Taro Aso, a direct descendant of the great 19th century political revolutionary Toshimichi Okubo, is the brashest and most charismatic prime minister since Jun’ichiro Koizumi (left). But if Koizumi is Elvis (indeed, the only foreign head of state to visit Graceland), then Aso (right) is Edward G. Robinson (middle).

Aso’s got a voice like a tough guy in a Bogart film, too. And he’s already proven himself more than willing to play the heavy with his opponents in the Japanese Diet.

Eugene Woodbury

Slate.com alerted me to a new movie which may be of interest to many Japundit readers. Sukiyaki Western Djando sounds bizzare to me but RottenTomatoes.com, my movie website of choice, attributes an impressive 68% positive reviews and the Slate.com review is positive as well.

Rotten Tomatoes’ synopsis is as follows:

Two connoisseurs of violence–prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike and American icon Quention Tarantino–team up for this genre mash-up. SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO follows two clashing clans in Japan as they both try to lure a talented shooter to their side. Tarantino makes a brief appearance in this film that pays homage to both the spaghetti western and classic Japanese cinema.

Highlights from Slate.com’s review:

Welcome to Sukiyaki Western Django (First Look), the English-language Western by Japanese director Takashi Miike. The all-Japanese cast, augmented by Quentin Tarantino in two cameo roles, learned their English dialogue phonetically and attack their lines as if the words were small furry animals that need to be beaten into submission. The dialogue is crammed with weird, Christopher Walken-esque line readings and bizarre placement of emphases—phrases like “You old biddy,” “Dang!” and “You reckon?” become hilariously divorced from meaning. But, like an alcoholic reduced to drinking sterno, the more you drink, the more brain cells you fry, and the better it tastes. Before long you not only start to understand Miike’s “through the looking glass” English but also to appreciate the cadences. It’s something like the dialogue in Deadwood or Cormac McCarthy’s writing: stiff, alien, occasionally silly but not without a hypnotic elegance all its own.

But why? The answer is simple: It’s a Takashi Miike film. The hardest-working man in showbiz, he’s made close to 80 movies, ranging from the good to the bad to the ugly, and if he’s going to make a Western, then it’s going to pay tribute to the truth that Westerns have never been solely an American undertaking—they’re an international language. With a title that’s one part Japanese (sukiyaki: the everything-in-a-bowl beef dish) and one part Italian (Django: the title character of Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 spaghetti-Western classic), Miike offers up an explosion of influences that mocks the idea of a monoculture that’s immune to foreign influence. Sukiyaki Western Django is a blend of Buddhist philosophy, film noir fatalism, Shakespeare’s Henry VI, and Japan’s very own 12^th-century Genpei War. It’s a Wild West pageant of American history seen through Japanese eyes, reducing our entire frontier mythology to an ultraviolent grab for gold.

Miike’s Sukiyaki Western is a way of paying homage to this cross-cultural melting pot, and he shuffles and reshuffles iconic images like cards in a magician’s deck: a victim of a lynching hung from a torii gate; cowboys wearing six shooters and wielding samurai swords; a saloon keeper slinging edamame. It may not make literal sense, but emotionally it feels right. Comic-book writer Alan Moore once said that if we could really view the past it would look more like science fiction than history, and the distancing effect produced by Miike’s style blows the cobwebs off the genre with a burst of machine gun fire.

Off topic, but I thought this montage someone put together of 100 of his favorite movies was pretty cool.

My apologies to those who hate off-topic posts.

Via Gawker

We just received word from Dave Boyle, writer, directory and star of Big Dreams Little Tokyo, which we reviewed back in September last year, that the movie will be playing in select theaters across the U.S. this summer, and coming out on DVD (Region 1) on July 22nd. You can pre-order on Amazon, if you like.

As I said in my original review, it is a very entertaining movie that is a definite must-see for anyone that has a connection with or an interest in Japan. My Japanese wife loved it, too.

Check out the movie’s website here.

Long-time Japundit reader Carlos Aguirre has written in to alert us to the world premier of a feature-length documentary named Tokyo Cowboys at the Japan Film Festival 2008 in Los Angeles on April 14.

Tokyo Cowboys: a new feature length documentary tells the stories of a group of westerners who gave up their jobs, homes and countries to pursue their dreams in the cut throat world of Tokyo.The film’s delicate and humorous portrait illuminates the price some pay for a taste of Tokyo’s success. Shot over a two year period, the film follows the trial and errors of its heroes’ quest for opportunity on this post-modern urban frontier.

