(Sword Of Desperation) A Samurai Saga - Richard

When you think of Japanese film, one of the 2 immediate things that come to mind is the genre of the Samurai Film (the other being Anime). It is no surprise then that one of the most popular sesisons of JFF14 has been the Samurai piece "Sword of Desperation". Richard Gray from DVD Bits takes a look at why this genre fascinates us all.

"The history of Japanese cinema has long been defined into a number of key genres that reflect the history of Japan itself. Arguably the most famous of these is the jidai-geki, or period dramas, and consist of films largely set in the Edo Period of Japan (1603 – 1868), with samurai cinema such as Rashomon, Yojimbo and Ran being an obvious sub-genre of this. Along with gendai-geki (contemporary dramas) and shomin-geki (realist films such as the works of Yasujiro Ozu). This latest film from director Hideyuki Hirayama manages to draw on several layers of this amazing tradition.

As the film opens, swordsman Kanemi Sanzaemon (Etsushi Toyokawa, 20th Century Boys) stabs and kills the Lady Renko (Megumi Seki), mistress to the Lord Tabu Ukyou (Jun Murakami, All to the Sea). This crime is normally punishable by beheading, yet Sanzaemon is spared. Instead, he is imprisoned in isolation for a year, during which time we learn of the corruption of Renko, and the growing rift that is forming between the Lord and his cousin Hayatonosho Obiya (Koji Kikkawa). When Sanzaemon is released and promoted to chief attendant, things really start to get complicated.

Many commentators have made a big deal of the similarities between this and the films of Yasujiro Ozu (Late Spring). At first glance, I wondered where this comparison could have come from. This is, after all, a film about a brutal murder and an elaborate plot of political intrigue. On closer inspection, the film is only about those things on the surface, and is principally concerned with the spaces in between. There are long scenes where ostensibly nothing happens, but there is always a brooding tension just boiling underneath the surface.

Toyokawa epitomises this understated character type, having recently come off the slightly more over-the-top version of the honourable samurai in 20th Century Boys as the “Shogun”. When the tension finally breaks, it is explosive. The film concludes, as it began, with a violent act. However, the final moments of the film are so blood-soaked it is almost as if the very emotional core of the film itself has finally been let loose and embodied in a very skilled and slightly miffed samurai.

Possibly the pinnacle of all samurai storytelling, simply because it draws on all of the influences of Japanese cinema. Sword of Desperation is simultaneously an impeccable samurai/period film and a quiet shomin-geki film, with the castle serving as a de facto for the family home that characterised Ozu’s films. Even nature is used as an oppressive force, heightening the tension inherent to the situation.

Easily one of my Top 5 films from the 14th Japanese Film Festival, Sword of Desperation is a slow-burning drama-cum-samurai film that should be seen as a classic piece of cinema for generations to come." by Richard Gray, DVD Bits.

Richard lists the film as one of his top 5 films of JFF14. What were yours? Did you have a top 3? top 7? or did just 1 film stick out for you as being top of the bunch? Send us an email at assistantcoordinator@jpf.org.au or post a commment below as we are interested in finding out what films captivated our audiences. Look forward to hearing everyones responses!

(Box!) A Tale Of Two Friends - Richard

Hello JFFers! The festival has just a few days remaining in Melbourne before moving on down to Hobart, so don't miss out on the chance to see some great films! Today we take a look at the very popular "Box!", from the director of "Detroit Metal City". We are running a special Buy 1 Get 1 Free deal for "Box!", so we hope you take advantage of it! And don't forget to send in your festival reports for the chance to be featured on the blog!

"Sport films tend to follow a fairly standard pattern, and are always good for a bit heart-string pulling in the audience. We’ve already had one sports film this year at the Japanese Film Festival in Feel the Wind, two if you count the competition performance calligraphy of Shodo Girls, both of which featured the underdog battling against the bigger competitors for the ultimate prize. Boxing films have always been at the heart of this genre, possibly due to the protagonist having to literally fight his or her way to the top. Going back to at least 1976′s Rocky and the operatic heights of Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull,  it seems that strapping on the gloves and stepping into the ring is Oscar gold, with the more recent Million Dollar Baby earning four Academy Awards including Best Picture.

Box! distinguishable from Richard E. Kelly’s similarly titled The Box by the handy ‘!’ at the end of the title, follows this grand tradition with the tale of two friends. When high-school student Yuki (Kengo Kora, Solanin) is rescued from some street toughs on a train by Kabu (Hayato Ichihara, Rookies), they realise that they were childhood friends prior to Yuki moving away. Reunited, Kabu convinces Yuki to join the high school boxing club, and eventually compete in regional tournaments. The most feared boxer in their weight division is Inamura (professional boxer Suwa Masashi), and it is only a matter of time before one (or both) of them must face him.

