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Up-and-coming filmmaker Kei Chikaura unveils a second impressive feature film with “Great Absence.” Where his previous movie, “Complicity,” focused on cross-cultural communication, for his newest project, Chikaura utilizes personal experiences in a co-written effort with Keita Kumano to tell a story of family reconciliation. Collaborating with the director again is legendary actor Tatsuya Fuji, best known internationally for starring in Nagisa Oshima's films “In the Realm of the Senses” and “Empire of Passion.”

Great Absence is screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival

Takashi is an actor based in Tokyo preparing for his latest role, with guidance from his producer, Yuki, who also happens to be his wife. While rehearsing, he is summoned by law enforcement to receive news that his father, Yohji, whom he has an estranged relationship with, had his home raided following a distress call. Reluctant due to personal resentment toward his parent, he eventually decides to...

When memory slips away, what do we know to be real anymore?

That’s the question asked by “Great Absence,” a new film that sees legendary Japanese actor Tatsuya Fuji return to the big screen in a father-son drama about life, death, mortality, and morality. Filmmaker Kei Chika-ura writes and directs the feature which centers on a rekindled family amid an Alzheimers diagnosis and a suicide.

The official synopsis reads: Distanced from his father Yohji (Tatsuya Fuji) for twenty years, actor Takashi (Mirai Moriyama) is brought back home by a jarring police call. Yohji has disconnected from reality due to dementia, and his second wife Naomi (Hideko Hara) is missing. Asked where she is, the old man replies that she committed suicide. While trying to find out about the stepmother, Takashi traces the past of Yohji he has never been able to accept. And since Yohji abandoned his family 20 years ago for Naomi,...

When it comes to categorizing classic films, determining the best 1970s horror movies is a touchy topic. As the decade was such a pivotal and formative era in horror cinema, there are dozens of movies that deserve to be highlighted. However, relative to their place in and contribution to horror history, some 1970s films stand out more than others.

Whether they're obscure 1970s horror movies or those largely recognized for their contributions to the genre, these films represent the best of their respective franchises and subcategories. Some of them even rank among the best Hollywood movies of the 1970s of any kind, as well as the highest-grossing. For viewers seeking the dark roots of modern horror cinema featuring monsters, slashers, ghosts, and unexplained occurrences, these are all essentials of the genre.

Related: 10 Highest-Grossing Movies Of The 1970s

Halloween (1978)

John Carpenter's Halloween is hailed as one of the best 1970s...

In the last decade, there has been a flourishing of films in which ageing heroes demonstrate that there is more than petanque and bingo in post-retirement life. Franchises like “Red” and “The Expendables” satisfy the collective desire to stay active and fit and never get old, and are also a vehicle for recycling old and beloved stars. But Kitano’s old bad guys of his “Ryuzo and the Seven Henchmen” are more “amiable losers” than their Hollywood heroic counterparts.

on Amazon

Ryuzo is a non-affective grandfather, with a turbulent past as a member of a Yakuza “family” who is not ready yet to stay calm and sit on an armchair. When not terrorizing the children of the neighborhood and insulting his daughter-in-law, Ryuzo spends his time wearing a “wife-beater” vest showing off his gang tattoos in plain sight and training with the bokken (the wooden katana) under...

Though the different eras of global feminist thought are known as “waves,” which implies successive awakenings of liberation and critique, the film world takes an inordinately long time to develop alongside it. Amidst the social upheavals of the ‘60s, where previously “permissive” sexual content was finally allowed to be seen in mainstream cinema, the industry arguably became even more sexist, lecherous, and restrictive around female subjects.

There’s also a more subtle way to see the pervasive sexism of film culture: through documentaries, and broadcast TV on film criticism and history. While a titan like Pauline Kael could flourish on public radio (leading to her influential reign at the New Yorker), from Siskel & Ebert, to Scorsese’s Journey Through American Movies and onto the video-essay era, it is a sausage fest. Faint as it may seem, it makes a difference when an authoritative-seeming, patriarchal figure is alone on that pedestal,...

