Japanese Animation at the London International Animation Festival 2020

This year’s London International Animation Festival (LIAF 20) is online this year and there are a number of Japanese films on offer. Tickets break down like this:

A standard virtual tickets costs £6 while a festival pass (covering 24 screenings and talks) costs £45 waged/£35 student and unwaged.

Here are the films:

Gunbuster, Gekijouban HAYABUSA2 REBORN, Kimi wa Kanata, Perfect Education: etude, Grisaia: Phantom Trigger The Animation – Stargazer, Gamera: The Guardian of the Universe, Japanese Film Trailers

Happy weekend, everyone.

This is the third and final trailer post of the week. There was one on Friday and Saturday due to the number of films. Next week, there will be one trailer post.

What else was released this weekend?

Memory’s Technique, Shin Samejima Jiken, Shibuya Shadow, Issho de ichiban nagai kubu, Kakurenbo, She is Alone Japanese Film Trailers

Happy weekend, everyone.

This is the second part of the weekend trailer post following yesterday’s instalment which had six films listed. So that makes 12 out of 19. There will be another post tomorrow. Since I last wrote, I watched the Chinese film Devils on the Doorstep (2000) for the Heroic Purgatory podcast.

What else was released this weekend?

Underdog, Sora wa doko ni aru, Mogura, Songs of Triumph, Sasaki in My Mind, One in a Hundred Thousand Japanese Film Trailers

Happy weekend, everyone.

I hope you are all well.

Since my last trailer post, I have watched two b-movies Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell and Matango, and three Hong Kong crime thrillers – the Infernal Affairs trilogy. I posted reviews for The Mistress/Wild Geese and Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell. Also, the latest episode of the Heroic Purgatory podcast is up and it is about Bong Joon-ho’s sophomore feature Memories of Murder!

I hope you are all listening to interesting podcasts and watching interesting films.

What Japanese films are released this weekend? 19 films so I’m splitting the trailer post up into three parts. Thankfully, I’ve written about some of these which played at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell 吸血鬼ゴケミドロ (1968) Dir: Hajime Sato

Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell   

吸血鬼ゴケミドロ 「Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro」

Release Date: August 14th, 1968

Duration: 84 mins.

Director: Hajime Sato

Writer: Kyuzo Kobayashi, Susumu Takaku (Script),

Starring: Tereuo Yoshida (Sugisaka, the co-pilot), Tomomi Sato (Kazumi Asakura, the stewardess), Eizo Kitamura (Gozo Mano, the senator), Hideo Ko (Hirofumi Teraoka, the hijacker), Kathy Horan (Mrs. Neal), Yuko Kusunoki (Noriko Tokuyasu), Nobuo Kaneko (Tokuyasu). Kazuo Kato (Dr. Momotake, the psychiatrist), Masaya Takahashi (Toshiyuki Saga, the scientist)

IMDB

Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell is a pessimistic sci-fi horror where a group of survivors from an airplane crash encounter an extra-terrestrial blob that can turn humans into bloodsucking vampires.

Released in 1968, the same year as classic Edo-gothic horror Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindo), the disturbing drama The Profound Desire of the Gods (Nagisa Oshima), and social commetary Death By Hanging (Nagisa Oshima), while it won’t be remembered as anything ground-breaking like those titles, it has its B-movie charms that justify giving it a watch.

Wild Geese / The Mistress 雁 Shiro Toyoda (1953)

The Mistress (aka Wild Geese)     

雁 「Gan」

Running Time: 104 mins.

Release Date: September 15th, 1953

Director: Shiro Toyoda

Writer: Masashige Narusawa (Screenplay), Ogai Mori (Original Novel)

Starring: Hideko Takamine, Hiroshi Akutagawa, Choko Lida, Eijiro Tono, Jukichi Uno,

IMDB

Wild Geese a.k.a The Mistress is based on a novel by Ogai Mori (real name, Mori Rintaro, 1882–1916), an interesting figure in himself. Originally born to a family of doctors, he was expected to follow that path but, instead, found fame as a translator, novelist, and poet. He lived through the transition from the Meiji era to the Taisho period and, from what I have read on Wikipedia, his works are humanist dramas as is evident in this particular film that tells a quiet tragedy about a poor woman who dares to dream of escaping the confines of her lowly position through marriage but finds herself trapped by gender and class as is revealed when she falls in love.

