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Goemon

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:00:04 +0000

Director Kazuaki Kiriya’s follow-up to Casshern is as visually dazzling as its predecessor – thank god it’s a bit easier to understand, too…!

In 2004 fashion photographer and music video director Kazuaki Kiriya burst onto the filmmaking scene with his mind-blowing adaption of an early 70s manga and anime series, Casshern. One of the first movies to be shot almost entirely on a studio back lot with it’s actors against a greenscreen, it was a dazzling, imaginative vision of a future world, the nearest to a proper live-action version of an anime we will probably ever see.

Unfortunately it was so much of a visual overload that it made what narrative there was all but incomprehensible!

Five years on Kazuaki is back with a similarly breathtaking period tale of action and adventure, Goemon.

It’s 1582 and the ruler of Japan Oda Nobunaga has been brutally murdered leaving the country in a state of political chaos. Master thief Ishikawa Goemon (Yosuke Eguchi, Shaolin Girl) has risen as a hero of the people due to his inclination to take from the rich and give to the poor. His latest haul could get him in trouble, as it includes small box that holds a secret that could rock the kingdom to its roots.

Unfortunately for Goemon, he’s discarded it into the crowds, caught by a street urchin. On discovering it’s value he quickly tries to reclaim it, only to find it’s also come to the attention of legendary swordsman Matahachi (Tetsuji Tamayama, Norwegian Wood, Casshern) and legendary ninja Hattori Hanzo (Susumu Terajima, Hana yori mo naho, Casshern, Ichi The Killer, Hana-Bi).

Soon there’s far more at stake than untold riches, as it transpires there’s far more to Goemon than meets the eye. But can he save the nation from destruction – does he even care anymore?

Produced by Takashige Ichise, best known for launching so-called J Horror with films like Ringu, Dark Water, Ju-On: The Grudge, and Shutter, director Kazuaki Kiriya’s latest film is as sumptuous a creation as Casshern. As with his earlier film, Kiriya’s obsession with classical art creates a beautiful sets and costumes as Renaissance art mixes with a baroque vision of Feudal period Japanese design.

There’s definitely a particular style at work, and Goemon’s tendency to wear masks that cover the lower half of his face is just one of many similarities with the films predecessor. The pacing and basic plot structure is almost an exact duplicate, as are many of the filming techniques used and black and white for flashback, etc – but here at least Kiriya lets the characters breathe a little more. And if the conclusion is, once again, that war is terrible and countless innocents are lost just so warring commanders can make their plays for power (yada yada), then at least this time Kiriya doesn’t take himself quite as seriously. It’s easily a lot more fun than Casshern, and this time there’s much more focus on shooting the action, and more combat between humans rather than CGI’d robots and endless jetting around.

Sure, there is a mass of CGI, and with the period setting this makes the film seem a little less original than Casshern. Computer generated fireflies, for instance, seem to have been used countless times now, including way back in The Storm Riders. The film itself is rather like an extreme version of Chen Kaige’s The Promise, but, again, perhaps a bit more enjoyable.

The character of Ishikawa Goemon is indeed a real folk hero, Japan’s equivalent of Robin Hood, who has been referenced in films and media many times before, including as a regular character in the animated series Lupin The Third (Lupin III), occasionally directed by a pre-Studio Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki. Like our very own (though rather older) Robin Hood folk tale, very little is known in truth about this figure. Even then (surprise surprise!) it’s hard to find much correlation between any of the known legends and Kiriya’s take on them, let alone the actual documented historical events. (Though many of the characters are named after real Feudal figures of the time, such as Mitsunari Ishida, played by Jun Kaname, Blood, K-20: Legend of the Mask, Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers, and Hideyoshi Toyotomi, played by Eiji Okuda, The Sea Is Watching, Black Kiss.)

See it as a Casshern 2.0 and you won’t be far off. It might not be quite it’s visual equal, but it’s a far better story – and that’s got to be a good thing!

Goemon (cert. 15) is released by Momentum Pictures and will open at selected UK cinemas this Friday, 23rd July 2010.

Casshern

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:00:46 +0000

Visually one of the most inventive films of the last decade, but ex-promo director and fashion photographer Kazuaki Kiriya’s movie debut is rather like watching a two and a half hour long music video – unintelligible and actually a bit dull…

In a near-future a fifty-year war between the Eastern Federation and Europa has finally come to an end, with the federation taking control of the Eurasian continent. And yet the war goes on, with a new rebellion breaking out in one former Eurasian zone.

Amid this ongoing chaos, Dr Azuma (Akira Terao, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, Ran) proposes a solution to depleting armed forces, the invention of a neo cell that can regenerate any human tissue. Kaoru Naito (Mitsuhiro Oikawa), a representative of Nikko Hairal Inc., soon helps him get the cells into production, yet his experiments seem fruitless until a mysterious lightning bolt stimulates the cells, and regenerates the cells into new mutants, who call themselves ‘neo sapiens’.

