Passages

[soundchaser]

Julee Cruise, 65.

Oh no. Those two albums she made with Lynch and Badalamenti are wonderful.

[dwk]

Takashi Ishii

[colinr0380]

I'm afraid that I cannot see the article you linked to dwk but I can at least add some context on Ishii's career, at least as far as I am aware of it.

Takashi Ishii is probably best known in the West for his mid-90s yazkua series Gonin (with an all star cast including Takeshi Kitano, Naoto Takenaka and Jinpachi Nezu) and Gonin 2. I see that his last film from 2015 is a third entry in the series, Gonin Saga. His other crime series from the same period was the two films in the Black Angel series.

Probably his most available film in the UK though was his 2000 horror-drama film Freezer (aka Freeze Me) which Tartan Video released through their Asia Extreme line. This may actually be a bit closer to Ishii's usual territory than his yakuza dramas since this is a rape-revenge film about a woman who kills her attacker and sticks his body in her freezer to dispose of it piece by piece, but inevitably finds (like that video nasty Cannibal Man) that more and more people start calling around to her apartment trying to find out where their friend disappeared to and she has to take care of them as well! Eventually she is attracting attention for the multiple freezer cabinets she is filling her apartment to the brim with! It all builds to a quite haunting (but quite darkly amusing as well!) final shot.
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The reason why I say that this may be more familiar territory for Ishii is that he was originally a manga artist whose series about sexualised rape and the psychological traumatic fallout from that, called Angel Guts, became one of the most notorious sub-series within Nikkatsu's Roman Porno period. In all five films were produced from 1978-1988 (with a sixth entry made independently post-Nikkatsu in 1994). Each film is a standalone piece with a different set of characters and situation, although the main female character is always named Nami Tsuchiya and her various male love interests are all named Tetsuro Muraki. Although to call them 'love interests' rather stretches the term since they run the gamut from straightforward assaulters to overly protective and possibly Incestuous brothers (NSFW) to rival reporters, to just the pervert across the way spying on a schoolgirl doing something incredibly naughty involving an egg, a condom and a sharpened pencil instead of getting on with her homework!

After providing the source material and screenplays for the first four films (including the astonishing third film of the series Angel Guts: Nami, which goes into delirious Argento-horror style territory in the final act as the mercenary female reporter tracking down and using rape victims for her sensationalised articles in her tabloid magazine gets the tables turned on her in the bowels of a hospital when her latest interviewee/victim turns out to have been driven psychotic by her assault. This then ends in (spoiler)Nami having a complete breakdown and becoming the perfect subject of one of her articles by fantasising in a dream sequence of her uncaring colleagues in her office pelting her with abuse), Ishii got the chance to direct the fifth entry in the series in 1988, Angel Guts: Red Vertigo.

Red Vertigo is a really interestingly dark and cynical film in itself, as after being assaulted by a patient whilst working as a nurse at her hospital and then due to that deciding to go home early to her photographer boyfriend only to find him in bed with his latest model, Nami leaves her apartment in tears and has an already bad day compounded by being run down by Muraki! Muraki himself (in an early role for Naoto Takenaka) is on the run from loan sharks and angry bosses and having picked Nami up from the road and placed her in the passenger seat, does the only sensible thing one could do: falls in love with the unconscious woman and decides to take her to an abandoned Air Force base he knows (more on which later!) where these two people who feel rejected by the world start up an intensely sexual Realm of the Senses (or Night Porter)-style relationship until inevitably the outside situation has to intrude into their sealed off world to end it all.

