“Goyokin,” which translates to “Official God,” is perhaps Hideo Gosha's finest film. Written by Gosha and Kei Tasaka, many of the director's regular players, including Tatsuya Nakadai and Tetsuro Tamba, star here. Toshiro Mifune was initially cast as the character Samon Fujimaki. However, production difficulties resulted in him being replaced by Kinnosuke Nakamura. “Goyokin” was a critical and financial hit upon release and remains a highly regarded piece of Japanese cinema.
on Amazon by clicking on the image below
In snowy feudal Japan, Sado Island is home to gold mines that provide riches offered to the Tokugawa clan via ship delivery, which can be jeopardized due to poor weather on the waters. Meanwhile, a reclusive samurai named Magobei Wakizaka wanders, clearly troubled by something. The ronin finds himself the target of an assassination attempt, which he survives. He learns this attack was orchestrated by his former clan master,...
on Amazon by clicking on the image below
In snowy feudal Japan, Sado Island is home to gold mines that provide riches offered to the Tokugawa clan via ship delivery, which can be jeopardized due to poor weather on the waters. Meanwhile, a reclusive samurai named Magobei Wakizaka wanders, clearly troubled by something. The ronin finds himself the target of an assassination attempt, which he survives. He learns this attack was orchestrated by his former clan master,...
- 1/17/2024
- by Sean Barry
- AsianMoviePulse
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Josef von Sternberg's Anatahan (1953) is showing June 4 – July 3, 2019 in the United States.Its premise alone is intriguing. A group of Japanese sailors are attacked at sea and become stranded on an island for seven years, with no knowledge of how the outside world carries on without them. A world, it’s worth noting, that is currently at war. The 1944 incident served as the basis for Michiro Maruyama’s 1954 novel, Anatahan, in which he detailed the ordeal and his time on the Northern Mariana island of that name. Intriguing, yes, but perhaps not a subject immediately associated with filmmaker Josef von Sternberg, a director best known for ornate, cloistered, exotic, and sometimes romantically convoluted dramas. Yet von Sternberg had, in fact, harbored an interest in Japanese culture and art for some time, and the prospect of translating Maruyama’s text to film,...
- 6/10/2019
- MUBI
Resting on laurels is for suckers.
It’s been four excruciatingly long years since The World’s End, the last film from Edgar Wright, which in Edgar-Wright-fan years is like a century. He was set up to direct Ant-Man, but we all know how that turned out. And while you might think Wright spent some of his time post-Marvel licking that particular wound, you’d be wrong, because Edgar Wright knows that living well is the best revenge, so in the last few years he’s been busy gearing up for not one but two films. Immediately after Ant-Man Wright started developing Baby Driver, which is at long last completed, set for a June 28 release, and so far is garnering the best reviews of the director’s career. At the same time he was starting Baby Driver back in 2014, though, there was another project the director was kicking around, an adaptation of the novel Grasshopper Jungle, and...
It’s been four excruciatingly long years since The World’s End, the last film from Edgar Wright, which in Edgar-Wright-fan years is like a century. He was set up to direct Ant-Man, but we all know how that turned out. And while you might think Wright spent some of his time post-Marvel licking that particular wound, you’d be wrong, because Edgar Wright knows that living well is the best revenge, so in the last few years he’s been busy gearing up for not one but two films. Immediately after Ant-Man Wright started developing Baby Driver, which is at long last completed, set for a June 28 release, and so far is garnering the best reviews of the director’s career. At the same time he was starting Baby Driver back in 2014, though, there was another project the director was kicking around, an adaptation of the novel Grasshopper Jungle, and...
- 4/13/2017
- by H. Perry Horton
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Take one fiercely individual auteur fed up with the Hollywood game, put him in Kyoto with a full Japanese film company, and the result is a picture critics have been trying to figure out ever since. It’s a realistic story told in a highly artificial visual style, in un-subtitled Japanese. And its writer-director intended it to play for American audiences.
The Saga of Anatahan
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber
1953 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 91 min. / Anatahan, Ana-ta-han / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring: Akemi Negishi, Tadashi Suganuma, Kisaburo Sawamura, Shoji Nakayama, Jun Fujikawa, Hiroshi Kondo, Shozo Miyashita, Tsuruemon Bando, Kikuji Onoe, Rokuriro Kineya, Daijiro Tamura, Chizuru Kitagawa, Takeshi Suzuki, Shiro Amikura.
