Jasper Sharp 31
Books: Ishiro Honda
By Jasper Sharp. Ishiro Honda is an easy filmmaker to ridicule. Here is a man whose name, more by accident than design, looks set to be forever identified with a certain giant fire-breathing lizard, and by extension Japan’s entire home-grown strain of giant monster movies that followed in its wake, featuring men in rubber suits […]
Books: Coproducing Asia
By Jasper Sharp. Stephanie DeBoer’s scholarly study Coproducing Asia: Locating Japanese-Chinese Regional Film and Media is not the general overview of Asian co-productions that its title might suggest. Its focus is more on the construction of a new cinematic and televisual idea of “Asia” in the post-war and post-colonial era. It details how forces within […]
Animerama
[WARNING: Content potentially Not Safe For Work] By Jasper Sharp. The three titles in Mushi Pro’s short-lived “Animerama” series, A Thousand & One Nights (1969), Cleopatra (1970) and Belladonna of Sadness (1973), arrived at an interesting juncture in the history of Japanese animation and Osamu Tezuka’s Mushi Production.
Books: Kurosawa’s Rashomon
By Jasper Sharp. The first thought that immediately sprang to my mind when I picked up Kurosawa’s Rashomon: A Vanished City, a Lost Brother, and the Voice Inside His Iconic Films by Paul Anderer was: “Does the world really need another book on Kurosawa?” Since Donald Richie gave the West the first systematic study with […]
Momotaro, Sacred Sailors
By Jasper Sharp. Momotaro, Sacred Sailors, a bizarre piece of wartime propaganda targeted at children, coming to UK Blu-ray over 70 years since its original theatrical release in April 1945. Sacred Sailors is a monumental work in the evolution of Japanese animation, and a testament to the dark days of modern history, funded by the […]