After unveiling the discs that will be arriving in April, including Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder, Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep, and more, Criterion has now announced what will be coming to their streaming channel next month.

Highlights include retrospectives dedicated to Guy Maddin, Ruby Dee, Lana Turner, and Gordon Parks, plus selections from Marlene Dietrich & Josef von Sternberg’s stellar box set. They will also present the exclusive streaming premieres of Bill Duke’s The Killing Floor, William Greaves’s Nationtime, Kevin Jerome Everson’s Park Lanes, and more.

Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which recently arrived on the collection, will be landing on the channel as well, along with a special “Lovers on the Run” series including film noir (They Live by Night) to New Hollywood (Badlands) to the French New Wave (Pierrot le fou) to Blaxploitation (Thomasine & Bushrod) and beyond. Also...

Two years after the release of “In the Realm of the Senses”, arguably his most notorious work given the scandal it caused in many countries, Nagisa Oshima made “Empire of Passion”, which was advertised as a spiritual successor to his last work. Based on a novel by Itoko Nakamura “Empire of Passion” shares the idea of a fatal affair, emphasizing the link between devotion, passion and violence, but in the end is quite a different movie, especially due to its horror elements, which caused many to regard it as one of the inspirations for Hideo Nakata’s “Ringu”. You might even go one step further by not just calling it a different, but in many ways also a much more refined and better feature than its predecessor, telling the story of a small community whose deeply-rooted blend of superstition and predilection for gossip make it a very bitter portrayal of Japanese society and politics.

Five years after he had won Best Director at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival for “Empire of Passion” Japanese auteur Nagisa Oshima would return to the cinema with “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”, a film based on the works “The Seed and the Sower” and “The Night of the New Moon” by Sir Laurens van der Post. In his books, he reflects on his time as a prisoner of war after he had been captured by Japanese forces in 1942, and in Oshima’s, film the character played by Tom Conti bears much resemblance to the author, especially because of his knowledge of the Japanese language and culture. Apart from Conti, Oshima managed to assemble quite an interesting cast for this war drama consisting of musicians David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto along with Takeshi Kitano as Sergeant Hara.

In 1942, Captain Yonoi (Sakamoto) is the commander of a camp of Japanese prisoners of war,...

Ryuichi Sakamoto to serve as president of the jury, which also comprises Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Pff director Keiko Araki.

Japan’s Pia Film Festival (Pff) is launching a cinema award in honour of Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Oshima, which is designed to recognise ‘next generation’ talents and give them exposure on the world stage.

Conceived by Oshima’s widow, actress Akiko Koyama, the Oshima Prize will be presented to young Japanese filmmakers who “following in the footsteps of Oshima, continue to take on challenges on an international scale and after making their commercial debuts”.

One of the masters of Japanese cinema,...

By Alex DeleonCharlotte Rampling in the Festival SpotlightThe first film seen at the festival in the homage to Charlotte Rampling retro was somewhat of a disappointment. I had seen this picture when it first came out in Japan and was favorably impressed at the time by its outrageous sense of the absurd, especially as made by a serious A level Japanese director like Nagisa Oshima (died 2013 at age 80). This time around the humor, at least for me, did not hold up and I was rather bored most of the way.

Today it is of little more than passing historical interest

There is, however, an interesting background to this very offbeat Franco-Japanese co-production from the year 1986 by which timeNagisa Ôshima was regarded as a first class Japanese iconoclast. Outside of Japan he was highly regarded in France where his mainstream hardcore porno films In the realm of the Senses (1976) and Empire of Passion...

