Films about the end of the world are nothing new. But films about the real end of the world–the moments in human history that seem to have put us on an inevitable path toward our own self-destruction–are less frequent. In the 1950s, as the Cold War took hold and the threat of nuclear war escalated, most of the films that came out dealt with it in terms of metaphor, usually sci-fi ones, like giant irradiated lizards and insects standing in for hydrogen bombs.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer addresses one of those moments in history head-on, giving us not just a glimpse into the tormented mind of the “father of the atomic bomb,” but a you-are-there, immersive front row seat to the very moment in which the first bomb was detonated and the end of the human race came into clear view, starting with what many now consider to...
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer addresses one of those moments in history head-on, giving us not just a glimpse into the tormented mind of the “father of the atomic bomb,” but a you-are-there, immersive front row seat to the very moment in which the first bomb was detonated and the end of the human race came into clear view, starting with what many now consider to...
- 7/24/2023
- by Don Kaye
- Den of Geek
Japan boasts one of the most robust and oldest film industries in the world, with historian Yomota Inuhiko dating its origins as far back as 1896. With visionary filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki among the industry's most recognizable names, Japan has produced some truly extraordinary films. Beyond sweeping historical epics and fantasy fare sharing the country's extensive folklore, Japan has produced a growing number of dramas that have stood the test of time.
From slice-of-life portraits across Japanese history to biting commentaries on society, Japanese dramas widely feature precision in storytelling and deliberate pacing to meditate on its themes. For decades, cinema has become a place for Japanese artists to question and subvert cultural norms directly while exploring and pondering existential themes. With that all in mind, here are the 15 best Japanese drama movies, from avant-garde pieces to animated films that delve into more humanist subject matter, showcasing different...
From slice-of-life portraits across Japanese history to biting commentaries on society, Japanese dramas widely feature precision in storytelling and deliberate pacing to meditate on its themes. For decades, cinema has become a place for Japanese artists to question and subvert cultural norms directly while exploring and pondering existential themes. With that all in mind, here are the 15 best Japanese drama movies, from avant-garde pieces to animated films that delve into more humanist subject matter, showcasing different...
- 1/27/2023
- by Samuel Stone
- Slash Film
(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)
The Movie: "Woman in the Dunes"
Where You Can Stream It: The Criterion Channel
The Pitch: A bug-hunting schoolteacher finds himself stranded in a sandpit with a woman, at the mercy of demented villagers, and forced into a life of shoveling sand.
In Japan, where rural population decline is an ongoing problem, there are places in the countryside that will actually pay people to live there. As 2023 began, the BBC and CNN reported that the government has upped its incentive program to 1 million yen per child for families willing to move away from the crowded capital of Tokyo to less thriving towns.
The villagers in "Woman in the Dunes" have devised a different scheme. They prey on solo travelers like...
The Movie: "Woman in the Dunes"
Where You Can Stream It: The Criterion Channel
The Pitch: A bug-hunting schoolteacher finds himself stranded in a sandpit with a woman, at the mercy of demented villagers, and forced into a life of shoveling sand.
In Japan, where rural population decline is an ongoing problem, there are places in the countryside that will actually pay people to live there. As 2023 began, the BBC and CNN reported that the government has upped its incentive program to 1 million yen per child for families willing to move away from the crowded capital of Tokyo to less thriving towns.
The villagers in "Woman in the Dunes" have devised a different scheme. They prey on solo travelers like...
- 1/14/2023
- by Joshua Meyer
- Slash Film
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It’s hard to think of a cinematic movement more influential, and instantly recognizable, than the French New Wave. In the late 1950s, a group of young writers for the French publication “Cahiers du Cinéma” began to question the safe, compromising choices made by filmmakers and demand something more daring and honest. Many of these writers, including the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, became filmmakers themselves. And the results were extraordinary.
Happy endings and sentimentality were replaced with stripped down, meandering plots with conclusions that were often unsatisfying. Many films used nonlinear storytelling, packing a stronger emotional punch by utilizing techniques that shocked the world. Slick production values were often abandoned,...
It’s hard to think of a cinematic movement more influential, and instantly recognizable, than the French New Wave. In the late 1950s, a group of young writers for the French publication “Cahiers du Cinéma” began to question the safe, compromising choices made by filmmakers and demand something more daring and honest. Many of these writers, including the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, became filmmakers themselves. And the results were extraordinary.
Happy endings and sentimentality were replaced with stripped down, meandering plots with conclusions that were often unsatisfying. Many films used nonlinear storytelling, packing a stronger emotional punch by utilizing techniques that shocked the world. Slick production values were often abandoned,...
- 4/1/2021
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
Japanese cinema’s earliest attempt to depict the full impact of the 1945 atom-bomb attack is one of the best anti-Nuke movies ever… yet it somehow stayed under the radar of American awareness for decades. The bombing is seen from only eight years’ distance, when the nation was seemingly resisting coming to terms with its social and political implications; Hideo Sekigawa’s account includes some subtle commentary on the indifferent political response to the plight of the victims… even in 1953. Arrow’s extras include a Jasper Sharp video essay that fills in a lot of blank cinema history between Enola Gay and Godzilla. The impressive music score will seem familiar; it’s by Akira Ifukube.
