スターウルフ, "
Star Wolf," was a half-hour sci-fi TV show produced and aired in Japan in 1978. (
TV Tropes page -- addiction warning) It had somewhat cheesy special effects, understandable being a TV series made just one year after Star Wars, but it made up for it with style, energy, and
ACTION PACKED MUSIC.
American viewers will know it best as the show ripped apart and reassembled into two Fugitive Alien movies by
Sandy Frank Productions, then shown on two memorable episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
(Episodes on YouTube: Fugitive Alien, its sequel.) Although the Japanese show got at least two seasons (the second under the title
Space Hero Star Wolf), only the first four episodes appear to exist on the internet. Here they are:
One -
Two -
Three -
Four. (There are no subtitles, but you should be able to figure out what is going on if you've seen the MST episode.)
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posted by JHarris
on Jun 27, 2012 -
26 comments
Taiyo Matsumoto's original five volume manga Ping Pong was one of the most surprising and gripping experiences I've had this year. But a huge reason for that is the artwork: he packs more kinetic energy into a single drawing of a shoe skidding across a floor than any real shoe has ever had. So it was with some trepidation that I saw posters for this adaptation going up in stores around Japan. Fumihiko Masuri is a first time director (not that you'd know it), with a background in computer effects. He seems to have directed this mainly because he's a really big fan of the manga too. On the film's website, they've placed images from the manga next to photographs of the actors in the film, so you can see how obsessive compulsive they were in matching faces. Not only faces, but movements, playing styles, and shot composition is all straight from the book, as if they'd used the manga in lieu of storyboards. Even the occasional surreal touch; a boy growing butterfly wings, a dragonfly landing on the net, is right out of the page onto the screen. --
Midnight Eye review; subtitled movie in 12 parts:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12
posted by filthy light thief
on May 14, 2012 -
22 comments
The
benshi of Japan were live narrators of silent films.
"To many 'silent' cinema fans in Japan,
benshi were a major attraction. It was usually the film that drew people to the theater, but it was often the
benshi which determined which theater a person would attend.
Benshi were huge cultural stars of the time, with
benshi earning as much, if not more, than many actors."
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posted by Paragon
on Feb 27, 2011 -
17 comments