“This is Ali Baba, town of mystery…”

As most of us know, the 1960s, especially the second half, were a time of upheaval, protests and general unrest in many areas of the world. Protests against the Vietnam War and the establishment resulted in a decade defined by violence on the one side, but also change on the other. Culturally, one could argue the late 1960s and early 1970s constitute one of the most interesting periods for the arts, a moment in time during which the possibility of change was a tangible shimmer on the horizon. And even though much of this hope was shattered by a re-affirmation of the ruling order – at least to some extent – the minds of people had been changed forever, as evident in the way culture has changed during that period.

Of course, times of change and upheaval often tend to give birth to fascinating and...

Review by Roger Carpenter

Director Yasuharu Hasebe was a well-known director in Japan right up until his death in 2009. He directed most of the Stray Cat Rock series of films in the early 1970s as well as the final installment of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701’s Grudge Song. He became known as the “Father of Violent Pink,” after directing a series of graphically violent and sexually sadistic films for Nikkatsu Studios with titles such as Rape!; Assault! Jack the Ripper; Rape! 13th Hour; and Secret Honeymoon: Rape Train. These films proved to be both highly controversial and very lucrative for Hasebe and Nikkatsu but, typical of Nikkatsu, the studio execs got cold feet after much bad press and began toning down their series of violent pink films.

But before all this, Hasebe cut his teeth as an assistant director for the great Seijun Suzuki, himself a...

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This April will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Monday, April 3 The Chaos of Cool: A Tribute to Seijun Suzuki

In February, cinema lost an icon of excess, Seijun Suzuki, the Japanese master who took the art of the B movie to sublime new heights with his deliriously inventive approach to narrative and visual style. This series showcases seven of the New Wave renegade’s works from his career breakthrough in the sixties: Take Aim at the Police Van (1960), an off-kilter whodunit; Youth of the Beast (1963), an explosive yakuza thriller; Gate of Flesh (1964), a pulpy social critique; Story of a Prostitute (1965), a tragic romance; Tokyo Drifter...

With the exception of several crowd-pleasing samurai epics (like Zatoichi and Three Outlaw Samurai) and a few bargain-priced historical costume dramas (such as The Ballad of Narayama and Gate of Hell), the flow of newly released Japanese art films by the Criterion Collection has slowed to a trickle over the past five years or so. (And for the sake of politeness and avoiding pointless controversy, I won’t invoke Jellyfish Eyes in this argument either.) We’ve obviously enjoyed a steady stream of chanbara, Ozu and especially Kurosawa Blu-ray upgrades during this past half-decade, and there have been several outstanding Japanese sets recently issued as part of the Eclipse Series as well, but we really haven’t seen much else along these lines in the main lineup since Kaneto Shindo’s Kuroneko came out in the fall of 2011. That’s over 200 spine numbers ago! But I’m happy to report...

The Criterion Collection has been good to Japanese provocateur Nagisa Oshima. His celebrated, explicit-sex shocker In The Realm of the Senses (along with its sorta-sequel, Empire of Passion) have seen disc from the company, and Criterion has also released a shotgun blast of his 1960s films via their lower-fi Eclipse series. Now Oshima's 1968 film, Death By Hanging, joins the collection as spine #798. It's not a title I was familiar with prior to now, but I had a great time familiarizing myself with it in this format, and am surprised there isn't more conversation about this film and its seemingly inexhaustible formal daring. (As the liner notes themselves point out: with Death By Hanging alongside 2001, If..., Once Upon a Time in the West...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Nagisa Oshima movies: From Death by Hanging to Taboo [See previous post: "Nagisa Oshima: In the Realm of the Senses (Truly) Iconoclastic Filmmaker Dies."] Among Nagisa Oshima’s other seminal works are Death by Hanging (1968); and the Cannes Film Festival entries Empire of Passion (1978), Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), Max Mon Amour (1986), and Taboo (1999), which turned out to be Oshima’s last effort. With the exception of Max Mon Amour, the Cannes titles were also nominated for multiple Japanese Academy Awards, including Best Picture. (Photo: Nagisa Oshima.) Much like In the Realm of the Senses, Death by Hanging was inspired by a real-life incident: the botched hanging of a young Korean man convicted of rape and murder. In Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, David Bowie plays a World War II prisoner of war who has a complex Billy Budd-like — desire/hate — relationship with a Japanese captain (played by rock star Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also composed the film’s score). Despite its title and the presence of Tatsuya Fuji,...

