House (1977)

Described by one reviewer as "an episode of Scooby Doo as directed by Dario Argento", House (ハウス, Hausu) is the first feature film from prolific director and screenwriter Nobuhiko Ōbayashi (大林宣彦). During the 60s, Ōbayashi spent his years following university producing short experimental films, while the next decade saw him directing commercials for television. He was able to use his expertise in these two seemingly divergent fields to produce a wholly engrossing, terrifyingly comic debut in this phantasmagorical coming-of-age nightmare.

According to Ōbayashi, production giant Toho Films was "tired of losing money on completely comprehensible films" and encouraged the director to "produce his own completely incomprehensible script". The result: a plethora of poltergeist phenomena and murderous mayhem; a film "too absurd to be genuinely terrifying, yet too nightmarish to be merely comic".



Fortunately, we here in San Francisco have the opportunity to experience the gut-busting, mind-blowing macabre of House on the big screen during an upcoming showing at the Castro Theater. North American distributor Janus Films is presenting the film in theaters across the country in preparation for its eventual DVD release, possibly slated for later this year. Additional show times and dates can be found by visiting the film's site.

House plays at the Castro Theater on Saturday, April 17th at 7:30 and 9:45p. For more information, click here.

Mad, Bad... & Dangerous To Know

If you haven't already, be sure to check out the exciting listings for Mad, Bad... & Dangerous To Know, a currently ongoing film series at the Japan Society of New York showcasing femme fatales of the 60s and 70s. The three-week, three-part event focuses on "three untamed beauties": actresses Ayako Wakao (若尾文子), Meiko Kaji (梶芽衣子) and Mariko Okada (岡田茉莉子).

Japan Society film programmer Samuel Jamier notes, "Both Wakao and Okada were muses and inspiration for two major film directors, Yasuzo Masumura (増村保造) and Kijū (Yoshishige) Yoshida (吉田喜重), respectively, while Kaji navigated between filmmakers, a wild card of Japanese cinema at the time. Put together, their films delineate what one could call an aesthetic of 'convulsive beauty.'"

The selections' themes vary from violent to erotic and anywhere in between. However, according to the series' press release, it's about more than just fetishizing skin flicks. Rather, "the films of Mad, Bad… & Dangerous to Know address concerns of the Japanese New Wave, post-war discontent, and the influence of international film genres such as the westerns and film noir."

"On one level [the series] reflects the status of the 'movie star' during the Golden Age of Japanese cinema at a time when cross-cultural traffic truly emerged. On a much deeper level, it brings to light new views of gender politics in Japan and examines the interconnections between female agency, gender ideologies, and Japanese models of womanhood."

Mad, Bad... & Dangerous To Know runs through April 18th at the Japan Society of New York. For more information, visit their website.

That Night's Wife (1930)

Sono Yo No Tsuma (a.k.a. That Night's Wife) - Directed by Yasujirō Ozu
その夜の妻 (監督：小津安二郎)

This Friday, February 19th, the Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley will be presenting That Night's Wife, a rare work by filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu. The 1930 silent movie is part of the two-film miniseries Masters of Asian Cinema, showing alongside Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's "modern classic" A City of Sadness, which runs the following day. The screening of That Night's Wife features Judith Rosenberg on piano, who will provide live accompaniment to the film.

"One of seven films Ozu made in 1930, this seems at first to be a prime example of his 'atypical' early silent period, when he experimented with numerous Hollywood-influenced genres and techniques before gradually refining the minimalist style and thematic focus of his mature career. The film opens as an effective heist drama pastiche, with [male lead Tokihiko] Okada trussing up bank clerks and dodging the long shadows of a police dragnet, fox-like; we follow him home to his wife and their critically ill baby daughter, as does a wily police chief. As captor and prey sit out the night, waiting for the child's recovery, the scene is set for a claustrophobic battle of nerves." (NB, Time Out London)

The films are presented in conjunction with the conference Relocating Ozu: The Question of an Asian Cinematic Vernacular, organized by the Centers for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Studies at UC Berkeley. The conference aims to "bring together a dynamic group of international scholars to reassess Ozu’s work in its wider relation to inter- and postwar colonial and urban modernities in East Asia." For more information, visit the UC Berkeley Institute on East Asian Studies.

For more information on Masters of Asian Cinema: Yasujiro Ozu and Hou Hsiao-hsien, visit the Pacific Film Archive Theater.

United Red Army (2007)

Jitsuroku: Rengo Sekigun - Asama Sansō E No Michi (a.k.a. United Red Army) - Directed by Kōji Wakamatsu
実録・連合赤軍 あさま山荘への道程 (監督：若松孝二)

As part of a three-week retrospective, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco has been showing a collection of films by director Kōji Wakamatsu, a number of which are being screened in the U.S. for the first time.

