#Shigeru Tamura

[holespoles]

Shigeru Tamura

たむらしげる

[mangacapsaicin]

shigeru tamura’s phantasmagoria days || たむらしげるの『ファンタスマゴリアデイズ』

[hiyutekivigil]

glassy ocean (クジラの跳躍’), 1998, dir. shigeru tamura

[nagaremonoseishi]

A Piece of Phantasmagoria. Old school Dreamcore

If you like dreamcore style, then I want to tell you about the cool author Shigeru Tamura. In his works he created a planet called Phantasmagoria. There are cities on this planet, strange creatures live in them, such as: an animated cactus, trees, lamp posts that have learned to walk. Wizards, witches, ghosts and many other strange creatures.

In his stories, Shigeru-san talks about everyday life and interesting events taking place on the planet he created. And he probably saw this planet in a dream, there is mention of this in the anime.

Initially, in 1989, a picture book was created. And after that there were three anime: Ginga no Uo Ursa Minor Blue (1993), A Piece of Phantasmagoria (1995), Kujira no Chouyaku (1998). All three anime have the same art style, similar characters and strange events. From this we can conclude that they are part of the same author's universe.

If you like dreamcore, dedicate your time to these three anime. They have pleasant music, beautiful art and unusual plots.

If you like the soundtracks from these anime, some of them are freely available.

Ginga no Uo Ursa Minor Blue OST: https://archive.org/details/09_20240131

Kujira no Chouyaku OST: https://archive.org/details/08_20240201

Enjoy!

[dracul91]

While traveling through the realm of dreams, I discovered a little planet called Phantasmagoria, this has been a story from that planet, till next time...

[ccthewriter]

CC’s Top 100 New Watch Ranking 2022 - Highlights

Each year on Letterboxd, I make a list of the 100 best films I’ve seen for the first time. It’s a fun way to compare movies separated in time, genre, and country of origin, and helps me keep track of what I’m watching! Over the next few days I’m going to release separate posts for each film in the Top 10, but for now, I wanted to highlight some incredible selections from the rest of the list. 

2021 was my cinematic awakening. I watched classics, pursued filmographies, and generally took a survey of the greats. I continued that exploration into this year, and if I’ve learned anything from this quest, it’s that there are A LOT of movies out there. I still have so much to see. When the Sight and Sound list dropped I wasn’t surprised that I had seen less than half of them. I’ve watched several since then, and it’s completely shaken up my rankings! There are films out there than can rattle your perception of the world. That’s something I adore about movies that I rarely find in other mediums. A few hours spent with a great movie can change you to your core. Like a dream that stays with you your entire life. How lucky we are to be able to enjoy and revisit such dreams whenever we want. 

The following films are all remarkable dreams. There’s something to say about everything in my Top 100, but these selections really stand out. They give feelings of desolation, or zaniness, or romance, or something stranger than anything I could put to words. Their ranking is subjective and liable to change - you have no idea how hard it was to assemble them in ANY coherent way. If you watch any of them, please feel free to reach out and tell me your thoughts! I am always interested in hearing the things people have discovered in these works. 

The full Top 100 list is on Letterboxd HERE. Click below to see ten selections chosen from #100 - #11

#96 - A Slightly Pregnant Man (1973), Dir. Jacques Demy

This is a list for Tumblr, so I had to highlight the m-preg film first. Gotta cater to my audience.

This was one of the most surprising comedies I watched this year. In a time when discourse about comedy is strong, and there’s an insistence that comedians are somehow obligated to be cruel and provocative, this film stands out as an example of the contrary. Often the best humor comes from unexpected empathy, not predictable cruelty. Marcello Mastroianni, my favorite biscotti (long Italian snack), is a driver’s ed instructor who discovers that he is pregnant. Hijinks ensue. There’s no hand-wringing explanation as to how it happens, no bug-eyed screaming at the camera, no cross-dressing or homophobic accusations. It’s all taken in stride. The humor is born out of the fact that at every turn, when you expect someone to act outlandish or cruel, they never are. Marcello’s wife accepts it; the doctors take interest in the case, but are respectful. A corporation invents a new line of male pregnancy clothes. It’s remarkable to see a film from 1973 that is kinder to a situation like this than something we’d get today. You can easily imagine the comedians of the 90’s and early aughts turning this premise into 120 minutes of gay jokes, slurs, and transphobia. There are dated jokes and dynamics to be found here, to be sure, but the blasé attitude towards this gender subversion makes this a really special watch.

