In recent years I’ve seen a critical push to apply familiar terms like Film Noir to all manner of Japanese crime films made during the 1950s and 1960s. The term has even been applied to the culturally specific Sun Tribe films (please see my previous post that discusses Sun Tribe films) as well as Pink Films of an adult nature and the more experimental and … Continue reading NIPPON NOIR: I AM WAITING (1957)
May is Asian Heritage Month or to be more exact, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. To celebrate I decided to collect links to some of the Asian films, filmmakers and actors that I’ve written about. I’m particularly fond of Japanese cinema so my writing reflects this but I’ve also written about Hong Kong and Bollywood films as well. This is a master list … Continue reading Celebrating Asian Film Artists
“In the movie business, a good ending must sometimes hold sway over the truth.” – Samuel Fuller, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking Before Samuel Fuller wrote and directed his own films he was a gutsy go-getting newspaperman. Fuller first worked at the New York Journal as a copyboy and eventually graduated to the role of crime reporter for the New York Evening Graphic, a … Continue reading STRANGER THAN FICTION: THE BARON OF ARIZONA (1949)
Senkichi Taniguchi’s Snow Trail aka Ginrei no hate (1947) begins with a bang. A montage of shadowy figures and fragmented images bombard viewers during the film’s opening credits while guns fire, alarms ring, windows break, trains whistle and sirens scream. We soon discover that three desperate men (Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Yoshio Kosugi) have just robbed a bank and in a bold attempt to dodge authorities, … Continue reading NIPPON NOIR: SNOW TRAIL (1947)
“Tokyo… After three long years. It makes my head spin. Just look at it. Why so many people crammed into tiny cage-like boxes? People… Such strange animals. What keeps them all going? They look like they’re half dead. Making a frantic pretense of being alive. What was so wrong about killing one of these stupid animals? I served three years… This is my territory… … Continue reading Plucking the Petals of Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower (1964)
In case you haven’t noticed, the Turner Classic Movie’s Morlocks blog has been renamed Streamline and is currently part of the new TCM & Criterion film streaming service at FilmStruck.com What is FilmStruck? Here’s an excerpt from a Time Warner press release: “Developed and managed by Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in collaboration with the Criterion Collection, FilmStruck will feature the largest streaming library of contemporary … Continue reading Now at FilmStruck – Streamline
For my fourth installment of Spy Games I decided to highlight the funny Italian spy spoof MATCHLESS (1967) directed by Alberto Lattuada. Criterion’s released a couple of Lattuada’s films including MAFIOSO (1962) and VARIETY LIGHTS (1950), which he co-directed with Fredrico Fellini. But I hadn’t seen any of Lattuada’s other films until I came across his two silly & stylish spy spoofs currently streaming on Netflix… Continue reading Spy Games: MATCHLESS (1967)
Images from Seijun Suzuki’s Everything Goes Wrong (1960) Last week I shared some of my thoughts about Seijun Suzuki’s Everything Goes Wrong (1960) over at the Movie Morlocks. This excellent neo-noir is one of Suzuki’s early films that isn’t available on DVD in the US yet but you can currently watch it on Hulu.com if you’re a member. Criterion has made an exclusive deal with Hulu … Continue reading EVERYTHING GOES WRONG (1960)
I recently signed up for a temporary “Plus” account with Hulu.com so I could sample some of the hard-to-see Japanese films Criterion has made available there. According to Criterion their partnership with Hulu “gives viewers a chance to explore our library, sample films they might want to buy, discover films they never knew they would want, and see films so rare that they would never see the … Continue reading SEIJUN SUZUKI’S EVERYTHING GOES WRONG (1960)
Images from Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle (1958) I recently caught up with Jacques Tati’s delightful French comedy Mon Oncle (aka My Uncle; 1958). I had previously only seen one Tati film, Les Vacances de M. Hulot (aka Mr. Hulot’s Holiday; 1953) and frankly it didn’t engage me as much as I wished it had so I put off watching other Tati films, but that was … Continue reading Monsieur Hulot vs. The Modern World
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