Hiroshima
Blu-ray
Arrow Academy
1953 / B&w / 1:37 flat / 104 85 min. / Street Date July 14, 2020 / 24.99
Starring: Eiji Okada, Yumeji Tsukioka, Yoshi Katô, Masayuki Tsukida, Takashi Kanda, Isuzu Yamada.
Cinematography: Shunichirô Nakao, Susumu Urashima
Film Editor: Akikazu Kôno
Original Music:...
Hiroshima
Blu-ray
Arrow Academy
1953 / B&w / 1:37 flat / 104 85 min. / Street Date July 14, 2020 / 24.99
Starring: Eiji Okada, Yumeji Tsukioka, Yoshi Katô, Masayuki Tsukida, Takashi Kanda, Isuzu Yamada.
Cinematography: Shunichirô Nakao, Susumu Urashima
Film Editor: Akikazu Kôno
Original Music:...
- 8/22/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Hideo Sekigawa’s Hiroshima (1953) is currently available on Blu-ray From Arrow Academy.
Hiroshima (1953) is a powerful evocation of the devastation wrought by the world s first deployment of the atomic bomb and its aftermath, based on the written eye-witness accounts of its child survivors compiled by Dr. Arata Osada for the 1951 book Children Of The A Bomb: Testament Of The Boys And Girls Of Hiroshima.
Adapted for the screen by independent director Hideo Sekigawa and screenwriter Yasutaro Yagi, Hiroshima combines a harrowing documentary realism with moving human drama, in a tale of the suffering, endurance and survival of a group of teachers, their students and their families. It boasts a rousing score composed by Akira Ifukube (Godzilla) and an all-star cast including Yumeji Tsukioka, Isuzu Yamada and Eiji Okada, appearing alongside an estimated 90,000 residents from the city as extras, including many survivors from that fateful day on 6th August 1945.
Hiroshima...
Hiroshima (1953) is a powerful evocation of the devastation wrought by the world s first deployment of the atomic bomb and its aftermath, based on the written eye-witness accounts of its child survivors compiled by Dr. Arata Osada for the 1951 book Children Of The A Bomb: Testament Of The Boys And Girls Of Hiroshima.
Adapted for the screen by independent director Hideo Sekigawa and screenwriter Yasutaro Yagi, Hiroshima combines a harrowing documentary realism with moving human drama, in a tale of the suffering, endurance and survival of a group of teachers, their students and their families. It boasts a rousing score composed by Akira Ifukube (Godzilla) and an all-star cast including Yumeji Tsukioka, Isuzu Yamada and Eiji Okada, appearing alongside an estimated 90,000 residents from the city as extras, including many survivors from that fateful day on 6th August 1945.
Hiroshima...
- 7/26/2020
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
As part of their release slates for the months June and July 2020 Arrow Academy will release the classic Nagisa Oshima “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence” starring David Bowie and Hideo Sekigawa’s powerful documentary “Hiroshima”
Synopsis for “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence”
David Bowie stars in Nagisa Oshima’s 1983 Palme d’Or-nominated portrait of resilience, pride, friendship and obsession among four very different men confined in the stifling jungle heat of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Java during World War II.
In 1942, British officer Major Jack Celliers (Bowie) is captured by Japanese soldiers, and after a brutal trial sent, physically debilitated but indomitable in mind, to a Pow camp overseen by the zealous Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto). Celliers’ stubbornness sees him locked in a battle of wills with the camp’s new commandant, a man obsessed with discipline and the glory of Imperial Japan who becomes unnaturally preoccupied with the young Major,...
Synopsis for “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence”
David Bowie stars in Nagisa Oshima’s 1983 Palme d’Or-nominated portrait of resilience, pride, friendship and obsession among four very different men confined in the stifling jungle heat of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Java during World War II.
In 1942, British officer Major Jack Celliers (Bowie) is captured by Japanese soldiers, and after a brutal trial sent, physically debilitated but indomitable in mind, to a Pow camp overseen by the zealous Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto). Celliers’ stubbornness sees him locked in a battle of wills with the camp’s new commandant, a man obsessed with discipline and the glory of Imperial Japan who becomes unnaturally preoccupied with the young Major,...
- 4/18/2020
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Both a landmark and a source of much controversy, “Hiroshima” is one of those films where the background is as significant as the picture itself. Let us take things from the beginning, by quoting Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie’s “The Japanese Film”. “In 1953, the Japan Teachers Union decided to go in with Kaneto Shindo and make a film version of the bestselling “Children of the Atom Bomb” (Genbaku no Ko) by Arata Osada. Shindo made a faithful film version, using the name of the book, and showed the aftermath of the bomb without any vicious polemic. (…) The Union was not at all satisfied, saying that he had “made [the story] into a tear-jerker and destroyed its political orintation.” They decided to back another version which would this time “genuinely to help to fight to preserve peace.” They found their man in Hideo Sekigawa, who turned out “Hiroshima”. (…) The picture was financially...
