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Departures (2008 Film)
is a 2008 Japanese drama film directed by Yōjirō Takita and starring Masahiro Motoki, Ryōko Hirosue, and Tsutomu Yamazaki. The film follows a young man who returns to his hometown after a failed career as a cellist and stumbles across work as a '' ''—a traditional Japanese ritual mortician. He is subjected to prejudice from those around him, including from his wife, because of strong social taboos against people who deal with death. Eventually he repairs these interpersonal connections through the beauty and dignity of his work. The idea for ''Departures'' arose after Motoki, affected by having seen a funeral ceremony along the Ganges when travelling in India, read widely on the subject of death and came across ''Coffinman''. He felt that the story would adapt well to film, and ''Departures'' was finished a decade later. Because of Japanese prejudices against those who handle the dead, distributors were reluctant to release it—until a surprise grand prize win at the Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yōjirō Takita
Yōjirō Takita (滝田 洋二郎 ''Takita Yōjirō'', born December 4, 1955) is a Japanese filmmaker. Takita received an Academy Awards, Oscar for Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, Best Foreign Language Film for his 2008 drama ''Departures (2008 film), Departures''. It marked the first time a Japanese film won the award after the category first became competitive in 1957. Career Yōjirō Takita entered the film industry through Mukai Productions, where he served as an assistant director. Takita first came to prominence with the long-running, popular light-comic ''pink film'' series, started by Shin'ya Yamamoto in 1975, and which Takita began directing in 1982 at Shintōhō Eiga. Later, for the Nikkatsu studio, Takita filmed similar ''Molester's'' films as part of that studio's ''Roman Porno'' line. ''Molester's School Infirmary'' (1984), ''Molester's Tour Bus'' (1985) and ''Molester's Delivery Service'' (1986) are some of these titles. Takita's 1986 mainstream co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montreal World Film Festival
The Montreal World Film Festival (WFF; french: le Festival des Films du Monde) was one of Canada's oldest international film festivals and the only competitive film festival in North America accredited by the FIAPF (although the Toronto International Film Festival is North America's only accredited non-competitive festival). The public festival, which was founded in 1977 as a replacement for the defunct Montreal International Film Festival (1960–68), is held annually in late August in the city of Montreal in Quebec. Unlike the Toronto International Film Festival, which has a greater focus on Canadian and other North American films, the Montreal World Film Festival has a larger diversity of films from all over the world. The festival was cancelled in 2019. In 2022, former festival president Serge Losique announced plans to revive the festival as the Global Montreal Film Festival, with a 2022 edition featuring free screenings of a selection of films that had previously screene ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manga
Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is used in Japan to refer to both comics and cartooning. Outside of Japan, the word is typically used to refer to comics originally published in the country. In Japan, people of all ages and walks of life read manga. The medium includes works in a broad range of genres: action, adventure, business and commerce, comedy, detective, drama, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, erotica ('' hentai'' and ''ecchi''), sports and games, and suspense, among others. Many manga are translated into other languages. Since the 1950s, manga has become an increasingly major part of the Japanese publishing industry. By 1995, the manga market in Japan was valued at (), with annual sales of 1.9billion manga books and manga magazi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang. Although the name "Rotten Tomatoes" connects to the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes in disapproval of a poor stage performance, the original inspiration comes from a scene featuring tomatoes in the Canadian film ''Léolo'' (1992). Since January 2010, Rotten Tomatoes has been owned by Flixster, which was in turn acquired by Warner Bros in 2011. In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold to Comcast's Fandango. Warner Bros. retained a minority stake in the merged entities, including Fandango. History Rotten Tomatoes was launched on August 12, 1998, as a spare-time project by Senh Duong. His objective in creating Rotten Tomatoes was "to create a site where people can get access to reviews from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dersu Uzala (1975 Film)
''Dersu Uzala'' (russian: Дерсу Узала, ja, デルス·ウザーラ, ''Derusu Uzāra''; alternative U.S. title: ''Dersu Uzala: The Hunter'') is a 1975 Soviet-Japanese film directed and co-written by Akira Kurosawa, his only non-Japanese-language film and his only 70mm film. The film is based on the 1923 memoir ''Dersu Uzala'' (which was named after the native trapper) by Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, about his exploration of the Sikhote-Alin region of the Russian Far East over the course of multiple expeditions in the early 20th century. Shot almost entirely outdoors in the Russian Far East wilderness, the film explores the theme of a native of the forests who is fully integrated into his environment, leading a style of life that will inevitably be destroyed by the advance of civilization. It is also about the growth of respect and deep friendship between two men of profoundly different backgrounds, and about the difficulty of coping with the loss of capability ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiroshi Inagaki