If you are in New York Thursday evening and jonesing for Japanese entertainment, consider Asia Society’s Yakuza movie series, curated by Japan uberspecialist Ian Buruma. The Thursday, March 20th offering starts from 7 and ends at 9, which means you’ll have plenty of time afterward to digest the violence while you eat out at Aburiya Kinnosuke.

Thursday’s film is Heitai Yakuza (or Hoodlum Soldier) and stars Shintaro Katsu, who you might know as the man with whom famed Gion geisha Mineko Iwasaki had an affair for much of her early life. IMDB sums up the plot thusly:

A young intellectual conscientious objector is forced to serve with the Japanese army in Manchuria. He joins with a dim-witted former gangster in an effort to desert by stealing a train.

Timely, no?

I couldn’t find a clip of Heitai Yakuza, but the above clip shows Shintaro Katsu in action. What a voice. And what moves. Oh, there is nothing scarier than a scary Japanese movie! Please go see and enjoy. Buruma himself will be there to introduce each film. Asia Society is at 725 Park Avenue at 70th street and, if I may say so, has a very nice bar.

Remember all the controversy some time back about Chinese actors being cast in roles depicting Japanese characters?

Well how about actor Robert Downey Jr. playing a white man who plays a blackman in a movie. . . I think. . .

And that is Jack Black behind him.

in what is one of the more disturbing trends in contemporary japan, the maid cafes and other perverted male otaku hang outs have spawned a new branch of cafes for female otaku, ones based one gay comic book porn. that’s right, women who want to indulge their childhood fantasy of young effeminate men dressed in high school uniforms flirting with each other, engaging in oral sex, or brutally anal raping each other finally have an outlet for their fetish.

now if you’re anything like me, your fist reaction to this article might be, oh say, wtf? but apparently in japan’s never ending quest to cater to every possible kink, they have stumbled across a sizable subset of female otaku that just can’t get enough of yoai manga and doujinshi. as a consequence proprietors sensing an opportunity for profit have created bars and restaurants much like the one featured in this article. run by a woman by the name of emiko sakamaki, the place goes by the name of edlestein (named after a yoai comic set in a german high school) and features a staff of young cosmetically enhanced men. according to her and others the market is driven by the atmosphere of female indulgence that has been of which japan has, until this time, been bereft of, combined with the popularity of anime and manga, complicated by the desire for relationships which transcend traditional gender roles, all united by a sample population of young to middle aged single women who appreciate the unparalleled beauty of a fragile young teenager being raped by other men (preferably in groups).

So, while the western world is waiting for the new Indiana Jones movie to wrap up, Asian fans are waiting for Hana Yori Dango to put the final touches on the story of Makino and Doumyouji.

Fans can be scary.

Really, really scary. This is what happens to you once you enter the Pretty Boy Factory at such a young age, and you have no idea if it is really the fate you want to choose for yourself. Personally, I’m not sure all the clothes actually make it worthwhile.

The shooting schedule apparently involves two weeks in Hong Kong and two weeks in Las Vegas. The movie is out in June. I’m going to miss it, but films are expensive in Japan, so it’s probably better that I have to wait for some kind of bootleg to fall into my hands. I’m really curious about the soundtrack. I’m sure it’ll include some kind of happy/nostalgic Arashi tune. And after HYD2 revived the career of Utada Hikaru (the song is too much for my poor little heart–I prefer Planetarium even though I can’t stand Ai Otsuka’s voice), I wonder who else will score a song for the movie. Will Hikki sing another tortured tune? Or will Ayu try for a comeback? Time will tell.

In case you are not aware, there is a big scandal going on in Hong Kong right now due to the public release of sex pics that show movie actor Edison Chen and actress Gillian Chung doing the dirty for the digital.

Though this has been ongoing news for quite a while now, we have chosen not to say anything about it because the main players in the Cantonese version of Sex, Lies and Video Tape had nothing to do with Japan.

Until now. . .

According to a report on the digital gossip rag Hollywood Grind, Chen’s collection of 1,300 dirty pics may include shots of Japanese movie star Chiaki Kuriyama of Kill Bill fame, and other Japanese starlets.

It should be emphasized here that this is only rumor at this stage and as far as I know there is no photographic proof at this time.

Evidently, Edison Chen is a real playboy who likes to shoot trophy photos of his conquests. Judging from the expressions of the girls in the photos that I saw, Chen apparently had no trouble getting well-known young women to perform like porn stars for him and on him in front of the camera.

Trouble struck when Chen took his laptop, photos and all, in for repairs, and a technician copied the hard disk. The photos are now all over the Internet, and you can see a bunch of them here at Hollywood Grind.

A word of warning. . .NSFW!!!