Japanese film-maker best known for the sexually explicit In the Realm of the Senses and Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, starring David Bowie

In a sense, it is unfortunate that the Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, who has died aged 80, was more infamous than famous, due to one film, In the Realm of the Senses (also known as Ai No Corrida, 1976). Although it was, for many, in the realms of pornography, the film was a serious treatment of the link between the political and the sexual, eroticism and death (previously dealt with in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris), and a breakthrough in the representation of explicit sex in mainstream art cinema. Like Bertolucci, Oshima was held and acquitted on an obscenity charge.

Based on a true cause célèbre, In the Realm of the Senses tells of a married man and a geisha, who retreat from the militarist Japan of 1936 into a world of their own,...

Tokyo (AP) — Nagisa Oshima, a Japanese director internationally acclaimed for his films "Empire of Passion" and "In the Realm of the Senses," has died of pneumonia. He was 80. His office, Oshima Productions, said Oshima died Tuesday afternoon at a hospital near Tokyo after being in and out of hospital since he was struck by a stroke more than a decade ago. A former student radical from Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto, Oshima debuted in 1959 with "A Town of Love and Hope," quickly earning a reputation of a "new wave" director with social and political themes during...

The renowned Japanese director, who died on 15 January, was best known for his explicit In the Realm of the Senses – but there was far more to his work than that. We take a look back at his career highlights

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After a short apprenticeship at the Shochiku film studio, Nagisa Oshima made his directorial debut aged 27 with A Town of Love and Hope in 1959, but it was his 1960 follow-up, Cruel Story of Youth, that propelled him to national attention. Drawing on techniques of the then-nascent European new waves, and striking a chord with its frustrated adolescent protagonists, Cruel Story hit a nerve in the roiling social mood of the early 60s.

Reading on a mobile? Watch video clip here

After his explicitly political Night and Fog in Japan (also 1960) was withdrawn by a nervous Shochiku, Oshima spent the next few years working in TV,...

An award-winning provocateur who challenged censors but found a devoted following, Japanese director Nagisa Oshima has sadly passed away at the age of 80. A law student before turning to film, from the start Oshima was pushing the envelope, with his third feature "Night And Fog In Japan" removed from circulation after only three days in release, with concerns that it would cause political "unrest." But it would be two pictures directed in the 1970s that would bring the director the most print and notoriety. "In The Realm Of The Senses" shocked with its unsimulated sex scenes, in the tale of an obsessive love affair, while "Empire Of Passion" was also intense in its depiction of desire, but also earned him accolades, including a Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. From there, Oshima moved on to another career highlight, the WWII tale "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" featuring David Bowie and composer/actor/rock.

Tokyo -- Nagisa Oshima, a Japanese director known for internationally acclaimed films "Empire of Passion" and "In the Realm of the Senses," has died of pneumonia. He was 80.

His office says Oshima died Tuesday afternoon at a hospital near Tokyo.

A former student activist from Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto, Oshima debuted in 1959, often depicting social issues. Oshima quickly rose to fame as a leading Japanese "new wave" director.

Oshima stirred public indecency debate in Japan when he released "In the Realm of the Senses" in 1976. Two years later, Oshima won best director award at the Canne International Film Festival with "Empire of Passion."

Despite suffering a stroke in 1996, Oshima briefly returned to filmmaking in 1999 with "Taboo," which became his last work.

