6/25/20 (Thurs)
Lincoln Center’s wonderful 2014 retelling of Moss Hart’s classic autobiography. I had missed this show back in the day and, as a huge fan of the book, had this broadcast marked in my calendar as soon as I heard about it. Continue reading
5/14/20 (Thurs)
A 1955 film, also known as Hooray for Marriage, by Toyoda Shiro based on a novel set in Osaka in the late 1920s. The wayward son of a prominent shopkeeper has dumped his wife and child for a beautiful geisha from a poor family, prompting his father to disinherit him for sullying the family name. The geisha is hoping to be the man’s next bride. Silly her. Continue reading
4/15/20 (Wed)
I wasn’t particularly eager at first to see this 2001 film about a killer virus and ensuing global panic since we’re living it at the moment. But strong recommendations from friends and curiosity got the better of me. I wasn’t even aware of the film until the past few weeks, when it’s suddenly become a very hot property. One thing that attracted me was that unlike the typical horror film about zombies or aliens, a virus is very real, making the story all too credible – and, it turns out, prescient. The first (and still one of the few) horror films I saw that really terrified me was Jaws since, while I don’t believe in devils, I do believe in sharks. Still, Contagion-wise, it remained to be seen how close Hollywood was willing to stick to the plausible as opposed to the dramatic.
11/27/20 (Fri)
This 1965 work is one of Kurosawa’s most popular and acclaimed films, so I was looking forward to seeing it despite the off-putting three-hour running time.
The setting is a rural village in the mid-19th century towards the end of the Edo Era. A privileged medical student (Kayama Yuzo) expecting to serve as the shogun’s physician pays greetings at a poor public clinic in what he believes a formality, only to learn that he has in fact been assigned there. He detests his surroundings, complaining of the low life and stink (“the smell of the poor”, he is told), and imperiously refuses to wear the uniform or follow the rules. He is eventually won over by the clinic’s virtuous head doctor, known as Red Beard (Mifune Toshiro), who seeks to heal his patients’ souls as well as their bodies (shades of the earlier Drunken Angel). Moreover, his experience with a sickly young waif in the film’s second half brings him an understanding of the struggles of the kindly townspeople. He eventually receives his commission to the shogun, but turns the offer down in order to stay and help the underprivileged (probably a good thing since the already struggling shogunate was overthrown just a few years later).
A film full of clichés and melodrama. Continue reading
11/25/20 (Wed)
This fantastic 1961 samurai flick is set a century earlier in 1860, a turbulent period in Japan when the shogunate was tottering. Continue reading
11/22/20 (Sun)
One of Kurosawa’s first postwar flicks and his first film with Mifune Toshiro. It amounts to a rather heavy-handed look at yakuza culture as well as the race for riches that threatens to undermine the societal ties that bind. It featured exaggerated performances by both leads, who do lots of declaiming in place of normal speech. There is nothing natural in Shimura Takashi’s gruff language or treatment of others, while Mifune is charismatic but over-the-top in trying to be the tough gangster, putting on a show even in intimate moments. It’s hard to believe in either of these guys.
The story itself is interesting. Continue reading
11/20/20 (Fri)
This 1946 film, made under the watch of Occupation censors, was Kurosawa Akira’s first postwar work and one of his only films to focus on a woman. Continue reading
1/5/21 (Tues)
Nakahira Ko’s seminal 1956 film, which put the so-called taiyozoku (太陽族) or “sun tribe” on the map, is essentially Japan’s Look Back in Anger, a sensationalist look at disaffected youth in the postwar era that electrified the staid Japanese film world. It was adapted by Ishihara Shintaro from his novelette, which was bundled with two similar stories that were all made into films the same year (this being by far the best). The series includes the notorious Season of the Sun (太陽の季節), known infamously for the scene in which the main character slams his erect organ through the paper shoji screen. The title of that story led an interviewer to refer in an article to the Sun Tribe, a label that came to define a generation. (The story is alluded to in this film in the boat’s English name, Sun Season.) Ishihara makes a brief appearance in the film as one of a group of thugs, but more important was his insistence that the filmmakers cast his younger brother Yujiro, creating a legend.
11/14/20 (Sat), Tokyo
This 1963 Kurosawa work is really two films. In the first half, a well off industrialist (Mifune Toshiro) is battling for control of a major shoe company with other board members who want to cut corners on product quality for greater profit. The industrialist refuses to give in and throws his entire fortune into a secret deal that will give him a majority stake.
Just when that deal is set to go through, he receives a call that his son has been kidnapped. Frantically, he agrees to pay the enormous ransom with the money he had gathered despite knowing that this will ruin him financially. Then unexpectedly the son wanders in. It turns out that the kidnapper has mistakenly taken the chauffeur’s son instead. The industrialist is now faced with a moral dilemma: does he save the boy at devastating cost to himself, or save his own family from a bleak future? Continue reading
11/13/20 (Fri), Tokyo
Two veterans of the recently ended war, we learn, had their backpacks stolen when they were younger. One channeled his anger into a desire to help the world and has become a policeman. The other let his anger destroy him and has become a criminal. That thin line between “stray dog” and “mad dog” is the film’s theme in a nutshell.
Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) is nominally a detective story, a stylish film noir, but it digs much deeper. Continue reading
11/9/20 (Mon), YouTube
Thirty-year-old Carol Burnett had just performed in the stage adaptation of the Doris Day film musical in Kansas City when CBS scooped her up for a television version. This marked her television special debut, but with a Tony nomination (Once Upon a Mattress) and Emmy Award already under her belt at this point, she was completely at home. Plus she appeared here with most of the co-stars from the stage production, giving it a real theatrical feel.
The show itself is no great shakes, an obvious (and inferior) rip-off of Annie Get Your Gun with songs that, while fun, are pale imitations of infinitely better numbers like “Anything You Can Do” and Oklahoma‘s “(Everything’s Up to Date in) Kansas City”. The story would never pass muster today with the woman ultimately seeking a man; the stage version never seems to have made it to Broadway and is unlikely to do so without significant rewriting, though it’s popular in the UK. But it doesn’t aspire to profundity, just entertainment, and it easily passes that test with its Wild West setting, unflagging high spirits, and boisterous star cowgirl role.
11/8/20 (Sun), Tokyo
Today’s shows, appropriately enough, were all pieces set in autumn. Having seen shows by the Kanze, Kita and Hosho schools in recent weeks, I added Konparu to the list today, though without knowing it until after the fact. The theater had a dismal showing at maybe 10-20% capacity. I was furious to see that the singers wore masks hanging loosely over their faces. I really don’t want to be reminded of this virus while I’m watching a 15th-century play. If I had known that was the case, I wouldn’t have shown up. I’m definitely going to call beforehand and check that the next time. Continue reading
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