The photos at the other end of the above link are as explicit and raunchy as they get.

Again, there are no Japanese actresses in the current set of Hollywood Grind photos, but they claim they will be posting more in the days to come.

A while back I posted that Mineko Iwasaki’s memoir, Geisha, A Life, was due to be turned into a TV special in Japan. For a refreseher on the scandal and lawsuit surrounding Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, see here. See also this archived article which questions Iwasaki’s motives.

Now the TV special has come and gone and I’ve had a chance to see it. The title roughly translates to “Battle of the Flowers,” which I guess is euphemism for a major catfight.

Love and Honor (2006) is a great movie that should remind you of Twilight Samurai  – not too much “action” in it — but how it really was. I should say that this is not as good as Twilight Samurai but still pretty good and well worth your 1.5 hours of time.

But, what else is there apart from love and honor? At least not in in jidea geki times… Today it is probably more like “my job and my french fries” or something like that, but in those days was a whole different ball game — especially for the samurai. According to a long-winded but detailed summary in IMDB:

Shinnojo, a low level samurai, lives with his pretty, dutiful and loyal wife Kayo. He has come to find his position in a castle as a food-taster for a feudal lord to be boring and pointless, and talks about opening a kendo school open to boys of all castes where he can teach the use of the sword. Before he can act on his dream he becomes ill with a fever after tasting some sashimi made from shell fish, but an investigation reveals that the poisoning was not due to a human conspiracy, but a poor choice of food out of season. After three days he awakes but finds that the toxin from the food has blinded him. Kayo is summoned by Shinnojo’s family to explain how the couple will survive. His uncle laments that he no longer knows anybody with influence in the castle, and asks Kayo if she knows of anybody. She relates how Toya Shimada, the chief duty officer in the castle and a samurai of high rank, offered to help and they tell her to act upon his offer of assistance. A message from the castle brings the good news that Shinnojo’s stipend of rice will remain the same, and for life but his aunt tells him that Kayo was seen with another man. He has Tohuhei, his faithful servant, follow her. Kayo notices that she is being followed, and although Tokuhei offers to cover for her, she reveals to Shinnojo that Shimada offered to help but with a price, shown when he forced himself upon her. He then solicited two additional trysts by threatening to tell Shinnojo about the first. An enraged Shinnojo divorces her and orders her out of his house. When it is revealed to him that Shimada had nothing to do with maintaining his stipend, but that it came out of gratitude from the lord of the clan himself, Shinnojo seeks to renew his skill with the sword as a blind man to avenge the dishonor of Kayo. Through Tokuhei he sends a message to Shimada to set up a duel, with the additional message to not underestimate him. The two samurai meet at the stables near the river to decide their destinies.

What will happen! This YouTube trailer doesn’t appear to be EXACTLY accurate and involves puppets, but is not a bad summary anyways. You can view the whole thing (including the thrilling conclusion and whether or not Kayo ever comes back again — I’m hoping she will…) on Crunchyroll:

That isn’t engrish–that’s what director Gen Sekiguchi called this 2004 movie. And it stars Tadanobu Asano, Sonny Chiba and Vinnie Jones! The producers describe it like this: “A wacked-out surrealist comedy from the farthest reaches of the imagination, the film almost defies description, coming on like a fantastical version of Pulp Fiction if directed by Takashi Miike while tripping on acid.” This is what amazon.com had to say:

Survive Style 5+ is the kind of film that is rarely made because it is so out of the box that producers and financiers have no interest in taking a chance on it. It’s difficult, in fact, to even categorize this film into a genre. It contains dark comedy, but also elements found in action, horror, science fiction, and drama. In this bizarre film, five seemingly independent stories somehow come together: A man kills and buries his wife only to find her quite alive when he arrives home–over and over again; A salaryman, with a wife and two kids, sees a famous hypnotist only to be permanently turned into a man who thinks he’s a chicken; An advertising executive loses it and comes up with some of the most vulgar commercials ever seen; A gang of young criminals find out they have homosexual tendencies; An English assassin (played wonderfully by British soccer player Vinnie Jones) looks for new clients.

You can watch this with subtitles at Crunchyroll, or buy it at amazon.com (where the same customers also tended to buy Ichi the Killer and Oldboy) or probably rent it somewhere. In any case, I would say this is a must-see–I enjoyed it a lot! Here is a trailer from YouTube:

The world’s first cell phone camera film festival is currently being held in Yokohama.

The Pocket Films Festival features submissions by people who recorded films on ther camera-equipped cellphones.

The works, streaming on monitors of cell phones strapped to tables, are filled with everyday shots, some literally taken on the run with streets and cars whizzing past in a blur.

