Abashiri Prison is a famous prison in Japan that had spawned numerous films, books and video games featuring the location. One of it's inmates was Hajime Ito whose novel Abashiri Bangaichi would form the basis of the feature reviewed here. With Eureka Entertainment bringing the first three of the lengthy series to blu ray it's time to look back at a launchpad for several prominent careers.
on Terracotta by clicking on the image below
A young Yakuza (Ken Takakura) is sent to prison following an attack on a rival gangster. After an incident results in his solitary confinement, he resolves to be a model prisoner and serve his time. He ignores several efforts of other prisoners to get him to join their escape. Fellow inmate Honda (Koji Nanbara) refuses to let go and ultimately a combination of manipulation by Yoda (Toru Abe) and discovery of his mother's illness force his hand.
on Terracotta by clicking on the image below
A young Yakuza (Ken Takakura) is sent to prison following an attack on a rival gangster. After an incident results in his solitary confinement, he resolves to be a model prisoner and serve his time. He ignores several efforts of other prisoners to get him to join their escape. Fellow inmate Honda (Koji Nanbara) refuses to let go and ultimately a combination of manipulation by Yoda (Toru Abe) and discovery of his mother's illness force his hand.
- 5/19/2024
- by Ben Stykuc
- AsianMoviePulse
There are few genre films of any kind quite as respected as 1954's "Godzilla." Directed by Ishiro Honda, the film was an examination of post-World War II Japan, a nation that had experienced the horrors of the atomic bomb. The now-iconic monster was a narrative device used to reckon with those horrors, and even though some 70 years later the movie has secured its place in cinema history, it wasn't always a sure thing. So much so that composer Akira Ifukube was advised to back out of doing the project by his peers for fear that it would ruin his career.
In the 2019 book "Life Godzilla," it's explained that production company Toho was not confident in the film ahead of its release. "Godzilla" was a movie that could have ended a great many careers. "We couldn't reassure them," said assistant director Koji Kajita. "There was still no soundtrack and without it the film looked stupid.
In the 2019 book "Life Godzilla," it's explained that production company Toho was not confident in the film ahead of its release. "Godzilla" was a movie that could have ended a great many careers. "We couldn't reassure them," said assistant director Koji Kajita. "There was still no soundtrack and without it the film looked stupid.
- 5/3/2024
- by Ryan Scott
- Slash Film
The seventh and eighth episodes of A Shop for Killers take drastic turns with the revelation of the smallest of details. There is a peek into the past that the seventh episode takes, and we’re brought back to the time when Jinman’s family was killed. How Jinman was able to save his niece from extreme situations has been brought out. The current-day scenario has been stressed in the eighth episode, where Jinman’s comrades have been fighting tooth and nail to keep Jian safe. Will Jian be able to fight the battle diligently? Will she be able to match herself to her uncle’s expectations? Will Jinman eventually come back? Let’s find out!
Spoilers Ahead
How Did Honda Help Jinman?
Jinman was opening up to Honda and was also entrusted Minhye to him, as he knew that he could keep Minhye safe. He had also made a...
Spoilers Ahead
How Did Honda Help Jinman?
Jinman was opening up to Honda and was also entrusted Minhye to him, as he knew that he could keep Minhye safe. He had also made a...
- 2/7/2024
- by Debjyoti Dey
- Film Fugitives
Warning: contains plot spoilers for The Boy and the Heron.
The English-language title of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature at Studio Ghibli is misleadingly simple. The Boy and the Heron suggests an Aesop-like fable in the vein of The Ant and the Grasshopper or The Hare and the Fox. The film itself has nothing like the clarity of a fable. It’s crowded, at times to the point of narrative incoherence, with enchanting but mystifying episodes that elude a single reading.
It’s the story of Mahito, a boy in 1940s Tokyo who loses his mother in a wartime fire. A year later, his father remarries her sister and starts a new family, moving them out to the aunt’s childhood countryside home. There, Mahito is plagued by a menacing heron who lures him to a mysterious tower built by his grand-uncle with the promise of seeing his mother alive.
The English-language title of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature at Studio Ghibli is misleadingly simple. The Boy and the Heron suggests an Aesop-like fable in the vein of The Ant and the Grasshopper or The Hare and the Fox. The film itself has nothing like the clarity of a fable. It’s crowded, at times to the point of narrative incoherence, with enchanting but mystifying episodes that elude a single reading.