That same night Azuma’s son, Tetsuya (Yusuke Iseya, After Life, Memories of Matsuko) body is returned home, a casualty of war. Azuma tries the neo cells on his body and brings him back to life, though it takes the father of his fiancé Luna (Kumiko Aso, Bare Essence of Life, Kaidan), Dr Kozuki (Fumiyo Kohinata), to build him an ectoskeleton to allow his body to survive it’s new abilities.

With the leader of the neo sapiens, Burai (Toshiaki Karasawa, 20th Century Boys) and his surviving associates including Barashin (Jun Kaname, Blood, Goemon) having reanimated a dormant army of robots, now only Tetsuya, having adopted the name of legendary Eurasian saviour Casshern, stands between them and their goal of annihilating mankind…

Casshern was one of the first films to be shot almost entirely against a green screen, with all but the actors and costumes themselves actually composites of 2D and 3D computer generated graphics, alongside contempory films like Sin City, Able Edwards and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Visually easily the most ambitious of the films, it’s a fascinating vision of a futuristic world, if not as successful as Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s ‘comic book-ification’ of Miller’s Sin City.

Indeed director Kiriya takes many of his visual cues from the original series, including those cheap ‘anime’ style battles where the animators would show a still of the participants against a moving background. It’s the closest I’ve seen to a proper live-action version of an anime, and yet it doesn’t help the narrative, with Kiriya more interested in plaintive conversations between combatants than the fights themselves.

It’s Kiriya’s convoluted take on the original story – which from all accounts appears to have simply been Casshern versus the robots – that is the real problem here. Too interested with how the film looks, he introduces to many elements into the narrative without really wanting to take them to their conclusion. Kiriya may have publicly counted Shakespeare’s Hamlet amongst his influences for the film (and there sure is plenty of family tragedy), but this is far harder to follow.

Accidently or not, themes of endless wars begun for nefarious reasons, with hints of a larger corporate companies behind them, is reminiscent of Japanese author Hiroshi Mori’s work, recently adapted by anime supremo Mamoru Oshii as The Sky Crawlers. Interestingly the look of the military uniforms, so obviously Nazi-based, is all too reminiscent of those in Oshii’s Jigoku no banken trilogy, culminating in Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Kiriya’s futuristic vision is also evocative of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (much more than Blade Runner), of which a 40s adaptation by Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka had only recently remade when the film was originally released.

Those who’ve seen Kiriya’s latest film Goemon will recognise the director’s declamation of the needless perpetuity of war. Fair enough, but he does seem to go on about it. And the film is way too long, though the US cut removing 20 minutes definitely doesn’t help.

Casshern is a beautiful movie that proves the strength of using green screen if you have a powerful imagination behind it. In this case that mind may be a little too distracted to follow an narrative, but it’s still impressive. In spite of the film weaknesses, if not because of them, Casshern will take repeated viewings well, as there really is so much going on.

Just don’t expect to enjoy it too much.

Goemon (cert. 15) is released by Momentum Pictures and will open at selected UK cinemas this Friday, 23rd July 2010.

The Storm Warriors

Andrew Heskins — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:00:32 +0000

A decade on Ekin Cheng and Aaron Kwok return as Wind and Cloud in this highly-anticipated sequel to The Storm Riders by The Pang Brothers, directors of The Eye – but if special effects have come a long way in that time, the art of narrative seems somewhat lacking…

Back in 1998 The Storm Riders was a pivotal moment in Hong Kong filmmaking. Directed by Andrew Lau and co-produced by digital effects company Centr0, it was one of the first HK films to use CGI to great effect. Based on the popular manhua or comic book by Ma Wing-Shing, Fung Wan, it reinvigorated the wuxia / swordplay genre – just in time for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But whereas Ang Lee would play up far more traditional influences of the 60s and 70s, Lau pulled heavily his own popular Young And Dangerous to appeal to a post-MTV generation.

(And arguably it helped the comic book movie makeover boom of the late 90s, early noughties, too.)

Now the Pang Brothers (whose Danny Pang co-edited the original) have brought together the original leads Cheng and Kwok for a spectacular, dazzling follow-up.

Many years on from the events of The Storm Riders, China now finds itself in the grip of an invading army led by ruthless Japanese warlord Lord Godless (Simon Yam, Vengeance, Election) and his son Heart (Nicholas Tse, The Promise, Bodyguards And Assassins), both hell bent on ruling the nation. Wind (Ekin Cheng, Tokyo Raiders, Forest of Death, Heroic Duo) and Cloud (Aaron Kwok, Murderer, Divergence, Saviour Of The Soul) are not a match, and even legendary martial artist Nameless can not defeat him.

With time running out for China and the captured royal family, both Cloud and Wind try desperate measure to turn the tables: Cloud becomes Nameless’ new disciple, creating a new sword fighting style; Wind decides to learn evil martial arts, but can he keep his dark side in check? Soon these old friends find themselves pitted against each other for the future of China.

