The Assassin

I got a chance to catch Hou Hsiao Hsien's latest film, The Assassin, this past weekend. Visually stunning and a challenge to follow, I enjoyed it a lot and feel like it will really increase in enjoyment on future viewings. Thankfully it already has a US blu-ray release in the works, so I went have to sneak back to the theatre before Friday. Well Go USA I'd releasing it, and hopefully they will find some special features to include. I'll even take some Cannes festival panels/interviews.

Netflix Vacation

I'm one of the few people in the world who has almost no experience with Netflix. Since I have a collection of over 1500 films on blu-ray alone, i don't usually feel the need to spend a monthly fee to have access to more films. It's hard enough to find time to watch the ones i own. I'm also not a huge fan of streaming. I like to own a physical copy of something. Some of the physical copies of films in my collection are gorgeous works if art, even before you put the disc in the player. I also don't want my film collection to change based on the whims of a company and it's licensing rights. Not to mention if i was going to go down the streaming road, I'd be a Hulu guy, since they have over 800 films streaming from The Criterion Collection.

So I'm not a Netflix guy.

But I'm on vacation, and our Air B&B on the lake here in Ithaca doesn't have cable, but *does* have usable Netflix. I'm still not a fan, especially of it's choices or search functionality. Actually maybe it's choices are excellent, but i just can't tell because i can't find any of the good stuff. We did find a few things to watch however.

First up was the documentary The Search For General Tso. We spend most of our vacations seeking out good food, so it makes sense that when it came time to watch a documentary, it was one about food. The Search For General Tso is just what it sounds like, a quest to find out the roots of America's most popular Chinese Restaurant menu item. A fun journey if you like food and ever wondered if General Tso was a real person, and if so, how much did he like chicken.

Next up was Hector and The Search For Happiness, the film adaptation of the book above. It's a generally feel good movie about a psychiatrist's journey to try and find out what makes people (and himself) happy. I enjoyed it, and was glad that it was a R-rated film. It would have felt a little too hokey and feel good for my tastes without the slight edge the rating provided. It also stars Simon Pegg, who's a bit of a guilty pleasure actor for me.

I still won't be getting Netflix anytime soon, even if it *is* currently offering Hirokazu Koreeda's Nobody Knows to stream.

One Last TIFF 40

I finished off my last day at TIFF on Thursday with a double feature. I originally had a ticket for a film today (Naomi Kawase's An), but since we leave for vacation today i traded in that ticket for another film on Thursday. The main draw for Thursday's trip was an advanced 3D screening of Ridley Scott's The Martian. The film plays out like something of a mash up of Interstellar, Gravity, and Cast Away. The elements all fit together well, with a surprising amount of humor blended in. It's nice to see that Science Fiction seems to be making a bit of a come back lately after so many years of 'science fiction that can't avoid also being horror' that seemed to have been so popular lately. An entertaining film that's worth catching in the theatre if you get a chance, with decently executed 3D.

The 2nd film of the double feature ended up being Sergei Loznitsa's documentary, The Event. The Event was created using found footage that had been filmed during a failed Coup d'etat in The Soviet Union in 1991. All the footage comes from 4 days of filming in Leningrad, and is presented without any real commentary. Thankfully, like so many TIFF screenings, the director was present for an introduction, as well as some Q&A after the film. Of the 5 films i saw at TIFF, The Martian was the only one where the director was not present and available for questions. It's a great way to explore films, but it does make going to regular theatres feel a little less robust afterwards.

Sion Sono!

Apologies for the terribly unflattering picture of me, but it's Sion Sono! At TIFF last night was the world premiere of one of Sono's many (i count 7) 2015 releases, The Whispering Star. They kept talking about how this film was unlike anything else Sono has done previously, but I feel like you could say that about almost any of Sono's films. This one was filmed in the restricted area of Fukushima, much like his 2012 film The Land Of Hope, but the similarities end there (although both films do star Sono's wife Magumi Kagurazaka). The Whispering Star is a fairly minimalist black and white science fiction film. People always ask which Sono film makes the most sense to try and get into The Criterion Collection. I'd love to see them do a double feature of The Land Of Hope and The Whispering Star, and maybe include a documentary about 3.11 (There are several out there) as a bonus feature.

Koreeda!

I felt lucky enough that I was getting a chance to see the North American premiere of Hirokazu Koreeda's latest film Our Little Sister. I didn't know that he'd be there as well to introduce the film and give a small Q&A session afterwards. As you can see, i even got to snag a quick photo op with him afterwards.

The movie was tremendous, reminding me a bit of his Excellent Stll Walking. While his style of filmmaking is much different, if there is any director that kids able to continue the spirit of Yasujiro Ozu's Japanese family dramas, It's Koreeda. There are a few of his films that have yet to find their way into my collection, but I'll be rectifying that soon!

