Columnists
Entries from January 2015
BY DEAN BRIERLY
Japanese actor Ken
Takakura, iconic leading man in countless yakuza and action films, died at 83
of lymphoma on November 10 in Tokyo. He had long since achieved legendary
status in Japan with his portrayals of brooding samurai, gangsters and hit men.
The characters he portrayed were usually on the wrong side of the law but
adhered to a chivalric code of honor that, while not reflective of reality,
nevertheless struck a deep chord among Japanese filmgoers of the 1960s. Takakura
was most familiar to American audiences for his roles in The Yakuza (1975), directed by Sydney Pollack and co-starring
Robert Mitchum; Black Rain (1989),
with Michael Douglas; and Mr. Baseball
(1992), with Tom Selleck. In each of these he more than held his own against his
high-powered American co-stars.
Born Goichi Oda in Nakama,
Fukuoka, Takakura was witness to real-life yakuza street clashes during his formative
years, which may have informed his acting choices when he began to incarnate
yakuza in his movies. Ironically, he originally aspired to a managerial
position at Toei studios, but a spur-of-the-moment decision to attend an
audition led to his becoming an actor, with his first performance coming in
1956 in Lightning Karate Blow.
Takakura was a competent
if middling headliner in dozens of films over the next few years until his
performance in The Walls of Abashiri
Prison (1965) suddenly thrust him into the front ranks of Japanese leading
men. As one of two escaped prisoners handcuffed together and on the run in desolate,
snow-filled Hokkaido (an obvious homage to 1958’s The Defiant Ones), Takakura’s anti-hero persona finally resonated
with the public. The film was so successful that Toei eventually churned out 18
Abashiri pictures, all starring
Takakura. He simultaneously appeared in several other long-running series,
including nine Brutal Tales of Chivalry
films and 11 installments of Tales of Japanese
Chivalry.
The thematic template in
these movies invariably skewed to a standard formula and audience expectations,
with Takakura playing an honorable yakuza, often just released from prison, who
found himself protecting weaker, innocent characters from the depredations of
dishonorable gangsters. If these films held few surprises on the narrative
level, they usually delivered potent depictions of violence, ill-fated love,
stoic machismo and a satisfyingly unhappy end for the hero. Such cinematic fare
was Takakura’s meal ticket throughout the decade.
However, as the 1960s made
way for the 1970s, a meaner, more cynical and considerably more violent style
of yakuza film took hold, spearheaded by director Kinji Fukasaku and budding action
superstar Bunta Sugawara. There was no longer room for the kind of honorable
gangsters Takakura portrayed in his trademark ninkyo, or chivalrous, yakuza pictures. But if he was no longer top
dog, the actor was still a big draw, his charisma supremely intact. While
Takakura still made action films—like the stunning Golgo 13 (1973), in which he played a badass hit man plying his
trade in Iran—he also starred in other types of roles, including an-convict
gone straight in the romantic drama The
Yellow Handkerchief (1977) and, in the latter part of his career, an aging
station manager in Railroad Man
(1999).
Takakura made more than
200 films during his life. Among his essential titles are Wolves, Pigs and Men (1964), directed by the great Kinji Fukasaku; An Outlaw (1964); The Walls of Abashiri Prison (1965-1972); Brutal Tales of Chivalry (1965-1972); Tales of Japanese Chivalry (1964-1971); Theater of Life 1 and 2 (1968); Yakuza’s
Tale (1969); Golgo 13 (1973);
several of the Red Peony Gambler series
(1968-1972), starring genre icon Junko Fuji; and many more.
On and off screen, Takakura
upheld traditional Japanese values and masculinity in the face of Japan’s
increasing materialism and westernization. For that he was revered by his
countrymen across political, class and age spectrums. Humble and self-effacing,
Takakura possessed a shrewd insight into his box office popularity. In a 2013
interview he stated, “I think that the reason the general public
identified with the roles I played was that they were struck by my stance as a
man who unrelentingly stands up to absurd injustices. It wasn’t just that I was
just going off to a sword fight, but that my character was willing to sacrifice
himself in order to protect the people important to him.â€
(For
those interested in exploring Takakura’s filmography, the best place to start
is www.japanesesamuraidvd.com, which has more than 40 of his films for
sale, all of them subtitled and most of them remastered.)