I rather liked the idea of picking up the story so long after the original timeline, consciously echoing the passing of time between films in the real world, rather than trying to make a direct sequel and have the actors pretend they’re the same age. (Mind you, not that Kwok looks any different other than appearing to have spent all that time in a gym!)

So there’s no need to worry if you’ve never seen the original. Trouble is, even if you have seen Storm Riders you may well feel like you’ve walked in halfway through the film. Never ones for overdoing expositions, the Pang Brothers drop you straight in the action, and never let up, taking us from one conflict to another. Sure, it’s exciting and definitely keeps the attention levels up, but it’s not, well, you know, a movie, is it?

The cast do the best with what they have, but there’s little for them to get their teeth into. Kwok, in particular, is engaging as Cloud, with his character finally learning to care about something or someone other than himself. But there are subtleties in their portrayal and subplots that are lost on all save the most devoted of the original comic books.

Visually the film is stunning. The quality production of sets and costumes, mixed with seamless compositing of CGI effects is superb. All of which goes to show just how far computer graphics have come since the original film (which itself didn’t look bad considering the undoubtedly limited budget available).

One sequence in particular, when Heart is shown cruelly pursuing Nameless and destroying every martial art school he comes across in the process, however, hints at an even more striking visual route. Taking it’s cue from the Frank Miller style of Sin City and 300, reflecting the comic book roots of the story. It would have been great to see much more of this in the film, even if it might have brought comparisons with the latest from the green screen king, Casshern director Kazuaki Kirita, Goemon. (Though there are intimation’s that would have just proved too expensive.)

Storm Warriors is a highly enjoyable, quality action production. I just wish they’d paid a bit more attention to the script.

The Storm Warriors is released Monday 12 July on Blu-ray and DVD by Cine Asia.

The Storm Riders

Andrew Heskins — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:00:29 +0000

With the long-awaited sequel The Storm Warriors out next Monday, we look back at the original adaptation of Ma Wing-Shing’s comic book Fung Wan, directed by Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs)…

In ancient China, the appropriately named evil Lord Conqueror (played by Sonny Chiba, The Streetfighter, Legend Of Eight Samurai, Kill Bill, on particularly fine raucous, bellowing form) learns from a Buddhist prophet that his future as ruler lies in two children, Wind and Cloud, and sends his legions out, King Herod style, to find and bring them under his wing and kill anyone who gets in his way.

But the final part of the prophecy must wait 10 years, as Wind (Ekin Cheng, Tokyo Raiders, Heroic Duo, Forest Of Death) and Cloud (Aaron Kwok, Murderer, Divergence, Saviour Of The Soul) grow up to be the most powerful weapons in Conqueror’s arsenal.

Wind is kindhearted, oblivious to the truth that his father Whispering Prince (Alex Fong, One Nite In Mongkok, Portland Street Blues) was killed during a dual with Conqueror. Cloud, on the other hand, is fully aware of the part Conqueror played in his father Striding Sky’s (Rongguang Yu, Mulan, New Police Story, Musa: The Warrior) death, and has become bitter, a cold and ruthless servant.

When the second part of the prophecy us revealed, that Wind and Cloud will not only make him, but also be his undoing, Conqueror sets about setting them against each other. This only results in backfiring on him, with his daughter Charity (Kristy Yang, A Man Called Hero, The Duel) murdered by his own hands.

Soon both Wind and Cloud have reasons to revenge themselves on Lord Conqueror, but can they work together to do it?

When The Storm Riders debuted at cinemas in 1998 it marked a turning point in Hong Kong filmmaking, the introduction of a high percentage of CGI effects that were (at that point) state-of-the-art. Even now the effects stand up pretty well. And that was kind of the point, co-produced by Hong Kong based Centro Digital Pictures, the film can be seen as much as a calling card for their work as it can a blockbuster, and really proved that HK could match Hollywood special effects.

Still riding the success of the Young And Dangerous series, which turned Ekin Cheng into a star and is attributed with glamorising triad life to teenagers of the time, this one-time Wong Kar-Wai cinematographer invigorated the wuxia genre, which had waned in popularity since the early 90s, setting the scene for Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a few years later.

Taken from the successful long-running manhua, or comic book series Fung Wan by Ma Wing-Shing, it’s interesting to look back on The Storm Riders and see how reverent it is to what came before. In the same way that Wing-Shing referenced the martial art novels of the 50s and 60s, Lau looked to the big screen adaptions, such as those by the Shaw Brothers studio.

In particular it’s the series of Gu Long adaptations by director Chor Yuen such as The Magic Blade and Death Duel that come to mind, as Each character is announced with text on screen. The later Buddha’s Palm seems quite an influence too, with that films attempt to imbue martial art powers with post Star Wars effects. Lau doesn’t stop there, there’s the casting Chiba with his long history in Asian film; the childhood scenes and stylised vision recall Ronny Yu’s The Bride With White Hair; and the dual between Conqueror and Whispering Prince in a bamboo forest pays homage to that in King Hu’s Touch Of Zen, much as Lee would do a couple of years later in Crouching Tiger.