Subversive Japanese director best remembered for controversial 1976 classic In the Realm of the Senses dies of pneumonia

Nagisa Oshima, the radical Japanese film-maker who scandalised his homeland with the explicit drama In the Realm of the Senses, has died of pneumonia at the age of 80. The director had been in ill health for a number of years, after suffering a series of strokes. His last film, the gay samurai drama Taboo, competed at the Cannes film festival in 1999.

A former law student and leftwing activist, Oshima worked in direct opposition to what he felt was the timid gentility of postwar Japanese cinema. "My hatred for Japanese cinema includes absolutely all of it," he said. Oshima once banned the colour green from his movies. He reportedly saw it as too calming an influence.

Billed by international critics as Japan's answer to Jean-Luc Godard, Oshima made his debut with 1959's A Town...

If you're making a film about bad people doing bad things, you owe it to your audience to give them some reason - no matter how ambiguous or artistic - why they should care what's happening. Common sense, maybe? Still, what keeps Nagisa Oshima's Empire of Passion good rather than great is the legendary director lets us watch a couple descend into madness, haunted (quite literally) by a terrible thing they've done, but gives us precious little opportunity to sympathise and never suggests the ending's ever in doubt. As a piece of cinema it's arguably more enjoyable than his more famous films - it's well acted, expertly shot and aesthetically far richer than the groove carved out by the notorious In the Realm of the...

Following on from last week’s loving Blu-ray/DVD “double play” releases of Empire of Passion and In the Realm of the Senses, Studio Canal have brought another of Nagisa Oshima’s films to the format in the shape of 1983 prisoner of war drama Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

Set in Japanese-controlled Java in 1942 and based on a series of semi-autobiographical novels written by Sir Laurens Jan van der Post, the film stars Tom Conti as the Mr. Lawrence of the title – an English officer fluent in Japanese and respectful (if often critical) of the culture – who attempts to mediate between the Japanese camp commanders and his own brash and reckless superior officer (Jack Thompson) in an strained effort to keep everybody alive. Japanese rock star Ryuichi Sakamoto (also the film’s composer) gives a stand-out performance as the restrained Capt. Yanoi, the man responsible for the camp, whilst celebrated filmmaker...

★★★☆☆ Nagisa Ôshima is no stranger to controversial topics and challenging conflicts, mixing life, death, love, sex and passion into ultimately powerful experiences. He does this once again in Empire of Passion (1978), which follows his borderline sexually-graphic In the Realm of the Senses (1976) with the steps of a younger, less-confident and less-passionate sibling.

The story follows two lovers, Seki and Toyoji, who become entangled in a consuming love affair, which first victim is Seki's elderly husband, followed by the protagonists themselves. The young, recently demobilised soldier Toyoji's attraction to the 40-year-old, but still pretty Seki, soon turns into jealousy, which drives him to pull her into a plot to murder her husband, but the act of strangling the rickshaw driver and dumping his body into a well might be more than any of them can handle. The re-appearing silent ghost of Gisaburo is not much help in keeping the lovers together,...

Today sees the hi-def release of two of the most controversial and sexually explicit films of the 1970s, both of which came courtesy of Japanese New Wave auteur Nagisa Oshima – later the director of the more widely seen David Bowie-starring WWII movie Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (incidentally itself coming to Blu-ray next week… we are giving copies away Here).

In two tastefully presented “double play” Blu-ray/DVD sets from StudioCanal come 1976′s In the Realm of the Senses and 1978′s more restrained thematic follow-up Empire of Passion. Both films share the same leading man, Tatsuya Fuji, but whilst the former was either banned or heavily censored upon released due to its many graphic scenes of “unsimulated sex”, the latter (less explicit) work earned Oshima a well deserved Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

In the Realm of the Senses

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Oshima’s most critically significant text,...

In The Realm Of The Senses; Empire Of Passion; Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence

Three separate releases this week from one of Japan's most progressive and controversial directors, Nagisa Oshima.

