#hisashi igawa

[myfilmsbox]

夢, (1990) Dir. Akira Kurosawa

[fuckyeahmeikokaji]

Hisashi Igawa (井川比佐志) and Meiko Kaji (梶芽衣子) on the set of Double Suicide Of Sonezaki (曽根崎心中), 1978, directed by  Yasuzo Masumura (増村保造).

[may8chan]

Bullet Ballet - Shinya Tsukamoto 1998

[clemsfilmdiary]

Pitfall / Otoshiana (1962, Hiroshi Teshigahara)

おとし穴　（勅使河原）

11/6/22

[byneddiedingo]

Hisashi Igawa in Pitfall (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1962)

Cast: Hisashi Igawa, Sumie Sasaki, Kazuo Miyahara, Kunie Tanaka, Sen Yano, Kei Sato. Screenplay: Kobo Abe, based on his teleplay. Cinematography: Hiroshi Segawa. Production design: Kiyoshi Awazu. Film editing: Fusako Shuzui. Music: Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yuji Takahashi, Toru Takemitsu.

Hiroshi Teshigahara's first feature film, and the first in his trilogy of collaborations with writer Kobo Abe that also includes Woman in the Dunes (1964) and The Face of Another (1966), is a fascinating blend of documentary realism and fantasy, a murder mystery and a ghost story. Set in the coal-mining region of Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese islands, it follows a miner (HIsashi Igawa) who travels around looking for work, accompanied by his young son (Kazuo Miyahara). He is surprised one day to be offered a job by a company he had never worked for before, hired on the basis of a photograph he didn't know had been taken of him. When he reports to the location he finds only a deserted village, whose sole resident appears to be a woman (Sumie Sasaki) who runs a candy shop. She explains that the mine shut down after a cave-in, and that she's owed some money and is waiting there for word from a man she knows. When he sets out to look for whoever summoned him there, he is followed by a man (Kunie Tanaka) wearing a white suit and carrying a briefcase. Unnerved by this silent follower, he begins to run, but the man at first keeps pace with him and then draws a knife from his briefcase and stabs the miner to death, then tosses the knife into the nearby marshes. Returning to the village, the man gives the shopkeeper a large amount of money and gives her detailed instructions on what to tell the police when they arrive, including a precise description of the murderer. And then the fantasy begins: The miner's ghost arises from his corpse and discovers he can't communicate with the living. Moreover, when the police and reporters arrive at the crime scene, they identify the victim as Otsuka, the head of a miners' union working nearby. Otsuka (Igawa) is a doppelgänger for the murdered miner. And so the complications mount, as we learn that Otsuka's union is at odds with a rival union headed by Toyama (Sen Yano). More deaths take place and other ghosts appear, some, like the miner, filled with frustration that they can't help reveal the truth about their murders. Finally, the only living person who knows what really took place is the miner's young son, who has witnessed the various murders. But the film ends with the orphaned boy setting out on a road that extends off to the horizon, carrying his secrets into an unknown future. Hiroshi Segawa's eloquent black-and-white cinematography and the minimalist, percussive score composed by Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yuji Takahashi, and Toru Takemitsu -- the last-named, a frequent collaborator with Teshigahara, is credited as "sound director" -- give the film its fine, nervous edge.

[moviemosaics]

Rhapsody in August

directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1991

[mariocki]

San tai yon ekkusu jugatsu (Boiling Point, 1990)

"Cut your finger off."

"Why do I have to do it?"

"You shagged my girl."

"You told me to!"

"Don't do that even if I tell you to! Cut it off, now!"

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have Hara Kiri 1962

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Films watched in 2020.

140: Rhapsody in August (Akira Kurosawa, 1991)

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

[scenesandscreens]

RAN (1985)

Director - Akira Kurosawa, Cinematography - Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda & Asakazu Nakai

"In a mad world only the mad are sane."

[ozu-teapot]

Madadayo | Akira Kurosawa | 1993

Tatsuo Matsumura, Akira Terao, George Tokoro, Asei Kobayashi, Hisashi Igawa, et al.

[spanielonthemoon]

Bullet Ballet (1998)

dr. Shinya Tsukamoto

[theoscarsproject]

Dodes’ka-den (1970). Various tales in the lives of Tokyo slum dwellers, including a mentally deficient young man obsessed with driving his own commuter trolley.

Told in vivid colour, this film is personal, emotional, evocative in all the ways Kurosawa films often are. The heart of this film is worn on its sleeve, and the effect is a brilliantly affecting series of viginettes and character studies that you’ll be thinking about long after the credits roll. 7.5/10.

[wesley-de-cornualles]

[clemsfilmdiary]

Demon Pond / Yashagaike (1979, Masahiro Shinoda)

夜叉ゲ池　（篠田正浩）

2/12/22

[byneddiedingo]

Jinpachi Nezu and Mieko Harada in Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985) Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryo, Mieko Harada, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Hisashi Igawa, Pîtâ, Masayuki Yui. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide, based on a play by William Shakespeare. Cinematography: Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saito, Shoji Ueda. Production design: Shinobu Muraki, Yoshiro Muraki. Film editing: Akira Kurosawa. Music: Toru Takemitsu. Costume design: Emi Wada. Lavish in color and pattern, Ran may be Akira Kurosawa's most pictorial film, to the point that the images and costumes and sets sometimes threaten to overwhelm the human drama at its core. This is Kurosawa's second effort at translating a Shakespeare play into medieval Japanese terms, and I prefer his adaptation of Macbeth, the 1957 Throne of Blood, to this reworking of King Lear. It seems to me that in Ran, Kurosawa stumbles over the analogous figures from Shakespeare in ways that he doesn't in his earlier film. Turning Lear's daughters into Hidetora's sons robs much of the delicacy and painful sadness of the Shakespeare play, especially in the final reunion of Lear and Cordelia. And King Lear is a more complex play than Macbeth, with its intricate subplot involving Gloucester and his sons, and the multiple intrigues of the households of Goneril and Regan. Kurosawa has pared down and fused some of these secondary stories, but he still loses sight at times of his central figure, the Lear analog, Lord Hidetora. Tatsuya Nakadai is unquestionably one of the world's great film actors, but he's too sturdy a figure for the enfeebled Hidetora, and the stylized old-age makeup often hides his features -- except for the great, glaring eyes. There are grand things, however, in the film, including a wonderfully villainous performance by Mieko Harada as the Lady Kaede, and a curiously effective Fool, performed by the androgynous actor-dancer known as Pîtâ.