- 9/25/2018
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Scores on Screen is a column by Clare Nina Norelli on film soundtracks.When French documentarian Alain Resnais was commissioned to produce a short film about the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, it initially seemed to him an impossible and daunting task. How does one convey onscreen the sheer magnitude of the horrific atomic attack and its devastating effects; how to reproduce on celluloid the ongoing trauma of that fateful August morning as experienced by the Japanese people? Resnais ultimately decided to focus his film on the “impossibility” of talking about, or fully knowing, the tragedy of Hiroshima. Eschewing the documentary form he was familiar with, the director instead embarked on his first narrative film, Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), enlisting the help of the celebrated French writer Marguerite Duras to write the film’s scenario and dialogue. Resnais still retained documentary-style images of the ruins of Hiroshima and the city’s survivors, but...
- 7/9/2018
- MUBI
Emmanuelle Riva with Vanessa Redgrave and Michael Barker for Michael Haneke's Amour Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Emmanuelle Riva, César, Lumière, and BAFTA Best Actress winner and Oscar nominee for Michael Haneke's Best Foreign Language Film winner Amour died at the age of 89 on Friday, January 27, 2017 in Paris.
Riva's performance with Eiji Okada in Alain Renais' Hiroshima Mon Amour in 1959 cuts so sharply to the truth about love and war that even after many viewings it is difficult to fully grasp the film's historical significance, storytelling innovations and stylistic brilliance.
Emmanuelle Riva in the hands of Jean-Louis Trintignant in Amour
Annette Insdorf, Professor in the Graduate Film Program of Columbia’s School of the Arts, Mademoiselle C director Fabien Constant, and Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words director Stig Björkman sent their remembrances.
"I consider Emmanuelle Riva one of the greatest actors of the past 60 years. I last saw...
Emmanuelle Riva, César, Lumière, and BAFTA Best Actress winner and Oscar nominee for Michael Haneke's Best Foreign Language Film winner Amour died at the age of 89 on Friday, January 27, 2017 in Paris.
Riva's performance with Eiji Okada in Alain Renais' Hiroshima Mon Amour in 1959 cuts so sharply to the truth about love and war that even after many viewings it is difficult to fully grasp the film's historical significance, storytelling innovations and stylistic brilliance.
Emmanuelle Riva in the hands of Jean-Louis Trintignant in Amour
Annette Insdorf, Professor in the Graduate Film Program of Columbia’s School of the Arts, Mademoiselle C director Fabien Constant, and Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words director Stig Björkman sent their remembrances.
"I consider Emmanuelle Riva one of the greatest actors of the past 60 years. I last saw...
- 2/1/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Actor celebrated for her intellectual performances who achieved early success in Hiroshima Mon Amour
For her brave, unsentimental performance as an elderly woman agonisingly declining physically and mentally in Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012), Emmanuelle Riva, who has died aged 89, became the oldest best actress Oscar nominee ever, at 85. It was more than half a century since Riva’s soothing cadenced voice and delicate features had dominated Alain Resnais’ masterful Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
In that film, the voice of Riva as Elle is first heard over horrific newsreel images of the victims of the atom bomb, and it is almost 10 minutes into the film before we see her in the arms of her Japanese lover (Eiji Okada), called simply Lui. She is a French actor in Hiroshima, he is an architect. The repeated phrases of their dialogue echo throughout the film written by Marguerite Duras. He says: “You saw nothing in Hiroshima.
For her brave, unsentimental performance as an elderly woman agonisingly declining physically and mentally in Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012), Emmanuelle Riva, who has died aged 89, became the oldest best actress Oscar nominee ever, at 85. It was more than half a century since Riva’s soothing cadenced voice and delicate features had dominated Alain Resnais’ masterful Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
In that film, the voice of Riva as Elle is first heard over horrific newsreel images of the victims of the atom bomb, and it is almost 10 minutes into the film before we see her in the arms of her Japanese lover (Eiji Okada), called simply Lui. She is a French actor in Hiroshima, he is an architect. The repeated phrases of their dialogue echo throughout the film written by Marguerite Duras. He says: “You saw nothing in Hiroshima.
- 1/29/2017
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
The Yakuza
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1975 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 112 & 123 min. / Street Date February 14, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring Robert Mitchum, Takakura Ken, Brian Keith, Eiji Okada, Richard Jordan, Keiko Kishi, James Shigeta, Herb Edelman.
Cinematography: Kozo Okazaki, Duke Callaghan
Production Design: Stephen Grimes
Art Direction: Yoshiyuki Ishida
Film Editor: Don Guidice, Thomas Stanford
Original Music: Dave Grusin
Written by: Leonard Schrader, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne
Produced by: Michael Hamilburg, Sydney Pollack, Koji Shundo
Directed by Sydney Pollack
The Warner Archive Collection is on a roll with a 2017 schedule that has so far released one much-desired library Blu-ray per week. Coming shortly are Vincente Minnelli’s Bells are Ringing, Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend and Val Guest’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and that only takes us through February. First up is a piercing action drama from 1975.
