ryuganji: film news from japan

comment by Leandro

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

If japanese are doomed with just one remake, what about with sh*tty hollywood and his hundreds of remakes per year? XD

comment by don

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

I actually like Abe and Nagasawa and think they could be great in those roles, especially Abe who’d make a much better Mifune than the one-dimensional Oda Yuji (who’s been cast in the ‘Sanjuro’ retread). Can’t see any good reason for casting a feathered-haired boy toy in the lead though, apart from the usual quid-pro-quo backroom deals between talent agencies and production companies.

It’s not the idea of a remake that churns my stomach - if they work it’s a pleasant surprise, and if it’s a turd it only serves to make the original look better - but drearily predictable commercial casting decisions like these seldom work in a film’s favour.

comment by ed

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

abe is an excellent choice. he plays comically virile men well, so this will be right up his alley. although this news made me cringe, wasn’t it AK who called a film Red Beard, and proceeded to focus much of its running time on a boyish teen idol? :P then again, getting AK remakes is infinitely preferable to retread of yet another TV series. tsk!

comment by James

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

Maybe they could create commercials for the movie by splicing old footage of Akira Kurosawa together to make it look like he approves of the remake. It shouldn’t be much harder than the can coffee commercials they’ve been doing the same thing with.

comment by jasong

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

Hey Don,

The irony is that because Higuchi did well (commercially) with his remake of Sinking Of Japan, he probably feels he has the Midas touch of bringing things up to date. With Sanjuro, Kadokawa Haruki (who has not a small ego) didn’t touch one hair of the original script, I was told. I think Oda looks good in the role — it’s more the director I’m worried about. Toho shows it at AFM this week. I’d like to see Yamada Yoji take on a Kurosawa remake, but it’d have to be a Shochiku-Toho joint

comment by logboy

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

hmmmm…. i like the headline, not sure one film is all that’s up. the list of decent films i’ve been able to see this year is pretty small. sure, backlog of stuff to catch-up on, and it’s never totall representative, and there’s a few nice DVDs in november, but generally i’d struggle to put a top 10 together this year, even including DVDs… the stuff i’m seeing on HK DVD is mostly romance dramas, the thing’s i’m seeing official sites for looks largely uninspiring. what’s the bigger picture?

comment by don

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

Ed, touche on the “Red Beard” comparison, although Kayama Yuzo would have been about 27 or 28 at the time it was made and already had several films under his belt.

Those coffee commercials with Kurosawa and Kuwata Keisuke just go to show that his films are as ripe for plunder as any, although I wonder how many people actually recognise Kurosawa in them. Also, they’re probably the closest we’ll get to seeing any of his work broadcast on free-to-air TV these days.

I didn’t think much of Higuchi’s “Lorelei” but haven’t seen his “Sinking of Japan” yet, so I’m deferring judgement. I share Jason’s skepticism about Morita Yoshimitsu though, as he’s one of those guys who never finds himself short of work despite a fairly mediocre filmography. Considering Kadokawa Haruki seems to fancy himself as a better director than most of the guys he works with, I wouldn’t be surprised if the film ends up smelling more of him than Morita.

As for Oda, I think he’s perfectly adequate in comedies, but dramatically speaking his subtlety-free performances are far better suited to the small screen. I have to admit I quite enjoyed him as an action hero in the Die Hard rip-off “White Out” though. But he’s nowhere near enough of a badass to play Sanjuro.

My biggest WTF with the Sanjuro remake is that it’s apparently a straight jidaigeki redo. They must be aware they’ll never be able to beat the original at its own game, so why not go nuts and mix it up a little? Set it in space, or a corporation, or a school playground? Jidaigeki are hardly big box office draws these days anyway, especially with younger audiences. As with Ichikawa Kon’s totally uncalled-for self-remake of “The Inugamis” (which tanked like a MF), you’ve got to wonder about some producers’ ideas of what people want to see.

Logboy - I haven’t seen as many Japanese films on the big screen as I would have liked to this year, but nevertheless I’d struggle to put together a best five list out of what I did manage to catch. Very few genuine standouts (”Paprika” and “Sad Vacation” probably came the closest), lots of near misses (”Dainipponjin”, “Zukan ni Notte inai Mushi” etc.) and a couple of absolute duds “The Matsugane Potshot Affair” and “Kaidan”).

