7th Heaven

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  • 7th Heaven

12/29/23 (Fri)

Frank Borzage’s 1927 film, based on a play that itself ran for nearly two years on Broadway, was apparently a massive hit in its day. It won the first Academy Awards for Best Direction and Actress (it lost Best Film to Wings), spawned several remakes over the decades (including a flop musical), and turned the pairing of Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell into a sensation that carried over for another 11 films. Sawato Midori, the benshi narrator who voiced all the characters live for today’s show, noted that Ozu featured a poster of this film in one of his early works, so it must have been popular in Japan as well. A benshi would have presented the movie in this way back in its day (further explained here), so the event was very much a throwback to the silent era. Sawato performed to the accompaniment of a five-piece band.

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The Song Lantern (歌行燈)

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  • 歌行燈 (The Song Lantern)

11/26/23 (Sun)

A 1943 film by Naruse based on a novel by early 20th-century author/playwright Izumi Kyoka (which has the much more evocative English title A Song by Lantern Light). Izumi’s fantasy contents wouldn’t seem an ideal subject for the more grounded Naruse, but maybe the apolitical subject matter was a way for the director to get around wartime restrictions and censorship. The film opens ominously with an exultation for the “100 million to carry the burden for bereaved households” (i.e., homes whose sons have died in battle), but the story thereafter is completely war-free. The Noh-based story has similarities with Mizoguchi’s Kabuki-based Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), and while it does not reach those heights, it has its moments. Hanayagi Shotaro repeats his lead performance from the stage version, where it became one of his signature roles.

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Battle Royale (バトル・ロワイアル )

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  • バトル・ロワイアル (Battle Royale)

11/19/23 (Sun)

Fukasaku Kinji’s 2000 cult classic about kidnapped high schoolers with a mission to kill is like a manga on speed. Fukasaku is best known for Battles Without Honor and Humanity, where the violence is grounded in reality of a sort. He abandons any semblance of reality here to give us a head-spinning series of murders, suicides and humiliations as the plot itself – the violence is the film’s entire reason for being.

That said, he manages to create unique and sympathetic characters who, despite the ridiculous plot, largely feel real within the world they’re given. Continue reading →

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding

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  • Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (live streaming)

11/18/23 (Sat)

This highly praised show was being live streamed in the final week of its Broadway run. The League of Live Stream Theater, which was providing the broadcast, made everything super easy. When I discovered that I had accidentally bought tickets for the wrong performance, they instantly cleared it up for me, and when a friend who I had gifted a ticket couldn’t get online 30 seconds before the show, they immediately sent him a new e-mail that allowed him to catch the show from the beginning. Three cheers for them. The show has drawn crowds in New York but at a notably low average ticket price, suggesting that they’re attracting different audiences than usual; my friend felt from the laughter that many viewers must have been black since they recognized small points that others wouldn’t understand (as he proved to me). If so, that’s a very good thing for Broadway. Let’s hope that’s emulated in other shows.

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Billie

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  • Billie

11/13/23 (Mon)

A 2019 documentary about Billie Holiday by James Erskine based on extensive interviews conducted by an obsessed fan in the 1970s for a planned biography. The book was never completed due to the author’s untimely death, which was ruled a suicide but is considered suspicious (for one thing, who puts on a pre-bed face mask before jumping out a window?) given the many shady characters she was researching in connection with the drug-addicted singer. The tapes, which sat for years before the director rediscovered them, cover not only musical luminaries like Count Basie (who the film hints had an affair with the researcher), Sylvia Syms and Charles Mingus but peripheral figures like Holiday’s psychiatrist (who called her a “psychopath”), pimp (who bragged about beating her) and her arresting officer.

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Shadow of Fire (火影)

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  • 火影 (Shadow of Fire)

11/9/23 (Thurs)

The latest overwrought work by provocateur Tsukamoto Shinya. The Foreign Correspondents Club was showing a subtitled version for the overseas press, and free sounded like the right price. That proved optimistic. There was an after-talk by the director (who produces his own films – no one else will), but we opted for dinner instead.

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Good (National Theatre Live)

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  • Good (National Theatre Live)

10/22/23 (Sun)

I was jet lagged when I saw this superb production of C.P. Taylor’s 1981 classic in London almost precisely one year earlier, so I wasn’t going to miss the chance to catch the NT Live recording. As Holocaust dramas are not necessarily a big thing in Japan, I figured tickets would be easy to come by and booked that morning, only to discover that the theater was nearly sold out; I was lucky to get two adjoining seats. I presume that’s due to the presence of David Tennant  in the lead role, though I’m not sure how they know him here.

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My Darling Clementine

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  • My Darling Clementine

10/7/23 (Sat)

John Ford’s 1946 version of the OK Corral gunfight shows a civilization in the throes of creation, a community coming together in a spartan desert territory as it sets the laws and values that it wants to live by. Much the same process was explored in the musical Oklahoma! just three years earlier.

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Unfaithfully Yours

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  • Unfaithfully Yours

10/5/23 (Thurs)

Unfunnily Yours is more like it. Preston Sturges’ 1948 film was apparently his last critical success after a string of flops, though it was a commercial failure at the time. That was partly due to the untimely suicide of Rex Harrison’s real-life suffering mistress, which creepily paralleled one of the plot points, and the studio didn’t help things by shifting strategy and advertising the black comedy as a thriller. It’s been reevaluated since and appears on many lists of best-ever comedies; it’s one of Tarantino’s 11 favorite films. Not on mine.

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Purlie Victorious (Gone Are the Days!)

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  • Purlie Victorious (Gone Are the Days!)

9/29/23 (Fri)

This 1963 film, which I never knew existed, popped up when I was checking out articles about the present Broadway revival. It’s a film of the Broadway original from two years earlier with many of the members of the original cast, including writer Ossie Davis and his wife Ruby Dee. It’s nominally about a black preacher in Georgia who recruits a random woman from Dothan to impersonate his late cousin in order to win an inheritance, figuring the white guy in control of the funds won’t be able to tell the women apart. Naturally events soon spin out of control. But as with any good satire, it’s about a lot more than its story.

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