There are favorite movies around Savant central,...
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1975 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 112 & 123 min. / Street Date February 14, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring Robert Mitchum, Takakura Ken, Brian Keith, Eiji Okada, Richard Jordan, Keiko Kishi, James Shigeta, Herb Edelman.
Cinematography: Kozo Okazaki, Duke Callaghan
Production Design: Stephen Grimes
Art Direction: Yoshiyuki Ishida
Film Editor: Don Guidice, Thomas Stanford
Original Music: Dave Grusin
Written by: Leonard Schrader, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne
Produced by: Michael Hamilburg, Sydney Pollack, Koji Shundo
Directed by Sydney Pollack
The Warner Archive Collection is on a roll with a 2017 schedule that has so far released one much-desired library Blu-ray per week. Coming shortly are Vincente Minnelli’s Bells are Ringing, Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend and Val Guest’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and that only takes us through February. First up is a piercing action drama from 1975.
There are favorite movies around Savant central,...
- 1/24/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The Criterion Collection have just released 1964's Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna), which was --- and is --- heralded as one of the art house films of the 1960s. As a result, Teshigahara earn an Academy Award nomination for best director. A ton has been written on this film by film scholars far more knowledgable than I, so I'll stick to the basics here. Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara, Woman in the Dunes stars Eiji Okada as a teacher and amateur entomologist from Tokyo who gets trapped at the bottom of sand dune. He's on the hunt to find and classify a rare beetle, but the last bus out leaves him stranded.The man finds a place to stay for the night, but unbeknown to...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 9/1/2016
- Screen Anarchy
Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.
The Nice Guys (Shane Black)
It’s been over 40 years since Chinatown, and roughly the same amount of time separates the events of that film from those of The Nice Guys, another tale of a private detective in Los Angeles taking on an initially simple case which leads him to a vast, environmentally centered criminal conspiracy. The Nice Guys even carries on Chinatown’s heartbeat of individual helplessness when confronted with the casual body disposal of profit-hungry industrialists.
The Nice Guys (Shane Black)
It’s been over 40 years since Chinatown, and roughly the same amount of time separates the events of that film from those of The Nice Guys, another tale of a private detective in Los Angeles taking on an initially simple case which leads him to a vast, environmentally centered criminal conspiracy. The Nice Guys even carries on Chinatown’s heartbeat of individual helplessness when confronted with the casual body disposal of profit-hungry industrialists.
- 8/23/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
By Raymond Benson
“Sand In Your...”
By Raymond Benson
One of the hallmarks of 1960s art house cinema was Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, adapted by Japanese author/playwright Kōbō Abe from his own 1962 novel. The picture won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964 and was nominated that same year for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. The following year, Teshigahara was nominated for Best Director (but lost to Robert Wise for The Sound of Music).
This is avant-garde cinema at its finest—or perhaps its most tedious, depending on your taste.
The story is straight-forward. Niki (played by Eiji Okada, the male lead from Hiroshima mon amour), a schoolteacher and amateur entomologist (he studies bugs), has ventured to a desert-like area of Japan (does one exist?) near the sea to find specific species of insects. He is stranded and needs a place to stay overnight.
“Sand In Your...”
By Raymond Benson
One of the hallmarks of 1960s art house cinema was Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, adapted by Japanese author/playwright Kōbō Abe from his own 1962 novel. The picture won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964 and was nominated that same year for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. The following year, Teshigahara was nominated for Best Director (but lost to Robert Wise for The Sound of Music).
This is avant-garde cinema at its finest—or perhaps its most tedious, depending on your taste.
The story is straight-forward. Niki (played by Eiji Okada, the male lead from Hiroshima mon amour), a schoolteacher and amateur entomologist (he studies bugs), has ventured to a desert-like area of Japan (does one exist?) near the sea to find specific species of insects. He is stranded and needs a place to stay overnight.
- 8/10/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Japanese art filmmaking writ large by director Hiroshi Teshigahara: a strange allegorical fantasy about a man imprisoned in a sand pit, and compelled to make a primitive living with the woman who lives there. Perhaps it's about marriage... Woman in the Dunes Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 394 1964 / B&W / 1:33 full frame / 148 min. / Suna no onna / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 23, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida, Hiroko Ito Production Design Totetsu Hirakawa, Masao Yamazaki Produced by Tadashi Oono, Iichi Ichikawa Cinematography Hiroshi Segawa Film Editor Fuzako Shuzui Original Music Toru Takemitsu Written by Kobo Abe Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
In the 1960s the public interest in art cinema reached out beyond France and Italy, finally giving an opening for more exotic fare from Japan. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara earned his moment in the spotlight with 1964's Woman in the Dunes, an adaptation of a book by Kobo Abe.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
In the 1960s the public interest in art cinema reached out beyond France and Italy, finally giving an opening for more exotic fare from Japan. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara earned his moment in the spotlight with 1964's Woman in the Dunes, an adaptation of a book by Kobo Abe.
