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Barmy wrote:For the most part that selection is the best stuff. Some of NO's work is justifiably obscure.

I can't imagine arguing that something should or should not be "justifiably obscure", but it's a shame that Three Resurrected Drunkards isn't on that Walker list. Hands down one of his best of the decade, and that's saying a lot.

I'm not dissing everything that's not on the list. My top 10 NO's are, roughly, Cruel Story of Youth, The Sun's Burial, Night and Fog in Japan, The Pleasures of the Flesh, Violence at Noon, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, Three Resurrected Drunkards, The Ceremony, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and Gohatto. Most of those are on the list.

Barmy wrote:I'm not dissing everything that's not on the list. My top 10 NO's are, roughly, Cruel Story of Youth, The Sun's Burial, Night and Fog in Japan, The Pleasures of the Flesh, Violence at Noon, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, Three Resurrected Drunkards, The Ceremony, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and Gohatto. Most of those are on the list.

Ah, I see. I wouldn't be able to get past the early 70s if I were to make a top ten of Oshima's work.

Yojimbo, I obtained these films from JapanEiga.com. If you want to hear how I like the DVDs, email me at [email protected]

It's mark(underscore)[email protected]

Also, I noticed that all of the Oshima and Imamura bootlegs from JapaneseNewWave.com have quietly resurfaced for sale at Superhappyfun's successor, NotAvailableonDVD.com. (Unfortunately, they don't list any of the "coming soon" titles that went unreleased when JNW implosed.)

I just checked the Siskel Film Center website and learned that Chicago will be one of those "among others" cities that will play the Oshima retrospective! The dates set are January 3 - March 2. I hope there are some fellow Chicagoans who will be elated by this news after the disappointment of not being on the original list of cities.

Wildgrounds reports that a Japanese boxset of The Catch, Band of Ninja and Death by Hanging is coming in January. No subs, natch.

I thought the latter two were already released on DVD, but maybe they were just old bootlegs? The copy of Death By Hanging I watched was not only in good condition, it had English subtitles too.

Almost all of Oshima's theatrical features, including those three, have been out in Japan for some time, but in fairly ropey editions (non-anamorphic, mostly). I assume the new boxset is a remaster. But any English-subbed version of Death by Hanging is definitely a bootleg.

otis wrote:Wildgrounds reports that a Japanese boxset of The Catch, Band of Ninja and Death by Hanging is coming in January. No subs, natch.

Well, you'll be glad to know the box was just released 2 days ago in Japan (yes, because it was set for January 2008, but delayed for right issues I guess).

Now, more Oshima's should come soon in official DVDs. Let's cross our fingers [-o<

The National Gallery of Art is going to be showing some Oshima films in March. Here's the list:

A Town of Love and Hope
Diary of Yunbogi
Cruel Story of Youth
Night and Fog in Japan
The Sun's Burial
The Catch
Shiro Amakusa, the Christian Rebel
The Ceremony

A projectionist recalls how he avoided a disaster when screening The Ceremony.

Steven H wrote:

Barmy wrote:For the most part that selection is the best stuff. Some of NO's work is justifiably obscure.

I can't imagine arguing that something should or should not be "justifiably obscure", but it's a shame that Three Resurrected Drunkards isn't on that Walker list. Hands down one of his best of the decade, and that's saying a lot.

I think "A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs" might be my favourite of the three Carlotta Oshimas I bought recently: 'Drunkards', and 'Japanese Summer: Double Suicide', being the other two, but there's not much difference between them, quality wise.

Why does everyone attack me so? Drunkards and Suicide are on my NO top 10 list. All I'm saying is that one can develop an essential NO list that, uh, excludes some of his stuff. It's rather useless to just say you must see everything.

Barmy wrote:Why does everyone attack me so? Drunkards and Suicide are on my NO top 10 list. All I'm saying is that one can develop an essential NO list that, uh, excludes some of his stuff. It's rather useless to just say you must see everything.

Have you not seen 'Treatise'?

Yojimbo, could you please share some of your thoughts on Bawdy Song?

I watched this last weekend and it left me a little dry. It seems as if it's also one of his least covered films, mostly just mentioned as part of the loose trilogy on the treatment of Koreans in Japan with Death by Hanging and Drunkards. One thing I did find interesting was that, according to a friend, the eponymous song is in a distinct Korean accent. I mostly found this worthy to note because the "Korean issue" seems to be tacked on at the end otherwise, but would definitely affect the consciousness of a Japanese-speaking viewer throughout the film.

PerfectDepth wrote:Yojimbo, could you please share some of your thoughts on Bawdy Song?

I watched this last weekend and it left me a little dry. It seems as if it's also one of his least covered films, mostly just mentioned as part of the loose trilogy on the treatment of Koreans in Japan with Death by Hanging and Drunkards. One thing I did find interesting was that, according to a friend, the eponymous song is in a distinct Korean accent. I mostly found this worthy to note because the "Korean issue" seems to be tacked on at the end otherwise, but would definitely affect the consciousness of a Japanese-speaking viewer throughout the film.

