16th Japanese Film Fest!

スタート！

It certainly has been a long time between posts, something that will no doubt be replaced with a fast and furious barrage of writing thanks to the 16^th Japanese Film Festival, which started its Melbourne leg last Thursday. What would ordinarily mean lots of movie watching (a record 40+ films are being screened this year) will be augmented by the fact that I am volunteering, and as such, will be watching/sitting through a whole bunch of films I wouldn’t ordinarily go out of my way to see.

A festival as big as this is obviously aiming to reach the widest possible audience, so the program is focused mainly on box office successes and crowd pleasers from the past year. Unfortunately for me this means that horror movies and bizarre cult oddities have been more or less abandoned in favour of dramas, weepies and chick flicks.

What has me incredibly excited however is the Melbourne exclusive retrospective of 50s/60s director Yasuzo Masamura. Six of his films will be screening FOR FREE at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, and is going to be a great opportunity to check out some stuff that may otherwise be unavailable outside of Japan.

Opening night kicked off with a number of speeches and a pretty much sold out screening of Thermae Romae (テルマエ・ロマエ), which was actually much more enjoyable than I was expecting. Hiroshi Abe’s comedic performance had some brilliant moments in this far fetched, time travel tale of Ancient Rome/Modern Japan crossover. Throw in some hilarious use of opera, a self-aware sense of humour and the super cute Aya Ueto and you’ve got a filmic love letter to the power of the bathhouse- and a pretty spot on choice for an opening night screening.

I have my tickets booked for six or seven films, and have decided to only write about the ones I actually sit down and watch from start to finish, rather than simply sit in on as a volunteer, which will make it easier on me in that there will be less to write and will save me from voicing the many reasons why Until the Break of Dawn (ツナグ) was the biggest load of melodramatic claptrap I have seen in a long while.

So stay tuned for some thoughts and musings on a bunch of upcoming films; which at this stage are looking like they will range from comedy, drama, action, documentary and one film I’m hoping will deliver at least a little bit of some much needed horror!

And grab ticket info from http://www.japanesefilmfestival.net/

Kanazawa Film Festival 2012

If the world ends this year, it won't be because of the whole "2012: End of Days" thing. It will have nothing to do with the Mayan calendar, the Aztecs, Egyptians or any other ancient mystical prophecies. It will be because of the 2012 Kanazawa Film Festival.

The program was released about a month ago, and it is pretty unbelievable. Last year's festival theme was Filmageddon, and showcased a formidable line up of horror, crime and war oriented films from all over the world. This year the theme is Eros. A new website (it's pink, of course) has been launched, and the line up is absolutely overflowing with erotica, in what promises to be the most outrageous and unashamed celebration of trash ever publicly held.

The website has split the films into specific categories/genres including but certainly not limited to "Horror Queen" "Way of Love" and "Abnormal" with Paul Verhoeven's big budget sleaze-fest Showgirls set for the free outdoor opening night screening (how is this even allowed??). The centrepiece of the program is definitely the Christina Lindberg retrospective. A cult figure of 1970s sexploitation cinema, it looks as though every film she starred in from that era will be included. From the erotic films of her Swedish homeland to the incredibly nasty Thriller: A Cruel Picture and also her brief foray into Japanese sexploitation cinema with Sex & Fury. Lindberg's naked figure circa 1970 is everywhere, adorning the official program, website, tickets AND T-shirts! But if that wasn't enough, she will also be visiting the festival as a guest! Wow.

Add to this Sadao Nakajima, a director known for his Yakuza films from the 60s and 70s, who will also be visiting, and you have a festival that Tarantino would absolutely lose his lunch over. Facebook updates showing local business owners clutching the program and offering recommendations are making it clear that the town is in a buzz of anticipation for the festival, which is really quite fascinating, given the relatively small size of Kanazawa versus the explicit content of the films scheduled for screening. It runs for one week from September 14 to 21. Unfortunately I will not be attending due to uni (the workload and the not having money thing), but it looks like it's going to be an absolute riot.

check out the website at http://www.eiganokai.com/event/filmfes2012/index.html
and on facebook http://www.facebook.com/eiganokai 

MIFF Countdown

The Melbourne International Film Festival kicks off next week and there are a grand total of nine Japanese films (although some of which are co-productions). I will be endeavouring to see every single one, so stay tuned. Among the nine films showing are not one, not two, but THREE Takashi Miike films (seriously, that man is a one man film making factory) including his adaptation of the popular Nintendo DS game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney which looks like a lot of fun.

The film I’ve been hearing about for months now, largely due to the fact that it is already available on DVD in the UK, Sion Sono’s Himizu will also be coming to town, which will no doubt continue his string of dark and disturbing films, while Hirokazu Koreeda can be relied upon to provide the kind of heartfelt drama he is famous for with I Wish. Unfortunately, anime fans will have to make do with a lone animated entry A Letter to Momo, but there is always the ReelAnime Festival to look forward to later in the year. 

Good old fashioned swords and Samurai dramas will be supplied both by Miike’s remake of Hara-Kiri (In 3D, no less!) and veteran director Koji Wakamatsu’s 11/25: The Day Mishima Chose His Own Fate, coming direct from Cannes.

 

Check out the MIFF website for info and tickets (or get the incredibly handy app) and keep checking Japachickyburgers for new posts as I bring you the Japanese side of MIFF 2012.