Ryuhei Matsuda was born on the 9th of May, 1983, in Tokyo, to actress and producer Miyuki Matsuda and actor Yûsaku Matsuda, and only six years later he loses his father to cancer at the premature age of 40. At only 15, Ryuhei is approached by Nagisa Oshima with the life changing offer of a prominent role in his film Gohatto. Since then, Matsuda's magnetic charisma and remarkable versatility have allowed him to portray a wide range of characters, from brooding antiheroes to quirky and endearing figures, captivating audiences both in Japan and internationally.
With a unique ability to immerse himself in diverse roles, he has left an indelible mark on Japanese cinema and continues to be a beloved and influential figure in the world of acting. However, Matsuda's congenital air of disdain for the whole world, his glacial aloofness mixed with his innate handsomeness make him the prototype of effortless coolness,...
With a unique ability to immerse himself in diverse roles, he has left an indelible mark on Japanese cinema and continues to be a beloved and influential figure in the world of acting. However, Matsuda's congenital air of disdain for the whole world, his glacial aloofness mixed with his innate handsomeness make him the prototype of effortless coolness,...
- 11/9/2023
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
The world mourns the loss of a man behind some of the most beautiful, mesmerizing, and transcendent music ever composed. On March 23rd, 2023, renowned composer Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away at 71. The cause of death was cancer, something he had battled for quite some time. Since his early days as a member and founder of the “Yellow Magic Orchestra,” Sakamoto demonstrated range as a composer and would be an influential figure covering a wide range of genres from electronic to classical. His work has often been fittingly described as atmospheric, emotional, hypnotic, beautiful, and majestic. He was also open about being an environmentalist, studying world culture, and advocating for peace. Journalists Gigova and Orie, in an article on CNN's website, detail his activism stating, “Outside music, Sakamoto was known for activism — and in particular for his anti-nuclear views, which saw him demonstrating against nuclear power plants and co-organizing a “No Nukes...
- 4/22/2023
- by Sean Barry
- AsianMoviePulse
Lauded Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto died on March 28 at the age of 71, recording company Avex announced on Sunday. “While undergoing treatment for cancer discovered in June 2020, Sakamoto continued to create works in his home studio whenever his heath would allow,” the statement read. “He lived with music until the very end.”
In the 1970s, Sakamoto was a member of the influential electronic music group Yellow Magic Orchestra, which released hit songs including “Yellow Magic (Tong Poo)” and “Technopolis.”
He made his film composing debut with 1983’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” and later composed the score for Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 film “The Last Emperor,” for which he earned the Best Original Score Oscar. His other film scores included Pedro Almodóvar’s “Tacones Iejanos,” Brian De Palma’s “Snake Eyes” and “Femme Fatale,” Oliver Stone’s “Wild Palms,” Oshima’s “Gohatto” and Alejandro G. Iñàrritu’s “The Revenant.”
A documentary about Sakamoto’s life and work,...
In the 1970s, Sakamoto was a member of the influential electronic music group Yellow Magic Orchestra, which released hit songs including “Yellow Magic (Tong Poo)” and “Technopolis.”
He made his film composing debut with 1983’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” and later composed the score for Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 film “The Last Emperor,” for which he earned the Best Original Score Oscar. His other film scores included Pedro Almodóvar’s “Tacones Iejanos,” Brian De Palma’s “Snake Eyes” and “Femme Fatale,” Oliver Stone’s “Wild Palms,” Oshima’s “Gohatto” and Alejandro G. Iñàrritu’s “The Revenant.”
A documentary about Sakamoto’s life and work,...
- 4/2/2023
- by Adam Chitwood
- The Wrap
Queer East Film Festival is delighted to unveil its full programme centred on queer storytelling and activism from East and Southeast Asia. This year’s programme includes a selection of 37 features, short films and artists’ moving image works from 15 countries, ranging from new releases to classic retrospectives, mainstream box office hits to radical independent works, accompanied by pre- screening introductions and filmmaker Q&As. A series of online panel discussions with international guests will run throughout the festival period, covering topics such as women in the film industry, queer film festivals, and the development of Asian LGBTQ+ movements.