- 8/9/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
★★★★★ The opening shot of Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour observes the entwined limbs of two lovers as ash settles on their skin before the image dissolves into those same bodies beaded with sweat. The ash, of course, suggests the nuclear fallout of the atomic bombing of the titular city in August of 1945 eliding time as it falls onto Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada some fourteen years later. Resnais had a preoccupation with time throughout his career - his next feature Last Year at Marienbad would step outside of it almost almost entirely - and Hiroshima Mon Amour drifts backwards and forwards through it to groundbreaking expressive effect. When challenged that such non-linear narrative techniques had been employed before, as in Citizen Kane, Resnais argued "yes, but in my film time is shattered."...
- 1/19/2016
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
The bloody adventures of a swordswoman dedicated to murderous revenge provided Quentin Tarantino with a major inspiration. Director Toshiyo Fujita's impeccable images make the gorgeous Meiko Kaji into an almost abstract superheroine in beautiful cultured dress and hairstyles -- and soaked with sprayed blood. The Complete Lady Snowblood Lady Snowblood & Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 790 & 791 1973/1974 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 97 & 89 min. / "Shurayukime" & "Shurayukihime: Urami Renga" / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 5, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Meiko Kaji, Toshio Kurosawa, Noboru Nakaya, Eiji Okada; Meiko Kaji, Juzo Itami, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Yoshio Harada. Cinematography Masaki Tamura; Tatsuo Suzuki Film Editor Osamu Inoue Original Music MasaaakiHirao; Kenjiro Hirose Written by Norio Osada, Kazuo Kamimura, Kazuo Koike Directed by Toshiya Fujita
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
A worldwide revolution hit the movies in the late '60s, with the relaxing of censorship in the west and the collapse of foreign film industries with the rise of TV.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
A worldwide revolution hit the movies in the late '60s, with the relaxing of censorship in the west and the collapse of foreign film industries with the rise of TV.
- 1/9/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
There are many names that come to mind when one looks back at the Japanese New Wave era: Nagisa Oshima, Koreyoshi Kurahara, Shohei Imamura, Masahiro Shinoda, and many, many more. The movement truly began with the adaptation of Shintaro Ishihara’s novel Crazed Fruit, released with the same name by director Ko Nakahira in his 1956 film. The film would kickoff a movement, a collective stream of films that juxtaposed a time in Japanese history where the traditional society of Japan clashed with the coming of a more contemporary way of living. The American occupation ended in 1952, bringing forth a difficult period for the Japanese individual and the struggle for the realization of purpose in a changing country.
One cannot discuss the Japanese New Wave without Hiroshi Teshigahara and his collaborations with Japanese writer Kobo Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu. Teshigahara didn’t make many films during this period of extreme...
One cannot discuss the Japanese New Wave without Hiroshi Teshigahara and his collaborations with Japanese writer Kobo Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu. Teshigahara didn’t make many films during this period of extreme...
- 9/1/2015
- by Anthony Spataro
- SoundOnSight
Robert Mitchum ca. late 1940s. Robert Mitchum movies 'The Yakuza,' 'Ryan's Daughter' on TCM Today, Aug. 12, '15, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series is highlighting the career of Robert Mitchum. Two of the films being shown this evening are The Yakuza and Ryan's Daughter. The former is one of the disappointingly few TCM premieres this month. (See TCM's Robert Mitchum movie schedule further below.) Despite his film noir background, Robert Mitchum was a somewhat unusual choice to star in The Yakuza (1975), a crime thriller set in the Japanese underworld. Ryan's Daughter or no, Mitchum hadn't been a box office draw in quite some time; in the mid-'70s, one would have expected a Warner Bros. release directed by Sydney Pollack – who had recently handled the likes of Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, and Robert Redford – to star someone like Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman.
- 8/13/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'The Beginning or the End' 1947 with Robert Walker and Tom Drake. Hiroshima bombing 70th anniversary: Six movies dealing with the A-bomb terror Seventy years ago, on Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Ultimately, anywhere between 70,000 and 140,000 people died – in addition to dogs, cats, horses, chickens, and most other living beings in that part of the world. Three days later, America dropped a second atomic bomb, this time over Nagasaki. Human deaths in this other city totaled anywhere between 40,000-80,000. For obvious reasons, the evisceration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been a quasi-taboo in American films. After all, in the last 75 years Hollywood's World War II movies, from John Farrow's Wake Island (1942) and Mervyn LeRoy's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) to Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor (2001), almost invariably have presented a clear-cut vision...
- 8/7/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Hiroshima mon amour
Written by Marguerite Duras
Directed by Alain Resnais
France/Japan, 1959
The first thing we see is a textured image of ash covered bodies. Indistinctly illuminated limbs are entwined in what appears to be a passionate embrace. Glistening particles of dust sprinkle down like snowfall. Then comes the dialogue. A woman recalls the devastating effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945. She says she saw it all. A man says she didn’t see a thing. “How could I not have seen it?” she questions. We see images of it, but some of it is staged, presented for the camera, possibly from her point of view. That is, if she’s telling the truth. There is a graphically unsettling montage of photographs, reconstructions, and Japanese films, all chronicling the attack; there is a morbid museum containing artifacts of that fateful day, haunting reminders of the physical and material destruction.
