Cinema 153
Burst City
By Tom Wilmot. Shinya Tsukamoto, Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa are just a few of the names that come to mind when thinking of acclaimed Japanese cult filmmakers in the late twentieth century. However, without the work of another incredibly influential auteur, we may not have these directors as we know them: Sogo Ishii. Distribution […]
CG in Anime
By Andrew Osmond. Last year, the film magazine Little White Lies interviewed Shoji Kawamori, famed for his creative role in Macross. He was asked what future he saw for hand-drawn animation in anime. His reply was blunt. “I imagine,” Kawamori said, “that in about ten or twenty years, (hand-drawn animation) will be heading in the […]
Books: Chinese Movie Mags
By Jasper Sharp. In these days of cosplay conventions and K-drama and Chinese sci-fi blockbusters on Netflix, it is easy to forget how little access to – and, let’s face it, interest in – Asian popular culture the West had for the vast bulk of the twentieth century. Not so in the other direction, however, […]
Melancholic
By Roxy Simons. “It’s dangerous to know something you’re not supposed to,” Kazuhiko’s boss at the local bathhouse tells him in Seiji Tanaka’s Melancholic. Feeling nosy over what is going on late at night at his workplace, Kazuhiko (Yoji Minagawa) decides to stake the place out, but quickly realises that there’s something far more ominous […]
Fish Story
by Jeremy Clarke. A comet threatens to destroy life on Earth. Three years earlier a religious cult attempts a ferry hijack. In the 1970s a punk band records and disbands before the Sex Pistols do. Welcome to the bizarre and quirky vision of Yoshihiro Nakamura’s Fish Story (2009). As well as being the screenwriter of […]