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For Christmas, my sister made me an adorable Nausicaa shirt.
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Dec 27, 2020 07:42
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Maxwell Lord posted:Honestly it's a film that took a couple of viewings to hit me too. Granted part of that was at first I didn't get why everyone was casually accepting all these forest ghosts and is this some weird Japanese theology, and the answer to that is "sorta". The family's a bit more credulous than one IRL would be but that's part of the tone. "Forest ghost" is a good description of Totoro, in that he and the other spirits are seemingly conjured up by the kids in response to their mother being in the hospital and their father having commitments that keeps him from always making time for him. Totoro is also a father of two younger spirits, but he not only has time for them, but he can comfort the human kids as well. The whole village pitches in to help take care of the kids, and as Totoro is a part of the village, naturally Totoro helps out too.
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Dec 27, 2020 07:46
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Maxwell Lord posted:I mean Totoro has a fine narrative- it's just a film in which there is never really much *danger* or *darkness* compared to even your average children's story. The basic conflict is that the family's strained by the mother being sick, and Totoro and the other little forest spirits come out of hiding to help support the family. it's got a whole subplot about a village scouring the countryside for a missing four year old and at one point they all think she drowned. it's one of the more intense sequences in miyazaki's whole filmography
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Jan 8, 2021 17:38
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Arcsquad12 posted:I asked him why he preferred subs he said that it was so he could read all the dialogue and not have to follow along with the visuals onscreen as much, and also so he could watch shows and films at 1.75 speed like some maniac. That's one of the most baffling explanations I've heard. I cannot understand this mindset. I've got two categories of watching things, actually watching things and using them as background noise. In the first case I want to see it, and in the second case it basically has to be dubbed since I'm not necessarily looking at it.
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Jan 8, 2021 17:47
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As a parent (does that require siren emotes?), Totoro is a straight up horror movie. The sequence where they all think the little girl has drowned in the pond is loving HARD to watch. The whole movie is like that, these kids are constantly breezing through poo poo that just gives me a heart attack to watch. Definitely feels intentional too. Maybe it's telling me to lighten up, since the kids end up completely fine, haha.
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Jan 10, 2021 19:24
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So I'm watching the next Zatoichi film (the first film I've watched in 2021! I've been slacking very very hard!) and who should have a small role but Machiko Soga, of Super Sentai and Power Rangers fame. I laughed my absolute rear end off at not only seeing but immediately recognizing her.
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Jan 17, 2021 22:57
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Okay - executive decision...I've been struggling super hard with having the motivation to watch Shogun due to its length, that I'm going to make individual posts about its 3 parts. This doesn't line up with the original 5 episode release, but the 3 disc structure is how its on blu-ray, so its how I'm gonna watch it. I need to impose some structure on it to get myself to watch it.
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Jan 19, 2021 03:44
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9 hours, huh? Why is it so long? Does it have intermissions? I'm struggling a little to imagine a narrative structure that long. Does it have long ponderous sequences? Once you've watched it, let us know how it is, and whether it justifies its length.
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Jan 19, 2021 04:30
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DorianGravy posted:9 hours, huh? Why is it so long? Does it have intermissions? I'm struggling a little to imagine a narrative structure that long. Does it have long ponderous sequences? Once you've watched it, let us know how it is, and whether it justifies its length. Well it originally was a 5 part, week-long TV event, not a standalone film, gotta justify the network time slots!
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Jan 19, 2021 05:05
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Shanty posted:As a parent (does that require siren emotes?), Totoro is a straight up horror movie. The sequence where they all think the little girl has drowned in the pond is loving HARD to watch. The whole movie is like that, these kids are constantly breezing through poo poo that just gives me a heart attack to watch. Definitely feels intentional too. Maybe it's telling me to lighten up, since the kids end up completely fine, haha. Again im exactly the wrong person for this film as I'm neither a parent nor a young child. I can empathize with what happens but I can't find a hook to connect me to it because I'm not at the right stage in life.
