Tag: cinema

August 14, 2016 · 0 comments

By Jasper Sharp. The clammy deathly-blue pallor, the single drooping eye leering through lank, matted black hair, the white cotton smock, the slow, spasmodic, Butoh-esque movements: there must be few out there unfamiliar with the imagery of the Japanese ghost since the shuffling form of Sadako first seeped into Western consciousness in Hideo Nakata’s Ringu […]

July 9, 2016 · 0 comments

By Jeremy Clarke. Sion Sono’s wonderfully insane, four-hour art-house epic Love Exposure (2008) made great waves on its UK release with its heady brew of father-son relationships, Catholicism, sin, teen gangs, martial arts stunts, up-skirt photography, violence, swordplay, castration, porno movie production, religious cults and more. Nothing in his prior directorial career had made quite […]

June 16, 2016 · 1 comment

By Andrew Osmond. Here’s a paradox. Even as When Marnie Was There, Studio Ghibli’s Last Feature Film (Probably), plays in British cinemas, a new animated feature bearing Ghibli’s logo opens in the festival circuit. This is The Red Turtle, directed by Michael Dudok de Wit, which debuted at Cannes before playing at another French event, […]

April 1, 2016 · 0 comments

Andrew Osmond revisits a restored classic. In 1985, Akira Kurosawa released his last epic film, Ran (meaning “Chaos”). The Japanese-French co-production was inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear but it transposed the tragedy to the lost Japan of many Kurosawa classics, of violent swordplay, doomed heroes and harsh morality. Such films – Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne […]

February 21, 2016 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. The Elegant Life of Mr Everyman is one of the oldest films screening in the current Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme; it was released back in 1963. Directed by Kihachi Okamoto, it’s an observational comedy, voicing the frustrations and neuroses of the ordinary working man when the shade of World War II […]