Graffiti Graffiti, Tsuyogari Caponata, Macho Caponata, Wonderful Paradise, Yaunpe wo Sagase!, Listening to the Air, Nakamuraya Saketen no Kyoudai Japanese Film Trailers

Happy weekend!

I hope you are all well!

This is the second part of my weekly trailer post. Part one can be found here.

What else is released this weekend?

Tezuka’s Barbara, Food Luck, Runway, Me & My Brother’s Mistress, Any Crybabies Around?, Stand By Me Doraemon 2 Japanese Film Trailers

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all well.

This is part one of my weekend trailer post.

This week, I’ve posted reviews for the Lisa Takeba films Wandering Alien Detective Robin and The Horse Thieves. Roads of Time. I’ve split this trailer post into two, the first today and the second tomorrow to allow space for all of the films released. These are just Japanese ones but the Chinese film The Crossing gets a Japanese release.

What have I watched this week? The Departed, Umberto D, V/H/S 2, The House of Exorcism, Door III, The Revenge I: A Visit from Fate, To the Ends of the Earth.

What is released this weekend? A lot of films I have already written about for festivals this year!

Wandering Alien Detective Robin さすらいのエイリアン 私立探偵ロビン Dir: Lisa Takeba (2012)

Wandering Alien Detective Robin

さすらいのエイリアン 私立探偵ロビン「Sasurai no eirian shiritsu tantei Robin」

Release Date: June 16th, 2012

Duration: 20 mins.

Director: Lisa Takeba

Writer: Lisa Takeba (Script), 

Starring: Masanori Mimoto, Takuro Kodama, Lisa Geran, Kinuo Yamada, Arata Yamanaka, Takashi Nishina, Yaeko Kiyose, Yuya Ishikawa, Marc Walkow,

JFDB IMDB

Lisa Takeba is a multi-hyphenate talent who gleefully blends genres, utilises melodrama and has the sort of imaginative hands-on DIY special effects that can charm an audience enough to paper over how slight or loopy her stories are. This can best be appreciated in her feature films The Pinkie (2014) and Haruko’s Paranormal Laboratory (2015), both of which are zany romances with a science fiction spin. Her earliest available work, the short film Wandering Alien Detective Robin (2012), is a good indicator of what she is capable of.

The Horse Thieves. Roads of Time オルジャスの白い馬 Director: Yerlan Nurmukhambetov, Lisa Takeba (2019)

The Horse Thieves. Roads of Time   

オルジャスの白い馬「Oruhasu no Shiroi Uma」

Release Date: January 18th, 2020

Duration: 81 mins.

Director: Yerlan Nurmukhambetov, Lisa Takeba

Writer: Yerlan Nurmukhambetov (Screenplay),

Starring: Dulyga Akmolda, Madi Minaidarov, Mirai Moriyama, Samal Yeslyamova,

Website IMDB

 

The Horse Thieves. Roads of Time is a wholly original film that runs for a tight 81 minutes and utilises the mechanics of various genres to explore the impact of a murder on a family in a remote region of the world. The film, which opened the 2019 edition of the Busan International Film Festival, is an international co-production between Kazakhstan and Japan. It’s the collective vision of two directors: Yerlan Nurmukhambetov, who won the New Currents Award at the Busan International Film Festival 2015 for The Walnut Tree, and Lisa Takeba who is known for her quirky sci-fi tinged romcoms, The Pinkie (2014) and Haruko’s Paranormal Laboratory (2015). What is delivered is a picture that definitely deserves to be seen on the widest screen possible as it zeroes in on the tiny dramas of a group of characters clinging to life in an uncaring environment.