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Into The Sun (2005 Film)
''Into the Sun'' is a 2005 action film directed by Christopher Morrison and starring Steven Seagal (who also produced), Matthew Davis, Takao Osawa, Eddie George, Juliette Marquis, and William Atherton. The original script, written by Trevor Miller, was very similar to Sydney Pollack's ''The Yakuza''. Joe Halpin, a former undercover narcotics detective, rewrote the script with Seagal to avoid making it a costly remake. Set in Japan, Seagal plays a CIA operative who takes down Yakuza gangsters. It was theatrically released in Japan but only went direct-to-DVD in the United States. Plot The assassination of Tokyo's governor Takayama causes a stir of public outrage in Tokyo, Japan. Upon hearing news of the incident, the U.S. FBI asks the CIA's Tokyo office to investigate the killing, believing it to be linked to the Yakuza, a dangerous Japanese mafia syndicate. The Japanese branch of the CIA starts sniffing around under the auspices of the United States Department of Homeland Securi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Morrison
Christopher "MINK" Wingfield Morrison is a British American film director, writer, producer and comic book novelist. Early life Christopher "mink" Wingfield Morrison was born in London and relocated with his parents to Los Angeles, California. Christopher attended photography college in Santa Barbara, California, Santa Barbara. His graduate film about a master Los Angeles luthier placed regionally in the Student Academy Awards. Career Morrison's first job was as a production assistant for Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Studios, and then he earned entry-level camera department positions. He then moved to the camera division of Sony Pictures Imageworks. In the summer of 1997 he self financed wrote, produced and directed the feature film ''Bus'', shot entirely in a Santa Monica City Bus in west Los Angeles. The film won gold at the Houston Film Festival. In 1998 he started work in the commercial/music video business working with acts like Madonna, Michael Jackson, Bust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yakuza
, also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media, by request of the police, call them , while the ''yakuza'' call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ''yakuza'' is gangster, meaning an individual involved in a Mafia-like criminal organization. The ''yakuza'' are known for their strict codes of conduct, their organized fiefdom nature and several unconventional ritual practices such as ''yubitsume'' or amputation of the left little finger. Members are often portrayed as males, wearing "sharp suits" with heavily tattooed bodies and slicked hair. This group is still regarded as being among "the most sophisticated and wealthiest criminal organizations". At their height, the ''yakuza'' maintained a large presence in the Japanese media and operated internationally. At their peak in the early 1960s, police estimated that the ''yakuza'' had a membership of more than 200,000."Police of Japan 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), officially the County of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, is a law enforcement agency serving Los Angeles County, California. LASD is the largest sheriff's department in the United States and the fourth largest local police agency in the United States, following the New York Police Department (NYPD), the Chicago Police Department ( CPD) and the Los Angeles municipal Police Department ( LAPD). LASD has approximately 18,000 employees, 9,915 sworn deputies and 9,244 unsworn members. It is sometimes confused with the unrelated Los Angeles Police Department which provides law enforcement service within the same county's county seat city. The department's three main responsibilities are to provide municipal police services within Los Angeles County, courthouse security for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, and housing and transportation services of inmates within the county jail system. The LASD provides municipal police s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chiaki Kuriyama
is a Japanese actress, singer, and model. She is best known in the West for her roles as Takako Chigusa in Kinji Fukasaku's 2000 film '' Battle Royale'' and Gogo Yubari in Quentin Tarantino's 2003 film '' Kill Bill: Volume 1''. Life and career She was born in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki. Kuriyama was a popular model during Japan's child model boom in the mid-1990s. In 1997, she appeared in the photobooks ''Shinwa-Shōjo'' (''Girl of Myth'') and ''Shōjokan'' (''Girl's Residence''), photographed by Kishin Shinoyama. ''Shinwa-Shōjo'' became a best-seller but, as it contained some nudity, was discontinued by the publisher in 1999 after the institution of new anti–child pornography laws. She also posed as a model for the child fashion magazines '' Nicola'' (1997–2001) and ''Pichi Lemon'' (1996–2001). She first achieved widespread recognition as an actress in Japan for her starring roles in the horror films ''Shikoku'' (1999) and '' Ju-on'' (2000). Chiaki also appeared in the 2000 act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Akira Terao
is a Japanese musician, singer and movie actor. As of 2012, he is the only male actor to have received both the Japan Record Award and the Japan Academy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role. Early life Terao was born in Yokohama (Kanagawa prefecture) in Japan, son of the actor and film director Jūkichi Uno. He attended schools Wako Gakuen, Hosei University Daini Senior High School, and graduated from the vocational school Bunka Gakuin. Career Singing career In 1966, he debuted as a bassist of a group sounds band called '' The Savage'' (ザ・サベージ). His solo debut album came out in 1970. As a singer, Terao is known mostly for the 1981 hit song and the album it was part of named , which sold 1.6 million copies in Japan. Acting career As an actor, he debuted in ''The Sands of Kurobe'', a film directed by Kei Kumai in 1968. In 1985, Terao worked under director Akira Kurosawa in ''Ran''. Five years later he appeared as "I" in Kurosawa's ''Drea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of China. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese (). Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest (including Sichuanese) and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the standard language (or are only partially intelligible). Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly one billion). Mandarin is by far the largest of the seven or ten Chinese dialect groups; it is spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Lo
Ken Lo (Kenneth Houi Kang Low) (born 19 March 1957) is a Hong Kong actor, martial artist, and stuntman. He is known for his martial arts and stunt work as a former member of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team, most notably for his antagonistic role as John in ''Drunken Master II'' (1994). Early life Ken Lo was born on 19 March 1957 as Kenneth Lo Wai-Kwong in Stung Treng, Cambodia. Lo's father is Hong Kong-Chinese and his mother is a Laotian. In 1975, at age 18, Lo and his family moved from Cambodia to Udon Thani, Thailand. Five years later, in 1980, he went to Hong Kong and worked as a tour guide. His idol was Bruce Lee which led him to practise Muay Thai and Taekwondo in Thailand. He won the freestyle fighting championships seven times, so his chance finally came when he made his debut in ''Working Class'' (1985), which was directed by Tsui Hark and starred Sam Hui. Career In 1986, Lo met Jackie Chan in a disco in Hong Kong, where he was head of security, and Chan hired him as his ow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katana
A is a Japanese sword characterized by a curved, single-edged blade with a circular or squared guard and long grip to accommodate two hands. Developed later than the ''tachi'', it was used by samurai in feudal Japan and worn with the edge facing upward. Since the Muromachi period, many old ''tachi'' were cut from the root and shortened, and the blade at the root was crushed and converted into ''katana''. The specific term for ''katana'' in Japan is ''uchigatana'' (打刀) and the term ''katana'' (刀) often refers to single-edged swords from around the world. Etymology and loanwords The word ''katana'' first appears in Japanese in the '' Nihon Shoki'' of 720. The term is a compound of ''kata'' ("one side, one-sided") + ''na'' ("blade"), in contrast to the double-sided '' tsurugi''. See more at the Wiktionary entry. The ''katana'' belongs to the ''nihontō'' family of swords, and is distinguished by a blade length (''nagasa'') of more than 2 ''shaku'', approximately . ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Department Of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the Federal government of the United States, U.S. United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the Interior minister, interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cyber security, and disaster prevention and management. It began operations in 2003, formed as a result of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, enacted in response to the September 11 attacks. With more than 240,000 employees, DHS is the third-largest Cabinet of the United States, Cabinet department, after the Departments of United States Department of Defense, Defense and United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Affairs. Homeland security policy is coordinated at the White House by the United States Homeland Security Council, Homeland Security Council. Other agencies with signi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
