#koji numata

[byneddiedingo]

Sumiko Sakamoto and Shoichi Ozawa in The Pornographers (Shohei Imamura, 1966)

Cast: Shoichi Ozawa, Sumiko Sakamoto, Keiko Sagawa, Haruo Tanaka, Ganjiro Nakamura, Masaomi Kondo, Ichiro Sugai, Kazuo Kitamura. Screenplay: Shohei Imamura, Koji Numata, based on a novel by Akiyuki Nosaka. Cinematography: Shinsaku Himeda. Art direction: Hiromi Shiozawa, Ichiro Takada. Film editing: Mutsuo Tanji. Music: Toshiro Kusunoki, Toshiro Mayuzumi.

Fascinating. confusing, sometimes funny, and sometimes just a little repellent. Must be a Shohei Imamura film. I don't shock easily, but Imamura always keeps me on the edge of being shocked, mostly because I don't know how far he'll go next. In The Pornographers, we're dealing not only with the title subject but also with incest and prostitution and even abuse of the mentally challenged, while desperately trying to sort out the very confused life of Subuyan Ogata (Shoichi Ozawa). He is one of the pornographers of the title, and he lives with a widow, Haru (Sumiko Sakamoto), who thinks her dead husband has been reincarnated as the carp she keeps in a very confining fish tank. She has two nearly grown children: Koichi (Masaomi Kondo), who seems uncommonly attached to his mother, and Keiko (Keiko Sagawa), a rebel without a cause. Ogata is obsessed with Keiko, whom he has known since she was a little girl. Nothing good is going to come out of his relationship with the Matsuda family, of course, especially after Haru gets pregnant and goes insane. But figuring out the ins and outs of the film's plot, and even whether what we're watching is flashback or dream or fantasy is part of the essence of its fascination -- and its repellent quality. Imamura isn't quite like any filmmaker I know of.

[anamon-book]

伊賀忍法帖 東映株式会社 映像事業部 デザイン＝沼田皓二 製作＝角川春樹、監督＝斎藤光正、原作＝山田風太郎、出演＝真田広之・渡辺典子・千葉真一・中尾彬・成田三樹夫・美保純・風祭ゆき・ストロング金剛（小林） ほか

[skullofjoy]

Koji Numata- end of  70′s

[childrenofthecart]

Koji Numata

[byneddiedingo]

Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1998)

Cast: Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rikiya Otaka, Miki Nakatani, Yuko Takeuchi, Hitomi Sato, Daisuke Ban, Rie Ino, Masako, Yoichi Numata, Yutaka Matsushige, Katsumi Muramatsu. Screenplay: Hiroshi Takahashi, based on a novel by Koji Suzuki. Cinematography: Jun'ichiro Hayashi. Production design: Iwao Saito. Film editing: Noboyuki Takahashi. Music: Kenji Kawai. 

Hideo Nakata's Ring is a film with nicely creepy images and a neat premise that imbues modern technology with ancient dread: an ordinary and (at the time) familiar item like a videocassette that carries a deadly curse giving its victim a few days of torture and fear. The supernatural by definition has no rules, so the best anyone investigating a supernatural occurrence like a haunted videotape can do is find out what's causing it, which constitutes the film's plot. Of course, it helps if the investigator has supernatural powers like extrasensory perception, which is why I think the screenplay cheats a little, depriving the film of some of the suspense it would have had if the tape's victims had less of an advantage.