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Jan 22, 2021 21:36
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        Big Zatoichi Catch-Up Post 3. Directed by Kenji Misumi, Kihachi Okamoto, Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Kazuo Mori, and Shintaro Katsu Much like batch two of the Zatoichi films...we've got some ups and downs here. I'm going to get my biggest disappointment out of the way first...Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo. This was the bait-and-switch, clickbait title of the lot. Really, its Zatoichi meets Toshiro Mifune. Ichi is himself, but Mifune is not playing anything resembling the character from Yojimbo & Sanjuro (beyond the physical resemblance of...being the same actor). "Yojimbo in name only" spends most of the runtime as a drunken mess with none of the style or cunning of the Kurosawa-directed rogue. Zatoichi at Large also comes in toward the bottom of my list...but not because of any particular disappointment, but rather just due to feeling like the brown sugar cinnamon pop-tart of Zatoichi films. It exists. It hits all the beats you'd expect of one of these. But it does so with an absolute workman like competence. Its aggressively extant. Samaritan Zatoichi rounds out the lower end of the list, with a more dour, subdued Ichi, who manages to lose at dice - an absolute rarity for him. Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman threatens to be a chanbara/wuxia crossover...but there's only like 5 minutes of wuxia stuff. I did really enjoy the language barrier between the two title characters though, that's a fun twist. Zatoichi in Desperation has one of the strongest opening hooks of any of the films -- Zatoichi is present for the death of a random old woman through zero fault of his own, just a random cosmic cruelty of someone slipping and falling off a bridge. But if he hadn't called stopped to speak to her, would she have taken that wrong step? Then the movie is just more of the same. Oops. The last three are highlights - Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival recaptures all the joy and panache of the early films I loved so much, complete with The Titular Thing being a big giant setpiece battle of fun. Honestly surprising how the 21st film in a series manages to be a bold take on the earlier conventions of the series. Then there are the two finales...the original series' run Zatoichi's Conspiracy and the coda/epilogue Zatoich: Darkness is His Ally. I wonder how aware production staff was that either of these would be an end-point for the series. Conspiracy maybe they thought was just another entry and that they'd keep going for a while...but it manages to be a good end-point, returning Ichi to his childhood hometown is a stereotypically great way to end the series. But that makes Darkness is His Ally confusing in comparison. That one honestly just plays like Just Another Zatoichi Film despite obviously being the swan song for Katsu in the role. Large swathes of the film feature everyone but Ichi, there's no big character exploration of Ichi, there's no real ties to his past or leadins to a different future. The film just....ends. Like any other. Ichi off into the sunset, toward the town over the next hill. Which I guess is how you end this series -- it doesn't end. It just heads off toward film 27, 28, 40, 100. Ichi never changes, he just travels. I really enjoyed this series...did it need to be 26 films long? Hell no. But it was a fun ride and I do not at all regret going on that ride. Up Next: Shogun (TV Miniseries) Released September 15th-19th 1980. Directed by Jerry London jivjov fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Jan 29, 2021 05:30
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Thanks for your great summaries of the Zatoichi movies. I haven't watched any of them, but I'm interested in checking out one or two at some point. It sounds like the series is generally a serial, but did you notice any general arcs or themes throughout the series? Does Zatoichi grow, or does the world change much around him? Also I noticed how many different directors you mentioned. Do the different films have better/different style than others? Are any directors noticeably better than others?
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Jan 29, 2021 05:56
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The last Zatoichi film, Darkness is His Ally, was made almost 15 years after Conspiracy, which is why it feels odd, it's not even included in the Criterion box set. It's very much Katsu's attempt at putting back together his career, and life, and it's also infamous for being the number one example of how far the Japanese film industry had fallen in the late 80's, as a member of the crew got killed when a prop sword got replaced by mistake by a real one during a stunt. There's was also a Zatoichi tv show in 70's that ran for 100 or so episodes.
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Jan 29, 2021 12:14
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DorianGravy posted:Thanks for your great summaries of the Zatoichi movies. I haven't watched any of them, but I'm interested in checking out one or two at some point. It sounds like the series is generally a serial, but did you notice any general arcs or themes throughout the series? Does Zatoichi grow, or does the world change much around him? The one big change over the course of the series is things start to get actually bloody right around the very tail end of the films in my 2nd big post. Most of the kills were bloodless up til then, but then they started leaning into the big stereotypical fountains of blood, the occasional severed limb, etc. Ichi himself is more or less consistent across all films, with the odd film here and there choosing to focus more on his inner turmoil from time to time. He never really grows or changes, but you'll sometimes have a movie where he's a bit more the focus as a /character/ versus just /being Ichi/. Electronico6 posted:The last Zatoichi film, Darkness is His Ally, was made almost 15 years after Conspiracy, which is why it feels odd, it's not even included in the Criterion box set. Yeah, I didn't explain it very well in my summary post, but the 25th film was the last one of the original run, hitting in 1972, and Darkness is His Ally was from 1989 and was sorta a Shintaro Katsu vanity project. I think the Criterion style box-art poster I used is a straight up fan-made creation, but I liked it a lot so I tossed it in the image gallery. I really would like to know exactly what caused the original series to end at 25 films though--diminishing box office returns finally outweighed continuing?