They have a voyeuristic feel because the cell phone is so unobtrusive. Devoid of the typical grandeur of standard films, they offer grainy but patiently taken close-ups that don’t rely on zooms and other fancy editing techniques.

The Pocket Films Festival in Japan, which organizers say is the first in this nation, marks yet another use for the omnipresent portable phone here, already used to exchange e-mail, surf the Internet, read novels and navigate on miniature digital maps.

Source

This 2004 Thai movie is technically within the scope of Japundit but definitely relevant (maybe) because it reminds me of Gozu for some reason. Probably a far-fetched reason. But I saw this the other day and was greatly impressed. You will like it!

Movies from Thailand used to be kind of ho-hum but the director Wisit Sasanatieng is obviously a genius and Ong Bak I and II were OK weren’t they? I am still brought to tears when thinking about the poor mama elephant eaten by yuppies and turned into jewelry. Crunchyroll (where you can view this one free) says this about it, via IMDB:

Pod is a man without a dream. He’s a country bumpkin who comes to work at a tinned sardine factory in Bangkok. One day, Pod chops off his finger and packs it in the can, prompting him to go around looking for his lost finger at various supermarkets. The incident convinces him to change his job, and Pod becomes a security guard at a large company. There he meets Jin, a lanky maid who carries a mysterious white book around even though she cannot read a single word written in it. The aimless Pod has a crush on Jin, a dreamy girl who dreams that one day she’ll be able to decipher the meaning of the white book. In this bright, colour-splashed world of director Wisit Sasanatieng, Bangkokians can grow tails and a dead grandmother can come back as a chatty gecko to deliver a few life lessons to her grandson. It’s a world where innocence is so precious and yet impossible to preserve. The unusual love story between Pod and Jin is set against the playfully ironic portrait of Bangkok, the city that offers false dreams and real disillusionment.

Remember to click “Bigger” to get a larger (although slower, picture). Good movie! It has a nice happy ending after much uncertainty and weirdness. Here is the trailer:

Japundit has drawn reference to this site before. But if no one is looking at Japanese and other Asian movies (I saw The Maid the other day there…) on the Crunchyroll site, then that is a shame. It’s free and if you choose “bigger” the streaming video will be about twice as big as YouTube and quite good.

The cadillac solution is to pay them about $4/month to be a member and the extra bandwidth and size is definitely worth it. After all–what does it cost to go to the movies downtown? I don’t think Crunchyroll is getting rich, but they do have bills to pay.

Veoh.com is a good alternative but there you must join formally and download their Veoh player–maybe it’s worth it though–but there are lots of good Asian movies on that site.

As always, you find some things on one or the other–like this gem on YouTube. Still, the best montage of Studio Ghibli stuff with Beatles soundtrack is only on Veoh.com. Multiple sources is best.

But for an example here is a Crunchyroll rock video by Chage and Aska from Ghibli Studios about their angel movie–which sadly I have not seen and don’t even know what its title is. But you can figure out the story pretty well from this vid. I must say I didn’t like this video at first and found it repetitive–but it kind of grows on you. Be sure to click “bigger” to start!

Anyway–there are lots more great movies and anime on the Crunchyroll site so do check it (them) out!

Contrary to popular belief, and even though tourist brochures never seem to show Black Fuji-san, Japanese zombies are not restricted to Akasaka or large corporations. You can find this out for yourself in Tokyo Zombie, a very amusing 2005 movie. Probably many Japundit readers have already seen it, so this is just a recommendation for the rest…

A review concludes: “Overall, Tokyo Zombie is a success. So long as you’re not going in expecting any semblance of plot or characterization you should come out feeling pretty happy. It’s coarse, suprisingly black humored, frequently insane, and most importantly its just plain fun.” Here is a synopsis, followed by a trailer:

Garbage men Mitsuo and Fujio are close friends. With Mitsuo mentoring Fujio in the arts of Jiu-Jitsu during their lunch-breaks, he hopes to pass on all his knowledge before he succumbs to the cancer in his stomach. However, there are more pressing issues at hand as at Black Fuji (a landfill where Tokyo’s population has rid of all its unrecycable electric products — and unwanted family members) the bodies of the undead have been brought back to life by the power of the pollution that surrounds them. As the epidemic spreads and Mitsuo is bitten, Fujio escapes only to find himself a slave in an apocalyptic world forced to fight the undead in a battle arena kept safe within the compounds of the surviving elite. It’s only a matter of time however, until Fujio finds himself faced with the challenge of taking on his “undead” mentor in a fight for survival. Yes it’s that crazy. [Jpreview.com]