It’s still a little early to be asking, but how was 2007 for everyone else?

comment by jasong

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

Although it was mainly Kimutaku’s show, I think Love and Honor played a big part in boosting confidence in jidaigeki to earn serious money. Dororo, too, in its way (marketing was more jidaigeki than mangafied). Maybe people are open to swords slashing the big screen again.

comment by logboy

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

wow, matsugane was a dud in your opinion?
i think it looks great. that said, i enjoyed the tone of ‘linda, linda, linda’ more that the overall results, even if it was a fairly common case of the very nice japanese “everyday mood, unusual events” approach we see often… hence, i’m beginning to think ‘tennen kokekko’ might be worth a punt.

comment by Nicholas

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

A bit late on this thread, but for me the problem with remakes, in general, is a simple one (keep in mind that there are exceptions to everything — like THE THING, for example…):

The hubris of people nowadays thinking that they can make a better film than back in the day. Furthermore, why do they only remake classics? Why not try to do some near misses and turn them right?

comment by don

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

Logboy:
You know how some critics have slagged Todd Solondz in the past for being a misanthropist? That he devises characters and situations primarily for the purpose of inducing trauma and humiliation? I’ve always enjoyed his films so I’ve never subscribed to that argument entirely, but it’s exactly the way I felt about “Matsugane”. Also, the deader-than-deadpan style that Yamashita used so well in “No One’s Ark” and to a less successful degree in “Ramblers” just didn’t work here at all. I felt no connection to the characters whatsoever and stopped caring about what was going to happen. The funniest thing about it was the title, but you have to sit through the rest of the interminable goings-on to get the joke.

Nicholas:
It does smack of arrogance, doesn’t it. To a degree I can understand the reasoning that most people don’t watch or know anything about old films, but are more likely to watch a cast of current stars appearing in essentially the same thing. This way of thinking seems to be particularly prevalent in Japanese television, with straight retreads of unassailable classics like Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” and Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” in recent years. However, none of these are updating or offering a new spin on the source material, and due to the projects’ inherent lack of imagination they definitely have no chance of improving on it, like Carpenter did with “The Thing”.

comment by Aceface

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

Is this party still on?

I saw a report a few days ago that actor Tsugawa Masahiko is directing his second film as “Makino Masahiko” and that’s going to be his uncle Makino Masahiro’s Edo era Yakuza flic masterpiece”Jirocho Sangokushi次郎長三国志”.Sigh.

I too dreamed about Kurosawa remake in totally different settings in foreign land.”Drunken Angel”would fits perfectly if it be sets in some shantitown in Johannesburg and the protagonist is suffering HIV instead of tuberculosis.Shimura’s role being played either White actor and Mifune’s by African.”Stray Dog”in Gaza or Baghdad and local cop looking for missing AK47 in order to stop sectarian violence in the city could also be interesting.

The closest of this happening in the real life was that Bong Joon-ho was offered to do a remake of “High and Low”(Of which he turned down saying the remake would never be a success).I don’t know whether if it was an offer for Korean remake or Japanese one,but if it would be done in adoptation to Korea than that could be really interesting for the income gap is rapidly widening and becoming real problem in there.

comment by don

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

Nothing wrong with being fashionably late, Aceface. Thanks for the mention over at Mutant Frog.

Did you see Tsugawa’s (sorry, Makino’s) “Nezu no Ban”? I couldn’t make it past the trailer. The vagina jokes were appealing but it appeared to be so overacted you could call it a “time-warp comedy” (as in “stuck in a…”). Mr. Miki Prune Nakai Kiichi’s been cast as Jirocho, so I’m expecting more of the same. I do wonder if the older audiences that Makino’s aiming at really need to be coddled so much.

All of those possible Kurosawa scenarios you came up with sound great, but I’d still prefer that Japanese producers and filmmakers did something similar here in Japan instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. At least then the remakes would feel a lot more legitimate as films in their own right, as opposed to the pointless carbon copies we’re being given.

Anyway, I think I need to get off this subject for now as it’s beginning to sound too much like all I want to do is write negative rants aimed at easy targets. Don’t want to become one of those bloggers…

That’s fascinating news about Bong Joon-ho. He could do a live-action Hamutaro movie and I’d buy advance tickets for it. The lacklustre reception “The Host” got here and everywhere else outside of South Korea made me lose even more faith in humanity.

comment by Aceface

posted on Monday, October 29 2007 at 9:55 am

“Anyway, I think I need to get off this subject for now as it’s beginning to sound too much like all I want to do is write negative rants aimed at easy targets. Don’t want to become one of those bloggers… ”

Ouch.