#90 - Kwaidan

Number 90 is one I will probably buy on bluray at the next Criterion sale at Barnes and Noble - it's just a beautiful piece by who is probably my favorite director from Japan after Kurosawa - Masaki Koboyashi

This is a collection of four stories of the supernatural, so you don't spend the whole 3 hours getting a drawn out story but some great shorter pieces - the Sets were so huge they had to be painted and built in an aircraft hanger, and it was one of the most expensive films of it's time - it's also Masaki's first color film, so he wanted to spiff it up a bit.  There are some well known actors here like Tatsuya Nakadai, Tetsuro Tanba, and Takashi Shimura - and a lot I've never seen before

all the stories have a bit of a twilight zone vibe to them, and they're based on the stories of as I understand it, a Greek Writer who emigrated to Japan and took a Japanese name - but you wouldn't be able to tell, as they have the style and feel of so many Japanese horror films, which is in and of itself a genre one could write a book about.

I won't touch on every story, but I want to touch on the longest, and centerpiece, Hoichi the Earless - this is a great piece (which could have probably been it's own film and I think took up 70 minutes) - it starts with the scene of a great sea battle which to my knowledge is the first Samurai sea battle I've ever seen, and interweaves with some closeups of a couple ships fighting with a painting that shows the thousands of ships that were at this battle - he was able to hereby do this one on the cheap with just a few ships - in this battle one clan is utterly wiped out

fast forward to a monastery nearby a few hundred years later, and a blind monk skilled in the biwa has mastered a song (100 parts - LOL) - that tells of the battle, and a ghostly apparition invites him to come and perform it for his Lord. - I won't get too much deeper into it than that but suffice it to say the gravitas and visuals of this story are some of my favorite of any film I've seen.  The music is excellent too, as well played Japanese Folk music can be very pleasing - (to me anyways)

there will be a few entries of Masaki's coming up, including my hands down favorite, Hari-Kiri - but also a 10 hour epic called the Human Condition.   I've seen all of these and there's also an Eclipse series I'm going to have to check out but this one I had never seen before - I will probably watch it one more time with the commentary going just to hear Stephen Prince's excellent work.   There are some other special features but I regret that Netflix only gives us disk 1 of these DVD sets.

next time bluray

RB