To learn who Takeo Kimura was and I why I’m saluting him, see my prior post. Now, let’s rock and roll with “Tokyo Drifter.”
And now a red band trailer from long before the invention of red band trailers for “Branded to Kill” — you’ve got your violence, you’ve got your sex, you’ve got your art.
Knocking around the cinephile blogosphere this morning, I happened upon the sad news, via Toronto Japanese cinema maven Chris Magee, that Takeo Kimura has passed on at age 91. Now, if you don’t know Mr. Kimura’s name immediately, don’t feel too bad. I didn’t recognize it either. However, when I found that he was Seijun Suzuki‘s art director, I had to take notice.
Now, if you don’t know Mr. Suzuki’s name right of the bat, don’t feel bad either. It just perhaps means you’re not a movie geek with a strong interest in Asian genre cinema of the 1960s and beyond. The world probably has enough of those anyway. What it doesn’t have enough of, however, is filmmakers with Suzuki’s boldness and off-kilter but (often) entertaining sensibility. A acknowledged influence on Quentin Tarantino (whose birthday this is, by the way), Jim Jarmusch, Wong Kar-Wai and probably many others. His best films, like the truly bizarre and compelling black and white “Branded to Kill” play a bit like Sam Fuller thrown into a cuisinart with David Lynch and Jean-Luc Godard. The color ones are weirder.
However, film is a collaborative media, once you seen one of his films, or even a moment from them, you’ll understand why Suzuki’s art director would be his most crucial collaborator. We’ll move backwards in time, starting with a clip for 2001’s “Pistol Opera,” also co-written by Kimura, which is not an everyday contribution for a production designer to make.
Its reputation is somewhat mixed to say the least (I have yet to see it myself) and ordinary coherence in storytelling is not really Suzuki’s strong-suit in any case. Nevertheless, there’s no denying that what you’re about to say is not something you see everyday, not without the right mix of rare herbs and mushrooms, anyhow and that’s primarily thanks to the late Mr. Kimura.
I’m still trying to work out how that film is supposed to be a remake of sorts of “Branded to Kill,” as that was an absurd but relatively low-key film about a troubled hitman with a sexual attachment to the smell of rice being cooked (really), but there you go. More to come.
A ton has happened since my last of these posts and I’m sure I’m missing plenty, but here are just a few of the interesting things going on in the movie world as this rather loony week finally ends.
* Bryan Singer will be producing, not directing, the next “X-Men” prequel. He’ll be directing “Jack, the Giant Killer” instead. And another Mike Fleming story, an exclusive this time: “Paranormal Activity 2” has a director. He’s Tod Williams, best known for “The Door in the Floor.” Sounds to me like Paramount is keeping things modest, wisely.
* The very ill Dennis Hopper got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today. Amy Kaufman has video of the ceremony which included Hopper rather gently chiding the paparazzi for an incident which caused him to fall. The video itself ends with photographers yelling “Viggo!” and “Jack!”
* Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” with Russell Crowe as Robin will be opening Cannes this year. The plot description put me somewhat in mind of the angle the great director Richard Lester and writer James Goldman took on the legend in a film I’m quite partial to, “Robin and Marian,” which starred Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn.
For those of you who haven’t read Bryan Lee O’Malley’s “Scott Pilgrim” comic series — about a twentysomething slacker who must defeat the seven evil ex-boyfriends of his new girlfriend, Ramona V. Flowers — well, there’s a good chance you’ll want to pick them up after seeing the first trailer for Edgar Wright’s big-screen adaptation. There has been a lot of buzz around the Twitterverse about “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” with directors like Jason Reitman calling it a “game changer for the genre” and Kevin Smith saying that “nobody is going to know WTF just hit them.”
I’ve been excited about this project for quite a while. The source material is wildly original, Wright is one of the most creative directors working today, and the cast is absolutely perfect — from Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the lead roles, to Chris Evans, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman as the evil exes. The movie doesn’t come out until August, so to help whet your appetite until then, check out the trailer below.
He had his biggest success on television with Bill Cosby on “I Spy,” historic in its way as the first inter-racial buddy adventure program on TV or, for that matter, in any medium and the tongue-in-cheek superhero comedy, “The Greatest American Hero.” Nevertheless, Mr. Culp, who died unexpectedly today from a fall at age 79, also made a notable mark on films.
Costarring with his colleague and friend Cosby, he directed an attempt to translate their TV fame into movies with 1972’s “Hickey and Boggs.” The film, which was written by a young Walter Hill, tried to go in vastly different, far grittier and grimmer direction than the TV show and failed at the box office. Recently, however, it’s been rediscovered by some cinephiles and crime film fans.
Still, a few year before that Culp appeared in one of the real cultural break-out movies of the 1960s, “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.” For better or worse, it helped popularized, or perhaps merely capitalized, on the idea of “swinging” and “free love” among the older, married set. I haven’t seen this one either and I have no excuse other than somewhat mixed-feelings about most of writer-director Paul Mazursky’s other movies. However, in her heartfelt farewell to Culp, Cinematical’s Monika Bartyzel was kind enough to provide the lengthy, terrific clip below. This scene with Natalie Wood really shows Culp’s way with both serious and light material as he experiences a pretty broad swath of emotions in a scene that starts out as something close to straight drama and gradually eases into some pretty delightful comedy. Now, I want to see this.
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