Today, New York independent distributor Film Movement Classics unveils the brand-new poster for Takeshi Kitano’s 1990 film “Boiling Point,” designed exclusively for retrospective screenings by comic book artist Benjamin Marra. Marra designed the film’s one-sheet with a colorful, stylized illustration highlighting baseball and the Yakuza. Check it out below.
Read More: Review: Takeshi Kitano’s ‘Beyond Outrage’ Blows Up The Standard Gangster Movie Template
The film follows Masaki (Yûrei Yanagi), an unassuming gas station attendant who is a member of the losing sandlot baseball team The Eagles. After he runs afoul of a belligerent yakuza, The Eagles manager, an ex-yakuza himself, gets involved, setting Masaki on a haphazard quest for guns in Okinawa with his friend Kazuo (Duncan). There they are befriended by the extremely eccentric yakuza boss Takashi (Takeshi “Beat” Kitano), leading them straight into the tangled web of organized crime.
Benjamin Marra is best known for “Night Business,...
Read More: Review: Takeshi Kitano’s ‘Beyond Outrage’ Blows Up The Standard Gangster Movie Template
The film follows Masaki (Yûrei Yanagi), an unassuming gas station attendant who is a member of the losing sandlot baseball team The Eagles. After he runs afoul of a belligerent yakuza, The Eagles manager, an ex-yakuza himself, gets involved, setting Masaki on a haphazard quest for guns in Okinawa with his friend Kazuo (Duncan). There they are befriended by the extremely eccentric yakuza boss Takashi (Takeshi “Beat” Kitano), leading them straight into the tangled web of organized crime.
Benjamin Marra is best known for “Night Business,...
- 8/11/2016
- by Vikram Murthi
- Indiewire
by Steve Dollar
If there is a signature sequence that defines a movie directed by Sabu, it's the never-ending chase that pretty much consumes the entire 82 minutes of his 1996 debut, Non-Stop (aka Dangan Runner). Tomorowo Taguchi, rock singer and star of the all-time Japanese cult classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man, is Yasuda, an everyman as inept as he is desperate. His plans to pull a bank heist go haywire, since everything always goes haywire a few minutes into a Sabu plot. But they go haywire in really nutty, unpredictable ways. In this case, the would-be bandit stops by a convenience store to shoplift a gauze mask for putative use as a disguise. As we see in a fantasy staging of the robbery, it makes a lousy and absurd choice. And Yasuda isn’t even much of a petty thief: A quartet of schoolgirls observes his actions amid giggles: "It's so embarrassing,...
If there is a signature sequence that defines a movie directed by Sabu, it's the never-ending chase that pretty much consumes the entire 82 minutes of his 1996 debut, Non-Stop (aka Dangan Runner). Tomorowo Taguchi, rock singer and star of the all-time Japanese cult classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man, is Yasuda, an everyman as inept as he is desperate. His plans to pull a bank heist go haywire, since everything always goes haywire a few minutes into a Sabu plot. But they go haywire in really nutty, unpredictable ways. In this case, the would-be bandit stops by a convenience store to shoplift a gauze mask for putative use as a disguise. As we see in a fantasy staging of the robbery, it makes a lousy and absurd choice. And Yasuda isn’t even much of a petty thief: A quartet of schoolgirls observes his actions amid giggles: "It's so embarrassing,...
- 1/23/2011
- GreenCine Daily
Dead Run
HONG KONG -- For the last couple of years, actor-director Sabu (DANGAN Runner) has been making films with Japanese boy band V6 (Hard Luck Hero and Hold Up Down), which became surprise festival hits. The exposure he got from his popular collaborations will get his new film, Dead Run, into any number of festivals and possibly a limited art house release outside of Japan: This is the kind of film that will sit well with upmarket foreign distributors. But anyone who's expecting the comic antics of the V6 films will be disappointed. In its place is some sensitive, assured filmmaking. Indeed Sabu's development as a filmmaker is one of the most interesting things about the film.
Road-movie master Sabu steers off his normal well-trod course to explore the drama found in isolation, integration and navigation of the path of life for high schooler Shuji (J-pop star Tegoshi Yuya). Shuji is a shore kid -- meaning he doesn't much fraternize with people who live on a landfill development off the mainland. He takes to hanging around with Miyahara (Toyokawa Etsushi), a priest and possible felon new to town, and the young woman, Eri (Kan Hanae), who spends most of her spare time in the church. Eri is aloof and withdrawn from almost everyone in the town, the suicide of her parents still hovering over her life. Shuji's brother Shuichi is another problem, a borderline genius who deteriorates into madness and manages to destroy the family.
One of Shuji's earliest glimpses of adulthood comes when Kenji (Terajima Susumu) and his moll Akane (Nakatani Miki) give him a ride home when his bike breaks down. The short drive is quite sexually charged and a little frightening for the young Shuji. Akane proves to be someone who nudges him into the nextphase of his life on two separate occasiona -- the most traumatic of which is largely Shuji's choice involving another boyfriend, Nitta (an oddly cold Osugi Ren).