Launched in 2020, Queer East is a new film festival that aims to amplify the voices of Asian communities in the UK, who have often been excluded from mainstream discourse, despite Asians being one of the country’s fastest-growing ethnic groups. Queer East seeks to facilitate a better understanding of the richness of queer Asian heritage,...
Launched in 2020, Queer East is a new film festival that aims to amplify the voices of Asian communities in the UK, who have often been excluded from mainstream discourse, despite Asians being one of the country’s fastest-growing ethnic groups. Queer East seeks to facilitate a better understanding of the richness of queer Asian heritage,...
- 8/25/2021
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
A film studio since 1920, Japan’s Shochiku has a back catalogue filled with works by master directors including Ozu Yasujiro and Kinoshita Keisuke as well as 1960s New Wave leaders Oshima Nagisa and Shinoda Masahiro and studio stalwart Yamada Yoji, maker of the enduringly popular Tora-san series.
Shochiku has been digitally remastering its classics in 4K for some time now and is bringing to FilMart four of the most recently restored titles in this ongoing project.
At (almost) the same time, the Hong Kong International Film Festival is laying on a ten-film tribute to the studio as a main plank of its 45th edition. Titles include: “The Masseurs and a Woman” (1938); Mizoguchi Kenji’s 1939 “The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum”; Kinoshita’s “Twenty-Four Eyes” (1954); Ozu’ “Equinox Flower” (1958); Kobayashi Masaki’s 1962 “Harakiri”; “Love Affair at Akitsu Spa” (1962); Yamada classic “The Yellow Handkerchief” (1977); Berlinale-winning “Gonza The Spearman” (1986); Oshima’s final feature “Gohatto...
Shochiku has been digitally remastering its classics in 4K for some time now and is bringing to FilMart four of the most recently restored titles in this ongoing project.
At (almost) the same time, the Hong Kong International Film Festival is laying on a ten-film tribute to the studio as a main plank of its 45th edition. Titles include: “The Masseurs and a Woman” (1938); Mizoguchi Kenji’s 1939 “The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum”; Kinoshita’s “Twenty-Four Eyes” (1954); Ozu’ “Equinox Flower” (1958); Kobayashi Masaki’s 1962 “Harakiri”; “Love Affair at Akitsu Spa” (1962); Yamada classic “The Yellow Handkerchief” (1977); Berlinale-winning “Gonza The Spearman” (1986); Oshima’s final feature “Gohatto...
- 3/16/2021
- by Mark Schilling
- Variety Film + TV
3 February 2021 (Hong Kong) – The 45th Hong Kong International Film Festival will mark the 100th anniversary of Shochiku Cinema with a retrospective programme, showcasing ten masterpieces from ten revered Japanese maestros, including Ozu Yasujiro, Shimizu Hiroshi, Imamura Shohei, and Oshima Nagisa.
Founded in 1920, Shochiku is one of Japan’s oldest and most successful studios. A media giant that prided itself first and foremost as a director’s studio, Shochiku offered creative freedom with which formative filmmakers crafted their signature styles to perfection. From Japan’s first sound film, first colour film, first Oscar-winning film to the world’s longest-running film series, Shochiku transformed the cinematic landscape, leading to Japanese cinema’s rising profile globally.
The ten classics in this selection reflect Shochiku’s remarkable achievements over a century. Shimizu and Ozu, two pillars at the studio renowned for their spontaneous style, are exemplified in The Masseurs and a Woman (1938) and the...
Founded in 1920, Shochiku is one of Japan’s oldest and most successful studios. A media giant that prided itself first and foremost as a director’s studio, Shochiku offered creative freedom with which formative filmmakers crafted their signature styles to perfection. From Japan’s first sound film, first colour film, first Oscar-winning film to the world’s longest-running film series, Shochiku transformed the cinematic landscape, leading to Japanese cinema’s rising profile globally.