Rising Sun of Nihon reports on some of the nitty gritty of Japanese cinemas — for those ESL teachers who just have to watch American movies. Why travel to Japan to watch Charlie’s Angels? (Come to think of it, why travel downtown here to watch Charlie’s Angels?) In any case, according to the bloggers’ experience the following observations are true:

• Foreign movies are usually shown in the language of the maker with Japanese subtitles
• More and more complexes are appearing with 10+ screens in 10+ smaller cinemas
• More complexes have elevated seats so the guy in front of you doesn’t block your view
• Movie prices are Y1000 – Y2000 depending on what you see and when you see it
• The late showings are the bargains at Y1000 (about $8.00)
• Snacks, Japanese style are available… ncluding popcorn… but NOT those giant buckets
• Japanese homemade movies do NOT have English subscripts
• English seems to the language of subtitles for those who do not understand Japanes (?)

Riki commented on one of the recent run-downs of Japanese, Korean and other Asian horror movies: “anyone seen The Happiness of the Katakuris? Kind of a horror musical. The Sound of Music meets Takashi Miike, with a bit of clay animation thrown in for good measure.”

It’s true that the original The Quiet Family (1998) was included, but Takashi Miike was almost completely ignored. Which is very unfortunate.

Everyone has seen Audition and Ichi the Killer but Takashi Miike is one of the most prolific filmmakers there ever was, so there are many many more. Here’s a half dozen of the best of them. Maybe you’ve seen some of them before–but each is surprising and often very surprising!

Dead or Alive (2000) Often called DOA. The Tokyo underworld is being torn apart by a turf war between the yakuza gangs and the invading Chinese triads. Ambitious yakuza member Ryuichi isn’t above playing both sides off against each other in his bid for power, while police detective Jojima, himself none too scrupulous in his methods, is out to destroy the gangs. Into this conventional plot framework Miike piles enough warped characters and bizarre, twisted happenings to fuel half-a-dozen Tarantino movies, while cheerfully borrowing–and inflating–key moments from hard-boiled gangster-noirs. [amazon.com]

Fudoh (1996) The young Riki Fudoh is severely traumatized by witnessing the murder of his brother as his father decapitates him in order to please the bosses of the other yakuza families. Riki promises himself to seek revenge on those who ordered the killing of his brother. Ten years later when Riki is in high school he has organized himself with well-trained six-year-old assassins with guns and stun-guns, two lethal high school girls, and a gigantic high school boy that can crush anything with his hands. [amazon.com] Trailer here.

Gozu (2003) Minami, a member of the Azamawari crew, highly respects his senior Ozaki who has saved his life in the past. However, lately Ozaki’s eccentricities have been making everyone wonder about his sanity. Chairman Azamawari is unsympathetic to Ozaki’s little outbursts and secretly orders Minami to take Ozaki to a disposal facility in the city of Nagoya. There, the fate of these two follows a twisted path filled with violence, mother’s milk, strange locals, and ultimately the disappearance of Ozaki’s corpse which Minami now desperately tries to recover. [amazon.com] Trailer here.

Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) The Katakuri family has just opened their guesthouse in the mountains. Unfortunately their first guest commits suicide and in order to avoid trouble they decide to bury him in the backyard. Things get way more complicated when their second guest, a famous sumo wrestler, dies while having sex with his underage girlfriend and the grave behind the house starts to fill up more and more. [amazon.com] Trailer here.

Imprint (2005) “Have I got your attention, mister?” By the time you reach this line in Takashi Miike’s Imprint, the answer will be a resounding, horrified “Yes!” This much-rumored-about episode of Showtime’s Masters of Horror series became notorious as the first installment to be denied an airing. It’s not difficult to see why the network balked. The story follows an American on a journey to a ghostly island bordello in Japan; he’s searching for a girl he lost years before. The prostitute he meets has stories to tell–and they abound in incest, abortion, murder, and one of the grisliest torture scenes ever produced for a mainstream outlet. [amazon.com] Trailer here.

Visitor Q (2001) Visitor Q is one of the most disturbing and taboo-bashing experimental works from acclaimed director Takashi Miike of Audition, Dead of Alive, and Fudoh fame. Visitor Q presents a harrowing absurdist take on the reality TV phenomenon, depicting the chilling disintegration of a dysfunctional family. Starring Kenichi Endo (Dead or Alive 2, Takeshi Kitano’s Violent Cop), Visitor Q seals Miike’s reputation as one of world cinema’s most daring and dangerous cinematic visionaries. [amazon.com] Trailer here.