who get to pad in and out of the room do so in reverential silence, and even those outside speak in hushed voices, lest he should be disturbed. "He" is somewhere in the suite right now, and his name is Takeshi Kitano.

In the 1960s, director Kinji Fukasaku created what would be the ultimate yakuza-sage for years to come with his “Battles Without Honor and Humanity”-series. While the various features of the series can be regarded as great entertainment on the one hand, they gain much more value when considered as a reflection on human greed, power and manipulation. Over the course of his career, director Takeshi Kitano has made quite a number of features, such as “Sonatine” or “Brother”, which would blend these themes with a certain poetic or philosophical approach, depending on your point of view. However, with the “Outrage”-series, he attempted to create his own version of Fukasaku's epic, albeit with a much more cynical undertone.

on Amazon by clicking on the image below

The second entry into the “Outrage”-series, “Beyond Outrage”, takes place five years after the incidents of “Outrage”, with the...

Starting his career with an uncredited role in Akira Kurosawa's “Ran” in 1985, the first role anybody would have noticed Susumu Terajima would have been in Takeshi Kitano's 1989 debut “Violent Cop”, as a drug addict henchman. Since then, he has been a notable face in many a cops vs. thugs film, among others, now with over 200 credits to his name.

Having been a regular with some of Japan's leading directors, notably Kitano, Takashi Miike, Hirokazu Koreeda and Sabu, to name but a few, he is typically always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Terajima's career has been one of support roles, not often taking the lead, but his face is a reliable one, with many top directors turning to him, and any Japanese cinema connoisseur will need more than 2 hands to count the number of roles of his they've seen.

Here are some standouts from his career that has seen him play: a likeable,...

One of our most-anticipated films in the Cannes Film Festival 2023 lineup is the latest work from Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano. “Kubi,” set to debut in the Cannes Premiere section and marking his first film since 2017’s “Outrage Coda,” has been on the filmmaker’s mind for the last thirty years, initially developing it around 1993’s “Sonatine.” The first trailer has now arrived ahead of the premiere and a subsequent Japanese release this fall.

Based on the director’s own novel, which was released in 2019, the period epic will follow the real-life Honno-ji Incident, in which famed warlord Oda Nobunaga was assassinated at a temple in Kyoto in 1582. Starring Asano Tadanobu, Nishijima Hidetoshi, and Kase Ryo, the film was originally reported to be the 76-year-old director’s final feature, but that sounds like it won’t be the case.

One of our most-anticipated films in the Cannes Film Festival 2023 lineup is the latest work from Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano. Kubi, set to debut in the Cannes Premiere section and marking his first film since 2017’s Outrage Coda, has been on the filmmaker’s mind for the last thirty years, initially developing it around 1993’s Sonatine. The first trailer has now arrived ahead of the premiere and a subsequent Japanese release this fall.

Based on the director’s own novel, which was released in 2019, the period epic will follow the real-life Honno-ji Incident, in which famed warlord Oda Nobunaga was assassinated at a temple in Kyoto in 1582. Starring Asano Tadanobu, Nishijima Hidetoshi, and Kase Ryo, the film was originally reported to be the 76-year-old director’s final feature, but that sounds like it won’t be the case.

“If possible, I hope this movie will be a hit, and I...

After three features which focused on Japanese media, society and the cult surrounding his own persona, director Takeshi Kitano decided to return to the yakuza-genre with “Outrage”, which was the start of a trilogy of movies about the inner turmoil of a criminal syndicate. Given the commercial failure of works such as “Takeshis’” and “Achilles and the Tortoise”, this decision was perhaps also fueled by the idea of winning back the kind of audience that got to know the filmmaker through “Sonatine”, “Brother” or “Hana-Bi”. While this premise does not actually sound like “Outrage” might be Kitano’s passion project, the movie itself, along with its successors, is easily one of the best works of the director and, at the very least, another look at the connections of organized crime and society.

on Amazon by clicking on the image below

After a meeting at the headquarters of the Sanno-kai,...