Also in 1988 Ishii wrote the screenplay for Toshiharu Ikeda's utterly bonkers slasher film Evil Dead Trap (Ikeda had previously directed the fourth entry in the Angel Guts series, Red Porno. aka the one with the egg and pencil and the absolutely no homework getting done!), which although unconnected (though the main characters are named Nami and Muraki ) uses the same abandoned US Air Force base location for its action.
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So that mid-90s period of yakuza and action films more mainstream 'respectability' may be his highest profile period after spending the early 90s trying to continue the Nikkatsu Roman Porno film-style work but in the independent sector. With Freezer however there was a turn back to the darkly sexual material, and during the 2000s Ishii wrote the screenplay for and directed the first two films in Toei's 'reboot' Flower & Snake S&M-themed series (which had previously been a film in Nikkatsu's Roman Porno series in 1974), and appears to have continued to have made darkly sexual dramas up to the mid-2010s. I would love to see some of these at some point, such as 2007's wonderfully titled "The Brutal Hopelessness of Love" (maybe a follow up to Toshiharu Ikeda's 1993 "The Brutal Insanity of Love"?) which appears to go back to naming the main character Nami Tsuchiya again.
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In terms of availability, Ishii has fallen out of view a bit. The first two Gonin films were released on DVD in the early 2000s (the first film in particular was in the right place at the right time and appears to have benefited from the interest in Takeshi Kitano's work post-Sonatine breakthrough in the West and probably got picked up by distributors as another "Beat" Takeshi film even though Kitano is just in an acting role here) but are long out of print. Similarly the Tartan Asia Extreme mid 2000s edition of Freezer (which may be the best entry point for those new to his work) is getting rare too, although it looks as if there are still a few copies still remaining on Amazon.

I got to see the the Angel Guts films through the Artsmagic boxset released in the US in the mid-2000s (which has some great Jasper Sharp commentaries, which is where a lot of my above information on Ishii is coming from! Though there is a bit of dead air during the egg, pencil and homework left undone scene of Red Porno after Sharp says that he prefers not to speak over the scene and will let it speak for itself!). There were some standalone editions of the films released as well, but it appears that they are all long out of print, and Artsmagic as a company seemingly disappeared around the same time that Tartan did.

I have my fingers crossed that some of Ishii's early Nikkatsu Roman Porno films that he wrote will appear in the Impulse Pictures line of releases in the US (one actually already has, as Zoom Up: Beaver Book Girl was based on his manga. Which makes for a good companion piece to Angel Guts: Nami, in that it involves a mercenarily callous adult photographer getting much more than he bargained for with his latest assignment!), and I would like to hope that a company like Arrow might be able to do a Gonin boxset, or even a Flower & Snake reboot boxset at some point.

But for now there is nothing in the UK and in terms of the US (along with Zoom Up: Beaver Book Girl on DVD) the only currently available Ishii-related work is the Unearthed Films Blu-ray of Evil Dead Trap.

[dwk]

I posted the article (Yahoo Japan, I haven't seen any English language obits anywhere) from my phone so I just checked on my computer and it opens up for me.

I think I saw someone mention that Nikkatsu isn't interested in licensing the Angel Guts movies.

I am a little surprised that someone like Arrow hasn't released the two Gonin movies. Has Arrow licensed anything from Shochiku?

[colinr0380]

Ah, I see what happened. Apparently Yahoo! Japan is not available in the UK or the European Economic Area. I just checked and can open the page through a VPN According to the article he passed away on the 22nd May from cancer, had been fighting the illness for a number of years and had been hospitalised and discharged last summer because of it. There is also this amusing line, as provided through Google translate:

In 2004, "Flower and Snake," which was made into a movie starring Aya Sugimoto from Oniroku Dan's SM novel, was a big hit, causing a "Hana Snake phenomenon" such as four major weekly magazines developing gravure bag binding before its release.

I would not mind seeing the Angel Guts films get released again by Impulse (especially if they could port across all the extra features including the interviews with Ishii), although there are so many films from the 1971-1988 Roman Porno period that have yet to have received any release that it would maybe be better if other things get their chance. The reticence may not be for reasons of squeamishness about the subject matter since the Impulse Pictures series has released such notorious titles such as White Rose Campus (albeit not with its fuller title!) and the original 1974 version of Flower & Snake in recent months. They have also been releasing the just as notorious but lesser known in the "violent porno" sub-genre of the series Zoom Up/Zoom In series of films, so it has been interesting to compare and contrast those with the more unified in coming from Ishii's manga series Angel Guts films, as well as seeing that there were quite a lot of other films made throughout the period that were are just as boundary pushing as the Angel Guts series was (including the Naomi Tani S&M series and a number of films directed by Yasuharu Hasebe). I keep thinking that I should work up the nerve to pm Mr Sausage or cdnchris about maybe creating a thread for the Impulse series and going through them one by one now that they are fast approaching their fiftieth release.

