Takashi Shimizu is the horror auteur behind the Ju-On films but he has been working on more mainstream films like the live-action Kiki’s Delivery Service lately. He makes his horror comeback with this short that stars Tomorowo Taguchi (Tetsuo: The Iron Man).
"Gisaeng are like flowers that can understand human speech...We're flowers meant to be picked by men who grant our wishes".
The soundtrack is so beautiful, the story heart-wrenching, the journey sweet and sorrow...
Friendship, love, obsession, betrayal, jealousy, revenge, pain, guilt, hate, shattered dreams and souls, all melt in a pot of vibrant colors and turn into exquisite music in the end...
Interesting conflict between tradition and modernity, illustrated by the classical jeongga and early Korean pop music (later known as trot).
The film's Korean title literally means "flowers that understand words" or "a flower that can talk", referring to gisaeng (the duality that was expected of gisaeng, who were well-educated in the arts but treated as socially inferior, and ultimately existed for men's pleasure.)
Worth watching!
8/10
TRANSLATION: rain woman
ALTERNATE NAMES: ame onba
HABITAT: dark streets and alleys; formerly clouds and holy mountains
DIET: unknown; possibly rain, or children
APPEARANCE: Ame onna are a class of yokai that appear on rainy days and nights. They summon rain wherever they go, and are often blamed for kidnapping and spiriting children away. They appear as depraved, haggish women, soaked with rainwater, often licking the rain off of their hands and arms like wild animals.
BEHAVIOR: Ame onna are related to minor rain deities. However, unlike the gods, ame onna are not benevolent. Though the rains they bring might save a village in drought or bring fortune to farmers, ame onna have another purpose in mind: they wander the villages on rainy nights looking for newborn babies. If they should find a child born that night, they snatch it and carry it off into the darkness, spiriting it away to turn it into another ame onna. Mothers who have their babies snatched away in this manner are sometimes known to transform into ame onna themselves out of grief and despair. Having lost their minds, these transformed women roam the streets at night with large sacks hoping to replace what was stolen from them while they were still human. They sneak into houses where crying children can be heard, and steal them away from their homes into the night.
ORIGIN: The first ame onna go back to the ancient folk religions of Japan and China, where the rains were said to be brought by benevolent gods and goddesses who live as clouds by morning and as rain by night, forever traveling between heaven and earth. Legend has it that somehow, some of these rain-bringing goddesses became corrupted and gradually evolved into evil yokai, abandoning their divinity to live among mortals and prey upon them.
A couple of years ago the deaf musician and composer Mamoru Samuragochi made the headlines when it was revealed that he wasn’t as deaf as he claimed after a series of articles drew doubts about his deafness and it was revealed that a man named Takashi Aragaki had served as a ghost writer for 18 years. This documentary looks at the man at the centre of the uproar and how he dealt with the press coverage.
Elegant and moving, the love story of Pascal and Ricky has been woven into this gorgeous tapestry of a film. Pascal has been in a destructive, violent relationship, picking pockets for a living; scared in his own home. When he meets the gentle and shy Ricky at a street café, he must break through Rickys reticence to open his heart for love. Their turbulent, passionate relationship is the core of this emotionally rich gem. Shot with an intimacy and intelligence seldom seen in an indie, Soundless Wind Chime is a superb feature debut from Kit Hung.
In this globe-trotting semi-autobiographical debut feature from Kit Hung, Ricky, a delivery boy working in Hong Kong, falls in love with petty thief Pascal (Bernhard Bulling), who pinches his wallet. The two start a passionate relationship, but tragedy strikes. Numb with grief, Ricky travels to his lover’s native Switzerland, and meets Ueli (Bulling again), who looks exactly like Pascal. They, too, begin a relationship. But is Ueli’s resemblance to Pascal mere coincidence?
The non-linear narrative can be tricky to follow, and the film demands more than one viewing to tease out its mysteries. It’s an enigmatic film with some gorgeous flourishes (check out the yodelling-backed scene in the Swiss bar), and a hugely impressive first (and hopefully not last) feature. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-gay-films-east-asia
On the festival circuit, Apichatpong ‘Joe’ Weerasethakul has established himself as Thailand’s leading director, having scooped multiple prizes at Cannes, including the Palme d’Or for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010). Homosexual themes suffuse much of his work (Weerasethakul is gay himself), manifesting as out and out camp in the outrageous The Adventure of Iron Pussy (2003). But best of all is Tropical Malady, one of the most mesmerising and surreal gay love stories ever told.