Written by Marguerite Duras
Directed by Alain Resnais
France/Japan, 1959
The first thing we see is a textured image of ash covered bodies. Indistinctly illuminated limbs are entwined in what appears to be a passionate embrace. Glistening particles of dust sprinkle down like snowfall. Then comes the dialogue. A woman recalls the devastating effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945. She says she saw it all. A man says she didn’t see a thing. “How could I not have seen it?” she questions. We see images of it, but some of it is staged, presented for the camera, possibly from her point of view. That is, if she’s telling the truth. There is a graphically unsettling montage of photographs, reconstructions, and Japanese films, all chronicling the attack; there is a morbid museum containing artifacts of that fateful day, haunting reminders of the physical and material destruction.
- 7/21/2015
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Criterion digitally restores its previous edition of Alain Resnais’ landmark directorial debut, Hiroshima Mon Amour, a jagged cornerstone of the French New Wave, which forever associated the reluctant auteur with one of the most acclaimed cinematic movements to date. Roughly preceding the renowned debut of Jean-Luc Godard and released the same month as Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (they competed against one another at Cannes), Resnais’ contribution changed the way we regarded linear narrative and flashback sequences, and much like those iconic works of his peers, now bears several decades worth of critical acclaim on its shoulders. Tragic, moody and ultimately a poetic exchange of present interludes shattered by ghosts of the recent past, Resnais begins with motifs he would remain fascinated with throughout his career, the nature of remembrance and recollection, instances as shattered as the narrative chronologies in his films.
Fourteen years after the atomic bomb laid waste to Hiroshima,...
Fourteen years after the atomic bomb laid waste to Hiroshima,...
- 7/14/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
“He Said/She Said—Reflections On Love, Unreliable Memories, And The Atomic Bomb”
By Raymond Benson
Director Alain Resnais achieved worldwide acclaim with his documentary short, Night and Fog (1955), which revealed to the world the true horrors of what went on in the Nazi concentration camps. For his first feature film, Resnais turned to fiction; and yet, he maintained a somewhat documentary approach in showing the world the true horrors of what occurred in Hiroshima, Japan when the first atomic bomb was dropped. Beyond that, Hiroshima mon amour (“Hiroshima, My Love”) is an art film that not only signaled the beginning of the French New Wave (although many film historians do not count it as an example of that movement), it also established Resnais’ singular, enigmatic and ambiguous style as an auteur. The director would go on to make even more thematically-mysterious pictures (namely Last Year at Marienbad) and become...
By Raymond Benson
Director Alain Resnais achieved worldwide acclaim with his documentary short, Night and Fog (1955), which revealed to the world the true horrors of what went on in the Nazi concentration camps. For his first feature film, Resnais turned to fiction; and yet, he maintained a somewhat documentary approach in showing the world the true horrors of what occurred in Hiroshima, Japan when the first atomic bomb was dropped. Beyond that, Hiroshima mon amour (“Hiroshima, My Love”) is an art film that not only signaled the beginning of the French New Wave (although many film historians do not count it as an example of that movement), it also established Resnais’ singular, enigmatic and ambiguous style as an auteur. The director would go on to make even more thematically-mysterious pictures (namely Last Year at Marienbad) and become...
- 6/30/2015
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
“Yet if you should forget me for a whileAnd afterwards remember, do not grieveFor if the darkness and corruption leaveA vestige of the thoughts that once we hadBetter by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.”—Christina Rossetti, Remember (1862)An opening title card from director Thom Andesen’s new feature film, The Thoughts That Once We Had, directly identifies the cinematic writings of philosopher Gilles Deleuze as the project's primary subject and inspiration. Deleuze’s two volumes on film, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985), are today synonymous with a certain modernist school of thought that, while integrated in academia to such a degree as to be all but understood, remains quite radical. Unquestionably dense and provocatively pedantic, the French empiricist’s filmic texts integrate an array of theories and conceptualizations into a fairly delineated taxonomy, and are therefore fairly conducive...
- 5/8/2015
- by Jordan Cronk
- MUBI
Perched at the top of this week’s flock of specialty film debuts is Birdman (Or The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance), a possible Oscar contender starring Michael Keaton. Though it’s a limited release, Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s complex film about a fading action-hero trying to reclaim his mojo on Broadway nevertheless combines elements of a superhero franchise that could tap fans well beyond the art house.
It’s part of yet another big flock of specialty film debuts coming this weekend, including the controversy-minded Sundance award-winner Dear White People, William H. Macy‘s directorial debut Rudderless, Kristen Stewart‘s Camp X-Ray, Jason Schwartzman‘s Listen Up Philip, The Golden Era, Summer Of Blood, and one great revival, Alain Resnais’ 1959 landmark Hiroshima Mon Amour.