It’s the story of Mahito, a boy in 1940s Tokyo who loses his mother in a wartime fire. A year later, his father remarries her sister and starts a new family, moving them out to the aunt’s childhood countryside home. There, Mahito is plagued by a menacing heron who lures him to a mysterious tower built by his grand-uncle with the promise of seeing his mother alive.
- 1/19/2024
- by Louisa Mellor
- Den of Geek
Festival will play upcoming Netflix series Supersex about pornstar Rocco Siffredi.
South Korean action title The Roundup: Punishment and Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart are among 12 additions to the Berlinale Special line-up, ahead of next month’s Berlin Film Festival (February 15-25).
Directed by Heo Myeong-haeng, Punishment will have its world premiere in Berlin. It is the fourth instalment in The Roundup action franchise, in which Don Lee plays detective Ma Seok-do.
Scroll down for the full list of new Special titles
Third title The Roundup: No Way Out took $69m in just three weeks at the...
South Korean action title The Roundup: Punishment and Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart are among 12 additions to the Berlinale Special line-up, ahead of next month’s Berlin Film Festival (February 15-25).
Directed by Heo Myeong-haeng, Punishment will have its world premiere in Berlin. It is the fourth instalment in The Roundup action franchise, in which Don Lee plays detective Ma Seok-do.
Scroll down for the full list of new Special titles
Third title The Roundup: No Way Out took $69m in just three weeks at the...
- 1/15/2024
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Festival will play upcoming Netflix series Supersex about pornstar Rocco Siffredi.
South Korean action title The Roundup: Punishment and Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart are among 12 additions to the Berlinale Special line-up, ahead of next month’s Berlin Film Festival (February 15-25).
Directed by Heo Myeong-haeng, Punishment will have its world premiere in Berlin. It is the fourth instalment in The Roundup action franchise, in which Don Lee plays detective Ma Seok-do.
Scroll down for the full list of new Special titles
Third title The Roundup: No Way Out took $69m in just three weeks at the...
South Korean action title The Roundup: Punishment and Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart are among 12 additions to the Berlinale Special line-up, ahead of next month’s Berlin Film Festival (February 15-25).
Directed by Heo Myeong-haeng, Punishment will have its world premiere in Berlin. It is the fourth instalment in The Roundup action franchise, in which Don Lee plays detective Ma Seok-do.
Scroll down for the full list of new Special titles
Third title The Roundup: No Way Out took $69m in just three weeks at the...
- 1/15/2024
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Although he was planning on continuing work on the Evangelion series, supervising animator Takeshi Honda decided to join The Boy and the Heron after speaking with director Hayao Miyazaki. In working closely with the “renowned maestro”, Honda found ways to ground the characters in reality to match a more somber style.
In his most personal work to date, Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron follows the story of a young boy named Mahito, who has recently lost his mother. Along with a cunning and deceptive gray heron, he journeys to a mysterious world outside of time where the dead and the living coexist. The Boy and the Heron won the 2024 Golden Globe for Best Animated Motion Picture.
‘The Boy and the Heron’
Deadline: How did you get involved with The Boy and the Heron?
Takeshi Honda: I had been working with Studio Ghibli from quite a while back.
In his most personal work to date, Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron follows the story of a young boy named Mahito, who has recently lost his mother. Along with a cunning and deceptive gray heron, he journeys to a mysterious world outside of time where the dead and the living coexist. The Boy and the Heron won the 2024 Golden Globe for Best Animated Motion Picture.
‘The Boy and the Heron’
Deadline: How did you get involved with The Boy and the Heron?
Takeshi Honda: I had been working with Studio Ghibli from quite a while back.
- 1/9/2024
- by Ryan Fleming
- Deadline Film + TV
After Hayao Miyazaki took three years to finish the initial storyboard for “The Boy and the Heron”, it became obvious that he needed help. With diminished stamina and failing eyesight, the legendary anime auteur was no longer able to control everything. So he invited Takeshi Honda (“Neon Genesis Evangelion”), the supervising animator on his hybrid CG/2D short “Boro the Caterpillar,” to join his upcoming feature.
Honda was flattered and told Miyazaki that he would think about it because he was already committed to “Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time,” the franchise film finale. “But at that time, Miyazaki san said, ‘I don’t have time — there is no one in the Miyazaki family who is over 80 years old.’ I thought it was a big deal,” Honda told IndieWire over Zoom through an interpreter.
Honda couldn’t refuse Miyazaki (now 82) and proceeded to spend the next seven years on a journey of a lifetime,...