#90 - Crimewave (1985), Dir. Sam Raimi

Perhaps the most controversial thing on this list! Crimewave is an early Sam Raimi film that is widely disliked, but I watched it with some friends this year and loved it. It’s a bonkers farce about a guy on death row recounting how he ended up there, starting as a meek nerd and getting wrapped up in murderous hijinks. On Letterboxd, I describe the aesthetics of the film as Looney Tunes Gotham City. It captures the griminess of mid-eighties cities and amplifies it, embodying the paranoia a certain American class felt going near urban centers at that time. This is what my parents thought would happen to me if I stayed in the city past dark. There are some really spectacular shots in this film - that one with the main goon charging through the doors and fighting away plates is a highlight. You can see Sam Raimi’s bag of tricks on full display, the visual genius that makes the Evil Dead movies hilarious and horrifying. His favorite punching bag Bruce Campbell makes an appearance in what might be his sexiest role - look at this gif, look at how FUCKING HOT he is. Blow smoke down my throat daddy. This film’s a great argument for Raimi being more than a blood-and-guts director. His kinetic scenes, his rubbery cartoon energy, has a place in any genre or story.

#81 - Trouble in Paradise (1932), Dir. Ernst Lubitsch

A psychological thriller, but fun, and sexy, and romantic, and not scary in the least. Hmm. Maybe there’s another term I should use… I evoke the psychology of this movie because it centers on a pair of professional double-crossers. A pair of thieves - partners in love and crime - decide to fleece a perfume heiress, one of whom seduces her and ends up really falling in love. Or maybe not! At every moment he confesses his love to the heiress, he’s turning to his partner and insisting he’s lying. And every time this partner acts to betray him and get revenge, she seems to reveal that that itself is part of the heist. Does the heiress know? Is she humoring them, or getting them framed? Every scene surprised me with who knew what and who was telling the truth when. I have a feeling I would have to rewatch this a few more times to get a real grip on that, and I would do so with pleasure. This plays like a light steamy comedy - and it is! - but within that easygoing charm there are actorly games that are fascinating to witness. I haven’t seen a shipping tree this complicated since the last time I watched Miraculous Ladybug…

#72 - The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

A premise built for a paperback romance novel. A young widow moves into a house by the sea, only to discover the ghost of an old captain is haunting her new home. He’s very mean and very handsome. Over the course of the film they transform from antagonistic cohabitants to gothic romantics, separated by the veil of death from consummating their attraction. She’s trying to write a novel, despite her grief and the ghost’s patronizing attitude. He is still coping with, y’know, not being alive. I am enchanted by the power of this premise. It evokes so many oil-paint scenes of lighthouses and sea-battered cliffs, so many stories of strong-jawed men being made soft by the poise of an unshakeable woman. I don’t want to give the ending away because it is spectacular. I will say that it is amazing when a movie finds a route for a character's fulfilment without changing her at the last minute. Especially from this time, to see a woman’s journey end without her sacrificing something of herself… it’s a wonderful thing.

#69 nice - Too Cool To Kill (2022), Dir. Xing Wenxiong

One of this year’s biggest surprises! A Chinese remake of a Japanese film, something a friend recommended out of the blue. I don’t think any of us knew what this was going to be when we put it on. But this is a deeply, deeply hilarious farce with just enough romance to have this stand with some of the classic Hollywood greats I’ve seen this year. A gangster threatens to shut down a director's movie over the debts he owes. The lead actress averts this by claiming she’s dating the one man the gangster fears, a legendary assassin named Killer Karl (lmao). She’s not, of course, but she convinces a foolish stuntman to play the part. He thinks he’s in a cinéma vérité production, he method-acts the role entirely, and a wild series of hijinks ensue as they try to pass this wannabee Daniel Day Lewis as a real assassin. It’s just so thoroughly comedic. I haven’t seen the original, so I can’t comment on what this film invents with the material, but the lead actor, Wei Xiang, gives one of the best slapstick performances I’ve ever seen. An endless series of twists and hilarious turns. I saw this on a low-quality stream, I hope this gets a good blu-ray release with better subtitles.