When at some point in the near future “Neck” is released, it will not only be a new feature directed by Takeshi Kitano, but also, as the filmmaker himself claimed, his last directorial effort. Given the pace with which he has worked and also the fact Kitano tried to balance his many projects, as a director, a TV host, a painter and an author (to name but a few), it is perhaps no surprise to hear the 75-year-old wishing to slow down a bit. Still, the phenomenon that is Kitano still continues to fascinate audiences in his home country Japan as well as internationally ever since he has left his mark with feature such as “Hana-Bi” and “Kikujiro”, or, perhaps lesser known to some, as the host of formats like “Takeshi’s Castle”. In 2020, French filmmaker Yves Montmayeur, who already made features about Yakuza-cinema and Pink films, tackled the life and...

Even though “Sonatine” was only his fourth film as a director, for many fans and critics it is still one of the best by Takeshi Kitano and arguably an important milestone in his career as it received much international attention, thanks to directors like Quentin Tarantino, whose production company decided to release “Sonatine” as one of their first titles for American audiences. However, for Kitano himself, the importance of this film is much more personal as it is artistic, evident in the title of the movie itself, which himself explains as an indicator that he finally was able to use the various devices and means within the medium on a basic level, similar to a student of the piano practicing basic pieces. All modesty aside, “Sonatine” is quite an impressive movie which not only continues its director’s themes of deconstruction, but also the idea of how beauty is connected to death.

2022 brings Far East Film back to its historical dimension. The Feff is once again what it has always been since 1999, but it also carries the imprint of all the latest changes: it is an augmented festival, more inclusive, and even more curious. If in the last two years Far East Film was forced to reinventing itself and review its formula with different parameters, these last few months have generated a sudden and wonderful acceleration: a wave of new energy, a vital frenzy which has shaped the twenty-fourth edition.

The Teatro Nuovo “Giovanni da Udine” with its 1200 seats will firmly resume its role as headquarters and it will be joined by the Visionary, an outpost of the special sections and retrospectives. The 2022 selection will include a total of 72 titles of which 42 in competition. 15 countries will be represented (including an Italy-China co-production), the number of female directors rises to 12 (of which 8 in...

The Far East Film Festival in Italy’s Udine has set Chinese-Italian co-production “The Italian Recipe” as the opening title of a revived, largely in-person event.

The film, directed by Hou Zuxin, sees an unexpected series of events bring together a Chinese reality TV show contestant and a woman already resident in Italy. The collision of personalities, connections and chemistry between stars Liu Xun and Yao Huang resemble those of “Roman Holiday,” festival organizers suggest. The film has its world premier on Friday next week, launching a nine-day event that runs until April 22-30.

The 2022 selection runs to 72 titles, selected from over 400 submissions, numbers that organizers say, is proof that Asian filmmaking was not halted by the Covid-19 pandemic. “The fear, not unreasonable, given all the halted productions, dismantled sets and release dates announced and then postponed for months, that there wouldn’t be many films to choose from was...

Tokyo Vice, which premiered on HBO Max on April 7, is a series adaptation of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, the 2009 memoir by Jake Adelstein, played by Ansel Elgort in the series. He was the first non-Japanese reporter ever hired by Yomiuri Shimbun, one of the biggest and most respected newspapers in Japan.

Adelstein is the only American on the crime beat at the paper, and is given an outsider’s help. In the series, he is taken under the wing by Hiroto Katagiri, played by Ken Watanabe, a detective in the organized crime division. He is investigating his own group of outsiders. Adelstein ultimately fled Japan when an article for The Washington Post got him in trouble with the yakuza mob.

The yakuza are well known in Japan. They inspired fan magazines, manga, and have been the subject of quite a few gangster films.

Kitano Takeshi, a contemporary icon of Japanese cinema, is to receive a lifetime achievement award next month at the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy.

“A legendary artist on Friday the 29th of April will receive the Golden Mulberry Award for lifetime achievement on the stage of Feff 24,” the festival announced Friday with barely concealed delight.

Kitano who has film credits as writer, director, producer and performer, as well as a whole TV comedy career, is known for the brutal sergeant he played alongside David Bowie and Sakamoto Ryuichi in Oshima Nagisa’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” and for incursions into Hollywood in “Johnny Mnemonic” and “Ghost in the Shell.”