A soldier and a country boy fall for each other and pay regular visits to the Thai jungle. So far, so unremarkable. Then one of the men is spirited away and the narrative whirls into a different world. The soldier appears to be on the trail of an apparently shape-shifting entity which may or may not be his departed lover. It’s utterly bizarre and utterly beautiful – a shot of a tree lit up by fireflies is astonishing, as is the hypnotic final encounter between the hero and a tiger. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-gay-films-east-asia
A feverish collision of avant-garde aesthetics and grind-house shocks (not to mention a direct influence on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange), Funeral Parade of Roses takes us on an electrifying journey into the nether-regions of the late-'60s Tokyo underworld. In Toshio Matsumoto's controversial debut feature, seemingly nothing is taboo: neither the incorporation of visual flourishes straight from the worlds of contemporary graphic-design, painting, comic-books, and animation; nor the unflinching depiction of nudity, sex, drug-use, and public-toilets. But of all the "transgressions" here on display, perhaps one in particular stands out the most: the film's groundbreaking and unapologetic portrayal of Japanese gay subculture.
Cross-dressing club-kid Eddie (played by real-life transvestite entertainer extraordinaire Peter, famed for his role as Kyoami the Fool in Akira Kurosawa's Ran) vies with a rival drag-queen (Osamu Ogasawara) for the favours of drug-dealing cabaret-manager Gonda (Yoshio Tsuchiya, himself a Kurosawa player who appeared in such films as Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and High and Low). Passions escalate and blood begins to flow — before all tensions are released in a jolting climax that prefigures by nearly thirty years Tsai Ming-liang's similarly scandalous The River.
With its mixture of purely narrative sequences and documentary footage, Funeral Parade of Roses comes to us from a moment when cinema set itself to test, and even eradicate, the boundaries between fiction and reality, desire and experience; consequently, the film shares a kinship with such other 1969 works as Masahiro Shinoda's Double Suicide and Ingmar Bergman's A Passion [The Passion of Anna]. Yet Matsumoto achieves a zig-zag modulation between pathos and hilarity that makes his picture utterly unique: a filmic howl in the face of social, moral, and artistic convention.
(Criterion Dungeon)
2 
http://movie.daum.net/moviedetail/moviedetailMain.do?movieId=92107
http://nofilmschool.com/2016/05/how-visual-master-re-animated-zombie-genre-train-busan
"Gisaeng are like flowers that can understand human speech...We're flowers meant to be picked by men who grant our wishes".
The soundtrack is so beautiful, the story heart-wrenching, the journey sweet and sorrow...
Friendship, love, obsession, betrayal, jealousy, revenge, pain, guilt, hate, shattered dreams and souls, all melt in a pot of vibrant colors and turn into exquisite music in the end...
Interesting conflict between tradition and modernity, illustrated by the classical jeongga and early Korean pop music (later known as trot).
The film's Korean title literally means "flowers that understand words" or "a flower that can talk", referring to gisaeng (the duality that was expected of gisaeng, who were well-educated in the arts but treated as socially inferior, and ultimately existed for men's pleasure.)
Worth watching!
8/10
FULL OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Db2ELIvNo&list=PLFNyxd7NhNEISbh-ppSaUQYL48YWKEV9s
PREVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrZOGo3-QaA
OST:
Han Hyo Joo - 계면조 평거 Gyemyeonjo Pyeonggeo (Love, Lies)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZywjyhG5XbM
Chun Woo Hee - 조선의 마음 (Joseon`s Heart)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDRXRBzzuhw
Han Hyo Joo, Chun Woo Hee - 봄 아가씨 (Spring Lady)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFGxezURPM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62SIfPaDnGk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcsi64cfgCY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBzPxQP3SK8 (he rehearsed 3 months for this scene)
TRANSLATION: rain woman
ALTERNATE NAMES: ame onba
HABITAT: dark streets and alleys; formerly clouds and holy mountains
DIET: unknown; possibly rain, or children
APPEARANCE: Ame onna are a class of yokai that appear on rainy days and nights. They summon rain wherever they go, and are often blamed for kidnapping and spiriting children away. They appear as depraved, haggish women, soaked with rainwater, often licking the rain off of their hands and arms like wild animals.