Honda was flattered and told Miyazaki that he would think about it because he was already committed to “Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time,” the franchise film finale. “But at that time, Miyazaki san said, ‘I don’t have time — there is no one in the Miyazaki family who is over 80 years old.’ I thought it was a big deal,” Honda told IndieWire over Zoom through an interpreter.
Honda couldn’t refuse Miyazaki (now 82) and proceeded to spend the next seven years on a journey of a lifetime,...
- 12/28/2023
- by Bill Desowitz
- Indiewire
Takashi Yamazaki's "Godzilla Minus One" comes out just prior to the 70th anniversary of Ishiro Honda's 1954 original "Gojira," and audiences have been on quite a journey throughout those decades.
By the lore of Honda's film, Godzilla was a massive amphibious animal created by nuclear bomb test radiation. He was more than a dinosaur that could be defeated by weapons. He was a physical manifestation of post-war nuclear devastation, a monstrous legacy of what weapons of mass destruction have wrought. Mass destruction only leads to more mass destruction. The 1954 film's scientists ultimately have to invent an even more devastating weapon, the Oxygen Destroyer, to defeat the beast. It is a somber, sad movie about how Japan -- about how humanity -- is unable to break a cycle of wartime annihilation. It wouldn't be until 1995's "Godzilla vs. Destoroyah," however, that a monster would rise from the remnants of the Oxygen Destroyer.
By the lore of Honda's film, Godzilla was a massive amphibious animal created by nuclear bomb test radiation. He was more than a dinosaur that could be defeated by weapons. He was a physical manifestation of post-war nuclear devastation, a monstrous legacy of what weapons of mass destruction have wrought. Mass destruction only leads to more mass destruction. The 1954 film's scientists ultimately have to invent an even more devastating weapon, the Oxygen Destroyer, to defeat the beast. It is a somber, sad movie about how Japan -- about how humanity -- is unable to break a cycle of wartime annihilation. It wouldn't be until 1995's "Godzilla vs. Destoroyah," however, that a monster would rise from the remnants of the Oxygen Destroyer.
- 11/11/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Before being widely known through his two “Baby Assassins” movies, Yugo Sakamoto has also shot a grittier, somewhat darker movie, “The Janitor”, who still implements, though, the chaotic narrative approach his later movies included.
on Hi-Yah!
The titular character is actually Akira Fukami, a man whose father was murdered and was taken in by his sworn blood brother, Majima, a yakuza leader who trained Fukami into becoming his most formidable assassin. As the movie begins, and as a side job, the young man poses as a janitor in a high school where Majima’s daughter, Yui is attending, secretly functioning as her bodyguard. Despite some issues here and there, his life proceeds smoothly, until Majima announces that he wants to take his business to Hong Kong. This enrages one of the underbosses, Nishimori, who immediately starts plotting to have him killed, using Fukami, to whom he reveals...
on Hi-Yah!
The titular character is actually Akira Fukami, a man whose father was murdered and was taken in by his sworn blood brother, Majima, a yakuza leader who trained Fukami into becoming his most formidable assassin. As the movie begins, and as a side job, the young man poses as a janitor in a high school where Majima’s daughter, Yui is attending, secretly functioning as her bodyguard. Despite some issues here and there, his life proceeds smoothly, until Majima announces that he wants to take his business to Hong Kong. This enrages one of the underbosses, Nishimori, who immediately starts plotting to have him killed, using Fukami, to whom he reveals...
- 10/20/2023
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Takumi Saitoh is a truly unique talent, who, after proving his prowess as an actor (he now has 165 credits to his name) continued in the same level as a director, with his segments in “Folklore” and “Food Lore”, and the features “Blank 13” and “Comply+-ance” being truly top notch. As such, his latest work, “Home Sweet Home”, based on the homonymous 2019 novel by Rinko Kamizu was one of the most anticipated films of the year. Let us see how he fared.
Home Sweet Home is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
Living in the harsh winter of Nagano, Kenji Kiyosawa, a sports instructor, is tired of being cold along with his wife, Hitomi, and newborn. As such, when he stumbles upon a company that manufactures pre-built houses that implement a technology that can warm the whole establishment with a single air-conditioner, his enthusiasm is unprecedented, as much as for his wife.
Home Sweet Home is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
Living in the harsh winter of Nagano, Kenji Kiyosawa, a sports instructor, is tired of being cold along with his wife, Hitomi, and newborn. As such, when he stumbles upon a company that manufactures pre-built houses that implement a technology that can warm the whole establishment with a single air-conditioner, his enthusiasm is unprecedented, as much as for his wife.
- 7/27/2023
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
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