His Japanese oeuvre ranges from fine art to gangster genre thriller. He has credits in film noir (“Violent Cop”), romance (“A Scene at the Sea”), drama masterpieces and hard-boiled cult saga “Outrage.”

“For Far East Film Festival 24, a truly...

Whereas Takeshi Kitano’s ninth feature as a director seems like a return to the yakuza genre, and thus characters and themes he had already explored in works like “Sonatine”, “Violent Cop” and “Hana-Bi”, the project itself marks a fundamental turning point in the career of the filmmaker. For a long time, he and producer Masayuki Mori had been negotiating with US-American producer Jeremy Thomas for “Brother”, a film whose story would be set in both Japan and the USA, more specifically Tokyo and Los Angeles. As Thomas puts it, the greatest challenge was to make sure Kitano would have the same working conditions in the United States he was accustomed to from his works in Japan. Eventually, “Brother” began filming in late 1999 and was finished in early 2000, and thus became an entry into the director’s filmography which seems to divide his fans to this day.

Buy This...

Salor Suit and Machine Gun

A perky high-schooler takes on the mob in “Sailor Suit and Machine Gun”, a one-of-a-kind genre-bender that riffs on the yakuza film, coming-of-age drama and ‘idol movie’, inventively adapted from Jiro Akagawa’s popular novel by director Shinji Somai, a massively influential figure in Japanese cinema whose work has been little seen outside his homeland.

Hoshi Izumi is a young innocent forced to grow up quickly when her father dies and she finds herself next in line as the boss of a moribund yakuza clan. Wrenched from the security of her classroom and thrust into the heart of the criminal underworld, she must come to terms with the fact that her actions hold the key to the life or death of the men under her command as they come under fire from rival gangs.

Presented in both its Original Theatrical and longer Complete versions, and...

Takeshi Kitano is one of the most recognizable contemporary Japanese filmmakers internationally, with films like “Sonatine” and “Hana-bi” having screened in festivals all over the world and netting numerous awards, Venice’s Golden Lion included. However, before becoming an director in 1989 with “Violent Cop”, Kitano also had a significant career as an actor (among other capacities) that reaches as far in as 1969, and currently numbers 68 credits to his name. This list is a celebration of his work as an actor. In case you are wondering, no, “Johnny Mnemonic” and “Ghost in the Shell” are not among them, and yes, the order of films is completely random

1. Shunpei in Blood and Bones

Takeshi Kitano is sublime in the central role, portraying an awful and very violent man, who does not seem to have any shred of kindness or benevolence on him. Sai, through Shunpei and the impact he has to those around him,...

The British Film Institute (BFI) is launching a major six-month season, Japan 2020, on BFI Player from 11 May, with new collections including Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, independent, cult, anime, 21st century and J-Horror.

This major season will spotlight filmmakers who have inspired admiration and fascination around the world. It will start with Akira Kurosawa, and over the coming months it’ll present films from the Golden Age, a focus on Yasujiro Ozu, new wave rebels, the visionary creations of anime, the netherworlds of J-horror, and so much more from archive rarities to contemporary works and cult classics.

New online collections will be released each month, and is expected to be presented at BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide later this year.

BFI Japan will include:

A major season on BFI Player, divided into thematic collections and released between May and October: Akira Kurosawa (11 May), Classics (11 May), Yasujiro Ozu (5 June), Cult (3 July), Anime...

Even though “Sonatine” was only his fourth film as a director, for many fans and critics it is still one of the best by Takeshi Kitano and arguably an important milestone in his career as it received much international attention, thanks to directors like Quentin Tarantino, whose production company decided to release “Sonatine” as one of their first titles for American audiences. However, for Kitano himself, the importance of this film is much more personal as it is artistic, evident in the title of the movie itself, which himself explains as an indicator that he finally was able to use the various devices and means within the medium on a basic level, similar to a student of the piano practicing basic pieces. All modesty aside, “Sonatine” is quite an impressive movie which not only continues its director’s themes of deconstruction, but also the idea of how beauty is connected to death.