The only real disappointment of that Artsmagic Angel Guts set was that the first film, High School Co-Ed is a 2.35:1 widescreen ratio film that gets cut down to 1.85:1 after the opening credits. Which is a shame because it has some beautifully composed shots (especially that confrontation scene in the alley which blocks and choreographs five characters in that tightly confined space masterfully) that would have been good to see in their correct ratio. Although if any film had to receive that treatment it was better it was that film and not Nami. It would also be great if a distributor could get the sixth entry in the series that was made independently outside of Nikkatsu, 1994's Angel Guts: Red Flash out at some point, which Ishii also directed and which was understandably not part of the Artsmagic set of the official Nikkatsu series (and there is arguably a seventh film in the series, also directed by Ishii, though that is more commonly known as Alone In The Night)

EDIT: Regarding pianocrash's comment just below about the optical censoring, it is worth noting that almost all Japanese films from the period feature optical censoring of genitalia (and often have the actors wearing crotch protection so there would be nothing to see underneath the optical censoring anyway) unless they were completely independently produced underground films. Even the 'adult' films and especially those produced by a big name like Nikkatsu. I have a suspicion that this is part of why the more extreme themes appear because upon reaching a certain level of explicitness and being unable to go further, that likely left it up to storylines and subject matter to push the boundaries instead.

That is why In The Realm of the Senses and its hardcore material was so transgressive (and probably could only have been made as a French co-production), despite the Abe Sada story having been told a number of times around the same period. The rules were only loosened up fairly late on, with Toshiharu Ikeda's 1997 film Kagi (or The Key, an adaptation of the Tanizaki novel) being the first Japanese film to be allowed to show uncensored pubic hair.

[pianocrash]

There's a 2017 "45th Anniversary HD Remastered" Angel Guts BD box available in Japan (amazon jp link), and looks like (based on a quick translation) to include Red Classroom, Nami, Red Porno, & Red Vertigo, the latter including "commentary w/ Takashi Ishii, Naoto Takenaka & Naoya Narita (former Nikkatsu planning producer)", along with "the original script" (the manga?). That particular listing is located in the "adults only" section on amazon japan, so there is still a chance it could include optical censoring, but you never know.

Also, Elephant Films released a 10 disc BD/DVD box in France (no English subs) in 2019, which paired 5 Roman Porno films (including Angel Guts: Red Porno) with 5 contemporary takes on the genre, as a reevaluation primer for that particular part of the world (great trailer!).

[hearthesilence]

American painter Duncan Hannah per social media. (He was close to quite a few punk/post-punk/New Wave artists.)

[Dylan]

American painter Duncan Hannah per social media. (He was close to quite a few punk/post-punk/New Wave artists.)

Duncan Hannah was 70. Cause of death was a heart attack. A tremendous loss. A wonderful artist with exquisite taste, and by all accounts a great person. He was also occasionally an actor, most notably appearing alongside Debbie Harry in Unmade Beds (1976). More recently, he wrote his memoir 20th Century Boy to tremendous acclaim.

Here's Hannah's list of Top 10 Criterion releases.

[mfunk9786]

Philip Baker Hall, at 90

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I always feel a little silly to lament the death of someone who lived a rich, long life full of incredible performances, but this one is truly sad. Even at 90, I sort of assumed he'd be kicking around for at least another decade. Truly one of the great actors of the 20th century. I still think the first time I sort of became conscious of him was as the library detective in Seinfeld. I think the easiest performances of his to pinpoint in being masterful were his three stellar roles in PT Anderson's first three films, but it was always nice to see things where he'd just pop in.

