STYLE IN ACTION
Showing posts with label seijun suzuki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seijun suzuki. Show all posts
July 30, 2012
CRITERION SALE ENDING
Today is the last day to take advantage of the Criterion Collection sale at Barnes and Noble. All Criterion DVDs and Blu-rays are currently 50% off on-line and in stores. Spy Vibers should check out titles like Branded To Kill, Tokyo Drifter, le Samourai, The Lady Vanishes, The 39 Steps, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, and classics by Fritz Lang, Wes Anderson, Kurosawa, Fellini, Bergman, Ozu, Takvovsky, and many others.
September 19, 2011
SEIJUN SUZUKI GOES BLU
The Criterion Collection has announced their upcoming Blu-ray titles for December. In addition to a vintage Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes, Spy Vibers can look forward to two 1960s cult classics by Seijun Suzuki!
From Criterion: Tokyo Drifter (1966): In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Phoenix Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is squashed when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. This onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors got director Seijun Suzuki in trouble with Nikkatsu studio heads, who were put off by his anything-goes, in-your-face aesthetic, equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima. Tokyo Drifter is a delirious highlight of the brilliantly excessive Japanese cinema of the sixties.
From Criterion: Branded To Kill (1967): When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin (chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) with a fetish for sniffing boiled rice who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.
Don't forget to enter to win a Blu-ray edition of the Elio Petri cult classic, The 10th Victim (1965), starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. Contest ends October 4th. Details here.
From Criterion: Tokyo Drifter (1966): In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Phoenix Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is squashed when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. This onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors got director Seijun Suzuki in trouble with Nikkatsu studio heads, who were put off by his anything-goes, in-your-face aesthetic, equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima. Tokyo Drifter is a delirious highlight of the brilliantly excessive Japanese cinema of the sixties.
From Criterion: Branded To Kill (1967): When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin (chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) with a fetish for sniffing boiled rice who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.
Don't forget to enter to win a Blu-ray edition of the Elio Petri cult classic, The 10th Victim (1965), starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. Contest ends October 4th. Details here.
May 24, 2011
SEIJUN SUZUKI
Happy Birthday to Japanese director, Seijun Suzuki, born today in 1923. Suzuki's career hit a major stride in the 1960s with a prolific output of Yakuza films for Nikattsu studio. Always bold to take on inventive visuals, Suzuki is fondly remembered for such films as Branded to Kill (1967) and Tokyo Drifter (1966). He had a falling out with the studio, which kept him away from directing for most of the 1970s. He began making more work in the 1980s, including co-directorship of a Lupin III animated film, The Gold of Babylon (1985). Suzuki most recently directed the operetta, Princess Raccoon (2005). There is a short essay about the director at Criterion here, and many of his movies are available on Netflix. Seijun Suzuki tribute website here.
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