After he had given his debut as director in “Violent Cop”, Takeshi Kitano obviously found a liking to having more control over a project. His second feature film “Boiling Point” is therefore an important creative step for him as he not only acts and directs, but also wrote the script and even collaborated with Toshio Taniguchi on the editing of the final film, making this one the first “complete” Kitano film in his body of work. The outcome of his effort is a film which is very difficult to categorize, which removes itself even further from notions like genre and other formal concepts such as the idea of the protagonist. However, within the context of his body of work, “Boiling Point” sets the foundation to the overall deconstruction of these aforementioned aspects and introduces the sort of deadpan humor as well as the notion of melancholia which would become trademarks...

As we mentioned in the review of the first part of the trilogy, the influence of Kitano was small but significant. This time, however, it is much more evident (from “Sonatine”), although the preposterousness that characterizes Miike’s style, still manages to dominate a large part of the film.

Two contract killers, blonde-haired and quirky Mizuki Okamoto and cool and silent Shuuichi Sawada meet with each other by accident, during a “job” and soon realize that they are childhood friends. Their reunion propels them into travelling to the island they grew up together. As they reminisce the past and meet up with old friends, they learn a number of shuttering news and eventually take a big decision: to start killing for… charity, giving their earnings to the poor children of the world. Their decision, though, brings them against their old employers, the crime syndicates.

This time, Miike...

Considered by many Takeshi Kitano’s magnum opus, “Fireworks” is also his most critically acclaimed work, as it netted him the Golden Lion in Venice Film Festival and a plethora of other awards, both in Japan and all around the world, despite the fact that the Japanese Academy chose to ignore him again, solely awarding Joe Hisaishi for Best Musical Score, among 10 other nominations. The international success of both “Fireworks” and “Sonatine” established Kitano as the most prominent Japanese filmmaker of his era, thus resulting in the end of his awful psychological condition that had been ongoing for years, even before shooting the latter.

Buy This Film

Kitano plays one among his favorite roles as Nishi, a violent police detective, who quits the force due to guilt ensuing from the terrible outcome of an effort to arrest a violent criminal, that left his best friend and partner Horibe crippled and...

Thrilling, talky, and densely plotted to a point of convolution, Outrage Coda closes Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage trilogy, which follows various warring yakuza crime organizations in Japan and now, South Korea, centering around an enforcer named Otomo, played by Kitano under his acting name Beat Takeshi. It’s interesting that Kitano’s work first hit North America under the banner of Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder Pictures. Luckily for audiences, Kitano is a filmmaker utterly unspoiled by the post-Tarantino wave in which hitmen became preoccupied by discussions about the discography of Hall & Oates as they sliced their target’s throat with a garrote wire. (Although the two filmmakers do share a love of Godard.) Outrage Coda is a gangster revenge film which slyly favors plot over character; where the violent antiheroes talk about the film’s plot, and absolutely nothing else.

After Otomo becomes aligned with a Korean crime organization,...

“I still have something to do.”

“Don’t be too reckless.” Shortly after the release of “Beyond Outrage”, the first sequel he filmed to this day, Kitano stated how he wanted to conclude his modern day-narrative on the yakuza. Besides the financial success of the last two films, a conclusion seems to be the logical next step after focusing on the hierarchy within the underworld (“Outrage”) and its evolution to a business (“Beyond Outrage”). The last entry into the series would be centered around the individual and highlight the lasting consequences of Otomo’s actions and those of the other characters.

Outrage Coda is screening at the Toronto Japanese Film Festival

Despite their roots within the cinema of directors like Ken Takakura or Kinji Fukasaku, Kitano emphasizes how he regards his films as different from these traditions. Even though his approach remains stylized, the image of the yakuza as an...

Kitano Takeshi returns to Japanese screens later this year with the third installment of his Outrage gangster saga. Kitano, of course, is the hugely popular comedian turned violent auteur behind classic yakuza films such as Fireworks and Sonatine and while Kitano had always moved between his crime pictures and smaller, quirkier, and more personal offerings throughout his career it seems as though the failure of his late career trio of weird, experimental offerings (Takeshis, Glory To The Filmmaker, Achilles And the Tortoise) to really find an audience at home or abroad has pushed him towards more audience focused offerings since. Give 'em what they want, right? And so we have 2010's return to yakuza crime Outrage, 2012 sequel Outrage Beyond - the first sequel of...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Check out these essentials even if you don’t catch the new movie.

