#Marc Walkow

[flashfuckingflesh]

EVIL Has the Right to Remain Dead! "Magic Cop" reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

No Two-Bit Magician In ‘Magic Cop” on Blu-ray!   Hong Kong cops are confounded by a chaotic drug bust when learning that their female suspect, who had managed to overpower an entire unit of male officers and even take a bullet ambling deadpan into the streets, had died 7 days prior.  An outlying officer, and practicing Taoist, Uncle Feng is called to Hong Kong to not only quickly solve the…

[fuckyeahmeikokaji]

Got a few news items to post about today, but first off the Alamo Drafthouse in New York City is going to be screening Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (女囚さそり　第４１雑居房) on Thursday, 6/28 at 9:30pm.

The screening is hosted by Marc Walkow (Twitter).

Still waiting for something like this to happen in LA... *cough*

http://fuckyeahmeikokaji.tumblr.com

[uspiria]

“I always discuss important things with children. Adults can only think about things they understand, so everything stays on that boring human level. At that level, a hit movie about shark attacks leads to one about bear attacks. That’s the best they can do, but children come up with things that can’t be explained. They like the strange and mysterious. The power of cinema isn’t in the explainable, but in the strange and inexplicable. So I asked my daughter, who was about ten at that time... 'If daddy were to make a Japanese movie, what would be an interesting story?’ She said, ‘Don’t bother, Japanese movies are boring.’ I said, ‘But if I were to make one, and I can’t make a movie like Jaws in Japan, what kind of movie would be as exciting?’ She was seated before a mirror after a bath, combing her long hair. She said, ‘Daddy, it would be scary if my reflection in that mirror began attacking me.’ I thought, ‘Yes, that would be strange and interesting.’ It’s not all that strange for bears or ants to attack people, but to be attacked by your reflection in a mirror is a fantasy that could only happen in a movie.”

Constructing a House (2010) dir. Marc Walkow

[goddessesofthesilverscreen]

Japanese New Wave goddess Shima Iwashita in one of her best roles as a bored, bloodthirsty shrew in her husband Masahiro Shinoda’s erotic ghost story Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975). From a good essay on Shinoda’s filmography:

“Shima Iwashita, so powerful in Himiko, contributed a pair of even more astounding performances in Shinoda’s next two films, though her characters couldn’t have been more different... Smaller in scale, but equally powerful, is Iwashita’s prior film for Shinoda, Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975), in which she plays a samurai’s wife kidnapped by a hulking mountain barbarian (Tomisaburo Wakayama), after he kills her husband and entourage during a robbery. Manipulating him into carrying her back to his cabin, then killing his other half-dozen wives, she sets about to destroy his life, seemingly in revenge for his actions but possibly because she’s something other than human. The pair move into the capital, where Iwashita’s character encourages her new husband to bring her fresh heads of noblemen and merchants, which she treats as toys or pets. The macabre story finds the pair slowly going crazy together, and the final third takes a dive into horror, making it one of Shinoda’s most atypical films but a genre classic in its own right, with Toru Takemitsu’s jangling score setting the perfect macabre tone.” — Marc Walkow, “Streaming Auteurs: Masahiro Shinoda”, Film Comment (February 2017)

Thanks to Clem’s Film Diary for these great stills!

[jeremyhush]

Check out this rad new cover art by @joaquindead for @cadabrarecords latest super bizarro release “The Human Chair”. Repost @cadabrarecords ・・・ ON SALE NOW!!! Edogawa Rampo’s, The Human Chair LP. Read by Laurence R. Harvey who is well known for the Human Centipede films and scored by Slasher Film Festival Strategy. Liner notes by Japanese film historian Marc Walkow. Art by Grady Gordon and hand lettering by Sam Heimer. For those new to Rampo, he is as widely known in Japan as Edgar Allan Poe is known here. We promise this will be one of the most nightmarish, unsettling stories you will ever hear. We consider this adaption to be absolute perfection. You don’t want to miss this, quantities are limited!!! #EdogawaRampo #TheHumanChair #LaurenceRHarvey #SlasherFilmFestivalStrategy #GradyGordon #SamHeimer #nowspinning #vinyl #vinylcollector #coloredvinyl #horror #horrorfiction #vinyljunky #spokenarts #spokenword #cadabrarecords #NightmaresOnVinyl

[recentanimenews]

Japanese Folk Tales Come to Life in Kwaidan Instrumental Vinyl Release

Author Lafcadio Hearn—AKA Yakumo Koizumi—is known for the influential collection of Japanese folk tales and ghost stories Kwaidan, which went on to inspire the work of many other creators, including film director Masaki Kobayashi. The latest piece of art to come from Hearn's stories is an instrumental album by music duo Alone in the Woods, comprised of Tiger Lab Vinyl's Jon Dobyns and hip-hop producer Lonn Bologna. Together they have created a haunting tribute full of international influences, and you can hear it for yourself in Cadabra Records' vinyl release of Kwaidan, which is officially out today. 