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Jan 29, 2021 15:19
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Incidentally, for those curious: This has been my January. Just ripping through Zatoichi. I got hooked.
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Jan 29, 2021 16:28
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jivjov posted:Yeah, I didn't explain it very well in my summary post, but the 25th film was the last one of the original run, hitting in 1972, and Darkness is His Ally was from 1989 and was sorta a Shintaro Katsu vanity project. I think the Criterion style box-art poster I used is a straight up fan-made creation, but I liked it a lot so I tossed it in the image gallery. From memory one of the reasons was that Katsu wanted to go further with Zatoichi, and update it to me more in line with the then contemporary samurai movies; more violent, more sex, more exploitation. But Toho, who picked up distributing, didn't want that type of Zatoichi so the films simply stopped, and Katsu took it to tv where at that point in Japan was a more profitable enterprise. You can sort of see what Katsu wanted from those Hanzo the blade films that he made after Zatoichi stopped. But now that you're done with Zatoichi it's time to start the other long and very famous series of Japanese films. Our Tora-san! It's only 50 films long.
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Jan 29, 2021 20:58
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Electronico6 posted:
Sadly not on Criterion Channel Edit: as far as series' go, though...I do plan on watching all 6 Lone Wolf and Cub films jivjov fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Jan 29, 2021 |
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Jan 29, 2021 21:14
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Scheduling update: Lone Wolf and Cub starts tomorrow
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Mar 28, 2021 02:30
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Does anyone else feel kind of bad for Goro Miyazaki? The dude is not his father but that's the only point of comparison for him. I just finished reading an article slamming him for the CGI TV movie Ghibli just did and how Giro was "squandering the studio thanks to nepotism." I'll admit that I don't like his films and Earthsea is a lovely adaptation of books I quite like. But I don't think Goro has gotten a fair shake and I feel bad for the guy constantly being compared to his abrasive rear end in a top hat dad who gets deified as the Walt Disney of anime films.
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Mar 28, 2021 18:03
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Arcsquad12 posted:Does anyone else feel kind of bad for Goro Miyazaki? The dude is not his father but that's the only point of comparison for him. I just finished reading an article slamming him for the CGI TV movie Ghibli just did and how Giro was "squandering the studio thanks to nepotism." I don't know a whole lot about the Miyazaki family dynamic, but I see a LOT of the "comparisons to the more famous/successful family members" in a lot areas. People regularly get identified as "so and so's kid" first, themselves second, and that's a drat shame.
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Mar 28, 2021 18:14
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 Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance Released January 15th 1972, Directed by Kenji Misumi. Now this is what I was expecting when I first dove into the Zatoichi series way back when. Absolutely not casting values judgement on one series over the other, but this is kinda what I thought most wandering samurai/ronin series were -- a bit gratuitous, full of hyper-stylized blood explosions, etc. Overall, I really enjoyed this, but I hope that specifically the relationship between "lone wolf" and "cub" gets fleshed out a bit more as the series progresses. The flashbacks to Ittō making the decision to embark on a quest of vengeance is really good for this, but in the "present day" story of the films, Daigoro feels more like a prop than a character. From an action perspective, I'm really enjoying the 'is always prepared' gimmick. About to be ritually murdered? Cool, the crest of the shogun is hiding underneath my formal dyin' robes. Bad guys take your sword? That's okay, there's a spare blade in the baby carriage that can be attached to a pole to be a naginata. Bad guys have pistols? Great! The bottom of the carriage is a steel plate. I'm absolutely certain that this is gonna start feeling a bit gimmicky as the series progresses...but at least here at the outset its just a fun character trait. I'm reminded of something like Batman always having the right utility belt gadget for a situation. In small doses, it feels like the proper actions of a well-prepared wandering warrior. Beyond the fighting prowess and gadgets, though, Ittō as a character comes down on the side of the line I find kinda hard to sympathize with. The opening moments go with "he ritually kills a kid" and doesn't really seem to make any comment on how we're supposed to feel about that. He doesn't seem overly conflicted about his role as state enforcer or anything, and that's kinda a dark place to pull a protagonist from. See also: being forced to have public intercourse with a prostitute to avoid being killed. Ittō doesn't seem particularly interested in finding another way to resolve things, he just goes along with it. Not every character in a movie needs to be a paragon of virtue, of course...but Ittō is just a bit more unlikeable than other anti-heroes I've seen. Up Next: Shogun (TV Miniseries) Released September 15th-19th 1980. Directed by Jerry London jivjov fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Mar 28, 2021 19:10
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Interest check: Individual reviews of the remaining Lone Wolf and Cub films? Or a wrapup post at the end like I did with Zatoichi?
