Alive (2002)

Starring:
Hideo Sakaki - TenshuYashiro
Ryô - Yurika Saegusa
Koyuki - Asuka Saegusa
Shun Sugata - Matsuda
Erika Oda - Misako Hara
Tak Sakaguchi - Zeros
Jun Kunimura - Kojima

Based on a popular Manga by Tsutomu Takahashi ("Sky High"), "Alive" combines the tension of Vincenzo Natali's "Cube" and Kitamura's own "Versus". For the brutal murder of his girlfriend's rapists, Tenshu is sentenced to die in the electric chair. Resigned to his fate and unmoved by his actions, he survives the lethal high voltage punishment. He is then given the choice to burn again, or take part in a vicious experiment pitting him against another prisoner and a mysterious alien life force. Here is where the true punishment begins.

OMG! This movie was totally kick butt. Not what I expected. I was expecting some serious gross out, so that delayed my viewing pleasure.

I will admit the movie is terribly slow. So how come I think the movie rocked? I can't explain it. It was wicked. It sort of reminded me, visually, of Miike Takashi's Big Bang Love, Juvenile A. It was dark. The colors were black, grey, smokey, some white and red and that was it.

A few flashbacks of Tenshu's life as to why he was sent to prison for murder. I got a little confused because they said he killed his girlfriend but yet I got the impression she killed herself. Not sure about that part but the rest of the story was ironically stunning.

You will, at first, feel sorry for Tenshu but the feeling never goes a way. The story won't let you. You catch yourself routing for Tenshu.........

The end had some nice sequenced action scenes with an ending that leaves you blinking.........

Sakaki Hideo

Blood and Bones (Chi to hone / 血と骨 -2004)

Starring:
Takeshi Kitano - Joon-pyong Kim
Hirofumi Arai - Masao Kim
Tomoko Tabata - Hanako Kim
Joe Odagiri - Takeshi Park
Kyoka Suzuki - Yong-hee Lee
Yuko Nakamura - Kiyoko Yamanashi
Jae Baxley - Fight Spectator
Mari Hamada - Sadako Toritani
Atsushi Ito - Yong-il / Young Joon-pyong
Shuuji Kashiwabara - San-myung Jang
Kazuki Kitamura - Yoshio Motoyama
Jun Kunimura - Yong-sang Jo
Yutaka Matsushige - Nobuyoshi Ko
Naoyuki Morita - Young Masao
Mami Nakamura - Sanae Otani
Takashi Nishina - Yong-su Kim
Kozo Sato - Tae-su Kim
Sansei Shiomi - Sung-ki Kim
Miako Tadano - Chun-mi Kim
Susumu Terajima - Hee-bom Park



Blood and Bones painstakingly describes the life of infamy lead by Kim Shun-Pei, an unskilled laborer from Cheju, an isolated island in the far South of Korea, from his arrival in Osaka in 1923, full of dreams and ambitions, for lack of more distinctive qualities, to his unmourned death in North Korea. Expatriated into Japan during the era of its colonial rule over the peninsula, he seems to be seeing/seeking (as do his compatriots) a land of opportunities for fortune, fame (to a lesser extent) and prior to these fantasies, work.

But unlike his fellow immigrants, Kim is a man who knows no law but the one dictated by his own iron will, and hardly any other means of expression than his two fists and his rage, with which he will establish his authority over the small community of his peers, a silent diaspora scattered in a few alleys that will remain their horizon for the rest of the film.


This was an excellent movie! Kitano Takeshi was awesome as the abusive, controlling father.

I've read that this movie was critiqued for the "abuse" towards Koreans in Japan during Japan's occupation of Korea. I didn't see that in this movie. What I saw was a normal reaction to how ANY ethnicity would react if a father who was the way he was would respond. Black, White, Asian, Mexican, Persian, etc...if were put about in those types of conditions, I would believe, would react the same as the Koreans did during that time.

I didn't even see a "Japanese" person depicted (even though the Koreans were actually Japanese actors) in the movie. It was all about the Koreans and how a family and the people involved in that family lived, loved, and learned and reacted to the man who took what he wanted and gave nothing back.

It was definitely a sad movie. There wasn't a single happy moment during the whole movie. I would hope they would have a part two of the movie because I'd like to see how the rest of the "children" became and how Masao lived after his father moved back to North Korea.

Oh yeah, Odagiri Joe was in it!! His part was quite big for the only 20 minutes he had in the whole movie. He was the first born son who was conceived out of rape. He was actually the most loving of the children especially towards Masao.

I wouldn't recommend this movie to everyone. Some serious mature scenes in this movie (yeah, I mean sex!) that was kind of gross since it was of the "old man". Ick!