Cinematography: Josef von Sternberg, Kozo Okazaki
Film Editor: Mitsuzo Miyata
Original Music: Akira Ifukube
Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya
Written by Josef von Sternberg from the novel by Michiro Maruyama & Younghill Kang
Produced by Kazuo Takimura
Directed by Josef von Sternberg...
The Saga of Anatahan
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber
1953 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 91 min. / Anatahan, Ana-ta-han / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring: Akemi Negishi, Tadashi Suganuma, Kisaburo Sawamura, Shoji Nakayama, Jun Fujikawa, Hiroshi Kondo, Shozo Miyashita, Tsuruemon Bando, Kikuji Onoe, Rokuriro Kineya, Daijiro Tamura, Chizuru Kitagawa, Takeshi Suzuki, Shiro Amikura.
Cinematography: Josef von Sternberg, Kozo Okazaki
Film Editor: Mitsuzo Miyata
Original Music: Akira Ifukube
Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya
Written by Josef von Sternberg from the novel by Michiro Maruyama & Younghill Kang
Produced by Kazuo Takimura
Directed by Josef von Sternberg...
- 4/11/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The Yakuza
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1975 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 112 & 123 min. / Street Date February 14, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring Robert Mitchum, Takakura Ken, Brian Keith, Eiji Okada, Richard Jordan, Keiko Kishi, James Shigeta, Herb Edelman.
Cinematography: Kozo Okazaki, Duke Callaghan
Production Design: Stephen Grimes
Art Direction: Yoshiyuki Ishida
Film Editor: Don Guidice, Thomas Stanford
Original Music: Dave Grusin
Written by: Leonard Schrader, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne
Produced by: Michael Hamilburg, Sydney Pollack, Koji Shundo
Directed by Sydney Pollack
The Warner Archive Collection is on a roll with a 2017 schedule that has so far released one much-desired library Blu-ray per week. Coming shortly are Vincente Minnelli’s Bells are Ringing, Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend and Val Guest’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and that only takes us through February. First up is a piercing action drama from 1975.
There are favorite movies around Savant central,...
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1975 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 112 & 123 min. / Street Date February 14, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring Robert Mitchum, Takakura Ken, Brian Keith, Eiji Okada, Richard Jordan, Keiko Kishi, James Shigeta, Herb Edelman.
Cinematography: Kozo Okazaki, Duke Callaghan
Production Design: Stephen Grimes
Art Direction: Yoshiyuki Ishida
Film Editor: Don Guidice, Thomas Stanford
Original Music: Dave Grusin
Written by: Leonard Schrader, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne
Produced by: Michael Hamilburg, Sydney Pollack, Koji Shundo
Directed by Sydney Pollack
The Warner Archive Collection is on a roll with a 2017 schedule that has so far released one much-desired library Blu-ray per week. Coming shortly are Vincente Minnelli’s Bells are Ringing, Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend and Val Guest’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and that only takes us through February. First up is a piercing action drama from 1975.
There are favorite movies around Savant central,...
- 1/24/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
John Frankenheimer ended a three year hiatus following his 1979 environmental horror/creature feature Prophecy with a commendable martial-arts effort, The Challenge (1982). Starring Scott Glenn in his first lead performance, the curiosity was co-written by John Sayles and also stars Japanese legend Toshiro Mifune (who had previously appeared in Frankenheimer’s 1966 film, Grand Prix). Though it ultimately proves to be a nonsensical narrative in its clash of East meets West and traditional values threatened by the consumer cravings of the modernized world, some fantastic fight sequences (a pre-fame Steven Seagal served as technical advisor) and superb lensing from famed cinematographer Kozo Okazaki mark the title as worthy of recuperation for its conglomeration of vintage components.
In 1982 Los Angeles, a down and out boxer, Rick Murphy (Glenn) is approached to transport a sacred sword to Kyoto in order to restore it to its rightful owner, a master samurai, Toru Yoshida (Mifune). Apparently,...
In 1982 Los Angeles, a down and out boxer, Rick Murphy (Glenn) is approached to transport a sacred sword to Kyoto in order to restore it to its rightful owner, a master samurai, Toru Yoshida (Mifune). Apparently,...
- 3/8/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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