To get a sense of Fox Searchlight’s ambitions for Birdman, the film closed the New York Film Festival last weekend to strong reviews, but then...
It’s part of yet another big flock of specialty film debuts coming this weekend, including the controversy-minded Sundance award-winner Dear White People, William H. Macy‘s directorial debut Rudderless, Kristen Stewart‘s Camp X-Ray, Jason Schwartzman‘s Listen Up Philip, The Golden Era, Summer Of Blood, and one great revival, Alain Resnais’ 1959 landmark Hiroshima Mon Amour.
To get a sense of Fox Searchlight’s ambitions for Birdman, the film closed the New York Film Festival last weekend to strong reviews, but then...
- 10/16/2014
- by David Bloom
- Deadline
Emmanuelle Riva had her first starring role in "Hiroshima Mon Amour." Her luminous talents as an actress (also playing an actress) were obvious. But like Resnais, Riva was also filming Hiroshima. See her evocative slice-of-life photos of this city in ruin below. From an original, Oscar-nominated screenplay by the glorious French writer Marguerite Duras, Resnais' 1959 drama anticipated his many cinematic fascinations to come. Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada play an actress and an architect who, while drifting through Japan, discuss memory and longing across elliptical, time-bending voiceovers as their brief affair begins to unravel. Meanwhile, the devastation of the Hiroshima bomb of 1945 is all around them. Shut out of Cannes competition in 1959 for its radically anti-nuclear stance, the film picked up the International Critics' Prize before becoming a worldwide art house sensation -- and a film classic. Tangled in rights issues and shut out of Resnais...
- 10/14/2014
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
While contributors to the Playlist are lucky enough travel to film festivals around the world to cover the latest and greatest cinematic offerings, one thing we always lament is not being able to make time for retrospective screenings. With restorations becoming de rigeur at fests, it's shame we can never carve the space in our schedules. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't, and indeed, the forthcoming New York Film Festival has more than a few to choose from. Courtesy of Rialto Pictures, Alain Resnais' classic debut film "Hiroshima Mon Amour" has been given a new coat of paint, and if you haven't seen it, now's the time. The film stars Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada, and follows an actress who heads to Hiroshima to make a film and winds up having an affair with a Japanese architect. And this lovely new trailer provides all the reasons you need to...
- 9/24/2014
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
From an original, Oscar-nominated screenplay by the glorious French writer Marguerite Duras, Resnais' 1959 drama anticipated his many cinematic fascinations to come. Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada play an actress and an architect who, while drifting through Japan, discuss memory and longing across elliptical, time-bending voiceovers as their brief affair begins to unravel. Meanwhile, the devastation of the Hiroshima bomb of 1945 is all around them. Shut out of Cannes competition in 1959 for its radically anti-nuclear stance, the film picked up the International Critics' Prize before becoming a worldwide art house sensation -- and a film classic. Tangled in rights issues and shut out of Resnais retrospectives through the years, "Hiroshima Mon Amour" will tour the Us in October 2014. It was restored by Argos Films, Fondation Groupama Gan, Fondation Technicolor and Cineteca Bologna with support from the Cnc. Rialto licensed theatrical and TV rights from Paris-based...
- 9/23/2014
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced that Rialto Pictures' upcoming 4K restoration of Alain Resnais' seminal film debut, "Hiroshima Mon Amour," will have its Us premiere during the 2014 New York Film Festival. A theatrical run at the Film Society follows on October 17. From an original, Oscar-nominated screenplay by the glorious French writer Marguerite Duras, the 1959 drama anticipated Resnais' many cinematic fascinations to come. Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada play an actress and an architect who, while drifting through Japan, discuss memory and longing across elliptical, time-bending voiceovers as their brief affair begins to unravel. Meanwhile, the devastation of the Hiroshima bomb of 1945 is all around them. Shut out of Cannes competition in 1959 for its radically anti-nuclear stance, the film picked up the International Critics' Prize before becoming a worldwide art house sensation -- and a film classic. Tangled in rights issues and shut...
- 7/14/2014
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
The more classics on the big screen the better. Rialto Pictures, a specialty distributor who has re-released other films like Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, has announced that the next classic they will be re-releasing this year is Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour starring Emmanuelle Riva (who was Oscar nominated for Amour) and Eiji Okada. First released in 1959, Rialto will be re-releasing the restored 4K version of the film, which originally debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and Locarno Film Festival last year. So while it has been showing, it's getting a theatrical release in October. Thanks to IndieWire for the news. Here are two early trailers for Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour: Glad to see this getting re-released, just hoping it can build enough buzz to get some audiences in theaters. "Known as a major influence on the French New Wave movement,...