#62 - Poitín (1978), Dir. Bob Quinn

You’ve heard of the Banshees of Inisherin - get ready for the Bastards of Inishtupid! Alright, sweaty introduction, but Martin McDonagh’s oeuvre is the best touchstone for the mood of this 50-minute crime story. The first feature film performed entirely in Irish, shot on location in Connemara. Two idiots bully the local moonshiner and try to get rich quick. Violence and misery emerges from their half-thought plans. I love this film because it is such a pleasure to hear Irish spoken - it’s a language I’m still struggling to learn, but hearing it in its own context, spoken by native speakers, is remarkable. The filmmaker turns Connemara into a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland, where your house stands alone in this sea of fog that monsters might emerge from. Connemara does feel that way. I went on a bus tour through there once, and stretches of it feel like an alien world. My grandmother was from Tuam, right outside that stony expanse. She passed before I was born, and what little I know indicates she had a hard life. Films like this help me understand what she might have been leaving when she came over to the States.

#53 - Sweetie (1989), Dir. Jane Campion

A film that makes me squirm to recall its details. There’s a lot of pain, a lot of discomfort, in so many of its moments… and just like the titular character, we want to shun them and forget the truths they expose. Sweetie is a bizarre exploration of a woman’s life. The first twenty minutes or so you see her get into a horribly ill-informed marriage with someone she barely knows, and you can’t understand why she’s acting the way she is - and then you meet her family. You meet Sweetie. You see that she comes from an impossibly broken home, and the way they cling to ‘normalcy’ is by turning Sweetie into a sacrificial lamb, a black sheep they can always scream at. Without oversharing, I really empathized with what Sweetie was put through. It’s clear that she isn’t ‘born bad,’ or some manipulative genius like her family is making her out to be. She’s deeply ill and needs help. Her family perpetuates her illness - do they cause it? Exacerbate it? Could anything at this point save her? The film’s characters don’t know, and they won’t ask. I admire Campion greatly, but many of her films don’t entirely work for me. The worlds they capture seem so specific that without knowing them first-hand they can seem outlandish. There are things in this film that I’ve seen, heard through friends, or seen the scarred aftermath of, and can confirm this film touches something deeply real. Powerful stuff - though make sure you’re emotionally prepared to watch it.

#52 - The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001), Dir. Takashi Miike

Boy, if you thought Sweetie was going to make you squirm!! This is a really fucking weird movie. It’s a campy horror-comedy, sometimes-stop-motion musical that ends in a blisteringly sincere and dramatic commentary about living despite it all. Its multi-hyphenate genres somehow make sense when it’s all put together. A family, the Katakuris, run a remote bed-and-breakfast, and through a series of misfortunes keep winding up with dead guests that they have to hide from new ones. They’re never entirely innocent in what befalls their visitors, but you end up rooting for them through all their poor decisions. The movie stands out for being truly unpredictable. I couldn’t remotely guess where any moment would lead. There are some utterly disgusting things depicted here - *highly* recommend looking at a content warning before viewing - but that is paired with some incredible moments of comedy. Blending such different tones is very difficult, and I always admire when a work somehow manages to make opposing elements harmonize.

#40 - Paisan (1946), Dir. Roberto Rossellini

Last year, I fell in love with the films of Federico Fellini. His works made me the passionate film nerd I am now. I started a series of video essays exploring his filmography (which you can view here!), and as part of that quest, I decided to watch all the films he had worked on too. He described Paisan as his baptism into true cinema. He traveled around Italy just after World War 2 with a crew of amateur actors and little money, adapting to the conditions around them as they found it. What emerged from that journey is this remarkable film. Six separate episodes about the liberation of Italy, united by a theme of miscommunication. Between people speaking different languages, and between people unable to express themselves. In a year like this one, I am moved by films made by anti-fascists, made explicitly to confront and address cultural memory in a period of reckoning. Paisan is the filmmaker holding a mirror up to what Italy had become, how fascism changed them, what they lost in abandoning themselves to such a horrible ideology. It is just a fascinating document of a specific period of history. We are lucky to be able to step through time via this movie and witness such a landscape. It’s shot beautifully, it’s made by people who lived through the things they’re depicting. Each little episode would be its own award-winning short film if you took them apart… what more can I say? This is a true classic for a reason.