Yet unlike Lee, Lau brought a more modern sensitivity with him. He pulled on those modern references from Young And Dangerous, with slo-mo action scenes with more in common with pop promos, and fights set to dance music (rather than more classical Chinese influence music), much as The Matrix would do a year later. This was wuxia re-interpreted for the post-MTV generation, echoing Tsui Hark’s early, anarchic take on the genre in The Butterfly Murders, and was probably the biggest step on since Hark’s own Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Ching Siu-tung’s A Chinese Ghost Story.

With an all- star cast, including Shu Qi, Michael Tse and Anthony Wong, The Storm Riders is still a highly enjoyable film, reaching the right balance of narrative and action (unlike it’s successor!).

Unsurprisingly, it was immensely popular. Inspiring another Ma Wing-Shing adoption, A Man Called Hero and the similarly themed The Duel, both also starring Ekin Cheng, and setting the scene for Hark to revisit his earliest triumph in the disappointing CGI led Legend Of Zu. Lau then tried an (unofficial) attempt at bringing computer game Tekken Fist to the screen in The Avenging Fist and rebooting the Wisley character (Legend Of Wisley, The Seventh Curse) in Wesley’s Mysterious File, before moving on to the Infernal Affairs series that finally made his name internationally.

The Storm Warriors is released Monday 12 July on Blu-ray and DVD by Cine Asia.

Robo-Geisha

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:00:43 +0000

More gruesome, silly, crazy fun from the creators of The Machine Girl, Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl and Tokyo Gore Police…

With direction from Noboru Iguchi (The Machine Girl), make-up and special effects by Yoshihiro Nishimura (The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, Meatball Machine) and visual effects by Tsuyoshi Kazuno (Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, Samurai Princess) regular readers of easternKicks.com will know exactly what to expect…

Yoshie Kasuga (Aya Kiguchi) pines to get out from the shadow of her more successful older sister, geisha Kikue (Hitomi Hasebe, Battle Royale II). Constantly bullied by her, a chance meeting with Hikaru Kageno (Takumi Saitô, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, Tamami: The Baby’s Curse), son of steel tycoon Kenzan Kageno (Tarô Shigaki) appears to be a way out, so she accepts an invitation to his home – a bizarre amalgamation, part factory, part temple.

Little does she know that Hikaru plans to build an army of robo-geisha’s, assassins at his beck and call, and Yoshie and her sister are the latest recruits! Soon the sisters squabbles become far more deadly, as they are pitted against each other for their very lives.

But if Yoshie proves herself to be the greater warrior, then it soon becomes apparent she has far too much heart to be a ruthless killer. Can she stop the kegano’s master plan to blow up Mount Fuji?

If Geisha Assassin missed every opportunity to have fun with it’s core concept, then Robo-Geisha grabs them and much more. Utterly silly right from the start, director Noboru Iguchi transplants Cinderella into the usual, gruesome mechanical fetishism and body shocks – this may still be the offspring of Tetsuro, but somehow this seems less unpleasant, less ‘grindhouse’ in tone, than most the films that have gone before.

Perhaps much of that comes from there being far more concentration on CGI effects than the normal prosthetics and make up. Yoshihiro Nishimura even has time to cameo as a yakuza boss. Fans of the splatterpunk scene may well have a problem with that, but the result lets the true silliness of the film shine through, unencumbered by scenes that make you feel more than a little nauseous.

Unfortunately it also feels a bit cheap, somehow less spectacular than the shoestring resourcefulness these filmmakers used before they could afford so many computer graphics.

No matter, there’s plenty here to delight, from the temple that turns megazilla, smashing over buildings as they spout blood, to a wonderful spoof of a Lone Wolf and Cub style duel in the rice fields, complete with yakuza boss in samurai fancy dress. In The final battle between the sisters Kikue divides in half, the top jet powered and still duelling, the bottom hilariously kicking away. Then there’s flying butt blades and even extracting butt swords.

There’s plenty more movie references too. For instance the masks of the highly-sexualised Tengu assassins (played by Asami, The Machine Girl, Meatball Machine: Reject of Death, and Cay Izumi, Tokyo Gore Police) recall that used by Malcolm McDowell in the notorious scene from A Clockwork Orange.

Like Machine Girl, this film holds together much better than most if it’s peers. It’s not quite as good, and less CGI would have been preferable, but it’s still a hell of a lot of fun!

Robo-Geisha is released today on Blu-ray and DVD by Cine Asia.

The Sky Crawlers

Andrew Heskins — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:00:27 +0000

Ghost In The Shell director Mamoru Oshii returns with a typically cerebral but nonetheless spellbinding gaze at an alternative future where eternally young fighter pilots clash in a seemingly endless and pointless war…

In an alternative near-future reality, specially bred soldiers named ‘Kildren’ fight an unspecified war, seemingly fabricated by rival conglomerate companies in order keep the mass population happy and obedient – a ploy that appears to have worked for years. Groups of fighter pilots engage in dogfights against the neighbouring nations forces high above the clouds, the only casualties of this conflict, they never age or grow up.