was a Japanese filmmaker best remembered for the Academy Award-winning '' Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto'', which was released in 1954. Career Born in Tokyo as the son of a shinpa actor, Inagaki appeared on stage in his childhood before joining the Nikkatsu studio as an actor in 1922. Wishing to become a director, he joined Chiezō Kataoka's Chiezō Productions and made his directorial debut with ''Tenka taiheiki'' (1928). Returning to Nikkatsu, he continued making jidaigeki and participated in the Naritaki Group of young filmmakers such as Sadao Yamanaka and Fuji Yahiro who collaboratively wrote screenplays under the made up name "Kinpachi Kajiwara". Like others in the group, Inagaki was known for his cheerful and intelligent samurai films. Inagaki later moved to Daiei and then Toho, where he made big budget color spectacles as well as delicate works depicting the feelings of children. He also produced many films and wrote the scripts for dozens of others. Recognition His film ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musashi Miyamoto
, also known as Shinmen Takezō, Miyamoto Bennosuke or, by his Buddhist name, Niten Dōraku, was a Japanese swordsman, philosopher, strategist, writer and rōnin, who became renowned through stories of his unique double-bladed swordsmanship and undefeated record in his 61 duels (next is 33 by Itō Ittōsai). Musashi, as he was often simply known, is considered a ''Kensei'', a sword-saint of Japan. He was the founder of the Niten Ichi-ryū, or Nito Ichi-ryū, style of swordsmanship, and in his final years authored and ''Dokkōdō'' (獨行道, ''The Path of Aloneness''). Both documents were given to Terao Magonojō, the most important of Musashi's students, seven days before Musashi's death. ''The Book of Five Rings'' deals primarily with the character of his Niten Ichi-ryū school in a concrete sense, i.e., his own practical martial art and its generic significance; ''The Path of Aloneness'', on the other hand, deals with the ideas that lie behind it, as well as his life's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teinosuke Kinugasa
was a Japanese filmmaker. He was born in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture and died in Kyoto. Kinugasa won the 1954 Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival for '' Gate of Hell''. Biography Kinugasa began his career as an onnagata (actor specializing in female roles) at the Nikkatsu studio. When Japanese cinema began using actresses in the early 1920s, he switched to directing and worked for producers such as Shozo Makino, before becoming independent to make his best-known film, '' A Page of Madness'' (1926). It was considered lost for 45 years until the director rediscovered it in his shed in 1971. A silent film, Kinugasa released it with a new print and score to world acclaim. He also directed the film ''Crossroads'' in 1928. He directed jidaigeki at the Shochiku studios, where he helped establish the career of Chōjirō Hayashi (later known as Kazuo Hasegawa). After the war, he helmed big-budget costume productions for Daiei studios. On February 26, 1982, Kinugasa died at the age of 86 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gate Of Hell (film)
is a 1953 Japanese ''jidaigeki'' film directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. It tells the story of a samurai (Kazuo Hasegawa) who tries to marry a woman (Machiko Kyō) he rescues, only to discover that she is already married. Filmed using Eastmancolor, ''Gate of Hell'' was Daiei Film's first color film and the first Japanese color film to be released outside Japan. It was digitally restored in 2011 by the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and Kadokawa Shoten Co., LTD. in cooperation with NHK. Plot The film begins during the Heiji Rebellion in 1160. Lord Kiyomori "the Monk" of the Taira clan has taken his whole family on a pilgrimage to the Itsukushima Shrine. In his absence, the Cavalry Chief Yoshitomo of the Minamoto clan, and the Guard Chief, Nobuyori of the Fujiwara clan, attacked Sanjo Palace, the residence of former Emperor Go-Shirakawa in a coup. The samurai Endō Morito is assigned the duty of escorting lady-in-waiting Kesa away from the palace on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production. Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film '' Sanshiro Sugata''. After the war, the critically acclaimed ''Drunken Angel'' (1948), in which Kurosawa cast the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another fifteen films. ''Rashomon'' (1950), which premiered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rashomon
is a 1950 Jidaigeki psychological thriller/crime film directed and written by Akira Kurosawa, working in close collaboration with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori (actor), Masayuki Mori, and Takashi Shimura as various people who describe how a samurai was murdered in a forest, the plot and characters are based upon Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story "In a Grove", with the title and framing story being based on "Rashōmon (short story), Rashōmon", another short story by Akutagawa. Every element is largely identical, from the murdered samurai speaking through a miko, Shinto psychic to the bandit in the forest, the monk, the assault of the wife and the dishonest retelling of the events in which everyone shows his or her ideal self by lying. The film is known for a plot device that involves various characters providing subjective, alternative and contradictory versions of the same incident. ''Rashomon'' was the first cinema of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