#19 - A Piece of Phantasmagoria (1999), Dir. Shigeru Tamura

A criminally underwatched, pristine gem of a film. A series of vignettes on a dreamlike, simple world. Anything I could say is best described by the speech that concludes each segment: “While traveling the realm of dreams I discovered a small planet called Phantasmagoria. This has been a short tale from that planet. The memories from this trip will be something to always cherish. Till Next Time - Sayonara!” This is so gentle, so happy, so whimsical. A man walks through a desert filled with giant lightbulbs and clocks. A cactus-person goes on a trip to the big city. The Bakers of Baker County have a tough life. You know those segments of Adventure Time or Steven Universe where they linger in some absurd visual, while a simple little melody plays that transports you into a space of simple enjoyment? Smile fixed and heart calm? This entire movie is like that. It contains light dreams, shining aspirations. I can’t wait to revisit it. If there’s anything from this list you should watch, it should be this one. It only has about 300 views on Letterboxd, an insanely low number given how spectacular this is. There’s no easily accessible blu-ray or physical copy of this, though you can view it on Vimeo here. Spend the 90 minutes doing so, you won’t regret it. I hope the director, Shigeru Tamura, gets to release a thousand things in English. It seems like most of his work has been for small Japanese publications. But I have to imagine he is widely known in the CalArts and animation circles - some spark of his influence seems to proliferate the best cartoons being made right now. Utterly gorgeous. A pinnacle of animation. Simplicity and style refined.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading! If you made it this far why don't you give me a follow on Letterboxd, where I post reviews and keep obsessive track of all the movies I watch. Again, feel free to drop a line if you checked out anything from this list!

[photojournalisme]

Children who were participating on the Mayday for food supplies in Japan, photographed by Shigeru Tamura, date unknown

[byneddiedingo]

Shigeru Amachi in Jigoku (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1960)

Cast: Shigeru Amachi, Utako Mitsuya, Yoichi Numata, Hiroshi Hayashi, Jun Otomo, Akiko Yamashita, Kiyoko Tsuji, Fumiko Miyata, Akira Nakamura, Kimie Tokudaiji, Akiko Ono, Hiroshi Izumida. Screenplay: Nobuo Nakagawa, Ichiro Miyagawa. Cinematography: Mamoru Morita. Production design: Shosuke Sasane, Haruyasu Kurosawa. Film editing: Toshio Goto. Music: Michiaki Watanabe.

I know what hell is: listening to elevator music interrupted by assurances that "your call is important to us" while on infinite hold. Which is not the idea that director Nobuo Nakagawa and co-screenwriter Ichiro Miyagawa present. It's pretty much the traditional one of fire and torture. Jigoku is a cult film, as many of the better (or at least more arty) horror films become, and while I'm not a member of the cult I can appreciate the skill with which Nakagawa presents his vision. It's a movie that ranges from deeply somber to extraordinarily lurid. The protagonist, Shiro (Shigeru Amachi), is a student who, after celebrating his engagement to Yukiko (Utako Mitsuya), gets into a car driven by his sardonic friend Tamura (Yoichi Numata). On a dark road, Tamura runs down and kills a gangster, Kyoichi (Hiroshi Izumida), whose mother (Kiyoko Tsuji) witnesses the accident. Shiro wants to stop, but Tamura keeps driving. Since her son was a gangster, she doesn't report the hit-and-run to the police but, along with Kyoichi's girlfriend, Yoko (Akiko Ono), vows to hunt down Tamura and Shiro and kill them. After pleading with Tamura, Shiro decides to go to the police himself, but on the way the taxi driver -- whom Shiro briefly hallucinates as Tamura -- runs into a tree and Yukiko, who has reluctantly accompanied Shiro, is killed. Shiro's road to hell is certainly paved with good intentions, and after his death he winds up there. He has received a telegram that his mother is critically ill, so he goes to see her at the home for the elderly that his father runs in the country. She's not as ill as he feared -- the telegram was actually sent by Kyoichi's mother and girlfriend to lure him into their trap. He discovers that the old folks' home his father owns is actually run on the cheap, with a doctor who skimps on medicine and food. He also encounters Sachiko, a young woman who looks exactly like his fiancée, Yukiko, down to the pink parasol she carries. She turns out to be the sister Shiro didn't know he had, but by this time revelations are coming hard and fast: Tamura -- who appears more and more demonic -- turns up too, as do the potential assassins, and in an elaborate concoction of circumstances, everybody dies, including Shiro. And everybody goes to hell, which is a fantasia crafted out of depictions from old Buddhist paintings and traditional cinematic imaginings of the underworld. Shiro learns there that the taxi accident killed not only Yukiko but also their unborn child, and he spends much of his time trying to rescue the infant from the torments of the afterlife. The film ends, after much exploration of the more gruesome torments of hell, with Shiro's vision of the twinned Yukiko and Sachiko, both with pink parasols, but although it suggests Faust being redeemed by Gretchen, there's nothing to indicate that this is any kind of redemption for Shiro. In short, Jigoku is complicated, contrived, confusing, sometimes a little cheesy and more than a little morally questionable -- does Shiro really deserve to go through all this? -- but also thoroughly fascinating.