When a new pilot Yuichi Kannami (Ryo Kase) joins one of these groups, he struggles unable to remember anything of his life before save his intensive flight training. The mystery deepens when his new female commander, Suito Kusanagi (Rinko Kikuchi), another ‘Kildren’ who has unusually crossed over from being a fighter pilot herself, refuses to discuss the fate of pilot Yuichi was brought in to replace, or why his plane is in such perfect condition.

Those unfamiliar with director Mamoru Oshii’s previous work may be surprised by how little The Sky Crawlers conforms to Anime clichés. Indeed, even though his best known work Ghost In The Shell (and Blood: The Last Vampire, on which he worked as supervising producer) are as close to being typical of the genre as he has ever gotten, yet like all his work hide more complex themes often little more than hinted at.

But perhaps that shouldn’t be a revelation at all. Oshii co-founded Studio Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, but left soon afterwards due to creative differences. Though Oshii’s work has always been more adult in content, the directors share a distain for simplistic, exploitative Anime that panders to an adolescent audience, and have done more to lift our preconceptions of the genre than any other filmmakers.

Sky Crawlers is itself no exception, taking author Hiroshi Mori’s first book of many on the ‘Kildren’ and dealing with it in a typically subverted fashion. The true nature of the ‘Kildren’ is only partly revealed in an after-title sequence, but even then there are no simple answers here, more hints and subtexts of themes. Like much of Oshii’s work, it bears comparison with Ridley Scott’s take on Philip K. Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ (or Blade Runner to you and me).

As with his early series Patlabor, Oshii concerns himself with the ‘little people’ caught up in the conflict. Powerless to change anything around them, they are mere pawns in a war or power struggle far beyond their comprehension. In tone it greatly resembles the last part of Oshii’s Jigoku no banken trilogy, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade – its effectively slow pacing paying tribute to films of the past. A reference which seems almost deliberate, as the name of the pilot Yuichi replaces is Jin-Ro.

But if Jin-roh looked to Hitchcock and the mesmerising Vertigo for inspiration, here Oshii looks to aerial combat movies like Battle Of Britain and The Dawn Patrol. Rooted in two World Wars, the film is as much about the endless waiting between those dogfights as it is the exciting aerial action. If anything, Oshii seems obsessed with that tedium, treating it in a detached, almost hypnotic fashion.

It bleeds a quality rarely seen in live-action films, with a strong voice cast including Oscar-nominated Rinko Kikuchi and cameos from famous Japanese actors such as Kill Bill’s Chiaki Kuriyama and prolific Naoto Takenaka, whose numerous roles include Shall We Dance and Ping Pong.

It’s glorious stuff, and though this might not appeal to every Anime fan, it should find an audience far beyond the genre. A beautifully shot, intelligent tale of innocence lost.

The Sky Crawlers is released this Friday, 23 April, by Manga Entertainment and will open at selected UK cinemas, including the ICA in London, and there’s a special preview tonight at the BFI Southbank ahead of their Anime Weekend in May.

The Sky Crawlers will also be released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Manga Entertainment on 31 May.

Virus

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:00:02 +0000

We keep the disaster movie theme going with a look at a near lost pandemic thriller from director Kinji Fukasaku, best known for Battle Royale…

With the release of The SInking Of Japan earlier this week, we take a look at another Japanese disaster movie, this time with a surprisingly Western cast.

The world as we know it is coming to an end, as a virus known only as Italian Flu (now, now, no racist jokes about it’s effects!) spreads amongst the populace. In fact the virus is manmade, designed for germ warfare, no vaccine exists. The only survivors are international groups of scientists based in Antarctica, who must now find a way to work together to build a new world.

Only when scientist Doctor Shûzô Yoshizumi (Masao Kusakari, Black Kiss) discovers that Washington will get rocked by an earthquake, a desperate mission begins to switch off an nuclear automatic retaliation system before it destroys the planet and even their own sanctuary.

My first run in with Virus was as a podcast from Cult of UHF, those exponents of films that have for one reason or another fallen into the public domain, cheekily released amid the highpoint of fears about the H1N1 virus spiralling out of control. Full of several hammy performances from several B-list American actors of the time, it was easy to dismiss as a terrible low-budget B movie.

Only thing was many of these actors could still get reasonable leading roles: Olivia Hussey (Black Christmas, Romeo & Juliet); Glenn Ford; Robert Vaughn; Geroge Kennedy; Chuck Connors; Henry Silva; Bo Svenson. It’s fun to see the revamped Battlestar Galactica’s Commander Adama Edward James Olmos and wonder if he ever looked young?

Then there was the slight unevenness in the story. The Japanese protagonists seemed quite important, but we hardly got to see them. It turns out that this was a Japanese production, directed by Kinji Fukasaku, whose long filmmaking career included Battle Royale, Triple Cross, Legend of Eight Samurai and Tora! Tora! Tora!.