TIFF!

One of the perks of living where i do is being able to make my way each year to The Toronto International Film Festival. It's a great way to see movies that i might otherwise not get to see for a long time (if ever). In the past I've gotten to see such great films as The Drop, Still The Water, The World of Kanako, and even the North American premiere of Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises. Sometimes you see things like The Drop, which was in theatres locally barely a month after TIFF. Other films like Still the Water, still haven't been released anywhere in the world with English subtitles, so I feel super lucky that i got to see it.

This year I got tickets to 4 films, and hopefully I'll be able to make all the showings. First up is tomorrow where i have a ticket to see Hirokazu Koreeda's latest film Our Little Sister. Koreeda's films have sadly not found their way to North America often enough, or with enough care. The Criterion Collection released the excellent Still Walking, but films like Like Father, Like Son just end up getting a bare bones DVD only release in states. A lot of his other films can only be acquired as DVD only releases from other territories. Hopefully this trend reverses sooner rather than later.

On Monday night i hope to see a double feature, including Sion Sono's Whispering Star. This might be the film I'm most excited about as Sono is the type of director who can pull off almost any genre of film, and is always able to surprise you. Some of his films I love, and others I'm much cooler on, but I'm always glad I've watched another of his films. There can never be too many Sion Sono films in my collection (and considering he's already directed 7 films in 2015, it will be a long time before i have them all).

Rounding out my Monday night is a super interesting looking film called Imbisibol about undocumented Filipino workers in Japan working jobs under the table.

My final film of the festival will be next Sunday as i start my vacation. Naomi Kawase's latest, An. Every time i read a review of a Kawase film at a film festival it always gets ripped about, but I've enjoyed both films (Still The Water, and The Mourning Forest) that I've seen by her. I guess no likes her films except me and the festival programmers?

April Story

Finally got around to watching my Korean import blu-ray of Shunji Iwai's April Story. The film is a fairly gentle introspective romance film, clocking in at a brief 67 minutes. My only previous experience with Iwai's work was Love Letter, which i recall liking, and his contribution to the anthology film New York, I Love You. I also have his films Hana and Alice, as well as All About Lily Chou Chou in my collection as well. Iwai also made a documentary about Kon Ichikawa as well, which I hope to acquire sooner rather than later.

Ozu would have been proud!

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

In between all of our Herzog films we managed to watch a movie that has ling been on my need to see list, Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. The film did not disappoint at all and now I'll be one of the many clamouring for this film to get a blu-ray release. The movie is way too beautiful to only be able to see in standard definition.

There is a website called Taste of Cinema that pretty much only exists to make lists of films. The writing, and the accuracy of the info contained in the article, both leave a bit to be desired, but some of the lists the create are to fun to peruse. This one is a favorite of mine. I never would have considered myself a lover of metaphysical films, but I own 13 of the 15 films on this list, and everyone I've seen I've adored.

Happy Birthday Werner!

Yesterday was Werner Herzog's birthday. Oddly, when i woke up not knowing it was his birthday i decided that i wanted to start my morning digging a bit more into his recent blu-ray collection that was released last year, of which there were still a lot of unwatched films. I ended up watching four Herzog films, but it wasn't until i had started the 2nd that i even realized it was his birthday. I guess somewhere deep down i knew?

I watched Aguirre, The Wrath of God for the first time. Great to finally see it, Klaus Kinski was great, and I could definitely see how Apocalypse now was influenced by it. It also allowed me to check another film off the Sight and Sound top 250 films of all time list, something I'll talk about more in a future post.

Even Dwarfs Started Small was up next and it took me a little while to get my barrings. I was mistakenly under the impression that it was a Documentary, which it definitely is not. A curiously of sorts, and something I'm glad i watched, but something I'm likely to revisit (unlike Aguirre).

Third Herzog of the day was Fata Morgana, which is a documentary, but a meandering one. I struggle with documentaries like this, the ones that have beautiful and interesting shots, but the connection between them feels transitory. Maybe some day i'll warm to documentaries of this type (I wish i could love Chris Marker's Sans Soliel, which i also struggle with), but for now I'm better off with things like's Herzog's amazing Cave Of Forgotten Dreams.

Last up was Fitzcarraldo, like Aguirre, a Herzog film I've always wanted to see. More great work from Klaus Kinski. Interesting to see the same actor as a much different character traveling down the same Amazonian rivers. As Herzog used to say, everyone should pull a boat over a mountain once in their lives.

Weekend Project

Same project as most weekends. Organizing and labeling the film collection and it's transition to being organized by director.

