Lost In Translation

Outlaw: Kill!

Outlaw: Kill! (1969) is the sixth installment of the Outlaw Gangster VIP series and director Keichi Ozawa's fourth. The patterns have been well established at this point. Ozawa decides to open with artful color filter stills rather than an action scene this time around. And this time Goror (Tetsya Watari) wanders into Kawasaki, a factory town between Tokyo and Yokohoma, and finds himself caught up in a turf war between warring clans. He is taken in by an old friend. It turns out that an elevator operator, Yumi (Chieko Matsubara) that he helped out of a jam with chinpira at a department store is the sister of said friend's wife. Another surprise comes during the final fight sequence that takes place at a club featuring a psychedelic garage band playing on a glass floor that cuts back and forth between the club and murderous action going on downstairs. (This was stolen from a film by the stylistic master of 60s "B" movies Seijin Suzuki) The film seems stretch the limits for sex and violence as films continue to lose out to TV in the late 60s and will fare worse in the 70s.

Modern Girls, Shining Stars, the Skies of Tokyo: Five Japanese Women

I was interested in reading Phyllis Birnbaum's Modern Girls, Shining Stars, the Skies of Tokyo: Five Japanese Women (2000) mainly because one of the chapters, the final one, focuses on Hideko Takamine one of master director Mikio Naruse's favorite actresses (thus one of mine). But all of the women profiled in this book are fascinating on some level. The First Chapter, "Slamming the Door Scaring the Neighbors" is about the volatile actress Sumiko Matsui, who is said to have been responsible for her lover's, the writer Hogetsu Shimmamura, death through negligence. The woman from rural Japan through force of will became the defining stage actress of her generation. The Second Chapter, "He Stole Her Sky", tells the tragic story of the life of the poet Chieko Takamura. She established her reputation with Chieko's Sky and died an early death from tuberculosis after having been diagnosed as a schizophrenic. The early feminist and author Byakuren Yanagiwara was the focus of Chapter Three, "Shinning Stars, Lonely Nights." This woman may be the most complex and difficult to understand of the women profiled in this collection. Yanagiwara was ill treated by her family who essentially sold her off first to her childhood sexual abuser then to a much older and wealthy merchant from faraway Kyushu. She was from an influential family with ties to the emperor and used poetry as a diversion from her unhappy marriage and eventually broke free by publicly breaking from her husband via a newspaper article and going off with the husband of her choice Ryusuke Miyazaki. Chiyo Uno, subject of Chapter Four: "Modern Girl", was another trailblazer and man-eating writer and kimono designer who broke the mold for modern women in the Taisho era. She went through a number of husbands while supporting herself as a writer over a long career. The final chapter, "The Odor of Pickled Radishes", focuses on Hideko Takamine, a well-known star of Japanese cinema in the golden years. Takamine also worked with several other notable directors like Keisuke Kinoshita for example. She lived a very sad life as a child star before maturing into memorable roles for elite directors in the golden age. It's interesting that in the preface Birnbaum talks about the difficulties of meeting biographical subjects with preconceived notions that were often repelled by the subjects. Therefore she chose to focus on dead subjects later, grappling only with the written histories rather than the subjects themselves. Only the final two subjects Chiyo Uno and Hideko Takamine were alive at the time of the writing of the book. Overall, it was a detailed look at five exceptional modern Japanese women.

Barry Lyndon (Bluray)

I recently saw Tony Zierra's documentary on Stanley Kubrick's assistant, Leon Vitali, Filmworker (2017). Vitali has a starring role in Kubrik's epic Barry Lyndon (1975) that was recently rel-released as a Bluray (also 2017). So seeing the documentary sent me back to see the restored version of the film. It has been over a decade since I saw it last. It still amazes-it is like a live action tapestry being unrolled. It was this film that made Vitali an acolyte of Kubrick and after that experience he worked mostly behind the screen on Kubrick's subsequent films. This really is a remarkable masterpiece of modern film making. The Criterion treatment includes: new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, alternate 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, new documentary featuring cast and crew interviews as well as excerpts from a 1976 audio interview with director Stanley Kubrick, new program about the film's groundbreaking visuals, featuring focus puller Douglas Milsome and gaffer Lou Bogue, as well as excerpts from a 1980 interview with cinematographer John Alcott, new program about Academy Award winning production designer Ken Adam with historian Sir Christopher Frayling, new interview with editor Anthony Lawson, French television interview from 1976 with Oscar-winning costume designer Ulla-Britt Soderlund, new interview with critic Michel Ciment, new interview with actor Leon Vitali about the 5.1 surround soundtrack, which he cosupervised, new piece analyzing the fine-art-inspired aesthetics of the film with art curator Adam Eaker, and an essay by critic Geoffrey O'Brien and two pieces about the film from the March 1976 issue of American Cinematographer.

Tora-san The Expert (30)

Yoji Yamada and his cast and crew made another standout film in the Tora-san series in the 30th installment, Tora-san, The Expert (1982). The pre-credits dream sequence is an homage to West Side Story featuring the fearsome "Brooklyn Tora." On Tora's (Kiyomi Atsumi) first arrival before entering the sweets shop he meets an old neighbor, Momoe, upsetting Uncle Tatsuzo (Masami Shiojo). There's also an unpleasant incident involving portioning out expensive matsutake mushrooms (a delicacy) among family members for dinner that shows Tora's selfishness. He tells Tora to leave and Sakura doesn't try to stop him this time as she feels he is at fault here. Tora finds himself in Oita in Kyushu staying at an inn in Yufuin, a hot springs town. While there he meets a timid zoologist, Saburo (Kenji Sawada) traveling to the inn where his mother worked when she was young with her ashes. Tora and the manager moved by his devotion arrange a funeral ceremony and ask two young women to attend the ceremony. The two young women work together in a department store in Tokyo and one of them, Keiko (Yuko Tanaka), catches Saburo's eye. But he is painfully shy and something of an oddball despite his good looks. Tora vows to help him woo Keiko with the usual antics and despite his bungling they get together.