Another week, another live-action remake of an animated classic. Well, you could argue that most of Ghost in the Shell isn’t really live action, since there’s so much that’s CG. You could also say it’s not a remake so much as a new adaptation of a Japanese comic book. Regardless, a lot of it is a pretty faithful copy, so a good percentage of this week’s list of Movies to Watch could apply to the manga or the anime versions of the story (I’m making it a given that you should see the original). That’s good for any of you boycotting the new movie due to its whitewashing controversy.

These 12 titles are worth seeing either way:

The Creation of the Humanoids (1962)

Despite being a cheap, cheesy sci-fi B movie, this is a significant work for being possibly...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Takeshi Kitano's Kikujiro (1999) is showing March 23 - April 22, 2017 in the United Kingdom in the series Kitano x 3.1With each viewing, Takeshi Kitano’s Kikujiro becomes increasingly porous. The gaps are clear: though the film is the story of Masao, a young boy searching for his estranged mother, and Kikujiro, the former yakuza forced to accompany him, they and the strangers they encounter exist without much background. The sleepy-eyed Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi) speaks only in short murmurs. Meanwhile, Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano) spends most of the film gambling off the two’s spending money at the track cycling racetracks, only to develop a compassion so subtle that he himself does not notice it. Simply put, the film is a blur, or a series of blurs.But these lacks of interconnectedness are why Kikujiro has only gotten better with age,...

Ryan Lambie Nov 21, 2016

The live-action Ghost In The Shell got its unveiling in Tokyo last week. Here's what we learned...

Pitched somewhere between a mournful chant and a military march of drums, Kenji Kawai’s soundtrack for 1995’s Ghost In The Shell cast an unforgettably eerie pall over the entire movie. The makers of the new, live-action take on Ghost In The Shell clearly recognise the power of Kawai’s music because, as the lights go down on the movie’s Tokyo unveiling event, the composer and musician himself is here to thrash out a live version of his score.

See related The Walking Dead season 7: synopses and titles for episodes 6, 7 and 8 The Walking Dead: how will the show end? The Walking Dead season 7 episode 4 review: Service The Walking Dead season 7 episode 3 review: The Cell

As blue light emanates from huge Led screens and Kawai thrashes his barrel-sized taiko drum,...

Takeshi Kitano has taken home laurels from film festivals the world over. As of next week, he can lay claim to an even higher honor: France’s Legion of Honor, which the Japanese actor, director and comedian will receive at a ceremony in Paris next week for his contributions to contemporary arts.

Read More: ‘Boiling Point’ Exclusive Poster: Film Movement Classics Re-Releases Early Beat Takeshi Movie

Jack Lang, France’s former culture minister, said in a statement that the “Violent Cop,” “Sonatine” and “Outrage” director “comfortably went beyond the limits of art genres and transformed the rules of performing arts, television, film and literature.” Kitano will receive the rank of Officier, the L’ordre National de la Légion d’honneur’s fourth-highest honor.

Read More: Tokyo Film Festival: U.S. Indie Scoops Top Prize; Tim Burton And Takeshi Kitano Honored

“I am very surprised that I will be given such an honor,...

Today, New York independent distributor Film Movement Classics unveils the brand-new poster for Takeshi Kitano’s 1990 film “Boiling Point,” designed exclusively for retrospective screenings by comic book artist Benjamin Marra. Marra designed the film’s one-sheet with a colorful, stylized illustration highlighting baseball and the Yakuza. Check it out below.

Read More: Review: Takeshi Kitano’s ‘Beyond Outrage’ Blows Up The Standard Gangster Movie Template

The film follows Masaki (Yûrei Yanagi), an unassuming gas station attendant who is a member of the losing sandlot baseball team The Eagles. After he runs afoul of a belligerent yakuza, The Eagles manager, an ex-yakuza himself, gets involved, setting Masaki on a haphazard quest for guns in Okinawa with his friend Kazuo (Duncan). There they are befriended by the extremely eccentric yakuza boss Takashi (Takeshi “Beat” Kitano), leading them straight into the tangled web of organized crime.