  Alone in the Woods put all their influences to work to add another layer of depth to these centuries-old folktales. In addition to instruments taken straight from the stories themselves—like the biwa, a lute-like instrument featured in "The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi"—the Kwaidan album's sounds range from Jamaican dub riddim to to '80s New Wave. 

    Kwaidan is available in a limited pressing on 160 gram vinyl, tucked inside a deluxe heavy-weight gatefold tip-on jacket. The release includes newly commissioned art by Zakuro Aoyama, a digital download code, an 18" x 24" poster, and liner notes by Japanese cinema scholar Marc Walkow.

  Learn more about the album and see what else Cadabra Records has to offer. 

    -------

Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. You can read his webcomic, BIG DUMB FIGHTING IDIOTS at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter @Moldilox. 

  By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[unseenfilms]

Pictures from NYAFF on July 3 including Grady Hendrix, Rufus de Rham and the return of Marc Walkow introducing BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY and announcing a new box set of the series for November

[fuckyeahmeikokaji]

Oh, and hey, just in case Arrow Video hasn’t already made your day by posting the cover art for Unchained Melody: The Films Of Meiko Kaji, today they also announced via Twitter that they’ll be releasing a box set of the three New Battles Without Honor And Humanity films.

Meiko Kaji (梶芽衣子) appears in the second of these, Head Of The Boss (新仁義なき戦い 組長の首). All three filmes were directed by Kinji Fukasaku (深作 欣二) and star Bunta Sugawara (菅原 文太).

Here are the details:

In the early 1970s, Kinji Fukasaku’s five-film Battles Without Honor and Humanity series was a massive hit in Japan, and kicked off a boom in realistic, modern yakuza films based on true stories. Although Fukasaku had intended to end the series, Toei Studio convinced him to return to the director’s chair for this unconnected, follow-up trilogy of films, each starring Battles leading man Bunta Sugawara and telling separate, but fictional stories about the yakuza in different locations in Japan.

In the first film, Bunta Sugawara is Miyoshi, a low-level assassin of the Yamamori gang who is sent to jail after a bungled hit. While in stir, family member Aoki (Lone Wolf and Cub’s Tomisaburo Wakayama) attempts to seize power from the boss, and Miyoshi finds himself stuck between the two factions with no honorable way out.

In the second entry, The Boss’s Head, Sugawara is Kuroda, an itinerant gambler who steps in when a hit by drug-addicted assassin Kusunoki (Tampopo’s Tsutomu Yamazaki) goes wrong, and takes the fall on behalf of the Owada family, but when the gang fails to make good on financial promises to him, Kuroda targets the family bosses with a ruthless vengeance.

And in Last Days of the Boss, Sugawara plays Nozaki, a laborer who swears allegiance to a sympathetic crime boss, only to find himself elected his successor after the boss is murdered. Restrained by a gang alliance that forbids retributions against high-level members, Nozaki forms a plot to exact revenge on his rivals, but a suspicious relationship with his own sister (Chieko Matsubara from Outlaw: Gangster VIP) taints his relationship with his fellow gang members.

Making their English-language home video debut in this limited edition set, the New Battles Without Honor and Humanity films are important links between the first half of Fukasaku’s career and his later exploration of other genres. Each one is also a top-notch crime action thriller: hard-boiled, entertaining, and distinguished by Fukasaku’s directorial genius, funky musical scores by composer Toshiaki Tsushima, and the onscreen power of Toei’s greatest yakuza movie stars.

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS:

• High Definition digital transfers of all three films • High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations • Original uncompressed mono audio • New optional English subtitle translation for all three films • Beyond the Films: New Battles Without Honor and Humanity, a new video appreciation by Fukasaku biographer Sadao Yamane • New Stories, New Battles and Closing Stories, two new interviews with screenwriter Koji Takada, about his work on the second and third films in the trilogy • Original theatrical trailers for all three films • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Reinhard Kleist • Illustrated collector’s book featuring new writing on the films, the yakuza genre and Fukasaku’s career, by Stephen Sarrazin, Tom Mes, Hayley Scanlon, Chris D. and Marc Walkow

Currently set for release on July 17.

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