Wakamatsu is best known for his racy, provocative films in the "pink eiga" genre, most of which feature a liberal dose of sex, drugs and violence, amplifying the attitude of Japanese counterculture during the 1960s and 70s.

In the final piece of the series, United Red Army, Wakamatsu chooses to focus on the tragic demise of the Red Army Faction, a group of young Japanese radicals whose members proliferated a series of terrorist attacks throughout the 1970s. With the help of archival footage, the 2007 film recreates the events surrounding the Asama-Sansō incident. Largely unknown outside of Japan, this nationally televised event saw police involved in a standoff with the U.R.A. for over a week amidst a heated hostage situation.

"Wakamatsu brilliantly reconstructs the most troubling episode in the bloody history of Japanese student-radical extremism through the true story of the United Red Army faction, which had its roots in the '60s when Japanese students protested America using Japan as a staging base for its war in Vietnam. In 1972, 14 members of the United Red Army faction lynched each other during group “self-criticism” sessions, which quickly degenerated into a ten-day stand-off with the police that is one of the pivotal moments in Japanese history, as famous in Japan as Martin Luther King’s assassination is in America. This gut-wrenching docudrama is underlaid with electrifying psychedelic rock music by Jim O’Rourke." (Michael Prazan)

United Red Army runs for one day only, Thursday, October 29th at 7p, concluding Pink Cinema Revolution: The Radical Films of Kōji Wakamatsu at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Samurai Rebellion (1967)

Jōiuchi: Hairyō Tsuma Shimatsu (a.k.a. Samurai Rebellion) - Directed by Masayuki Kobayashi
上意討ち：拝領妻始末 (監督：小林正樹)

After a near two-year hiatus (I can't believe it's been that long!), we here at Showa OK! plan on skipping the lengthy apology and picking up right where we left off with another local screening of a powerful Shōwa-era film, director Masayuki Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion.

Kobayashi's tale of duty, honor and revenge is being presented jointly by the San Francisco Public Library and the Consulate General of Japan in conjunction with the currently ongoing Lords of the Samurai exhibit at the Asian Art Museum. This special screening is free and open to the public.

"Toshiro Mifune stars as Isaburo Sasahara, an aging swordsman living a quiet life until his clan lord orders that his son marry the lord’s mistress, who has recently displeased the ruler. Reluctantly, father and son take in the woman, and, to the family’s surprise, the young couple fall in love. But the lord soon reverses his decision and demands the mistress’s return. Against all expectations, Isaburo and his son refuse, risking the destruction of their entire family. Director Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion is the gripping story of a peaceful man who finally decides to take a stand against injustice." (The Criterion Collection)

As an added bonus, the screening will be followed by a discussion led by iaido ("the way of sword drawing") master Andrej Hendryk Diamantstein concerning the film and its depiction of the samurai way of life.

Lords and Loyalty: Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion and the Samurai Ethos will be held at Koret Auditorium in the San Francisco Public Library on August 22nd from 2-4.45p.

Lords of the Samurai runs until September 20th.

Chikamatsu's "Love In Osaka" (1959)

Naniwa No Koi No Monogatari (a.k.a Chikamatsu's "Love in Osaka") - Directed by Tomu Uchida
浪花の恋の物語 (監督：内田吐夢)

We digress from the world of music for a moment to briefly introduce a fabulous film of the Shōwa period, director Tomu Uchida's production of Tokugawa-era master playwright Monzaemon Chikamatsu in Love in Osaka. Uchida's films are being shown during a series of screenings presented by the Pacific Film Archive, housed on the campus of UC Berkeley.

"The plays of Monzaemon Chikamatsu have frequently been adapted into films, most notably Mizoguchi's Crucified Lovers, but few with the experimental intensity of Uchida's version of the kabuki classic The Couriers of Love Fleeing to Yamato. The adopted son of an Osaka courier falls in love with a prostitute and, discovering that she is about to be purchased by a client, steals money from his employer to redeem her. The young lovers take flight to Yamato, but, as in Chikamatsu's other domestic tragedies of love and duty, they must be pursued and their passion destroyed by death. Favorite Uchida themes, such as the indenturing of a prostitute (see Yoshiwara and Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji), and his characteristic emphasis on performance and theatricality re-emerge here; but the daring device of having Chikamatsu himself appear as a character is just one of many surprises this remarkable film holds." (James Quandt)

Tomu Uchida: Japanese Genre Master runs until September 29th.