Benjamin Marra is best known for “Night Business,...

All feature new 2K remasters from Office Kitano!

The first 1000 copies of each feature cardboard slipcases with new illustrated artwork by Marie Bergeron supported by Filmdoo’s Film Creativity Competition.

All 3 now available to pre-order at: http://amzn.to/20wQ1BA

Hana-bi – January 11th

30 minute documentary from the film’s original release

Interview with Takeshi Kitano from the film’s original release

New Audio commentary by film critic Mark Schilling

New trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwTWtAE3ylY

Kikujiro – February 22nd

Jam Session – 90 minute documentary on Kikujiro directed by the award-winning Japanese director Makoto Shinozaki

Dolls – March 14th

Interviews with Takeshi Kitano, Miho Kanno, Hidetoshi Nishijima & Yohij Yamamoto

Behind the Scenes

Video from the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival

Takeshi Kitano – Biography

The success of Hana-bi has confirmed Takeshi Kitano as a leading figure of international cinema. Among its numerous awards, Hana-bi won the Golden...

Writer/ Director Takeshi Kitano returns to Japanese underworld with this juvenile Yakuza outing that replaces the brutality of his earlier work (Zatoichi, Brother, Sonatine) with blithe and bungled comedy. After opening with a colourful credit sequence, tiny sized letters exploding on a black backdrop, we are introduced to Ryuzo (Tatsuya Fuji): a doddery ex-Yakuza turned

The post Lff 2015: Ryuzo and His Seven Henchmen Review appeared first on HeyUGuys.

I interviewed Takeshi Kitano, aka "Beat" Takeshi, in spring of 2001 regarding "Brother," his first film shot on American soil. Kitano is arguably, still, the biggest star in Japan, one whose influence crosscuts virtually all areas of media.

Memories: Kitano was surrounded by a small entourage of Japanese men, one of whom was his interpreter. He was formal and stoic in his interaction with me, but never unfriendly. As Sofia Coppola so deftly portrayed in "Lost in Translation," the English to Japanese process of translating can often be time-consuming for what amounts to seemingly little that's been said. Kitano rarely made eye contact or smiled, although when he would laugh softly, a crooked grin would form on one side of his mouth, the right. The other striking thing about Kitano's appearance was a tic, or slight tremor, that would appear on the left side of his face, the after-effect of a...

From a crazy early Nic Cage role to a lesser-known film starring Robert De Niro, here's our pick of 25 underappreciated films from 1989...

Ah, 1989. The year the Berlin Wall came down and Yugoslavia won the Eurovision Song Contest. It was also a big year for film, with Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade topping the box office and Batman dominating the summer with its inescapable marketing blitz.

Outside the top 10 highest-grossing list, which included Back To The Future II, Dead Poets Society and Honey I Shrunk The Kids, 1989 also included a plethora of less commonly-appreciated films. Some were big in their native countries but only received a limited release in the Us and UK. Others were poorly received but have since been reassessed as cult items.

From comedies to thrillers, here's our pick of 25 underappreciated films from the end of the 80s...

25. An Innocent Man

Disney, through its Touchstone banner, had high hopes for this thriller,...

To celebrate the release of Tony Jaa's The Protector 2 and Kitano Takeshi's Beyond Outrage on DVD in Australia, Madman is giving you, our dear readers, the chance to win a DVD pack that includes some of the best Thai action and Kitano Takeshi films. First prize (one winner): All of the pictured movies on DVD - The Protector 2, Ong Bak 1, 2 and 3, Chocolate, Outrage, Beyond Outrage, Kitano Takeshi Boxset (Violent Cop, Boiling Point and Sonatine)Second prize (three winners): Either The Protector 2 or Beyond Outrage on DVD.For a chance to win, all you have to do is to follow these two steps:1) Tell me in 25 words or less, which of the movies in the prize pack you like the most and...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Exclusive: Fukushima-themed sci-fi drama likely to be French co-production.