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May 28, 2021 14:22
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jivjov posted:Interest check: Individual reviews of the remaining Lone Wolf and Cub films? Or a wrapup post at the end like I did with Zatoichi? Speaking as a lurker who’s really enjoyed reading through this thread, I’d be interested in individual posts at least.
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May 28, 2021 15:16
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Cool. I'm struggling mightily with getting the Shogun tv thing actually watched no matter how much I want to. 90 minute movies are more my jam.
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May 28, 2021 16:18
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So I found myself in the mood and with enough spare time to watch The Human Condition this weekend, and what a ride that was. And when I say ride, I mean a slow descend into total despair and misery. Haven't felt this bad after watching a movie since that time i saw Come and See.
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Jul 18, 2021 23:19
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 Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx Released April 27th 1972, Directed by Kenji Misumi. (Wow, remember when this was a weekly or twice weekly series project? Oh well, I'm still having fun, and some people are still here, so hey) What a mixed bag of a film for me, honestly. First and foremost, one of my biggest complaints about the first film was addressed here. Daigoro, and his interactions with Ittō, are much more prominent here. I would not at all be surprised to learn that the sequence of Daigoro carrying water and food to his injured father is a panel-to-screen adaptation of a sequence from the manga. However, Ittō himself feels just as impenetrable as in the first film. His attitude remains one of "Well, I guess this is what's happening now" for the majority of the runtime. I guess I'm in the wrong franchise for deep character studies though. The actual plot of this one also feels rather disjointed. There's a throughline of Ittō being contracted to assassinate a man selling trade secrets to an economic rival, but this just seems like a thin reason to string a bunch of various fights with non-traditional weaponry together. The action is fun and well choreographed, but feels a bit over the top (even by the standards of the genre) from time to time. Something I will praise the film for is the variety of environments -- I'm a sucker for shipboard sequences, and the desert climax is very stylish. Overall, still worth watching, but I'm very glad this is a 6 film series rather than a 26 film one. Up Next: Shogun (TV Miniseries) Released September 15th-19th 1980. Directed by Jerry London
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Jul 21, 2021 04:50
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I enjoy hearing about these movies. Is there much connectivity between the Lone Wolf and Cub movies you've watched? Does Itto have an overarching goal or life philosophy?
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Aug 29, 2021 20:21
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DorianGravy posted:I enjoy hearing about these movies. Is there much connectivity between the Lone Wolf and Cub movies you've watched? Does Itto have an overarching goal or life philosophy? Thus far it seems to be a sense of enlightened pragmatism. He's got the skills to take on odd jobs as an assassin, and since he's more or less disgraced he can't really settle down anywhere. As mentioned in my review of movie 2, he really comes off as " Well -- this is my life now" with a side order of "I should take care of my kiddo"
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Aug 29, 2021 20:32
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Criterion flash sale going on--lots of the stuff I've reviewed here can get picked up at half price!
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Oct 20, 2021 04:40
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Project isn't dead. You'd think with Covid times I'd be ALL over films. This time it's been a crippling FFXIV addiction slowing me down. Gonna book some time for this project again soon!
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Jan 19, 2022 04:35
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jivjov posted:Project isn't dead. You'd think with Covid times I'd be ALL over films. This time it's been a crippling FFXIV addiction slowing me down. Gonna book some time for this project again soon! I just re-watched Last Man Standing and am still waiting for your take on it. It's got Christopher Walken at his 90s Walken-ist, right on the dividing line before he became sefl-parody.
