Posts Tagged ‘Nobuhiko Obayashi’


Out now and upcoming . . .

January 27th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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This past weekend UK outfit Eureka! released under their Masters of Cinema label what is already one of the most exciting foreign language DVD releases of the year – Nobuhiko Obayashi’s bizarre fantasy horror House / Hausu, arguably the best coming of age story ever to revolve around a house that eats people.  The disc includes a new anamorphic widescreen transfer, a 90-minute collection of interviews about the film featuring the director, cast, and crew, a theatrical trailer, and an extensive booklet.  The disc is highly recommended for stateside fans who just can’t wait for the eventual Criterion Collection offering (as of yet still unannounced), and is currently offered at 39% below retail at Amazon.co.uk.

Out on the 19th of the month was another fine offering from Shout! Factory, a lavish DVD re-release of Kingdom of the Spiders, previously only available as an expensive German or pathetic Goodtimes release.  The new special edition includes a restored 1.77:1 anamorphic transfer, a commentary featuring director Bud Cardos and many of the crew, a new interview with star William Shatner, and a slew of other featurettes.  The disc is currently available at a savings of 25% from Amazon.com.

And last but not least among notable new releases is a new multi-film collection from Warner, the 4 Film Favorites: Urban Action Collection, released with absolutely zero fanfare on the 14th of January.  The four film collection includes Three the Hard Way, Hot Potatoe, and Black Samson, but the big news of the packages has to be the DVD debut of Jim Kelly’s Black Belt Jones.  While budget in price the transfers are great, and the package can be had for $14.99 at Amazon.com (note: you may be able to find a better deal at your local retailers, so shop around).

Upcoming is the just announced Forbidden Planet, slated for Blu-ray release from Warner on September 7th.  No word on extras as of yet, but I imagine that (in line with previous Warner hi-def offerings) that the package will more or less mimic the special edition DVD from 2006.  Even if it was an unlikely bare-bones release, Wtf-Film would still love to add this classic to his high-def collection.


HOUSE / HAUSU at the Oak Street Cinema!

October 4th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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Hi all – I read about this in Citypages sometime ago but the Oak Street Cinema has just updated its calendar with a date in the past day or so.

If you’re a weird cinema fan and happen to be in the vicinity of Minneapolis on the nights of October 15th through 17th, then the Oak Street is definitely where you need to be.  HOUSE / HAUSU is probably the best coming-of-age story ever to be told as a haunted house flick about girl-eating furniture, crazy spinsters, and creepy white cats.  You can check out not one but two reviews here on site, one from myself and a second from contributor Ted Johnson.

posterFrom the Oak Street Cinema site:

“There are movies for which advance word in the newspaper seems like insufficient notice. In the case of this thoroughly insane feature—a 1977 Japanese horror film now making erratic stops across the country, like a spaceship crashing in your backyard—it’s hard to imagine what method could conceivably herald its contents: a three-story gong, maybe, or an army of acid-crazed Brownies shrieking through the streets. For now, this’ll have to do: Run. Wake your neighbor. Slap your children. Eye your cat with suspicion. Every once in a blue-screen moon, a movie will remind even the most jaded of cult-film aficionados that, no, in fact, they have not seen everything. Here, director Nobuhiko Obayashi dispatches six schoolgirls to spend their summer vacation with classmate Oshare at her ailing aunt’s remote estate. A friend described the movie’s first half as an experimental film made by an 11-year-old girl, and that fits: Avant-garde devices such as screens within screens may be underscored with pancake-syrupy pop, or framed with the kind of gauzy borders a kid might sketch around a doodled unicorn. Obayashis body of work extends from experimental shorts to apocalyptic teenage sci-fi (1987′s The Drifting Classroom) to those notorious 1970s Charles Bronson “Mandom” perfume ads—and in House, he manages to compress them all into one brain-boiling spew of psychotropic, psychedelic, sense-deranging WTF imagery. It’s scary not in any conventional sense, but because a viewer feels so utterly without bearings—as if whatever glue holds the universe together had suddenly turned to Jell-O.”


House

September 28th, 2007 | article by | 1 Comment »
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Toho Co. Ltd [1977] 87′
country: Japan
director: NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI
cast: KIMIKO IKEGAMI, KUMIKO OHBA,
cast: YOKO MINAMIDA, MITSUTOSHI ISHIGAMI

Oshare (Ikegami) is just your average everyday schoolgirl. One day she comes home from school to find that her musician dad (who apparently works with Sergio Leone) is about to remarry. Not willing to accept a replacement for her deceased mother, Oshare tries to visit her mom’s home where her aunt currently lives. The aunt (Minamida) invites her to come for a visit.

Oshare and her pals Fanta, Kung Fu, Melody, Sweet, and Gari hightail it to the country where they find Auntie’s miniature house sitting on a set hilltop. Residents try to dissuade them from going, but they move on. Once there, they are greeted by the charming, but wheelchair-bound Auntie, who may just be the most attractive elderly person ever.

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House

September 28th, 2007 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Toho Co. Ltd [1977] 87′
country: Japan
director: NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI
cast: KIMIKO IKEGAMI, KUMIKO OHBA,
cast: YOKO MINAMIDA, MITSUTOSHI ISHIGAMI

Things are not looking good for high schooler Oshare. Just a week before she is supposed to take a wonderful holiday trip with her widowed father (a film composer who, at present, is working with none other than Sergio Leone), she discovers his plans to remarry. Furious at the prospect and not at all willing to accept the death of her mother and move on, Oshare decides that, instead of going on the trip with both her father and his lover, she’ll visit her real mother’s sister instead. Even though the two do not know each other well, Oshare knows that her mother was very close to her aunt and that the two were quite alike.

Bad news breaks for her six friends as well – it seems their summer camp trip has been ruined by the fact that the woman who owns the property is expecting a child. With nothing better to do, the six decide to tag along with Oshare. Each one of them has a particular quirk – Kung Fu is athletic, Mac (short for “stomach”) is always hungry, Gari is a nerd, Melody is musically inclined, Sweet is sweet and Fanta has an imagination. Their teacher, Mr. Togo, is supposed to accompany them on their trip but, after suffering an unfortunate accident involving stairs, a bucket and a car, is forced to delay his departure but promises to follow along in his buggy.

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