Japanese director Koji Fukada, whose Au revoir l’ete premiered in Tokyo competition last month and made its international premiere at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, has recruited veteran producer Kazuyoshi Okuyama [pictured] for his next project, Sayonara, based on an android theatre play of the same title.

Au revoir l’ete recently won the Montgolfière d’or and the Prix de jury jeune at the Festival des 3 Continents Nantes. Fukada’s award-winning Hospitalite also attracted attention at festivals such as New York, Rotterdam and Tokyo.

Speaking to ScreenDaily in Tallinn, where Au revoir l’ete is playing in the EurAsia competition, the director said his next project, Sayonara, will be produced by the former Shochiku main producer Kazuyoshi Okuyama, whose credits include Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine and recent Hitoshi Matsumoto comedy R100.

“His production company Team Okuyama will produce and we’re working on a deal to make...

Exclusive: Fukushima-themed sci-fi drama likely to be French co-production.

Japanese director Koji Fukada, whose Au revoir l’ete premiered in Tokyo competition last month and made its international premiere at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, has recruited veteran producer Kazuyoshi Okuyama [pictured] for his next project, Sayonara, based on an android theatre play of the same title.

Au revoir l’ete recently won the Montgolfière d’or and the Prix de jury jeune at the Festival des 3 Continents Nantes. Fukada’s award-winning Hospitalite also attracted attention at festivals such as New York, Rotterdam and Tokyo.

Speaking to ScreenDaily in Tallinn, where Au revoir l’ete is playing in the EurAsia competition, the director said his next project, Sayonara, will be produced by the former Shochiku main producer Kazuyoshi Okuyama, whose credits include Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine and recent Hitoshi Matsumoto comedy R100.

“His production company Team Okuyama will produce and we’re working on a deal to make...

Outrage was a bit of a letdown. It was an often tedious movie, full of unlikable characters and featuring a plot that was both hard to follow and hardly worth following. Somehow, it made a yakuza turf war seem utterly boring. Beyond Outrage fixes many of the mistakes of its predecessor, wisely introducing more character development, making some of those characters more sympathetic, and upping the ante on the violence. In addition, it adds a playfulness and sense of humor that was woefully missing from the original.

The movie doesn’t start off particularly promisingly. Takeshi Kitano, who wrote, directed, and stars in the film, does not show up until a full 24 minutes into it. That’s 24 minutes to get to the guy who is ostensibly the film’s protagonist, and certainly its most recognizable face. All the time until then is spent catching the audience up on all the...

Odd List Ryan Lambie Simon Brew 24 Oct 2013 - 06:46

Another 25 unsung greats come under the spotlight, as we provide our pick of the underappreciated films of 1995...

The year covered in this week's underrated movie rundown was significant for a number of reasons. It was the year that saw the release of Toy Story - the groundbreaking movie that would cement Pixar's reputation as an animation studio, and set the tempo for CG family movies for the next 18 years and counting. It was the year that saw James Bond (played by Pierce Brosnan for the first time) emerge for GoldenEye after a six-year break. It was also the year of Michael Mann's Heat, Dogme 95, and the moment where Terry Gilliam scored a much-deserved hit with 12 Monkeys.

As ever, we're focusing on a few of the lesser-known films from this particular year, and we've had to think carefully about what's made the cut and what hasn't.

The director of Sydney film festival describes the magic of film festivals and the communal discovery of great new works

My first experience of a film festival was through a catalogue. I was about 16 at the time, and in my weekly forays into Durban's city centre I would pick up a copy of the New Musical Express, and the occasional football or cricket magazine. One day, I came upon the catalogue for the Durban International Film Festival. Though I was too young to attend, I bought it, and pored over it for weeks, noting all the films I wished I could see – all of them really.

Around the same time, a friend had somehow managed to get his hands on a UK-distributed VHS tape of Takeshi Kitano's Sonatine. I adored everything about the film: the extreme violence, the childish games on the beach, the black suits, the dreaminess of it.

Review by Sam Moffitt

I have watched a lot of gangster movies in my life, although that particular genre was never my favorite. Monster and horror movies always were and probably always will be that, but I have watched a good many gangster films, and enjoyed them

When I was a kid Kplr-tv, Channel 11 in St. Louis ran all the Warner Brother’s old gangster and film noirs on the weekends. In fact they had so many Bogart pictures for a while they ran Bogart Theatre on Sunday afternoons.