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Jan 19, 2022 05:15
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New tack to try to get me back on board with this whole project--one of my partners is into classic film, so maybe watching with her will motivate me
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Apr 5, 2022 14:02
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I am watching a Film today
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May 22, 2022 06:12
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 The Wind Rises Released July 20th 2013, Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Ahhh, reading contemporary reviews of this one certainly is something. Everyone was so sure that Miyazaki was retiring for good and this would be his absolute last film. And if it had been his last film, what an amazing one it would have been. it is a well known fact that Hayao Miyazaki loves airplanes and loves them a lot. So much of Studio Ghibli's output features aircraft, wind, flight....and this feels like an absolute love letter to all of that...all while being quite a bit critical of the politics surrounding WWII. I almost wish the film had gone deeper into that, honestly. Dig more into the conflict of someone that just wants to build beautiful planes and how those planes get used as weapons of war.... But that's not really what this story ends up being about. Its present in so so much of the movie, but more as just a Fact of Setting for most of the run. Even when the 'thought police' come for Jiro, its seen as more of just an obstacle to his work than a serious threat to his liberty. The bigger conflict for Jiro ends up being his affection for Nahoko - he can't be with her without impacting his work, but being apart from her distracts him from his work just as badly. As someone newly in some long-distance relationships, that is what the kids call "a mood". The pair of them making the absolute most they can of Nahoko's limited time was very poignant -- their courtship, marriage, and her eventual passing are all just so...beautifully done. A really solid entry from Miyazaki, and one I almost certainly will be revisiting in the future. Up Next: Shogun (TV Miniseries) Released September 15th-19th 1980. Directed by Jerry London
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May 22, 2022 21:47
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I really liked The Wind Rises and watching The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness made me like it even more. Also, if you’ve only seen it in Japanese it’s worth looking ip the dubbed scenes with the German guy because he’s dubbed by Werner Herzog and it’s pretty great.
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Jun 2, 2022 12:25
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 Ran Released June 1st 1985. Directed by Akira Kurosawa Way back in 2016, I went to a theatrical screening of this film. I was worried "oh, its going to come up soon on my big Japanese cinema retrospective project, will I really feel up to watching a 2.5 hour long movie a second time?" Turns out life would continue to stymie this entire project and I had over 7 years between screenings. Its late, I'm de-rusting my film thought posting engines, this is not gonna be a long or particularly inspired review. Kurosawa does amazing things with color - said it before, and I'll say it again, I wish there were as many color films of his as there were black and white ones. I love that this man still never pulls punches with characters - sure this is a take on King Lear but an entire clan is completely hosed at the end of this story and that's just such a Kurosawa place to end up. I like watching movies and I should do more of that soon. Up Next: god only knows at this point
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Oct 23, 2023 04:51
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Just wanna say this thread rules and I’m always happy to see you bump it.
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Oct 23, 2023 04:59
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Pirate Jet posted:Just wanna say this thread rules and I’m always happy to see you bump it. I'm happy to still be here, tbh.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:20
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 When Marnie Was There Released July 19th 2014, Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi What a peaceful little piece....god...I love Studio Ghibli so much for just giving me these slice of life films with just a tiny sliver of magic to tell the story they want to tell. Is there a literal time fissure? Is Anna actually communing with a ghost? Who cares, please just engage with the characters. I really sympathized with Anna in a lot of this -- between one dead parent, one horribly bigoted one, a divorce, and a recent breakup...I've been dealing with quite a lot of the same feelings of rejection, loneliness, and neglect that Anna is at the start of this film, and man, I really really get it. Some days you really do just want to live in your bed, engage in a special interest, and not speak to any other humans at all. I'm just glad Anna was able to get some closure on her life through the connection with the town her grandmother grew up in. The final retelling of who exactly Marnie is and what happened to her is really impactful in just how quickly it all gets spelled out. I'm honestly not gonna lie, sitting here trying to process my feelings on this movie is just really filling me with a similar longing and desire for closure and I'm just gonna cut this here before I get too maudlin about things. Beautiful film, full of heart, I want to live in the specific world this film depicts. Up Next: where we're going, we don't need plans
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Oct 25, 2023 02:32
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House! House! House!
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Oct 25, 2023 17:55
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