- 6/17/2014
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
This Fall, Rialto Pictures will present a newly burnished 4K restoration of Alain Resnais' gorgeous black-and-white breakout "Hiroshima Mon Amour," which has long been unavailable for exhibition in the Us.From an original, Oscar-nominated screenplay by the glorious French writer Marguerite Duras, Resnais' 1959 drama anticipated his many cinematic fascinations to come. Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada play an actress and an architect who, while drifting through Japan, discuss memory and longing across elliptical, time-bending voiceovers as their brief affair begins to unravel. Meanwhile, the devastation of the Hiroshima bomb of 1945 is all around them.Shut out of Cannes competition in 1959 for its radically anti-nuclear stance, the film picked up the International Critics' Prize before becoming a worldwide art house sensation -- and a film classic. Resnais' farewell film, "Life of Riley," bowed at the Berlinale this year three weeks before he died on March 1 at the age of...
- 6/17/2014
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
Complex and avant-garde French film director best known for Night and Fog and Last Year in Marienbad
Alain Resnais, who has died aged 91, was a director of elegance and distinction who, despite generally working from the screenplays of other writers, established an auteurist reputation. His films were singular, instantly recognisable by their style as well as through recurring themes and preoccupations. Primary concerns were war, sexual relationships and the more abstract notions of memory and time. His characters were invariably adult (children were excluded as having no detailed past) middle-class professionals. His style was complex, notably in the editing and often – though not always – dominated by tracking shots and multilayered sound.
He surrounded himself with actors, musicians and writers of enormous talent and the result was a somewhat elitist body of work with little concern for realism or the socially or intellectually deprived. Even overtly political works, Night and Fog,...
Alain Resnais, who has died aged 91, was a director of elegance and distinction who, despite generally working from the screenplays of other writers, established an auteurist reputation. His films were singular, instantly recognisable by their style as well as through recurring themes and preoccupations. Primary concerns were war, sexual relationships and the more abstract notions of memory and time. His characters were invariably adult (children were excluded as having no detailed past) middle-class professionals. His style was complex, notably in the editing and often – though not always – dominated by tracking shots and multilayered sound.
He surrounded himself with actors, musicians and writers of enormous talent and the result was a somewhat elitist body of work with little concern for realism or the socially or intellectually deprived. Even overtly political works, Night and Fog,...
- 3/3/2014
- by Brian Baxter
- The Guardian - Film News
Hiroshima mon amour
Directed by Alain Resnais
Written by Marguerite Duras
France, 1959
Hiroshima mon amour was the first feature film of director Alain Resnais, whose only previous work had been a few short films. Most notably, Resnais had debuted Night and Fog at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955. The film was a documentary about Nazi concentration camps and was the direct catalyst to his involvement with Hiroshima mon amour. Resnais was approached to make a documentary about the atomic bomb. Wary of repeating his previous work, Resnais teamed with Marguerite Duras to create a wholly innovative fiction film that encapsulated Resnais’ struggles in making a film about the atomic bomb and the impossibility of coming to terms with such horrific events.
The film concerns a series of conversations, or one extended conversation, over a 36-hour period between a French actress only credited as She (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect,...
Directed by Alain Resnais
Written by Marguerite Duras
France, 1959
Hiroshima mon amour was the first feature film of director Alain Resnais, whose only previous work had been a few short films. Most notably, Resnais had debuted Night and Fog at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955. The film was a documentary about Nazi concentration camps and was the direct catalyst to his involvement with Hiroshima mon amour. Resnais was approached to make a documentary about the atomic bomb. Wary of repeating his previous work, Resnais teamed with Marguerite Duras to create a wholly innovative fiction film that encapsulated Resnais’ struggles in making a film about the atomic bomb and the impossibility of coming to terms with such horrific events.
The film concerns a series of conversations, or one extended conversation, over a 36-hour period between a French actress only credited as She (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect,...
- 7/31/2013
- by Katherine Springer
- SoundOnSight
Eiji Okada, Emmanuelle Riva in DGA (but not Oscar) nominee Alain Resnais' Hiroshima, mon amour (top); Melina Mercouri, Jules Dassin in Dassin's Oscar- (but not DGA-) nominated Never on Sunday (bottom) DGA Awards vs. Academy Awards 1953-1959: Odd Men Out Jack Clayton, David Lean, Stanley Donen 1960 DGA (14)Vincente Minnelli, Bells Are RingingWalter Lang, Can-CanDelbert Mann, The Dark at the Top of the StairsRichard Brooks, Elmer GantryAlain Resnais, Hiroshima, mon amourVincente Minnelli, Home from the HillCarol Reed, Our Man in HavanaCharles Walters, Please Don't Eat the DaisiesLewis Gilbert, Sink the Bismarck!Vincent J. Donehue, Sunrise at Campobello AMPASJules Dassin, Never on Sunday DGA/AMPASBilly Wilder, The ApartmentJack Cardiff, Sons and LoversAlfred Hitchcock, PsychoFred Zinnemann, The Sundowners 1961 DGA (21)Robert Stevenson, The Absent Minded ProfessorBlake Edwards, Breakfast at Tiffany'sWilliam Wyler, The Children's HourAnthony Mann, El CidJoshua Logan, FannyHenry Koster, Flower Drum SongRobert Mulligan, The Great ImpostorPhilip Leacock, Hand in HandJack Clayton,...
- 1/10/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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