Box! follows a fairly predictable path, with a fairly set path towards the final confrontation between newcomer Yuki and his foe Inamura. By the time they meet, it isn’t so much about winning for Rocky…erm… Yuki, it is about going the distance. So the path they follow is a predictable one, but the real appeal of any sports film are the characters and their ability to illicit emotion from the audience.

Kengo Kora plays completely against his terrific drifter role in Solanin, where he spent most of his energy simply existing. Here he is single-mindedly driven, although is character is similarly singular in his motivations. This isn’t really surprising when your primary foe is non-actor Masashi, whose own performance is restricted to a series of snarls and menacing (and occasionally homoerotic) stares in the direction of our two leads. Only Ichihara, as the all-brawns-no-brains Kabu, is given a bit of depth to play with, especially during his own downslide and the unresolved relationship with the terminally ill Satoko (Mitsuki Tanimura, Summer Wars).

One can be fairly certain of what they are getting when they step into the ring with Box! While this will undoubtedly garner some interest from fans of Toshio Lee and his previous cult hit Detroit Metal City, it merely remains another crowd-pleasing trip of one man going the distance." - Richard Gray, DVD Bits.

Cheers to Richard for the review. You can see his recap on the entire Sydney JFF14 on The Reel Bits, including what his favourite films of the festival where! He managed to catch 18 of the 22 films at the festival, so their is a great range of reviews and thoughts on the festival line-up.

See you at the festival!

(Feel The Wind) Catch A Fan Favourite - Richard

The entries just keep getting better here on the JFF blog, with a great piece from Richard Gray today on "Feel the Wind". The film has been winning awards for both the first time director and the great story, and is being touted as the Japanese "Chariots of Fire". It is a fun piece, and for that reason it will screen in 5 regions around Australia, second only to "About Her Brother" which featured across all 6 territories. Read why below!

"The Hakone Ekiden is one of the biggest university athletic events in Japan. Run every year on January 2 and 3, the two-day relay marathon follows a course of almost 220 kilometres between Tokyo and Hakone and is a matter of massive prestige for the universities involved. Seasoned writer Sumio Omori, who became the youngest winner of the Kuniko Mukoda Award for screenwriting, uses this difficult course to make his directorial debut with Feel the Wind, a fictionalised account of a struggling team to overcome great odds. Winner of Best New Director at the 19th Japan Movie Critic Awards and the 31st Yokohama Film Festival, Feel the Wind is the kind of film engineered to make audiences feel good.

University student Haiji (Keisuke Koide, from the blockbuster "Rookies" and "Cyborg She") is a former runner whose career has slid due to injury. He had all but given up on the dream of running the Hakone Ekiden until he meets elite runner Kakeru (Kento Hayashi), who has left running due to a fight with his coach. Gathering eight other housemates, who have never run before, they form the necessary team of 10 athletes to fulfil Haiji’s dream of qualifying for the ekiden (marathon relay). Most of them are not up to the challenge, but the rag-tag team of roommates are determined to help Haiji fulfil his seemingly impossible dream.

Sports movies are always popular with crowds, and there is something about marathon running that seems to particularly appeal to the masochist is all of us. From at least "Chariots of Fire" onwards, which was admittedly about sprinting taken to balletic heights, track athletics have been taken as a convenient outlet for personal pain and anguish. Everybody on the team has something to work through, from Haiji’s injury to the manga-obsessed Prince (Yuichi Nakamura) and his lack of self-worth, and by the end of Feel the Wind, we get the impression that their accomplishments in the race have also worked through some of those “issues” as well. As the distributor Shochiku succinctly puts its “Through the training and the experience, each member finds their inner strength and the joy of feeling the wind”. Wind joy, that’s what it’s all about.

Feel the Wind misses a few steps during the middle act, which drags on a little too long, and by the end of the marathon itself audiences may feel like they have run the entire distance. Perhaps this is a side-effect of the bookish origins, as the film is an adaptation of Shion Miura’s novel that centres on the race. One would imagine we get much more personal insight into the personal pain of the competitors in the novel, although this highly emotional film borders on the melodramatic at times. However, Feel the Wind has that "Rocky" spirit, without Sylvester Stallone’s endless monologues to nobody in particular.

