Tag: Tom Mes

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Features Live Action Movies Music

Blow the Night
(Yoru o Buttobas,
夜をぶっとばせ)

Director Chusei Sone – 1983 – Japan – Cert. 18 tbc – 108m

****

Two teenage girls: a high school dropout who falls in with gangs, and 24 hours in the life of a girl who knows a band – part of the Chusei Sone Double Feature on Blu-ray from Monday, July 27th.

NSFW

This starts out with a rock drummer playing a fill, freeze-framed almost immediately to the title of the film, then his band The Street Sliders – whose record company Epic / Sony put ¥10m into the film’s budget – launching into a blistering Japanese Punk / R&B number with the cheerful chorus “Masturbation! Masturbation!” The film travels quite some distance with a cut to disaffected schoolgirl Takada (Namie Takada playing a younger version of herself) being told by the principal that she just needs to turn up for school while the exams are on. “Well-behaved student, my ass!” says a suited teacher after the girl’s been dismissed. “What kind of student dyes her hair and her nails red?”

Well, Namie is the kind that gets in at home without keys in the afternoon by negotiating an open window, changes schools every couple of years, and lives with her sister, grandma.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Crazy Thunder Road
(Kuruizaki
Sanda Rodo,
狂い咲きサンダーロード)

Director – Sogo Ishii – 1980 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

Following on from Arrow’s superb BD of Sogo Ishii’s Burst City (1982) comes Third Window’s equally impressive BD release of its predecessor in the Ishii canon Crazy Thunder Road (1980) – on Blu-ray from Monday, February 21st 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK

This was Ishii’s Nihon University student graduation project, his first to be shot on 16mm rather than Super 8, which somehow got picked up for distribution by major Japanese Studio Toei which led to their giving him a budget for Burst City. Tom Mes, who as with Burst City supplies a commentary for the film, describes Crazy Thunder Road as “one of the Holy Grails of Japanese film releases if not the Holy Grail.”

When Toei presented Ishii with what seemed like astronomical funding for Burst City, it led him to overreach himself. In retrospect, he considers Burst City unfinished… [Read the full review at All The Anime]

Crazy Thunder Road was out on Blu-ray in the UK on Monday, February 21st, 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies Music

Burst City
(Bakuretsu Toshi
Burst City,
爆裂都市
BURST CITY)

Director – Sogo Ishii – 1982 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 115m

Film ****

Cultural significance *****

Arguably the lynchpin film that brought Japanese cinema back from the brink of extinction in the early 1980s and paved the way for much of what was to follow – on Blu-ray from Monday, November 20th 2020

Looked at today through Western eyes, the opening with its breakneck, speeded up race through (presumably) Tokyo cutting between nighttime and daytime POV shots, with motorbike noises, anticipates the more demented pixillated chase scenes of Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989), shots of bikers recall the anti-establishment feel of Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) and patterns caused by moving lights burning into film emulsion recall Norman McClaren and Len Lye’s early animation experiments drawing and painting direct onto film. Then it seems to turn into Mad Max (George Miller, 1979) by way of a gangster film elements (two men in a car wearing a suit and a leather jacket respectively) who avoid a near collision with two punks on a motorcycle and sidecar.

How many of these precedents Ishii had in mind (or even had seen) when he made this is impossible to say.… Read the rest