Oshima's bold and inventive early films made him a darling of the critics of world cinema but it was 1976's long-banned In The Realm Of The Senses (Ai No Corrida) that really put him on the map. It's a tale of a sexual relationship so obsessive and boundary-breaking that it can only end in tragedy. 1979's Empire Of Passion covers much similar destructive ground, with another doomed romance, here featuring jealousy, guilt, madness and murder. It's a heady brew. 1983's Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence provided Oshima with an unexpected hit, thanks not only to support from the UK's legendary independent film company Palace Pictures but also to a leading role by David Bowie. Quite what young pop fans thought of seeing...

Based on the novel by Itoko Namura and directed by Nagisa Ôshima, the UK Blu-Ray Premiere of Empire of Passion will be available as a Double Play disc set on 17th October. We have three copies of the Double Play Blu-ray & DVD to give away.

A young man has an affair with an older woman. He is jealous of her husband and together they decide that they should kill him. One night, after the husband drinks plenty of sake and gets into bed, they strangle him and dump his body down a well. To avert any suspicions, the woman pretends that her husband has gone to Tokyo for work. For three years the wife and her lover secretly see each other until finally, suspicions become very strong and people begin to gossip. To make matters worse, her husband’s ghost begins to haunt her and the law arrives to investigate her husband’s disappearance.

To mark the release of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983), In the Realm of the Senses (1976) and Empire of Passion (1978) all from Writer / Director Nagisa Oshima and all of which are all making their way to Blu-ray on 17th October, Studio Canal have given us 5 copies of each movie to give away!

Scroll down for more info on each:

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983)

Written by Nagisa Ôshima Starring: David Bowie, Tom Conti and Ryûichi Sakamoto Available in Double Play disc set

In 1942 British soldier Jack Celliers (David Bowie) comes to a Japanese prison camp. The camp is run by Yonoi (Ryûichi Sakamoto), who has a firm belief in discipline, honour and glory. In Yonoi’s view, the allied prisoners are all cowards after choosing to surrender in the war instead of committing suicide. When one of the prisoners, interpreter John Lawrence (Tom Conti), tries to explain the Japanese way of thinking,...

It’s that time of the week when you want to sit back, relax a bit and throw on something new and exciting. Well, you’ve come to the right place. It’s the second week in this Hulu Plus excursion, and I’ve had a blast with it. A lot of Daily Show, Colbert Report and Kitchen Nightmares intake in the last week. I can’t help but love my politically minded comedy and angry chef shows. But I digress.

This last week there was a ton of new content from Criterion put onto Hulu Plus. A wonderful array of films and a ton of supplemental material from certain films, which I will yet again break down for all of you, and the links will be within, so you don’t even have to search for them. We here at the Criterion Cast aim to please.

When the first...

Japanese director Takahisa Zeze (Flying Rabbits; Moon Child) disaster movie come medical thriller ‘Kansen Rettou’ (aka Pandemic) is heading for UK DVD next month. A great cast including; Satoshi Tsumabuki (Dororo), Kanningu Takeyama (Memories Of Matsuko) and veteran actor Tatsuya Fuji (Empire Of Passion) keeps the - world threatened by a mysterious killer virus - plot moving at pace, and the love story (this is a Japanese disaster movie after all) sub plot, thankfully veers away from full blown melodrama…most of the time. Pandemic streets on May 9.

Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), which is based on an autobiographical novel by the South African adventurer-soldier Laurens van der Post, is a homo-erotic culture clash set in a World War 2 internment camp. This film's international rock-star casting and multi-lingual dialog reflects an obvious attempt by Oshima and his producer Jeremy Thomas to reach a broader international audience. This experiment in commerciality isn't entirely successful. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is good, but it falls short of the high bar set by the Oshima's prior works.