This was, of course, the heavily abridged US cut of the film, which not only loses some 50-odd minutes from the film, mainly from the Japanese subplots, but also rearranges the footage to it’s own (and often confusing) end. This wasn’t helped by the fact the Cult of UHF version rather helpfully left what remained of the parts in Japanese without subtitles!

Yet despite all this, there was definitely some merit to the film. Hell, it might be corny, but not as terrible as you might have thought.

In it’s longer format it recounts far more of Doctor Shûzô’s past, colouring far more effectively his relationship and growing affection for Olivia Hussey’s character Marit. There are title cards detailing the time and spread of the virus. Then there’s Shûzô’s epic journey south to reunite with the rest of the surviviors – completely cut from the US edit which is by default far gloomier.

There are some interesting ideas tackled during the film, not least the topic of a new morality when 830-odd men have survived with just eight women. There’s a certain amount of intelligence applied to the film that survives some of the hokeyness and occasionally melodramatic performances. Masao Kusakari himself, as the lead, is actually pretty good.

Elsewhere even in it’s longer form so of the edits seem a little rough and clumsy around the edges – particularly when Fukasaku tries to show us Japanese society crumbling in the face of this inevitable peril (which seems to involve clubbers stripping off in a disco!). Then there’s the end footage, mainly shots of penguins jumping off into the Antarctic Ocean. Probably the biggest crime of the film, though, is some dire English accents on show by American actors. I mean, Chuck Connors as a British Naval officer? Really?

Those familiar with Terry Nation’s Survivors series, either in it’s original 70s incarnation or the newly revamped version, will be familiar with the prospect of the world wiped out by a disease. (Mind you, Terry borrowed from John Wyndam, so what the hell?) Virus, or Day Of Resurrection as it’s also known, has it’s roots as much in Robert Wise’s adaption of the Michael Crichton novel The Andromeda Strain (and those that followed, like George A. Romeo’s original The Crazies) as it does with the more mainstream disaster movies. Sure, George Kennedy even recites some of the same dialogue he used in Earthquake.

But there’s something else starting to happen in Virus. It mirrors the growing preoccupation with nuclear holocaust, the fear of a third world war that would annihilate us all, and the very real threat of the cold war that dominated the 80s and 80s cinema (having lost the charade of hiding these themes behind alien invasions and gigantic monsters). In that sense it can be seen ahead of the curve. Shûzô’s journey then becomes something of a post-apocalyptic vision, again only really beginning to become widely popular in films like Mad Max.

It’s said film producer Haruki Kadokawa had hoped this would be his breakthrough into the international market. Instead it flopped, and edited up sold to Pay TV states in it’s heavily edited version.

Despite all the DVDs available, the only place you can officially get the full version is as part of the Sonny Chiba Action Set, alongside Golgo 13 and an edited version of The Bullet Train. Which is ironic as Chiba’s screen time is less than 10 minutes, and not even particularly energetic. Ripe for a solo release and wider reappraisal.

The Sinking Of Japan

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:30:40 +0000

Could this be the final sunset for the Rising Sun? It’s bye bye Japan in this big budget disaster movie…

Just what is it with disaster movies? Seems like a few years ago you couldn’t go a summer without someone like Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay turning the world upside down with aliens, asteroids, volcanoes, giant Japanese monsters or adverse climate change. Nowadays the West seems more interested in ‘low key’ horrors, like waking up and finding the place overrun with living dead (be they Zombie or Vampire), than thinking there might be something bigger to worry about than the next Olympic Games, like, I don’t know, prophecies, end of the world, that sort of thing.

Arguably in the wake of manmade horrors like the Twin Towers, or at least human, bureaucratic negligence in the face of natural disasters like Katrina, such films seem to carry less weight with American and British audiences.

The same can’t be said of the East, where the 2004 Tsunami and even more recently the earthquake in the Sichuan province of China (which this film predates) are timely reminders of just how little control we have over the forces of nature. Hence there’s been something of a resurgence of the old school disaster movie. Only last year Korea was in peril from a Tidal Wave (Haeundae) in what is reported to be their 4th biggest film, and now it seems Japan is in similar danger.

Director Shinji Higuchi’s The Sinking Of Japan follows the tried and tested formula, as used by filmmakers since long before the Airport films first took off, and cemented in the movies of the 70s. In fact Sakyo Komatsu’s novel Nippon Chinbotsu was originally adapted into a movie in 1973, at the height of disaster movies popularity.

The main participants meet at the first of what turns out to only the beginning of Japan’s troubles, when an underwater earthquake strikes deep beneath Suruga Bay and causes no end of destruction. Rescue worker Reiko Abe (Kou Shibasaki, Dororo, Memories Of Matsuko, One Missed Call, Battle Royale) save submarine pilot Toshio Onode (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Monkey Magic) and young girl Misaki (Mayuko Fukudo, Death Note: L Change The World, Kamikaze Girls), and their fates become entwined as Japan’s rising sun sinks.