[cyn-the-black-rabbit]

Mugen Myōjō Academy 夢幻明星学園

Student Council Club

Natsumi Sone 曽根 奈津美 (Third-year) (Student Council President) (Former Captain of Volleyball Team) (predecessor of the epithet Luna Moth) Moeko Imai 今井 萠子 (Third-year) (Student Council Vice President) (Former Vice-captain of Volleyball Team)

Volleyball Club

Kaoru Asagawa 浅川 薫 (coach) Satoko Kimura 木村 聡子 (Second-year) (Captain of Volleyball Team) (epithet "Luna Moth") Mayu Taniguchi 谷口 真由 Chitose Sekine 関根 千歳 Kuriko Tamura 田村 久里子 Runa Minobe 美濃部 瑠奈 Nozomi Onose 小野瀬 のぞみ Anzu Hashizume 橋爪 杏子

Baseball Club

Chōei Asato 安里 長栄 (coach) Satoru Ogasawara 小笠原 悟 (Third-year) (Captain of Baseball Team) (pitcher/third baseman) (epithet "Diamondback Moth") Sadao Kuryū 久留生 貞夫 (Second-year) (catcher) Mitsuru Onishi 大西 充 (First-year) (first baseman/pitcher) Issei Ootani 大谷 一誠 (First-year) (pitcher) Fumiya Furuhata 古畑 文也 (Second-year) (left fielder) Giichi Asato 安里 義一 (Second-year) (catcher) Kiyotaka Hoshina 星名 清高 (Second-year) (second baseman/shortstop) Masaki Kurushima 来島 正樹 (Third-year) (center fielder) Rui Inaba 稲葉 累 (Third-year) (right fielder)

Basketball Club

Mitsuo Sugaya 菅谷 光雄 (Second-year) (Captain of Basketball Team) (epithet "Eclipse Moth") Shigeru Oomae 大前 繁 Makoto Nishiura 西浦 誠 Ryusei Mizoguchi 溝口 流星 Katsuomi Utagawa 宇田川 勝臣

[holespoles]

Shigeru Tamura

たむらしげる

[mangacapsaicin]

shigeru tamura’s phantasmagoria days || たむらしげるの『ファンタスマゴリアデイズ』

[thefilmsimps]

Jigoku (dir. Nobuo Nakagawa)

-Jere Pilapil- 7/10 Nobuo Nakagawa’s Jigoku is a cornerstone of horror, in a way. You can see its influence, arguably, in works like Hausu or even Evil Dead II (which I also watched last night). As a morality tale, it’s a bit slight, but as a work of imagination and special effects, it’s pretty amazing that Nakagawa achieved this in 1960. The movie stars Shigeru Amachi as Shirō, a student, and Yōichi Numata his acquaintance Tamura. Tamura drives Shirō home one night, committing a hit and run that haunts Shirō for the rest of the movie. It sets off a domino effect of sorts: the hit and run victim’s girlfriend and mother scheme up some revenge against Shirō, and his guilt and bad luck cause irreparable damage to those around him. Not only that, but the ulterior motives and immoral decisions of those around him have disastrous effects for everyone. The majority of Jigoku’s runtime is spent in a kind of hell-on-earth, where Shirō‘s life is turned upside down by death and betrayal. The characterizations are all a bit thin - Shirō is sad but passive, Tamura an unhinged agent of chaos - so spending that much time on what amounts to domestic melodrama is entertaining but slight. It’s all a preamble, though, for when the movie moves on to a literal hell, one that competes with Pasolini’s The Canterbury Tales for inventive depictions of hell (granted, in different religious visions). In this final act, it becomes a true horror movie and earns its cult status as Nakagawa and co-writer Ichirō Miyagawa unleash some truly creative tortures upon the afterlife’s residents. All in all, this is an uneven but worthwhile entry into cult fandom. Unfortunately, like many horror movies, the best of it is tucked away in the final act while the majority of the movie shuffles along with midlevel drama. Numata’s performance as Tamura is incredible; as one dimensional as his character is, his mischievous spirit feels like the third act trying to break into the first two. It’s a spark of energy needed while Shirō is in his feelings.

[thatanimescreencapguy]

A Piece of Phantasmagoria

[anamon-book]

スター コレクター　たむらしげる Picture-CARD Book 架空社

[slice-of-afterlife]