ryuganji: film news from japan

If you had the good fortune to attend the Okamoto Kihachi retrospective at last year’s Tokyo Filmex, you might have been greeted by a humble and gracious silver-haired lady upon entering and exiting the cinema at the National Film Theatre. I was blown away when I found out it was Okamoto Mineko, Kihachi’s widow and former producer. Why was someone of her stature bowing to peons like me for merely paying a few 100 yen to watch her husband’s amazing movies? We should have been genuflecting in her presence and carrying her around in a palanquin.

Okamoto passed away unexpectedly at the age of 81 on February 19th 2005 just as he was about to start shooting his adaptation of “Gento Tsujibasha”, a novel by Yamada Futaro about a supernaturally-enhanced family who bump into several famous figures from the early Meiji period on their travels through Kyushu. Nakadai Tatsuya, Sanada Hiroyuki and Ogata Ken were set to star.

Surprisingly, the project was revived in September last year with Nakadai on board and backing Mineko herself to direct, and pre-production had been pushing ahead until she abruptly slammed on the brakes. Projected costs were soaring, and she had begun to doubt that she was the right person to make the film. “Pouring over the screenplay, I came to the conclusion that it was something that only Kihachi could have directed”. Mineko explained the situation to Nakadai, and hopes that another plucky individual will take a chance on bringing the novel to the screen. “It’s wonderful source material, so I hope someone else will take up the task of writing [their own version] from scratch”. She might have made the right decision in light of the underwhelming results of Kurosawa Akira’s former acolytes having a crack at his unfilmed screenplays, such as Koizumi Takashi’s “Ame Agaru” (When the Rain Lifts) and Kumai Kei’s “Umi wa Mite ita” (The Sea is Watching).

P.S. A word to the wise: some discerning distributor really needs to get off their chuff and release his Okamoto’s rollicking musical satire “Aa Bakudan” (Oh, My Bomb!) on English-subtitled DVD. It might be the best example of his inimitable ability to seamlessly blend action, comedy and social commentary, not to mention some snazzy song and dance numbers. (source: Sponichi)

It was really inconsiderate of my Hawaiian friend to hold his wedding in August instead of October, when I could have been attending the Hawaii International Film Festival. Selfish git. “Funky Forest” collaborators Miki Shunichiro and Ishii Katsuhito made it though, in fact it was Ishii’s fifth time attending, and as part of the festival’s outreach activities he was invited to give a lecture for students at Kamehameha High School. Apparently the last one he gave two years ago was so well received that they asked him do another, and over at the Nice Rainbow blog they’ve posted a couple of short videos of his visit and lecture. I’ve written some rough notes below for the second video that summarise the portions of his lecture where the interpretation has been edited out.

Ishii started out in the commercial industry at the age of 25, and now he’s 41.
He thinks he’s directed somewhere between 3-400 commercials.

Shows clip from “New Hal & Bons 2″.

Creative process question:
“Hal & Bons” came out of his desire to make a low-budget CG work, and he came up with the idea of using just one background and having two dogs talking.
He talked with a CG company and they said they could make something along those lines within the budget he had to work with, but he felt it needed something else to help move the story along.
He came up with the idea of creating a mochi (chewy rice cake) character, as they’re simply white globs and thus presumably cheap to animate.
The first Hal and Bons was more successful than he had expected, so he was able to make another.

Deadline question:
The first step is to figure out how to make it drawing characters and designing everything himself in detail.
He makes clay models to give to the CG company so there’s no room for error.
He does that because he only has a small budget to work with. If he had the money, he’d outsource that sort of work.
Ishii also does the voice of the dog on the right [Bons?] to save money

Shows clip of self-animated opening sequence from his first film, “Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl”.
The movie was submitted to the Hawaii International Film Festival, where it caught the eye of Quentin Tarantino who subsequently asked Ishii to work with him on “Kill Bill”.
For the animated sequences of his second film “Party 7″, he drew the characters and storyboards and left the rest to an animator he’d wanted to work for a long time, Koike Takeshi.