The film is set in Java in 1942. Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto) is a colonel in the Japanese army who, along with brutal Sergeant Gengo Hara (a young pre-accident Takeshi Kitano), lords over a P.O.W. camp. Life in the camp, which is mostly filed with British soldiers, is a daily struggle against death, torture, starvation, and the sexual allure of sweaty men packed together in dismal conditions.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson 

Rating (out of 5): ***

The great Japanese director Nagisa Oshima is known for shaking up the quiet, stately Japanese cinema of the 1960s with his stories of youth, social realism, social critique, and even a bit of surrealism. His most notable titles from this period are arguably Boy (1969) and The Ceremony (1971), though none of his early films is well known in the West. Instead, Oshima is best known here for his pair of 1970s erotic arthouse hits, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) and Empire of Passion (1978). Though these movies put Oshima on the world map, many early fans consider them a diversion from Oshima's true talent.

This leads us to Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), Oshima's follow-up to Empire of Passion, newly released via Criterion Collection. With the world's attention, he turned to this international production, based on an autobiographical novel by Afrikaner Laurens van der Post,...

It’s not a war! It’s just killing.

We’re just about halfway through August and in some parts of the world kids are getting ready to go back to school, a lot of vacations have run their course and folks are already making plans for Labor Day. In other words – summer is almost over! (That is, in the northern hemisphere…) So for this week’s Eclipse column, I figured I better find a summer movie to review while there’s still time. And I’ve landed on the perfect choice: Nagisa Oshima’s Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, from Eclipse Series 21: Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties. Besides the obvious seasonal theme indicated in the title, I figure this is a good title to review for a few other reasons.

Judging from the accounts of recent acquisitions I’ve seen from last month’s Barnes & Noble sale, the Oshima box...

With the new Eclipse box set, Eclipse Series 21: Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties, hitting store shelves today, it appears as though Criterion is set to release yet another film from the legendary director, Nagisa Oshima.

Best known as the man behind the controversial film, In The Realm of The Senses, the new box set includes films like Pleasures of the Flesh, Violence At Noon, Sing a Song Of Sex, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide and Three Resurrected Drunkards, Criterion has now announced, kind of, that they will be bringing Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence to the collection.

In a tweet this morning, the collection announced that the film would see a release “this year…” which albeit a cryptic piece of news, is quite interesting. This would be Nagisa’s third film in the collection, with Senses and Empire of Passion, and follows a British soldier Jack Celliers who comes to a Japanese prison camp,...

I wasn't ready. I first read about "In The Realm Of The Senses" something like 27 years ago, reading a magazine, where there was an article about Nagisa Oshima and his "new" release, "Empire Of Passion," which the article claimed was more like a spiritual sequel to his earlier picture than anything new. In the article, they alluded to the controversy over "In The Realm Of The Senses," and whether or not it was "fair" for the film to get the same rating as pornography.  And because I decided at a very early age that censorship is a pure and simple...

Bankrolled in succession by French producer Anatole Dauman, Nagisa Oshima’s In The Realm Of The Senses (1976) and Empire Of Passion (1978) have always been packaged together, not least by Dauman, who looked to seize on the loosening of censorship codes to bring a new level of sexual explicitness to the art film. The latter was even released under the title In The Realm Of Passion in an effort to yoke it to the earlier film, which had scandalized the world with its unsimulated sex scenes and graphic, ritualized castration. But Oshima balked on replicating the pornographic hook for ...

DVD Playhouse—May 2009

Paramount Centennial Collection Paramount Studios releases two more classic titles from its library on special edition DVD: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is John Ford’s last masterpiece (although he would go on to direct two more very good films) from 1962: about an Eastern lawyer (James Stewart) who travels west only to find primal brutality in the form of sadistic bandit Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin, great as always) and pragmatic brutality in local rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), each two sides of a coin that represent a way of life slowly dying out as Stewart’s modern brand of civilization tames the West. A perfect film, period. Howard Hawks’ El Dorado is essentially a remake of his earlier classic Rio Bravo, with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and a young James Caan as lawmen joining forces against corrupt cattle barons. Great fun. Two disc sets.