BEHAVIOR: Ame onna are related to minor rain deities. However, unlike the gods, ame onna are not benevolent. Though the rains they bring might save a village in drought or bring fortune to farmers, ame onna have another purpose in mind: they wander the villages on rainy nights looking for newborn babies. If they should find a child born that night, they snatch it and carry it off into the darkness, spiriting it away to turn it into another ame onna. Mothers who have their babies snatched away in this manner are sometimes known to transform into ame onna themselves out of grief and despair. Having lost their minds, these transformed women roam the streets at night with large sacks hoping to replace what was stolen from them while they were still human. They sneak into houses where crying children can be heard, and steal them away from their homes into the night.
ORIGIN: The first ame onna go back to the ancient folk religions of Japan and China, where the rains were said to be brought by benevolent gods and goddesses who live as clouds by morning and as rain by night, forever traveling between heaven and earth. Legend has it that somehow, some of these rain-bringing goddesses became corrupted and gradually evolved into evil yokai, abandoning their divinity to live among mortals and prey upon them.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-unmasking-of-japans-beethoven
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/06/01/films/theres-real-story-behind-fake-documentary/#.V1QQcfl95D_
http://danchi-movie.com/
http://eiga.com/movie/82568/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4877264/
http://movie.daum.net/moviedb/main?movieId=86622
Subbed trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPmOEMJFoA
In this globe-trotting semi-autobiographical debut feature from Kit Hung, Ricky, a delivery boy working in Hong Kong, falls in love with petty thief Pascal (Bernhard Bulling), who pinches his wallet. The two start a passionate relationship, but tragedy strikes. Numb with grief, Ricky travels to his lover’s native Switzerland, and meets Ueli (Bulling again), who looks exactly like Pascal. They, too, begin a relationship. But is Ueli’s resemblance to Pascal mere coincidence?
The non-linear narrative can be tricky to follow, and the film demands more than one viewing to tease out its mysteries. It’s an enigmatic film with some gorgeous flourishes (check out the yodelling-backed scene in the Swiss bar), and a hugely impressive first (and hopefully not last) feature.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-gay-films-east-asia
A soldier and a country boy fall for each other and pay regular visits to the Thai jungle. So far, so unremarkable. Then one of the men is spirited away and the narrative whirls into a different world. The soldier appears to be on the trail of an apparently shape-shifting entity which may or may not be his departed lover. It’s utterly bizarre and utterly beautiful – a shot of a tree lit up by fireflies is astonishing, as is the hypnotic final encounter between the hero and a tiger.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-gay-films-east-asia
FULL SUBBED: http://kissasian.com/Drama/Farewell-My-Concubine/Movie?id=9944
A feverish collision of avant-garde aesthetics and grind-house shocks (not to mention a direct influence on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange), Funeral Parade of Roses takes us on an electrifying journey into the nether-regions of the late-'60s Tokyo underworld. In Toshio Matsumoto's controversial debut feature, seemingly nothing is taboo: neither the incorporation of visual flourishes straight from the worlds of contemporary graphic-design, painting, comic-books, and animation; nor the unflinching depiction of nudity, sex, drug-use, and public-toilets. But of all the "transgressions" here on display, perhaps one in particular stands out the most: the film's groundbreaking and unapologetic portrayal of Japanese gay subculture.
Cross-dressing club-kid Eddie (played by real-life transvestite entertainer extraordinaire Peter, famed for his role as Kyoami the Fool in Akira Kurosawa's Ran) vies with a rival drag-queen (Osamu Ogasawara) for the favours of drug-dealing cabaret-manager Gonda (Yoshio Tsuchiya, himself a Kurosawa player who appeared in such films as Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and High and Low). Passions escalate and blood begins to flow — before all tensions are released in a jolting climax that prefigures by nearly thirty years Tsai Ming-liang's similarly scandalous The River.
With its mixture of purely narrative sequences and documentary footage, Funeral Parade of Roses comes to us from a moment when cinema set itself to test, and even eradicate, the boundaries between fiction and reality, desire and experience; consequently, the film shares a kinship with such other 1969 works as Masahiro Shinoda's Double Suicide and Ingmar Bergman's A Passion [The Passion of Anna]. Yet Matsumoto achieves a zig-zag modulation between pathos and hilarity that makes his picture utterly unique: a filmic howl in the face of social, moral, and artistic convention.
(Criterion Dungeon)