The ten classics in this selection reflect Shochiku’s remarkable achievements over a century. Shimizu and Ozu, two pillars at the studio renowned for their spontaneous style, are exemplified in The Masseurs and a Woman (1938) and the...
- 2/5/2021
- by Adam Symchuk
- AsianMoviePulse
To celebrate the release of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence – available on limited edition Blu-ray 15th June from Arrow Academy – we have a copy up for grabs!
David Bowie stars in Nagisa Oshima’s 1983 Palme d’Or-nominated portrait of resilience, pride, friendship and obsession among four very different men confined in the stifling jungle heat of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Java during World War II.
Produced by Jeremy Thomas, it was the first English-language film by Oshima, a leading light of Japanese New Wave cinema, and provided breakthrough big-screen roles for comedian Takeshi Kitano and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also composed the film’s hauntingly memorable BAFTA-winning score. This powerful wartime drama was adapted from Laurens van der Post’s autobiographical novel ‘The Seed and the Sower’ (1963) by screenwriter Paul Mayersberg (The Man Who Fell To Earth).
Order today: https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/merry-christmas-mr-lawrence-blu-ray/FCD2013
To be in with a chance of winning,...
David Bowie stars in Nagisa Oshima’s 1983 Palme d’Or-nominated portrait of resilience, pride, friendship and obsession among four very different men confined in the stifling jungle heat of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Java during World War II.
Produced by Jeremy Thomas, it was the first English-language film by Oshima, a leading light of Japanese New Wave cinema, and provided breakthrough big-screen roles for comedian Takeshi Kitano and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also composed the film’s hauntingly memorable BAFTA-winning score. This powerful wartime drama was adapted from Laurens van der Post’s autobiographical novel ‘The Seed and the Sower’ (1963) by screenwriter Paul Mayersberg (The Man Who Fell To Earth).
Order today: https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/merry-christmas-mr-lawrence-blu-ray/FCD2013
To be in with a chance of winning,...
- 6/16/2020
- by Phil Wheat
- Nerdly
Japanese film-maker best known for the sexually explicit In the Realm of the Senses and Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, starring David Bowie
In a sense, it is unfortunate that the Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, who has died aged 80, was more infamous than famous, due to one film, In the Realm of the Senses (also known as Ai No Corrida, 1976). Although it was, for many, in the realms of pornography, the film was a serious treatment of the link between the political and the sexual, eroticism and death (previously dealt with in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris), and a breakthrough in the representation of explicit sex in mainstream art cinema. Like Bertolucci, Oshima was held and acquitted on an obscenity charge.
Based on a true cause célèbre, In the Realm of the Senses tells of a married man and a geisha, who retreat from the militarist Japan of 1936 into a world of their own,...
In a sense, it is unfortunate that the Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, who has died aged 80, was more infamous than famous, due to one film, In the Realm of the Senses (also known as Ai No Corrida, 1976). Although it was, for many, in the realms of pornography, the film was a serious treatment of the link between the political and the sexual, eroticism and death (previously dealt with in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris), and a breakthrough in the representation of explicit sex in mainstream art cinema. Like Bertolucci, Oshima was held and acquitted on an obscenity charge.
Based on a true cause célèbre, In the Realm of the Senses tells of a married man and a geisha, who retreat from the militarist Japan of 1936 into a world of their own,...
- 1/16/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
The renowned Japanese director, who died on 15 January, was best known for his explicit In the Realm of the Senses – but there was far more to his work than that. We take a look back at his career highlights
Reading on a mobile? Watch video clip here
After a short apprenticeship at the Shochiku film studio, Nagisa Oshima made his directorial debut aged 27 with A Town of Love and Hope in 1959, but it was his 1960 follow-up, Cruel Story of Youth, that propelled him to national attention. Drawing on techniques of the then-nascent European new waves, and striking a chord with its frustrated adolescent protagonists, Cruel Story hit a nerve in the roiling social mood of the early 60s.
