The success of the Monsterverse franchise has allowed for the return of Kaiju culture to the mainstream and has also left an impact on even comic-book-oriented content, as seen in movies like Shang-Chi and Aquaman. Thanks to this resurgence of giant monster-oriented content, a near-forgotten Japanese Kaiju legend, Gamera, will make its debut in animated format as a Netflix original series on 7th September 2023. The character debuted in 1965, a decade after the release of the much revered, iconic monster movie Godzilla, which also served as an inspiration for Gamera’s creation, and since then has remained a fan favorite Kaiju despite being overshadowed by the popularity of Godzilla lore.
For Kaiju fans, Gamera has its own appeal that is both kind of similar to Godzilla and distinctive in its own right. Despite having a dozen live-action movies in its franchise, ranging from Showa to the Heisei era, Gamera has been...
For Kaiju fans, Gamera has its own appeal that is both kind of similar to Godzilla and distinctive in its own right. Despite having a dozen live-action movies in its franchise, ranging from Showa to the Heisei era, Gamera has been...
- 9/6/2023
- by Siddhartha Das
- Film Fugitives
Novelist Shohei Ooka would captivate readers with his anti-war novel “Fires on the Plain,” published in 1951. Inspired by his personal experiences from being drafted as a soldier, Ooka's chilling story depicts the gruesome violence and insanity that occurred during the Imperial Japanese Army's last stand in the Philippines on the island of Leyte during World War II. The award-winning book was praised for its gripping storytelling and raw examination of the horrors of war. With the success of the title, there were talks for a film adaptation for quite a while. Eventually, the nightmarish narrative would be superbly adapted for cinemas with Kon Ichikawa's “Fires on the Plain.”
on Amazon by clicking on the image below
Daiei Film greenlighted the project, and the studio's president, Masaichi Nagata, would produce it. Kon Ichikawa would direct, and his wife, Natto Wada, would write the screenplay. There was initial...
on Amazon by clicking on the image below
Daiei Film greenlighted the project, and the studio's president, Masaichi Nagata, would produce it. Kon Ichikawa would direct, and his wife, Natto Wada, would write the screenplay. There was initial...
- 3/28/2023
- by Sean Barry
- AsianMoviePulse
Yasuzo Masumura takes horror into kinky territory in an Edogawa Ranpo shocker about obsession, namely, mixing sex and death. Michio is the tactile-fixated blind sculptor who imprisons model Aki to serve as an ultimate objectified ‘body’ — but she eventually joins him, taking the lead on a delirious suicidal journey of discovery. Probably once considered pornographic, the 1969 show is fairly tame by today’s Nc-17 standards, and not as radically violent or abhorrent as one might expect — but it’s still loaded with weird, Dangerous Ideas. The sets are not to be believed — the unhinged artist lives in a surreal workspace surrounded by hundreds of oversized sculptures of body parts.
The Blind Beast (Moju)
Blu-ray
Arrow Academy
1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date August 24, 2021 / Moju; Warehouse / 39.95
Starring: Eiji Funakoshi, Mako Midori, Noriko Sengoku.
Cinematography: Setsuo Kobayashi
Art Director: Shigeo Muno
Original Music: Hikaru Hayashi
Written by Yoshio Shirasaka from a novel...
The Blind Beast (Moju)
Blu-ray
Arrow Academy
1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date August 24, 2021 / Moju; Warehouse / 39.95
Starring: Eiji Funakoshi, Mako Midori, Noriko Sengoku.
Cinematography: Setsuo Kobayashi
Art Director: Shigeo Muno
Original Music: Hikaru Hayashi
Written by Yoshio Shirasaka from a novel...
- 8/21/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Sci-fi alert! Classic science fiction discoveries are getting rare these days, which makes Arrow’s rejuvenation of Japan’s first science fiction tale in color such a special item. Fans may need both hands to count the ‘copycat’ elements but Kôji Shima’s epic improves on many of its American predecessors. Despite the star-shaped arts ‘n’ crafts aliens, this well-directed First Contact tale has impressive special effects at the service of a surprisingly mature and thoughtful storyline.
Warning from Space
Blu-ray
Arrow Films US
1956 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 87 min. (Japan), 88 min. (U.S. TV) / Street Date October 13, 2020 / Uchûjin Tôkyô ni arawaru (Spacemen Appear in Tokyo) / Available from Arrow Films / 39.95
Starring: Keizô Kawasaki, Toyomi Karita, Mieko Nagai, Shôzô Nanbu, Bontarô Miake, Kanji Kawahara, Kiyoko Hirai, Isao Yamagata, Sachiko Meguro, Fumiko Okamura, Shikô Saitô, Tetsuya Watanabe, Bin Yagisawa.