The final scene is still something of a puzzle for me, pd, other than it may be something of a recurring 'motif' for Oshima, along with the Korean issue. (at least during that period of his filmmaking)

Given that there were three different types of songs featuring, 'the Japanese militaristic', 'the bawdy songs of the working class', and the Vietnam protest songs, I took it as more than a treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs, he was comparing and contrasting the circumstances where each type are used, and the effect, and nature of those using them. And the 'priorities' of the four young students.

As a rule if I can't immediately translate the French subs I don't pause, or go back over it shortly afterwards so I won't claim to understand everything he was getting at, but the combination of what I could translate and the fascinating visuals makes me want to investigate more (In fact I subsequently ordered the book "Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast", in order to help me get a better grip on what he's about: if only to dip into, as I always prefer to figure out what the director/script is about)

The BFI Southbank starts a Nagisa Oshima season in August. As someone who only really knows the films from Ai No Corrida onwards, no doubt this'll be very welcome.

Thanks for the input, Yojimbo! I liked the comparisons between the songs and uses of them. It's such a difficult film to digest after a single viewing. I loved the title sequence with the blood seeping through the red cloth evoking a violent image of the Japanese flag. I found it brilliant to begin the film as a sex comedy in order implicate the viewer with the students as the women in the film fall victim to the men's priorities. The raunchy song the "revolutionary" teacher sings is at first tastelessly funny and then absolutely disturbing when it becomes the rallying cry for the four boys.

Spoiler

When the teacher dies, it's the final punchline to the comedic flow of the first half of the film. Oshima says "good riddance" to the old intellectual left, but then takes a darker look at what's to follow

In the final scene, we come to understand, by monologue, that a truly equal revolutionary sexual relationship is impossilbe under oppression and that men, even revolutinary men, oppress women in the same manor that Japan oppresses Korea. The monologue is the film's weakest element to me and it feels tacked on every time I ponder it. Not because it doesn't fit, but because it fits too well. It's too obvious for Oshima.

The Oshima retrospective is on it's last two weeks here and it's been really amazing. The downside for me is that I want to watch these films again and again. I picked up Desser's Eros + Massacre based on the high praise it gets on this board and I found the context it provides on these films to be indispensable. I'll collect and contribute some of my thoughts in the coming days.

PerfectDepth wrote: The raunchy song the "revolutionary" teacher sings is at first tastelessly funny and then absolutely disturbing when it becomes the rallying cry for the four boys.

Agreed, also it served to raise question marks about the subsequent behaviour of the lead boy, not least, in the hotel, in the teachers room

PerfectDepth wrote:

Spoiler

When the teacher dies, it's the final punchline to the comedic flow of the first half of the film. Oshima says "good riddance" to the old intellectual left, but then takes a darker look at what's to follow

In the final scene, we come to understand, by monologue, that a truly equal revolutionary sexual relationship is impossilbe under oppression and that men, even revolutinary men, oppress women in the same manor that Japan oppresses Korea.

Agreed about the monologue; and your comment about that final scene may be a plausible one.
The fact that one of the girls 'took charge' at the protest rally might have, deep down, irked them

PerfectDepth wrote: The Oshima retrospective is on it's last two weeks here and it's been really amazing. The downside for me is that I want to watch these films again and again. I picked up Desser's Eros + Massacre based on the high praise it gets on this board and I found the context it provides on these films to be indispensable. I'll collect and contribute some of my thoughts in the coming days.

Desser's Eros + Massacre is also winging its way to me as I type: Yoshida's films are never as opaque as Oshima's, at least in the latter's peak period, but I'd still like to read more about a director who I hadn't even heard of two years ago, but whom I've quickly grown to love (and I also have some Masumuras, Suzukis, Imamuras, and Shindos to catch up on)

thirtyframesasecond wrote:The BFI Southbank starts a Nagisa Oshima season in August. As someone who only really knows the films from Ai No Corrida onwards, no doubt this'll be very welcome.

I watched 'Merry Christmas' a couple of nights ago, as part of my Oshima DVD marathon: an interesting theme, certainly, and has interesting moments, but nowhere near the league of his essential 60's films.

I thought Bowie and Sakamoto dragged it down somewhat, even though Oshima had previously successfully used a pop singer in the lead of 'Three Resurrected Drunkards'; Tom Conti was, of course, good, and Beat Kitano, in his film debut, surprisingly so, but the two leads needed to have been stronger actors

Ai no Corrida is showing in Tokyo this weekend with a 'lecture' by Wakamatsu Koji apparently. Now, I'm assuming 99% it'll be a cut (or at least mosaiced) version, but perhaps not. I have no evidence to base my 1% doubt except that there seems to be decidedly less (if any) mosaiccing in the cinema nowadays compared to DVD & TV. Also it's part of a film festival and I recall some unsimulated sex at a festival a couple of years ago (um..on screen). Of course, that was a foreign film which probably arrived in the country an hour or so before the festival and wasn't checked by censors.

Death By Hanging is my all time no #1, I loved what zedz wrote about it but I havent seen it discussed much more in this or in the other thread - I'd love to hear some thoughts.