[MitchPerrywinkle]

Hall really was a tremendous talent and a welcome presence in nearly everything he was in, elevating even the most turgid of projects (I tried and failed to watch a ghastly indie movie where he had to care for a duck, and the only reason I stuck around for as long as I did was because he managed to inject some dignity into a sophomoric project). I think that his Sydney in Hard Eight is the more quietly complex performance, but for my money his turn as Jimmy Gator in Magnolia will remain my personal favorite performance of his in a PTA film. Hall's ability to inhabit his character with clear-sighted empathy goes a long way toward providing the film's sometimes pedantic exploration of morality some complexity, even as the third-act revelation casts his prior scenes in a new light as well as challenges our sympathies for his plight. He makes Jimmy Gator one of PTA's most recognizably human monsters, and every moment he's onscreen is a deeply affecting snapshot of the multi-faceted tragedy of a weak man's life coming to an ignominious end.

Has it ever been confirmed by Raphael Bob-Waksberg or any of the other writers for Bojack Horseman that Hall's character was a deliberate homage to the Anderson film? His casting hardly seems incidental in the former, and for a show that confronts the thorny question of forgiveness for trauma wreaked upon subsequent generations by their elders, I would be shocked if nobody from that creative team had seen Magnolia.

[colinr0380]

This news reminds me that I really need to get to Secret Honor at some point, with Philip Baker Hall playing Nixon.

Along with those great performances in Paul Thomas Anderson films, I particularly like his late 90s-early 2000s run of appearances in quite political films: The Insider, The Contender, Tim Robbins' film Cradle Will Rock, up until Dogville. Speaking of difficult moral situations and shades of grey suddenly becoming black and white issues, for good or ill, he gets one of the best scenes clarifying the disinterest of the world in the truth of a situation, more interested in covering up and causing as few ripples as possible to polite society based on assumed indiscretions, near to the end of The Talented Mr Ripley (major spoiler)

[beamish14]

This news reminds me that I really need to get to Secret Honor at some point, with Philip Baker Hall playing Nixon.

The film that really made me fall in love with Robert Altman, too. It’s perfection

[solaris72]

I'm holding space for him tonight by watching DUCK (2005), one of his rare starring roles, where he plays a widower who adopts an orphaned duck who is allergic to synthetic fibers. It's set in the dystopian (then-) future year of 2009. Most of the movie is just Philip Baker Hall talking to a duck.



Pixar's UP seems to owe a lot to this movie as regards its much-ballyhooed opening sequence. If you've ever wished SECRET HONOR had multiple locations and featured a duck, it's streaming free on tubi!

[MitchPerrywinkle]

That is exactly the movie I was referencing in my post. Could only watch twenty minutes of it before giving up. It's almost infuriating how much Hall remains a consummate professional while all of the other actors play their parts like they were community theater rejects who were told they needed to relearn how human beings are supposed to behave.

[Cinephile1]

1936-2022 | Renowned Israeli Writer A.B. Yehoshua Dies at 85.

[fdm]

Jazz trombonist Grachan Moncur III, on the 3rd.

[dwk]

Comic artist Tim Sale

[beamish14]

Everett Peck, creator of DUCKMAN and SQUIRREL BOY. The former is probably my single favorite animated series of the 1990’s; just a brilliant, incredibly incendiary work that is like nothing before or since. His commercial illustration work and comics are just wonderful. I remember seeing his art in magazines like Playboy and The New Yorker for years

[colinr0380]

Everett Peck, creator of DUCKMAN and SQUIRREL BOY. The former is probably my single favorite animated series of the 1990’s; just a brilliant, incredibly incendiary work that is like nothing before or since. His commercial illustration work and comics are just wonderful. I remember seeing his art in magazines like Playboy and The New Yorker for years

The Duckman series was great, though perhaps impossible to air in the current climate!

[JSC]

Mark Shields, long time political commentator on the PBS Newshour

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/18/media/ma ... index.html

[Aunt Peg]

Iconic Australia-British Actress/Producer Carol Raye, 99 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Raye

[Aunt Peg]

Co-creator of Hair James Rado, 90 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rado

[Pavel]

Football player Tony Siragusa. I associate him mostly with his very funny performance in 25th Hour

[MichaelB]

Guitarist Massimo Morante of Italian prog-rock band Goblin, who made unforgettable contributions to Deep Red, Suspiria, Dawn of the Dead and much else besides.