I saw a double bill of Public Enemy and Little Caesar at the Tivoli theater in the early 70′s, a double bill of White Heat and High Sierra at the Naro theatre in Norfolk, Virginia during my time in the Navy in the late 70s. I enjoyed a lot of the new wave of gangster pictures in the 80s and 90s.

Written and directed by Takeshi Kitano.

Starring Miho Kanno, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tatsuya Mihashi,

Chieko Matsubara, Kyoko Fukada and Tsutomu Takeshige.

Running time: 113 min.

Dolls is a beautiful, clever, original stylization with just the right touch of subtle irony characteristic of other Kitano’s works.

Plot

There are three stories in the movie, all of them concerning love, always futile, tragic and pierced with the feeling of loneliness.

The central story is about a young couple, Matsumoto and Sawako. They are engaged to be married, but Matsumoto is persuaded by his parents to marry the daughter of his boss. As a dutiful son, the young man respects his parents’ request: they worked hard to get him through college and give him a good chance at life.

At the wedding Matsumoto is informed that Sawako attempted suicide. She survived, but lost her mind and is now in a semi-vegetative state. Matsumoto leaves...

If you haven't seen any Takeshi Kitano (Kikujiro no Natsu, Achilles to Kame, Kantoku: Banzai!) films yet, Hana-bi is probably one of the best starting points in the man's oeuvre. It's one of his more accessible films, but it still goes a long way in highlighting his various skills. While still very unique and different from Western cinema, there are enough elements to pull in people not quite familiar with Asian film making.Back in 1997 Hana-bi earned Kitano a Golden Lion (Venice International Film Festival). Even though he needed the help of Shinya Tsukamoto to convince the jury of Hana-bi's qualities, the film went on to become Kitano's big break-through in the West. A break-through that was already imminent when he released Sonatine a couple...

Director: Kitano Takeshi. Review: Adam Wing. Well it’s about time. Kitano Takeshi is a complex individual it would seem, but with Outrage we are taken back to a time where life was much simpler. Not to mention a whole lot bloodier. You’d be forgiven for thinking he had fallen off the face of the planet, after a trilogy of films that dealt not with warfare, but with his own artistic integrity. In truth however, Takeshis’, Achilles and the Tortoise and Glory to the Filmmaker! struggled to find an audience on both sides of the water. They are deeply personal films blessed with the offbeat eccentricities of their guiding light, but you have to go all the way back to 2003 to witness Kitano at the height of his power. It was the 1990’s that saw Kitano deliver his finest work, with films like Boiling Point, Violent Cop and Sonatine...

Takeshi Kitano, also known as Beat Takeshi, was already a Japanese television star known for his comedy when he directed his first film, Violent Cop, in 1989. In that dark thriller, Kitano played the title role with grim, stone-faced conviction. Developing a slow, meditative filming style to match his expressionless face, Kitano turned out one gripping, thoughtful, bloody movie after another in the ’90s, finding darkly poetic peaks with the gangster thriller Sonatine and the mournful Fireworks. Kitano retreated from crime films after his 2000 Hollywood excursion Brother; he instead revived the classic samurai character Zatoichi and turned out a ...

Outrage (Autoreiji)

Written and Directed by Takeshi Kitano

Japan, 2010

Originally a comedy star on Japanese television, Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi) rose to international fame as a director of yakuza dramas during the 1990s. He’s known primarily for Sonatine and Fireworks (Hana-bi), which offered remarkable visions of violence and beauty. His stunning long takes can resemble intricate paintings while his characters enjoy a brief respite from the ruthlessness of the real world. There’s little of that sanctuary in his latest work Outrage (Autoriji), a nasty depiction of yakuza life in the 21st century. The story opens with a striking wide shot of a large group of gangsters dressed in black as their leaders meet. These guys have sworn allegiance to their bosses, but it means little once the bullets start flying.

This film most closely resembles 2000’s Brother in tone, but it outdoes that picture by remaining unpredictable with constant betrayals.