Cinematography: Kimio Watanabe
Film Editor: Toyo Suzuki
‘Color Designer’: Taro Okamoto
Original Music: Seitarô Ômori...
Warning from Space
Blu-ray
Arrow Films US
1956 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 87 min. (Japan), 88 min. (U.S. TV) / Street Date October 13, 2020 / Uchûjin Tôkyô ni arawaru (Spacemen Appear in Tokyo) / Available from Arrow Films / 39.95
Starring: Keizô Kawasaki, Toyomi Karita, Mieko Nagai, Shôzô Nanbu, Bontarô Miake, Kanji Kawahara, Kiyoko Hirai, Isao Yamagata, Sachiko Meguro, Fumiko Okamura, Shikô Saitô, Tetsuya Watanabe, Bin Yagisawa.
Cinematography: Kimio Watanabe
Film Editor: Toyo Suzuki
‘Color Designer’: Taro Okamoto
Original Music: Seitarô Ômori...
- 9/29/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Due to the huge commercial success of the Godzilla-films, produced by rival production company Toho, Daei Film wanted to create their own monster franchise. Director Noriaki Yuasa, who was originally set to direct a film involving killer rats, whose production was on halt, went on to helm the first Gamera-movie: “Gamera, the Giant Monster”. Over the years, the giant, pre-historic turtle, much like Godzilla, became cultural icon, featured in 12 films as well as comic books, manga and video games. With the upcoming release of all Daei’s entries by Arrow Video, we may take a look back at the first story involving the giant monster, a story about a vision of a world where a common cause was seen as something which would unite enemies and science could deliver that vision of harmony.
The story begins in the Arctic when the crash of an unknown aircraft causes a nuclear blast,...
The story begins in the Arctic when the crash of an unknown aircraft causes a nuclear blast,...
- 8/7/2020
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Machiko Kyo, an actress who starred in some of the most internationally acclaimed Japanese films of the postwar era, died in Tokyo on Sunday at age 95, her former studio Toho announced Tuesday. The cause of death was heart failure.
Born in Osaka in 1924 as Motoko Yano, she joined the Osaka Shochiku Girls Opera in 1936 and, using the stage name Machiko Kyo, the Daiei studio in 1949. Though viewed by studio boss Masaichi Nagata as a Japanese answer to the voluptuous Hollywood sirens of the era, she first came to attention of the world as the sexually assaulted wife of a murdered samurai in Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” (1950). The winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, the film brought not only Kyo and Kurosawa but also Japanese cinema to the attention of the West.
Kyo followed up with starring roles in Kenji Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu” (1953) and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s “Gate of Hell...
Born in Osaka in 1924 as Motoko Yano, she joined the Osaka Shochiku Girls Opera in 1936 and, using the stage name Machiko Kyo, the Daiei studio in 1949. Though viewed by studio boss Masaichi Nagata as a Japanese answer to the voluptuous Hollywood sirens of the era, she first came to attention of the world as the sexually assaulted wife of a murdered samurai in Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” (1950). The winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, the film brought not only Kyo and Kurosawa but also Japanese cinema to the attention of the West.
Kyo followed up with starring roles in Kenji Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu” (1953) and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s “Gate of Hell...
- 5/15/2019
- by Mark Schilling
- Variety Film + TV
Machiko Kyo, star of films by many of Japan's legendary directors, including Akira Kurosawa, Teinosuke Kinugasa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kon Ichikawa and Yasujiro Ozu, died Sunday of heart failure at a Tokyo hospital, according to studio Toho. She was 95.
Born Motoko Yano in Osaka in 1924, Kyo began her career as a dancer and showgirl at the now defunct Daiei Co. in 1949, where her charms caught the eye of its president and producer Masaichi Nagata, who groomed her for stardom.
Nagata, with whom she became romantically involved, produced Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), in which Kyo starred as the "...
Born Motoko Yano in Osaka in 1924, Kyo began her career as a dancer and showgirl at the now defunct Daiei Co. in 1949, where her charms caught the eye of its president and producer Masaichi Nagata, who groomed her for stardom.
Nagata, with whom she became romantically involved, produced Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), in which Kyo starred as the "...
- 5/14/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Machiko Kyo, star of films by many of Japan's legendary directors, including Akira Kurosawa, Teinosuke Kinugasa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kon Ichikawa and Yasujiro Ozu, died Sunday of heart failure at a Tokyo hospital, according to studio Toho. She was 95.
Born Motoko Yano in Osaka in 1924, Kyo began her career as a dancer and showgirl at the now defunct Daiei Co. in 1949, where her charms caught the eye of its president and producer Masaichi Nagata, who groomed her for stardom.
Nagata, with whom she became romantically involved, produced Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), in which Kyo starred as the "...