Collection of Ozu Films

Yasujiro Ozu is my favorite director of all time, so my shelf where I keep all of his films is one of my favorite spots in my collection. I'm only missing one of his surviving films (his only documentary Kagami Jishi) and one of his partially survived films (a silent film called Fighting Friends Japanese Style). Ozu is a director that is appreciated throughout the world so there are frequently new releases of his films coming out in different territories. His main studio in Japan has been releasing newly restored 4K scans of some of his best films, so I've been cheerfully re-purchasing each new release as they come out.

A Story Of Yonosuke

I got to watch one of my favorite modern Japanese films last night, A Story Of Yonosuke. I'm someone that loves all things Japan, and all aspects of Japanese culture, so a film like this right up my alley. It's a story about a somewhat naive college freshman named Yonosuke, and the people he meets during this time of his life, and what effect it has on them. It's a film with a lot of heart, that is frequently silly, but always engaging.

The director, Shuichi Okita, has directed five films, with a sixth on the way. Unfortunately I've only been able to locate one other, The Woodsman and The Rain, with English subtitles. Such is the problem with Asian cinema sometimes. The Woodsman and The Rain isn't as good as A Story of Yonosuke, but it does feature Koji Yakusho, who is one of the best actors working in Japan today.

Weekend Viewing

I've managed to get in a few films this weekend ahead of what looks to be a busy Sunday. The films were a mixed bag for the most part.

First up is Goyokin, which is i believe the third collaboration between director Hideo Gosha and actor Tatsuya Nakadai. I love samurai films in general, and Tatsuya Nakadai specifically, so i figured this would be a good film for me. I liked it, but i was surprised that i didn't enjoy it as much as the last Samurai Gosha film i watched, Three Outlaw Samurai. The film wasn't bad, i just assumed that since this one was more recent and included Nakadai, that it would have been a little better. It probably didn't help that the US DVD from Tokyo Shock that i own appears to be a less than stellar copy of the film.

Next up was a just released on Blu-ray western featuring Mads Mikkelsen called The Salvation. I'll watch pretty much anything if it has Mikkelsen in it, so when i saw this was being released I picked it up right away. Unfortunately, i found it be a fairly uninspired western, which had WAY too much CGI in it for my liking. There was a scene that had a fire the size of a large bonfire in it, where the entire fire portion was CGI. Is it really cheaper to CG some fire, rather than just lighting an actual fire? Did the director think it looked just as good as real fire? I found it puzzling, and it certainly detracted from the film. Mikkelsen was great as always, but in the end the film was a bit of a waste of his considerable talents.

Last up was actually a film in a theatre. I don't go the theatre as often as I'd like for a variety of reasons, but it's always nice when i get chance. Tonight the wife and I snuck out to catch Phoenix. Phoenix reminded me a little bit of one of my favorite recent films, Ida, in the sense that it dealt with the period after the end of World War II, and explored the difficulties of people who survived (especially Jews) trying to put things back together and find their place in the world (The style of the film is not similar to Ida of course, just the general topic). While it's not something that blew me away like Ida did, it was a well done and fascinating look at that period, with a tremendous performance put in by Nina Hoss, who i had recently seen act for the first time in Anton Corbijn's A Most Wanted Man. If Phoenix is playing in an art house type theatre near you, i certainly recommend it.

Film Collection: Beyond The Films

I'm a collector by nature, so my enjoyment of films has led to healthy film collection. My film collection however is not just composed of the films themselves. When an individual film or director makes a strong impression upon, there is a good chance I'll seek out things to add to my collection that go beyond the films themselves. This could include, but is not limited to, things like posters, books, programs, stamps.... whatever. From time to time i'll share some details and photos of the things that have made their way into my collection.

My favorite director is Yasujiro Ozu, so I'm always looking for new Ozu items to add to my collection. I'm sure there are people with much larger collections of Ozu items, but I'm pretty proud of what I've managed to acquire. Here is a program from an exhibition they had at The Kamakura Museum Of Literature in 2003. Some information about the exhibition as well as this program can be found here. I'm glad i picked it up when i did, since it was reasonably priced, and i haven't seen one up for sale since. As you can imagine i get pretty excited when i find a new Ozu thing to add to the collection!

2014 - 419 Films

When people see my film collection, i always tell them that's it's lot easier to acquire films, than it is to watch the films you acquire. I can buy 10 films in 5 minutes (and have more times than i can count), but i still need to find 2-3 hours if i actually want to watch a film. Between work, things around the house, and family/social commitments, that time isn't always easy to find.

Last year I challenged myself to watch 400 films. As I've said previously, i feel like i started to truly appreciate film later in life than most, so i felt i was behind on seeing films i wanted to see. Mostly classic, art house, and foreign films were the ones i was short on, since i had spent my life watching modern Hollywood films. I gave myself a few parameters. I wanted to make sure that 90% of what i watched were films that i hadn't seen previously, and i didn't want more than 10% of the total number to be short films. I believe short films are valuable and wanted them to be part of the equation, but too many felt like "cheating" since their length is is a bit easier to get through. I ended 2014 watching my 419th film (which randomly ending up being The Making Of The Shining), so the project was a huge success.