BY TODD GARBARINI
Lamberto
Bava's Demons, which was released on
Friday, May 30, 1986, is one of the most entertaining and unintentionally
hilarious horror films that I have ever experienced. Set upon an unsuspecting
public with an ad campaign similar to that of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), the film was
distributed without a rating in selected markets and warned that no one under
17 would be admitted. It's interesting to note that although Demons is quite gory, most of the
violence is fantastic in nature and is fairly tame when compared to the horror
films of the last 10 to 15 years which have tended to be not only brutally
violent but also gratuitous to an unnecessary degree. While a good number of
audience members have a seemingly insatiable and unquenchable thirst for blood
and guts, I prefer horror films that spend more time on character, story, and
style. If gore is part of the equation, that's fine, but it doesn't really
interest me if it's the only point of the film. In Demons, the gore is there and it's messy, but it's not over the top
and is only used to accentuate the action.
Filmed during the summer of 1985 in then-West
Berlin, Germany and at a long-gone derelict theater in Italy, Demons is most definitely an ‘80’s film.
The hairstyles, the clothing, and the music pulsating on the soundtrack all
point to a time that took place 30 years ago. The film poses the question as to
what would happen if a group of randomly selected members of the public were
given the opportunity to see a sneak preview of an untitled film in a theater and
what would happen if they got stuck in that very theater with absolutely no way
of getting out. This is a tried-and-true horror film plot, but it's pulled off
extraordinarily well and has loads of quotable dialogue. Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) and Kathy (Paola
Cozzo) are friends who are presumably in high school or college and decide to
blow off class for the sneak preview. They've both been given complimentary
tickets by a strange man wearing a metal mask over his face. Along with a group of other people, they make
their way into the theater. The audience is comprised of a crazy cast of
characters, most notably: Ken (Karl Zinny) and George (Urbano Barberini) who
make sure that they sit next to Cheryl and Kathy; Frank and Ruth, a married
couple who provide comic relief; and the uproarious Tony (the inimitable Bobby
Rhodes), a snazzy pimp with his two whores Carmen (Fabiola Toldeo) and Rosemary
(Geretta Giancarlo), who he often yells at. Tony and his ladies provide some of
the funniest and most memorable dialogue in the film. While watching the movie
within the movie, strange things begin to happen in the audience. A
disease-like contagion breaks out and pretty soon the audience is fighting for
their lives, attempting to make their way out of the theater as the exits are
inexplicably blocked.
As if this motley crew wasn’t enough, a
group of outsiders driving around in a car comprised of one woman and three men
(two of whom are named Baby Pig and Ripper!) are a crazy lot who manage to make
their way inside the theater. An all-out war between the infected audience in
the form of demons and those who haven't been affected breaks out and threatens
all of human kind.
The release of Demons on DVD and Blu-ray has been a long time coming. Don May’s
excellent company, Synapse Films, has done a bang up job of re-furnishing the
film and making it look bright and clear, as opposed to the old VHS and
American laser disk pressings which were notoriously dark and full of contrast,
making it very difficult to interpret the on-screen action. The special edition Blu-ray came out months
ago, but for those of you interested in just the film, the DVD movie-only
release fits the bill. It sports not
only the original American mono audio, but also the much better sounding
European stereo mix. The dubbing is
entertainingly ludicrous and is done by different loopers on the respective
sound tracks. Claudio Simonetti provides
one of his best film scores which is interspersed with period music of the
era.