Born Motoko Yano in Osaka in 1924, Kyo began her career as a dancer and showgirl at the now defunct Daiei Co. in 1949, where her charms caught the eye of its president and producer Masaichi Nagata, who groomed her for stardom.
Nagata, with whom she became romantically involved, produced Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), in which Kyo starred as the "...
- 5/14/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Ugetsu
Blu-ray
Criterion
1953 / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date June 6, 2017
Starring: Mitsuko Mito, Masayuki Mori, Kikue Mouri, Sakae Ozawa, Kinuyo Tanaka
Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa
Film Editor: Mitsuzô Miyata
Written by Matsutarô Kawaguchi, Yoshikata Yoda
Produced by Masaichi Nagata
Music: Fumio Hayasaka, Tamekichi Mochizuki, Ichirô Saitô
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
In 1941 Orson Welles was busy giving the film industry a hot foot with Citizen Kane, a bullet-train of a movie whose rhythms sprang from the ever accelerating hustle and bustle of contemporary American life. That same year one of Japan’s greatest filmmakers, Kenji Mizoguchi, was taking his sweet time with a four hour samurai epic set 240 years in the past, The 47 Ronin.
The story of a band of loyal soldiers seeking revenge on a corrupt landowner, The 47 Ronin plays out in a precisely measured, ceremonial style, its 241 minutes leading up to the moment when the fierce band of brothers...
Blu-ray
Criterion
1953 / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date June 6, 2017
Starring: Mitsuko Mito, Masayuki Mori, Kikue Mouri, Sakae Ozawa, Kinuyo Tanaka
Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa
Film Editor: Mitsuzô Miyata
Written by Matsutarô Kawaguchi, Yoshikata Yoda
Produced by Masaichi Nagata
Music: Fumio Hayasaka, Tamekichi Mochizuki, Ichirô Saitô
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
In 1941 Orson Welles was busy giving the film industry a hot foot with Citizen Kane, a bullet-train of a movie whose rhythms sprang from the ever accelerating hustle and bustle of contemporary American life. That same year one of Japan’s greatest filmmakers, Kenji Mizoguchi, was taking his sweet time with a four hour samurai epic set 240 years in the past, The 47 Ronin.
The story of a band of loyal soldiers seeking revenge on a corrupt landowner, The 47 Ronin plays out in a precisely measured, ceremonial style, its 241 minutes leading up to the moment when the fierce band of brothers...
- 7/1/2017
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
(Region B) Akira Kurosawa's unquestioned top rank classic remains a fascinating study of truth and justice. A forest encounter left a man murdered and his wife raped. Or did something entirely different happen? The witnesses Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Machiko Kyo give radically differing testimony. This UK edition offers a full commentary by Japanese film expert Stuart Galbraith IV. Rashômon Region B UK Blu-ray BFI 1950 / B&W / 1.33:1 / 88 min. / Street Date September 21, 2015 / Available at Amazon UK / £15.99 Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Kichijiro Ueda, Fumiko Honma. Cinematography Kazuo Miyagawa Art Direction So Matsuyama Film Editor Akira Kurosawa Original Music Fumio Hayasaka Written by Shinobu Hashimoto, Akira Kurosawa from stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa Produced by Minoru Jingo, Masaichi Nagata Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
This reviewer doesn't review most foreign discs, but with major studios licensing out their libraries, there are...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
This reviewer doesn't review most foreign discs, but with major studios licensing out their libraries, there are...
- 11/3/2015
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Chicago – Beneath every honorable warrior is a cold-hearted opportunist hell-bent on dominating his victimized prey at all costs. That’s a theory indelibly illustrated by Teinosuke Kinugasa’s revered 1953 classic, “Gate of Hell,” a melodrama populated by such frustrating characters that it nearly loses the viewer’s interest before its admittedly splendid finale, when the tale takes on grand dimensions of Greek tragedy.
The real—and, regrettably, only—reason to seek out Criterion’s new release of this long-forgotten landmark is to marvel at the new digital master of a 2011 2K restoration that brought Kôhei Sugiyama’s vibrant color photography back to life. This was not only one of the first color pictures in Japanese cinema, but one of the first films to utilize color with the arresting vibrance of a truly painterly eye. The golds, reds and blues pop with such potency that they would’ve felt right at...
The real—and, regrettably, only—reason to seek out Criterion’s new release of this long-forgotten landmark is to marvel at the new digital master of a 2011 2K restoration that brought Kôhei Sugiyama’s vibrant color photography back to life. This was not only one of the first color pictures in Japanese cinema, but one of the first films to utilize color with the arresting vibrance of a truly painterly eye. The golds, reds and blues pop with such potency that they would’ve felt right at...
- 4/29/2013
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
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