Of course, watching 419 films in 365 days means you have to watch a lot of films when you are not in the mood to watch a movie, it means you don't always have the time to really savor of think about the film you've just seen. It also meant that frequently i was watching 2-3 films a day on weekends when i didn't have other plans. It was something i had to discipline myself to do. I'm glad i did it, but I'm also glad I'm not doing it again this year. I'm still watching a lot of films, because i love them, but this year it's at a much more natural pace. This morning i watched #182 for 2015, which i imagine would put me at around 250 for the year. That seems like a good number moving forward.

Kurosawa Paintings

As might already be obvious, I'm a huge fan of Japanese Cinema. When it comes to classic Japanese cinema, one of the masters, especially when it comes to making films that were widely appreciated in the west, was Akira Kurosawa. He directed 30 films during his life, all of which are worth seeing. I should note that while i own all 30 films that he directed, I've only watched 28 so far. I still think that makes my opinion reasonably grounded.

One of my favorite things about Kurosawa was that in addition to his career as a film director, he was also an avid painter. This means that when he was doing storyboards for his films, he was able to paint scenes to show exactly what he wanted them to look like in vivid color. Below are some examples of his amazing work. All of these are featured in one of my most prized possessions, this book which is now out of print, that is a complete collection of Kurosawa's drawings are paintings. A less complete, and much smaller version is available here at a very friendly price.

The King And The Mockingbird

I got a chance to catch The King And The Mockingbird this morning at a local theatre here in town. It's loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Shepherdess and The Chimney Sweep. It's nice anytime i get a chance to see a non Japanese animated film that isn't Pixar/Disney/Dreamworks. Sometimes it seems that those films have such a similar style/formula that i'm always craving something different and unique when it comes to animation. As you can see from the design of the king, it definately doesn't look like the sometimes cookie cutter designs of a lot of popular American animation.

The King And The Mockingbird (rumored to be a favorite of Hayao Miyazaki) is a curious little film. Part fairy tale, part surreal, part science fiction. I wish i could have seen it in it's native French however, as this version was dubbed.

Another great French animated film to watch out for if you're looking for something different and more distinct is Ernest & Celestine. It's a very lighthearted film that would be appropriate for all ages, and the film has a distinctive style that almost looks water-colored.

My next off the beaten path animated film will hopefully be the Irish film The Song of The Sea. I've heard nothing but good things about it, and i'm always looking to support animation that steps from outside the usual sources. Just need to find the Blu-ray at a good price!

In The Mood For Love

Normally I'm very focused on watching movies i haven't seen before. The two main reasons for this are that i feel like i developed an appreciation for cinema later in life than most, and therefore have ground to make up, as well as having a large film collection that includes a lot of movies I've yet to watch.

Last night however i was worn from a long week of work and just wanted to enjoy something beautiful and perfect. The first thing i thought of was Wong Kar-wai's In The Mood For Love, a film I could never see too many times. Kar-wai manged to take a 15 month shoot utilizing 2 different cinematographers (Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping Bin) and make one of most beautiful visual films. It doesn't hurt that he had two of the best and most visually appealing actors in the world to work with (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung), along with the vintage allure of 1960's Hong Kong, which sometimes feels like it's own character in the film (much like Tokyo in Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation).

If you want to get a sense of the style of film (although the poster is a great start), check out this great blog that chronicles Maggie's dresses throughout the film. As someone who is not generally interested in fashion, i still find myself mesmerized seeing dress after dress in the film as it progresses.

The film unfolds like a visual love letter to the 1960's Hong Kong. The plot unfolds in layered bursts of moments sometimes seemingly unconnected portions of dialogue and interaction, intermingled with lush slow motion shots of interiors or street level Hong Kong as the characters pass through. The nontraditional love story that unfolds as the film progresses is what you take from the experience of watching of the film, but the visuals and the amazing attention to detail with every shot are what cause this story to embed itself in your head.

The film is also the 2nd film of a trilogy of sorts (Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild is the first, and 2046 being the 3rd), but the film is not only the best of three, but can be well enjoyed even if you never seek out the other two. It goes without saying that i recommend this film, as it's one of my all time favorites. It's available readily in the US from The Criterion Collection on both Blu-ray and DVD. Feel free to let me know what you think if you check it out. I'll surely be mentioning it again in these parts.

Mikio Naruse

Happy belated birthday to Mikio Naruse, born on August 20, 1905.

Ozu At The Bar

Ozu with Okada Mariko and Tsukasa Yoko on the set of Late Autumn (1960).