The discs special features are as
follows:
Anamorphic
widescreen transfer from original vault materials in the 1.66:1 aspect ratio,
featuring all-new color correction supervised by Synapse Films
Contains
both the “International English†stereo language soundtrack, as well as the
“U.S. Mono†English alternate dub soundtrack
Original
U.S. theatrical trailer
Newly-translated
English SDH subtitles provided for both English versions
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
By
Mark Cerulli
Robert
McGinnis…
For fans of movies of the
1960s and ’70s, his name ranks up there with the stars who made the major
studio films of that era. Even though he didn’t actually “make†movies, his
work most definitely did. Best known as the artist behind the “classic†James
Bond posters, McGinnis worked for almost every publisher and major magazine for
decades, putting his distinctive stamp on a huge, well, body of work, which
is fully (and gloriously) represented in The
Art of Robert E. McGinnis, a lush 176-page hardback now on sale from Titan
Books. Since McGinnis is one of the most influential and iconic movie poster
artists of the 20th Century, Cinema Retro was pleased to see him
honored in this way.
The book starts with McGinnis’s
journeyman beginnings in the 1950s Cincinnati and New York advertising scenes,
where he toiled away on product ads like so many other young, hungry
illustrators. Most would flourish for a time, then fade into obscurity, but a
chance encounter in NYC with artist Mitchell Hooks (of Dr. No movie poster fame) led to paperback cover assignments that firmly
put McGinnis on the map. In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, most book covers were
illustrated, and the cover directly impacted sales. The more lurid or
intriguing the art, the better the sales, and McGinnis’s racy (for those days)
cover art quickly brought him attention from publishers.
In 1961 McGinnis painted
his first movie art – Breakfast At
Tiffany’s – and that launched him into the illustration stratosphere for
the rest of the decade. He painted the key art for Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Casino Royale (1967 spoof), On Her
Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, Man With the
Golden Gun, and the book cover art on
Moonraker, helping guide the Bond series through major transformations as
different actors took on the lead role. McGinnis’s specialty was the human form
– he painted the heroic images of Bond and, of course, the sultry Bond Girls. The late Frank C. McCarthy handled certain
explosions and action art on some of the early Bond titles. The result was
marketing nirvana, dramatic, precedent-setting artwork that helped make Bond
the hottest movie property around.
McGinnis’ work was everywhere
– from huge billboards to newspaper ads, and, of course, on paperbacks in every
commuter’s briefcase. Curiously, his favorite art from his movie work is for The Odd Couple one-sheet, where he
perfectly captured the essence of neat-freak Felix and super-slob Oscar. Other
Hollywood works like Barbarella and Cotton Comes to Harlem are also
beautifully reproduced in the book, some with his original sketches, so the
reader can see the work evolve.
Each phase of McGinnis’s
long career is chronicled by writer Art Scott, who worked with the artist on
this definitive book. As you might expect, each chapter is profusely
illustrated with gorgeous full-color art – from hardboiled detective book
covers to bucolic landscapes for magazines like Reader’s Digest and Good
Housekeeping, even vivid historical scenes for National Geographic are here. McGinnis also illustrated for a
number of men’s magazines like True
and Cavalier, and his provocative
nudes left little to the imagination, but they also serve as even more proof of
his astonishing skill. These long-legged “McGinnis Women†looked like they
could get up and walk off the page – something I’m sure most Cavalier readers wished they would! The
artist himself chimes in throughout the book, offering up inside stories from
his long career. Thankfully, his creative output isn’t slowing down – just look
at page 95 where his stunning cover art for the 2011 limited edition of Stephen
King’s Joyland is reproduced. That
cover features a pale, yet alluring “McGinnis Woman†in a bikini and holding a
rifle. What could be more perfect?
The
Art of Robert E. McGinnis is one of those “must haves,†a book
any movie or fine art fan will want to pick up to look through again and again.
It perfectly captures McGinnis’s impressive work, curves, gun barrels and all.
With a list price of just $34.95, it’s a bargain when compared with the prices
McGinnis original art now fetches at auction.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
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