Letter Never Sent

I saw that Criterion also had an edition of Mikhail Kalatozov's Letter Never Sent (1960) and since I had enjoyed his previous films I Am Cuba, The Cranes Are Flying, and The Red Tent I decided to get it. The most important aspect of this film is the continued collaboration of Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky, who worked previously on 1957’s The Cranes Are Flying and 1964’s I Am Cuba. This like those two previous films are notable for its visual style more than anything else. he opening five minutes of Letter Never Sent, a sequence of five long takes (none shorter than thirty seconds in duration), can be seen as an example of Urusevsky’s cinematographic mastery.This film is a film of exploration at the onset a party of four geologists—three men and a woman—embarks on an expedition to locate diamonds in the wilderness of the Central Siberian Plateau. The second part of the film is a desperate struggle for survival against nature first in the form of a forest fire then later by the early winter that strikes. The Criterion treatment is uncharacteristically light:new high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition, a new English subtitle translation, and a booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Dina Iordanova.

Outlaw: Black Dagger

Once again Keichi Ozawa is at the helm for the 5th installment of the Outlaw Gangster VIP series starring Tetsuya Watari, Outlaw: Black Dagger (1968). I must say that the extreme uses of Cheiko Matsubara hits a high point here as she plays the recently slayed Yuri from the previous installment and the maternal nurse sister, Shizuko, of Miura (Ichiro Nakaya). There's not much to distinguish this installment from the others, except that it moves from Osaka in Kansai to Tachikawa in Western Tokyo to the pleasure quarters near the American airbase-so the sleazy bars,clubs, and hourly hotels make a good backdrop for yakuza knife fights.

The Great Hack

Karen Ahmer and Jehane Nojaim's Nextflix documentary The Great Hack (2019) is another chilling look at how individuals and companies are undermining democracy all over the world. Essentially making the world a worse place. One of the main culprits, Brittany Kaiser, si trying to save face after moving from Obama's social media team to Cambridge Analytica and helping Trump win the presidency and helping promote a Leave EU campaign that resulted in Brexit-not to mention helping other right wing leaders in places like Brazil and Trinidad take control of those countries. They basically target undecided voters who must be emotionally or intellectually fragile so that they can be manipulated into going over to the dark side. The sad thing is that I'm sure its still going on in the US for the next election. It scary stuff, I do not fear for myself-I fear for democracy in the free world.

Hearts And Flowers For Tora-san (29)

In Yoji Yamada's 29th installment of the Tora-san series, Hearts And Flowers For Tora-san (1982), takes place mostly in Kyoto. The pre-credits sequence has another historical/folk tale-like opening with Tora-san (Kiyosumi Atsumi) as a traveling artist who draws sparrows that come to life-animation style. This episode finds Tora in Kyoto where he meets a Kanjior Kawai-esque ceramics maker, Sakujiro Kano (Nizaemon Kataoka) who is considered a living treasure. While spending some time in his studio he meets a young widow, Kagari (Ayumi Ishida in an award winning role), working there as a maid. She is jilted by a former disciple of Kano and returns to her hometown on the Tango peninsula, a beautiful part of Kyoto-fu that is on the Japan Sea side of Honshu. Later she comes to Tokyo to visit a friend and while at Toraya she passes Tora a love letter to meet her in Kamakura. He's too shy to go alone so he brings Mitsuo (Hidetaka Yoshioka in his first real storyline) with him and the awkward date ends badly and Kagari returns home and Tora hits the road again only to meet up with Kano sensei again. I thought this was one of the best episodes I've seen to this point, Yamada and his team are really hitting their stride in the late 70s and early 80s.. 

Jamilia

Jamilia (2018) is a documentary about Kyrgyz women today by Aminatou Echard. The title is based on the heroine of a classic Kyrgyz novel about a young woman who, having been forced to marry, who then fled with her lover. Fifty years later, the director meets several generations of Kyrgyz women, resulting in portraits reflecting both the novel's protagonist. The film was shot with Super 8 and the recording was done separately in a way that felt disconnected to me. There were some compelling stories, but I don't think the images were very compelling or interesting to see. I have been to Kyrgyzstan twice previously and plan to visit again for a volunteer conference piqued my interest in the film. The fact that bride kidnapping was a social custom for so long there makes this a potentially explosive topic, but it never goes there. It only recounts these women's stories. 

Outlaw: Goro The Assassin

Keiichi Ozawa's fourth installment of the Outlaw Gangster series Outlaw: Goro The Assassin (1968) is one of the best of the series so far. Goro (Tetsuya Watari) is released from jail and his friend Masa dies a few days later asking to Goro to deliver a message to his sister, Shinobu (Chitose Kobayashi). He gets a job as a repairman in the hotel that his romantic interest, Yuki (Chieko Matsubara-always a new character in this saga...), works in. He encounters some yakuza who hassle her and befriends her. Meanwhile, he is searching the red light district for Masa's sister-this requires attending strip shows and visiting brothels to find her. Of course these stories intersect as the yakuza are involved in both situations. There's some inspired cinematography and lots of violence as usual with a dash of salaciousness-a nod to where much of cinema will go in the 70s when movies have to compete with TV. There fore they need to show what can't bee seen on TV to attract their audiences. This one is also notable for the Nagoya location, a place akin to Detroit as there were major car manufacturing factories and other production facilities in this city. The romantic interest, Yuki is from Mie prefecture on a peninsula to the south of the city at the port of Toba. Toba is known for oysters and pearls and some action takes place at a port there at the end.