There’s the Prime Minister’s aide, Saori Takamori (Mao Daichi, Saiyûki TV series) confronted with giving her boss the bad news from American scientist that the shifting tectonic plates under Japan will pull her into the sea in the next five years. Then there’s lead scientist Yusuke Tadokoro (Etsushi Toyokawa, 20th Century Boys), for whom Toshio works, who finds out the
American’s have got it wrong by over four years. So the race is on to save Japan, and one of our protagonists will be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Only thing is, will there be anything left of Japan to save?

After such an explosive start director Higuchi spends much of the first half of the film, like so many of the original disaster movie of the 70s (and no doubt the original book) explaining the science to get us to buy into this situation. Like we really care? In fact, at points Higuchi is even repetitive, doubling up on screen captions to information he’s already had lead characters give us.

It’s when the proverbial finally starts to hit the fan that Higuchi. There’s a definite amount of glee in how he shows us different provinces and major cities obliterated, reminiscent of Emmerich’s trademark felling of major cites and landmarks since be blew up the Whitehouse in Independence Day. Oh, it’s fun alright, and probably even more so for Japanese audiences who may be living there now or have relatives and friends in those areas. Higuchi’s long career working behind the scenes in Anime comes to the fore as he realises this destruction with real panache.

His direction of the cast is less impressive, and this is where his film really sinks. The supposed chemistry between cute but unconvincing rescuer Reiko and lame love interest Toshio is non-existent. Considering the scale, centring on such a small collection of protagonists seems to insular, especially when they’re so uninteresting.

Elsewhere Etsushi Toyokawa makes far more of an impact as lead scientist, dominating scenes with his scowl. His past romance with Saori seems far more convincing, and something we’d love to see more of.

The film has the dubious notoriety of containing the last appearance by the great Tetsurô Tanba, whose career spanned five decades including appearances in Bullet Train, Story of Ricky, The Twilight Samurai and Kwaidan.

The story does in fact pick up on recent events in the states like Katrina and 9/11, with officials dragging their heals to save their populace, more interested in gilding their own exit by shipping out national treasures before the populace. There’s also the heroification of the rescue squad, definitely influenced by the firefighters involved in the rescue attempt at the Twin Towers.

Sure it’s a bit long, but there are great effects. I’m just looking forward to a low-budget New Zealand remake. Ahem.

The Sinking Of Japan is released today by MVM.

Written By

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:00:05 +0000

Mad Detective writer/director Wai Ka-fai and lead Lau Ching-wan reunite for a sad, soppy, sloppy mess of a film…

After the brilliant Mad Detective, I’ll admit I was looking forward to the latest pairing between that films writer and co-director Wai Ka-fai and its leading star Lau Ching-wan (who first collaborated back in 1997 on Too Many Ways to Be No. 1) – how wrong can you get?

Several years after the loss of her father in a car accident where she, her mother and brother survived, Melody (Mia Yam, Flying Butterfly) decides to write a novel about him to help her family get over their grieving. Blinded by the accident, in her story the roles are reversed, with their blind father (Lau Ching-wan) the only surviving member of the accident. The character in her novel seems to take on his own life, as he too tries to resurrect his family in a story, but tragedy is not far away for Melody.

And so the loop goes round, deliberately building on the confusing layer upon layer of different narratives in order to propel the suspension. At the core there are some interesting thoughts about alternative realities, and characters and scenarios breaking free of their authors intentions, echoing the Pang Bothers Re-cycle or even Stanger Than Fiction (though I guess we all have Charlie Kaufman to thank for that!). Yet unlike Re-cycle Ka-fai dabbles in these themes rather than commits to them, and as the story becomes more fantastical it lacks the both the Pang’s tension and inventive vision, which was more like Alice In Wonderland for grown-ups.

Indeed, between the overbearingly sentimental tone of the piece from the opening scene, right up to increasingly juvenile ideas of lead young adult Melody – with her brother deciding to appear to his father as a (fluffy and stupid looking) dog, a mysterious ‘Ghost Whisper’ (not Jennifer Love Hewitt!) and casting a young version of herself as the operator of a ghost tram, driving ghosts to the after life – this shambolic piece starts to come off more like a kids movie, something like a Studio Ghibli film with all the life and imagination sucked out of it.

Such naivety jars against the darker themes of coming to terms with bereavement and a young adult so in the pits of despair that she contemplates suicide. In Hong Kong itself the film received an IIB rating, the equivalent of a 15 (sort of). It’s reminiscent of Tsui Hark’s equally disappointing Missing, reiterating that films need for a bizarre and ultimately unengaging take on loss. There’s little here to make you connect or sympathise or care about the characters.

There’s no doubting the enthusiasm with which Lau threw himself into the role, even learning braille, but Written By is a convoluted mess. Neither childlike nor adult in tone it’s over simplistic treatment is evocative of the current trend in Hong Kong filmmaking to treat audiences like idiots. Very disappointing…

Blood: The Last Vampire

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:00:32 +0000

A solid, good looking action film with great fight sequences by choreographer Corey Yuen, but plot inconsistencies and a baffling conclusion don’t make the best for Chris Nahon’s live-action adaption…

Let’s face it, the original anime Blood: The Last Vampire was something of a tease. At 48 minutes long, the original intention of the film as part of a multimedia project including a video game and manga was lost on most of its audience, myself included. Those of us that saw it still loved it as a brilliant, if incomplete variation on Ghost In The Shell.