Reading on a mobile? Watch video clip here
After his explicitly political Night and Fog in Japan (also 1960) was withdrawn by a nervous Shochiku, Oshima spent the next few years working in TV,...
Reading on a mobile? Watch video clip here
After a short apprenticeship at the Shochiku film studio, Nagisa Oshima made his directorial debut aged 27 with A Town of Love and Hope in 1959, but it was his 1960 follow-up, Cruel Story of Youth, that propelled him to national attention. Drawing on techniques of the then-nascent European new waves, and striking a chord with its frustrated adolescent protagonists, Cruel Story hit a nerve in the roiling social mood of the early 60s.
Reading on a mobile? Watch video clip here
After his explicitly political Night and Fog in Japan (also 1960) was withdrawn by a nervous Shochiku, Oshima spent the next few years working in TV,...
- 1/15/2013
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Tokyo – Japanese director Nagisa Oshima died of pneumonia on Tuesday in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo, where he had been living since his retirement from filmmaking. He had moved there after Taboo (Gohatto), his 1999 movie about gay samurai, which competed at Cannes. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Oshima’s only English-language work, starred David Bowie as a man in a Japanese Pow camp, with fellow musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who wrote and performed the score, as his guard. The film also featured Beat Takeshi, who went on to a successful directing career as Takeshi Kitano. Born in Kyoto, Japan’s
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- 1/15/2013
- by Gavin J. Blair
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Japanese / Native American actor and musician Tadanobu Asano will appear as Nagata in director Peter Berg's new film "Battleship" based on the classic board game.Also starring in the $200 million dollar budget live-action "Battleship" film are Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgård, Brooklyn Decker, Rihanna, and Liam Neeson.The film was originally planned to be released in 2011, but rescheduled to May 18, 2012. The plot involves a naval fleet fighting against extraterrestrial invaders.Asano is best known to international audiences for the samurai films "Gohatto"...
- 9/19/2010
- by edmoy
- Examiner Movies Channel
[Our thanks go out to Chris MaGee and Marc Saint-Cyr at the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow for sharing their coverage of the 2010 Nippon Connection Film Festival.]
On my first day of film viewing at the 10th Nippon Connection film festival, I had the great pleasure of seeing what might turn out to be one of it's strongest entries: "Oh, My Buddha!," the second film directed by Tomorowo Taguchi, who is best known for his acting work in films as diverse as "Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha," "Gohatto," "The Eel" and "Tetsuo: the Iron Man," in which he plays the title character. Though I haven't yet seen his 2003 directorial debut "Iden & Tity," it is clear from "Oh, My Buddha!" alone that he has developed a very confident and mature understanding of filmmaking, maintaining a sharp control over his style and drawing you into a well-told and compulsively watchable story.
The film follows young Jun, a first-year student at an all-boys Buddhist high school in Kyoto. The year is 1974, and Jun is an aspiring musician who lovingly worships...
On my first day of film viewing at the 10th Nippon Connection film festival, I had the great pleasure of seeing what might turn out to be one of it's strongest entries: "Oh, My Buddha!," the second film directed by Tomorowo Taguchi, who is best known for his acting work in films as diverse as "Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha," "Gohatto," "The Eel" and "Tetsuo: the Iron Man," in which he plays the title character. Though I haven't yet seen his 2003 directorial debut "Iden & Tity," it is clear from "Oh, My Buddha!" alone that he has developed a very confident and mature understanding of filmmaking, maintaining a sharp control over his style and drawing you into a well-told and compulsively watchable story.
The film follows young Jun, a first-year student at an all-boys Buddhist high school in Kyoto. The year is 1974, and Jun is an aspiring musician who lovingly worships...
- 4/16/2010
- Screen Anarchy
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