Tag: drunk

KIBA:
The Fangs Of Fiction
(Damashie
No Kiba,
騙し絵の牙)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 February 2022
No Comments on KIBA:
The Fangs Of Fiction
(Damashie
No Kiba,
騙し絵の牙)

Director – Daihachi Yoshida – 2020 – Japan – 112m

*****

Forward thinkers take on the conservative old guard within a Japanese publishing corporation – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2022 between Friday, 4th February and Thursday, 31st March

Megumi Takano (Mayu Matsuoka from One Night, Kazuya Shirashi, 2019; Shoplifters, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2018; A Silent Voice, Naoko Yamada, 2016; Lesson Of Evil, Takashi Miike, 2012; Love Exposure, Sion Sono, 2008), daughter of local bookstore owner Takano (Shinya Tsukamoto), is as dedicated an editor as you’ll find anywhere in publishing. Alas, she lacks the political savvy needed to survive in its ruthless, corporate, dog-eat-dog world. When the owner of the publishing company Kunpu which employs her dies unexpectedly, she finds herself caught up in the machinations of a large organisation where some employees resist change while others plan to completely reinvent the business model to ensure the company’s survival, possibly at the expense of some of its employees.

Thus it is that new CEO Tamatsu (Koichi Sato from Fukushima 50, Setsuro Wakamatsu, 2020; Sukiaki Western Django, Takashi Miike, 2007; Where The Last Sword Is Drawn, Yojiro Takita, 2002) comes in with plans to restructure the company.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Flag Day

Director – Sean Penn – 2021 – US – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

A woman struggles to come to terms with her father who is a criminal and a pathological liar – out in cinemas on Friday, January 28th

This at once follows a linear narrative trajectory and doesn’t. On the one level, Jennifer grows into a woman, argues with her parents (with good reason) and attempts to find herself and make her way in the world. On the other level, images and sequences move effortlessly between Jennifer aged six (Addison Tymec), Jennifer as a young teenager (Jadyn Rylee) and the adult Jennifer (Dylan Penn). Sometimes it feels like the adult Jennifer having a flashback, sometimes it seems like we’re one of her younger selves, all very vivid and real. Sometimes it’s memory, sometimes it’s experience.

It’s based on the real life memoir of Jennifer Vogel, who apparently wrote the book trying to sort out her feelings about her unorthodox upbringing.

It starts and (more or less) ends with a line of cop cars pursuing suspect John Vogel (Sean Penn) wanted for counterfeiting. As the images roll over us, there’s a lot of adult Jennifer voice over in the first ten or so minutes (and elsewhere at odd moments in the film).… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Death,
Desire
And Rat Poison

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 29 October 2021
No Comments on Death,
Desire
And Rat Poison

An introduction to the films of Korea’s late and, lamentably, largely unknown director Kim Ki‑young – originally published in Manga Max, Number 8, July 1999. Reprinted here to coincide with London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF)’s screening of Woman Of Fire (1971) on Friday, October 29th. If you missed it, the restoration screens again on Friday, November 5th as part of a strand dedicated to actress Youn Yuh-jung at London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) which runs from Thursday, November 4th to Friday, November 19th

It seems unthinkable that the world could have failed to recognise a director whose 2.35:1 widescreen visuals compare favourably with Seijun Suzuki and John Boorman and whose marriage of technique with subject matter is as terrifying as anything by Dario Argento or Alfred Hitchcock. Nevertheless, when 1997’s Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) ran a retrospective season of films by Kim Ki-young (the first of a proposed series of annual events showcasing Korean directors) it quickly became clear to astonished audiences that the unthinkable had indeed happened. Sadly, on February 4th 1998 – within six months of his new-found international acclaim – Kim and his wife died in a fire in Korean capital Seoul.… Read the rest