Arai Hirofumi

I cannot believe I have not a single picture of Hirofumi-kun in any of my other previous posts of his movies. WTH? So here I go. He doesn't have the classic idol looks but he's cute in his own right. That Korean in him gives him a distinctive look that I really like. He can play tough guy or sweet guy...it works both ways for him. *muah!*

Season of Snow (Silver Season) (Giniro no season/銀色のシーズン -2008)

Starring:
Eita - Gun Shiroyama
Rena Tanaka - Nanami Ayase
Tetsuji Tamayama - Yuji Kobato
Munetaka Aoki - Jiro Kaminuma
Eriko Sato - Erika Kitazawa
Tetta Sugimoto - Tokoaki Miyabe
Jun Kunimura - Masayuki Seto
Ellie Toyota

A struggling town in the Japanese Alps finds itself in a desperate search for tourists to its publicly-run ski resort. Unable to compete with the swank resort on the other side of the mountain, local officials and inn owners have struck upon an idea to offer a wedding-and-ski package, complete with a wedding ceremony at a charming snow chapel they have built on the mountainside. The town welcomes its first customer in the beautiful Nanami Ayase (Rena Tanaka) who has arrived ahead of her fiance so she can learn to ski down the ceremonial “rice shower” slope without falling. The townsfolk’s biggest concern, however, lies with three young down-and-out local skiers who constantly disrupt life in the town with their skiing antics and shady schemes to wring money out of unsuspecting visitors. One of them is Gin Shiroyama, a former world class mogul champ who was the local hero until a terrible spill effectively ended his career. Feeling guilty for the tremendous pressure they placed on him, the townspeople have chosen to leave Gin alone, letting him get away with anything. But they’re quickly running out of patience. When Nanami hires Gin as her skiing instructor, it sets into motion a snowballing chain of events that could change everyone’s future for the better, if it doesn’t bury the town first.



OMG! Can I be any happier today?



I just downloaded the torrent for this movie. Okay, I'm a little illiterate when it comes to bittorrents but I finally figured out how to make the English subtitles prevail! Woohoo!



First off.....my Tetsuji-san and Eita-san were in this. Eye candy! Oh heck yes! Picture in your head....a naked Eita sitting on a shower bench. Oh yeah! There was that...........



I wasn't all that thrilled with the romance thing that happened in the movie. I thought this would be more on the skiing than love. Oh well. I was hoping for more competition than anything else. And.....they didn't go into detail with Tetsuji-san's character as to why he quit the Hokkaido All-Stars team. I was hoping for a competition with him in that. *sigh*



But on the upbeat....the views were spectacular. It was filmed in Canada even though they gave the impression it was in Japan. The cast was great. It was just the script that could have been better. Less mushy and more skiing. The very beginning was sooooooo coooooool! I can't explain it but just imagine them do x-games type stuff. I guess that is what had me believe the story would be more about that.



The metaphor for this story is......never look down, look straight ahead. If you fall down, get back up and try again. That is the gist of this story. Never quit, never say die, never stop but finish it to the end...............


Eita


Tamayama Tetsuji

69 (シクスティナイン-2004)

Starring:
Satoshi Tsumabuki - Kenichi Yazaki
Masanobu Ando - Tadashi "Adama" Yamada
Yuta Kanai - Manabu Iwase
Asami Mizukawa - Mie Nagayama
Rina Ohta - Kazuko "Lady Jane" Matsui
Yoko Mitsuya - Yumi Sato
Hirofumi Arai - Bancho
Hideko Hara - Kenichi's mother
Ittoku Kishibe - Matsunaga sensei
Jun Kunimura - Sasaki
Kyohei Shibata - Kenichi's father
Noriko Eguchi
Tasuku Emoto - Tatsuo Masugaki
Gen Hoshino - Yuzuru Nakamura
Haruka Igawa - Alpharomeo girl
Ryo Kase - Ryo Otaki
Rinko Kikuchi
Kenta Kiritani - Yuji Shirogushi
Fumiyo Kohinata - Yoshioka sensei
Hidekazu Mashima
Rie Minemura - Fumiko sensei
Yoko Mitsuya
Akifumi Miura - Goro Narushima
Yosuke Miyauchi - Shirai
Yoshiyuki Morishita - Adachi
Jun Murakami - Yakuza
Shunsuke Sawada - Ezaki
Toshiyuki Seyama - Scribe
Kyusaku Shimada - Aihara sensei
Suzunosuke
Kosuke Toyohara - Kawasaki sensei
Yoshiaki Yoza - Kiyoshi Fukushima

Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan, 1969: inspired by the iconoclastic example of Dylan, Kerouac, Godard and Che, a band of mildly disaffected teenagers led by the smilingly charismatic Ken (Tsumabuki Satoshi) decide to shake up "the establishment" - i.e. their repressive school and the nearby US military installation. A series of anarchic pranks meets with varying levels of success, until Ken and company focus their energies on mounting a multimedia ‘happening' to combine music, film and theatre. Complications ensue.

This was an all out awesome movie. The version I watched had a few minor subbing boo-boo's (ie....incorrect English grammar) but I got the gist of it.

This was a great coming of age movie set during 1969. The comedy was hilarious. Teenagers, males, who thought of getting their first lay, becoming rock stars, making a name for themselves and all they had to go through to get there. LOL! This was a genius of a movie. Satoshi-san was a riot as Ken...oh, the first 30 minutes of the movie had me laughing so hard. Ken, loves to tell stories and one of them was about a certain particular body part. Then there was when the 3rd year student took over the school and one of the students played a naugty song over the loud speaker about the same particular body part. What a hoot!

Loved, loved, loved this!!

Tsumabuki Satoshi


Masanobu Ando