Shuji's tale goes from standard teen angst to tragedy. The nature of Shuji's education grows increasingly dark after he heads out on the road to find Eri in Tokyo, culminating in a way that only a Sabu film can. However, Dead Run appropriately lacks the ridiculously clever happenstance that works so well in the director's more comic films. He avoids coincidence for his characters, and forces them to make more choices.
Working from a script adapted from a novel -- a first for him -- Sabu demonstrates his ability to navigate dense material deftly. There's a lot of danger in the world, and Shuji's dead run -- his dash -- through adolescence is fraught with pitfalls regardless of how tranquil the blue-toned landscape looks.
Dead Run does have moments where the line between deliberate pacing and dragging blurs. However, cutting scenes wouldn't work because there's nothing in the narrative that doesn't need to happen. Sabu simply hasn't allowed his tight, controlled hand free reign here, but Shuji's emotional growth is deftly handled for the most part, with Sabu's preferred road motif in full swing. This is a strong film, the director's most accomplished, mature film to date.
Dead Run does have moments where deliberate pacing morphs into dragging. However, cutting scenes could be difficult in a film where every scene contains something that needs to happen to carry both plot and theme forward. Nevethtless, this is a strong film, the director's most accomplished, mature film to date.
DEAD RUN
IMJ Entertainment, Kadokawa Pictures, J Storm
Credits:
Writer/director: Sabu
Based on a novel by: Shigematsu Kiyoshi
Producer: Miki Hiroaki
Director of photography: Nakabori Masao
Production designer: Kanekatsu Koichi
Music: SENS
Editor: Tomoyo Ohshima.
Cast:
Shuji: Tegoshi Yuya
Eri: Kan Hanae
Father Miyahara: Toyokawa Etsushi
Akane: Nakatani Miki
Nitta: Osugi Ren
Kenji: Terajima Susumu
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 123 minutes...
Road-movie master Sabu steers off his normal well-trod course to explore the drama found in isolation, integration and navigation of the path of life for high schooler Shuji (J-pop star Tegoshi Yuya). Shuji is a shore kid -- meaning he doesn't much fraternize with people who live on a landfill development off the mainland. He takes to hanging around with Miyahara (Toyokawa Etsushi), a priest and possible felon new to town, and the young woman, Eri (Kan Hanae), who spends most of her spare time in the church. Eri is aloof and withdrawn from almost everyone in the town, the suicide of her parents still hovering over her life. Shuji's brother Shuichi is another problem, a borderline genius who deteriorates into madness and manages to destroy the family.
One of Shuji's earliest glimpses of adulthood comes when Kenji (Terajima Susumu) and his moll Akane (Nakatani Miki) give him a ride home when his bike breaks down. The short drive is quite sexually charged and a little frightening for the young Shuji. Akane proves to be someone who nudges him into the nextphase of his life on two separate occasiona -- the most traumatic of which is largely Shuji's choice involving another boyfriend, Nitta (an oddly cold Osugi Ren).
Shuji's tale goes from standard teen angst to tragedy. The nature of Shuji's education grows increasingly dark after he heads out on the road to find Eri in Tokyo, culminating in a way that only a Sabu film can. However, Dead Run appropriately lacks the ridiculously clever happenstance that works so well in the director's more comic films. He avoids coincidence for his characters, and forces them to make more choices.
Working from a script adapted from a novel -- a first for him -- Sabu demonstrates his ability to navigate dense material deftly. There's a lot of danger in the world, and Shuji's dead run -- his dash -- through adolescence is fraught with pitfalls regardless of how tranquil the blue-toned landscape looks.
Dead Run does have moments where the line between deliberate pacing and dragging blurs. However, cutting scenes wouldn't work because there's nothing in the narrative that doesn't need to happen. Sabu simply hasn't allowed his tight, controlled hand free reign here, but Shuji's emotional growth is deftly handled for the most part, with Sabu's preferred road motif in full swing. This is a strong film, the director's most accomplished, mature film to date.
Dead Run does have moments where deliberate pacing morphs into dragging. However, cutting scenes could be difficult in a film where every scene contains something that needs to happen to carry both plot and theme forward. Nevethtless, this is a strong film, the director's most accomplished, mature film to date.
DEAD RUN
IMJ Entertainment, Kadokawa Pictures, J Storm
Credits:
Writer/director: Sabu
Based on a novel by: Shigematsu Kiyoshi
Producer: Miki Hiroaki
Director of photography: Nakabori Masao
Production designer: Kanekatsu Koichi
Music: SENS
Editor: Tomoyo Ohshima.
Cast:
Shuji: Tegoshi Yuya
Eri: Kan Hanae
Father Miyahara: Toyokawa Etsushi
Akane: Nakatani Miki
Nitta: Osugi Ren
Kenji: Terajima Susumu
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 123 minutes...
- 6/22/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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