It’s appeal is indicated by Feel the Wind‘s Top 10 rankings in Japanese Film of 2009 lists in both the Kinema Junpo  and Yokohama Film Festival. Indeed, the latter puts it in such fine company as the brilliant "Love Exposure", Japanese Film Festival stable-mates "Dear Doctor" and "Villon's Wife", and one of my personal favourite films of the year, "Summer Wars". On the Brisbane leg of the 14th Japanese Film Festival, this was voted an audience favourite. This will no doubt connect with audiences, but just be prepared to watch a lot of running." by Richard Gray, DVD Bits.

Feel the Wind screens on Thursday, and is one of the few films in the festival that the whole family can come along to. It is rated PG so feel free to bring the little ones along for a trip to Japan, well at least for a couple of hours!

See you at the festival!

(Kyoto Story) The Renaissance Of Film - Richard

It's official, the JFF Blog is a big hit! With over 1,000 views in just under a month, we are glad to provide some exciting content for you all to read over. Thank you for your passion of all things Japanese! Today we have our first entry from Richard Gray, editor of DVD Bits, who takes a look at the Tsutomu Abe & Yoji Yamada directed "Kyoto Story".

Kyoto Story will screen as part of our Special Double Screening session that takes place on Tuesday November 23rd at Event Cinemas on George St. This will include the feature film, plus an award winning short film "Wish You Were Here" and Panel Discussion with Tsutomu Abe (Happy Family Plan), Tadao Sato (Japan's leading film critic) and Shigeki Chiba (Vice Principal of JAMI).

A note to film students and lecturers, FREE tickets to this session are still available, with details about how you can get them here, thanks to Metro Screen.



"Uzumasa Daiei was one of the most famous shopping arcades in Kyoto, housing the now defunct Daiei Studios, producers of such films as Rashomon with Akira Kurosawa and the monster-mashes of Gamera. Now it forms the focal point of an experiment, combining the efforts of some up and coming filmmakers with some veterans in the field. Working with Ritsumeikan University's College of Image Arts and Sciences and Shochiku Co., Ltd., one of the worlds oldest film studios,  directors Yoji Yamada (About Her Brother, the opening night film of this year's Japanese Film Festival) and  his protege Tsutomu Abe (Happy Family Plan, 13th JFF) have guided this simple love story into cinemas across the world.

Using a combination of real conversations with local residents and a screenplay by Yoji Yamada ("Love and Honour" - 12th JFF), Kyoto Story weaves a beautifully simplistic tale of love in a small town. Kyoko (Hana Ebise) is a librarian (yay!) who is fairly settled with the idea that she will live in her small town with her laundromat owning parents until her dying days. However, she soon finds that her affections are torn between boyfriend and aspiring stand-up comedian (USA (EXILE)) and a bumbling visiting academic from Tokyo (Sotaro Tanaka - "About Her Brother") who has fallen head over heels in love with Kyoko. She must decide which path she will follow, and where her heart lies.

The title Kyoto Story naturally brings to mind the work of Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story). In many of his films, Ozu explored the disintegration of traditional family life in post-war Japan. However, in the wake of the economic downturn of the 1990s, many Japanese filmmakers (including Tsutomu Abe) returned to reflect upon the importance of the family unit and the comforting joys it brings (as he so aptly did in Happy Family Plan).

So too is the case with Kyoto Story, a film that gently takes us through the lives of two families and reminds us all that there is no place like home. Kyoko's decision about deciding whether to leave the flock is reminiscent of Ozu's "Late Spring", where everybody seemed to have an idea of what was best for its lead character Noriko. Kyoko's ultimate decision shows that the men around her are far more dependent on her than she will ever be on them.

There is little about Kyoto Story that jumps out and screams at you of its brilliance, but it really isn't a jumpy-out-screamy kind of film. It is a sweet story that is as much a nostalgic love-letter to a bygone era as it is about the love triangle at the heart of the film. It is a rare thing that a film captures the slow vibe of a place yet simultaneously manages to be entertaining and charming all in one neat bundle. Kyoto Story is that bundle, a joyous one at that.

Kyoto Story is screening at the 14th Annual Japanese Film Festival with Eriko Onishi's "Wish You Were Here". Check out the website for further details." - Richard Gray, DVD Bits

Thanks again to Richard for that piece on the interesting production that was Kyoto Story. Does anybody else know of Student / Industry crewed films? Matt Newton's "Three Blind Mice" had a large contingent of Sydney Film School students amongst its crew, and Participate Film Academy has produced the likes of "Sweet Marshall", but it seems to be a very rare thing.

It must have been a wonderful opportunity for the students to work with the likes of Abe and Yamada, make sure you ask Abe-san about it during the Panel Discussion!

See you at the festival!