Nearly a decade on the film has recently become an Anime series, Blood+, loosely based on the original premise, and now Chris Nahon, director of the impressive (and arguably best) Western Jet Li vehicle (Kiss Of The Dragon), has returned to Asia inspiration of a glossy, nicely shot live-action version. Indeed Blood tries hard to reproduce the original, the opening subway scene is all but an exact reproduction, in a 300 or Watchmen sort of a way, down to the original’s yellow-filtered, 70s exposed light.

The first half-hour or so is pretty much an exact re-run of the original, with Saya (Gianna Jun, Il Mare – the original of The Ice House, The Uninvited) part of a mysterious agency going undercover on an American Base high school to coax out deadly vampire demons that feast on humans. Sure, some details have been mucked around with, but the main difference is the addition of fellow student Alice McKee (Allison Miller, 17 Again, Take) who, kind of, takes the place of the original’s Japanese born school nurse Makiho Caroline Amano.

Here the film rather lets itself down with it’s own lack of ambition to take the ideas further, and add imaginative layers that could have supplanted the original.

We begin to learn Saya’s history, and rather than the 19th Century past hinted at in the original, and used in the series, the live-action instead moves her past to edo period Japan. We discover her father was a great vampire hunter, but was killed by Onigen (Koyuki, The Last Samurai, Pulse, Alive), most powerful of all the demons, and hence Saya seeks revenge.

With Tokyo seeming rife with demons, it seems that increased demon activity points towards a devious plan by them, and the presence of Onigen. Saya’s chance for revenge is at hand, but at what cost?

As action films go, Blood: The Last Vampire is by no means terrible. It’s obvious that director Chris Nahon has an understanding of how to film action, and – having worked with action choreographer Corey Yuen on Kiss Of The Dragon – know when to hand over the reigns. It’s beautiful to look at, even if sometimes the CGI work is less convincing than the original. (Mind you, the original being one of those ground breaking anime’s that kept the right side of almost looking too real – well, how can you compare with that?)

It would be easy to blame it all on the tortured production. Billy Kong, producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, House Of Flying Daggers, and Lust, Caution, announced the live-action version of Blood with The Bride With White Hair director Ronny Yu attached. That didn’t work out, but ultimately Chris Chow’s (Fearless) script plays too readily into both their histories when taking the film on from its original premise.

In the flashback sequences, Blood tries hard to take you back to the films that inspired Crouching Tiger. It’s Lone Wolf and Cub and classic Shaw Brothers films wrapped in revisionist, noughties style. It’s all swords and wire-fu, wonderfully done, but you wonder, hang on, where are the demons? Later Saya’s showdown with Onigen seems too reminiscent of The Bride With White Hair. But Blood doesn’t seem to know how it’s demon vampires should look, or fight for that matter. It’s here, then over there, horror, then old school wuxia. Enjoyable, but perhaps somewhat misguided by Saya’s use of a sword. (Which in the original, by the way, breaks anyway!?)

It’s an odd mix, not helped by the fact that as a Brit – that as an international production – it relies on British actors to fill in the gaps in the cast. It can be disorientating to see Ruby In The Smoke’s JJ Field or Dog Soldiers Liam Cunnigham as Americans, but not as much as seeing UK TV stalwart Larry Lamb, last most noticeably cast in EastEnders, as a US army base general.

Casting wise, Gianna Jun is fine in the lead role, but weirdly not as feisty as you’d like her to be – all torn by her past and overly upset. (You wonder if someone like Love Exposure’s Hikari Mitsushima might have been been better?) As a character Koyuki’s Onigen just isn’t shown as evil enough – come on Chris (x 2) will you? Give us more to work with!

When Alice’s character starts spouting cod-philosophy it’s all a bit hard to take. (The purpose of the original school nurse character being a lot more poignant.) And then comes the baffling finale, which makes no sense at all other than playing up a reference to Alice’s name.

All in all Blood comes in pretty short for an action film. While I welcome an action film that runs well under 2 hours for a change, it’s all a bit telling on the production side. Indeed, the release date was put back a couple of times due to post-production not being finished in time. For all that, it’s not half bad looking (though you do wonder if the DVD could be more enlightening with deleted scenes and, possibly, abandoned or early scripts).

If you’re expecting entertainment, then Blood fulfils that and more, think Blade Trinity meets later episodes of Buffy. However, if you’re expecting an imaginative re-write of the vampire genre, seek out Park Chan-wook’s Thirst or Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In…

easternkicks.com » Sci Fi / Fantasy

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» We spoke to both Gianna Jun and Chris Nolan exclusively earlier in the year…

…and don’t forget, you can win the DVD here!

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