Tags adultery, arthouse, butterfly, clocks, corpse, crime, crush, cupboard, death, debt, deception, dental school, desire, double suicide, drunk, factory girl, female shamen, fire, fridge, fugitive, grotesque, horror, housemaid, immoral, insect, insect woman, Kim Ki‑young, kitchen cupboard, Korean War, LEAFF, LEAFF 2021, LKFF, LKFF 2021, London East Asia Film Festival, London East Asia Film Festival 2021, London Korean Film Festival, London Korean Film Festival 2021, love triangle, married, married (with two children), moral, murder, necrophilia, no self-control, park bench, penis, piano teacher, pipe, poison, prison officer, prisoner, prostitute, Pusan, rape, rat poison, refuse to die, sea, seduction, self-control, sewing machine, sex, sex and death, sexual appetite, shamen, skeleton, stiffen, train carriage, upright, vasectomy, Youn Yuh-jung

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Sound Of Nomad:
Koryo Arirang

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 August 2021
No Comments on Sound Of Nomad:
Koryo Arirang

Director – Kim So-young (as Kim Jeong) – 2017 – South Korea – 87m

****

How an indigenous theatre company kept the culture of the Koryo people alive after they were deported by the Soviet authorities from Far East Russia to Kazakhstan in 1937 – in the documentary season: Korean Film Nights: In Transit presented by LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival

The Beijing Treaty (of 1860 although the date isn’t mentioned) ceded to Russia the so-called Maritime Province – an area of land stretching down to Vladivostock. The territory bordered on the Northwestern tip of Choson (Joseon), today’s Korea, and Chosons stated migrating into the Maritime Province, calling themselves the Koryo people. In late 1937, the Soviet authorities decided that the Koryos could potentially be Japanese spies and deported them in boarded up trains to Ushtobei, Kazakhstan, Central Asia.

The journey took two days and many children died, their corpses thrown unceremoniously out of the train at night. After the journey, the deportees faced a harsh winter, the eventual death toll rising to 40 000.

This story has been documented in Korea, but little else about the Koryos has. The first Kazakhstan Koryo settlement in Ushtobei is today marked by a memorial.… Read the rest

Tags 1930s, 1937, actress, adoption, alcohol, alcohol dependency, alcoholic, alcoholism, Almaty, ankles, Arirang, Arirang Ensemble Of Koryo, audience, Beijing Treaty 1860, Central Asia, Choi Tatiana, Choson, Chun Hyang, corpses, COVID-19, cultural traditions, culture, death toll, deportation, drunk, farm workers, history, in transit, janggu, Joseon, Kazakhstan, Khazakhstan, Korea, Koryo, Koryo people, Koryo Theatre, Kyzylorda, Lee Hamdeok, life, LKFF, LKFF 2021, London Korean Film Festival, London Korean Film Festival 2021, loss, Maritime Province, memorial, mothers and daughters, orphan, pandemic, Park Maya, people’s actress, performance, plays, projection, rail, rice fields, Russia, shooting, singer, songs, South Korea, Soviet, Soviet Union, spies, suicide, Tashkent, tragedy, train, trilogy, Ushtobei, Uzbekistan, Vladivostock, walk, Winter, workers

Animation Features Movies Series Television

Black Cat Detective
(Heimao Jingzhang,
黑猫警长)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 25 February 2021
No Comments on Black Cat Detective
(Heimao Jingzhang,
黑猫警长)

Director – Dai Tielang – 2010 – China – Cert. N/C U – 76m

Parental Warning: Although this drawn animation has a (completely legitimate) recommended UK U certificate, it contains a lot of gun and knife violence and, in the subtitles, one swear word.

****

Black Cat Detective and his fellow police protect everyday citizens from nefarious criminal animals including a mouse mastermind – available to rent online in the UK & Ireland as part of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio Retro in the Chinese Cinema Season 2021 from Friday, February 12th to Wednesday, May 12th

A purple mole proudly shows the children sacks of supplies stocked in his granary for the coming Winter. Unfortunately, an evil criminal mastermind mouse (backed by music with a stinger cue ripped off the opening of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) has his eye on these stocks and breaks in with his gang who get drunk on red wine and oil before passing the sacks out of the granary window, which action alerts the mother mole whose attempt at stopping them is thwarted by their throwing enough sax onto her to pin her down.

The cops led by Black Cat Detective turn up to shoot at the mice, one of whom they hit, and arrest the mole children on the premises, quickly realising their mistake and releasing the latter.… Read the rest