ACF 878: Sabu retrospective concludes this afternoon with screening of "Troubleman "

Troubleman © 2010 Troubleman Production Committee

Troubleman / Toraburuman
Written and directed by Sabu
Japan, TV Series, 2010, 180 minutes
International Premiere!
When: Saturday, February 5th, 2011 at 5 PM
Where: Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New Yorrk, NY
(between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

The Sabu retrospective series at Japan Society concludes this afternoon with his most recent completed work, six episodes of the television series Troubleman (sometimes spelled Trouble Man).

Description (from Japan Society's website):
Sabu's latest work, written for TV and presented for the first time outside Japan, stars Shigeaki Kato as Kazuo Tokuda, an insurance agent whose life is turned topsy-turvy when he gets thrust into a web of mystery and intrigue involving murderers, would-be rapists and a gang of (angry) yakuza! As things turn out, trouble is nothing new for this man, who might just be the very embodiment of bad luck.

To buy tickets online, click here.

For information about the complete mini-film series Run, Salaryman, Run! - A Retrospective of Sabu's Film Works, click here.

ACF 875: Sabu's The Blessing Bell at Japan Society

The Blessing Bell © 2002 The Blessing Bell Film Partners

Walk, Salaryman, Walk!

The Blessing Bell / Kofuku no Kane
Written and directed by Sabu
Japan, 2002, 87 minutes
When: Friday, February 4th 2011 at 7:30 PM
Where: Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, NY
(between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

Netpac Award, 2003 Berlin International Film Festival
Grand Jury Prize, 2003 Cinemanila International Film Festival

Japan Society's Sabu film series continues tonight with this tale of Igarashi (Susumu Terajima). a blue collar salaryman whose factory has shut down. We follow him over the course of 24 hours as he takes a remarkable walk, a journey into wide-ranging and strange experiences. These include a yakuza who wishes to donate his organs, a murderer who's killed his wife's lover but not her, a dying (or perhaps already dead) man in a hospital (played by director emeritus Seijun Suzuki, who I understand has done a lot of acting in recent years), a lottery ticket and more.

For me, the remarkable thing about the film was that it is a nearly silent movie. There's no music, only some environmental sounds (such as the sound of a train or of car tires screeching), and minimal dialogue. In fact, I don't think the protagonist says much of anything until the end of the film, and then he's not really on camera.

Also Terajima (who has significant roles in Sabu's Monday, Drive, and Troubleman, which will be shown on Saturday), reminds me of Buster Keaton, not only in his slender build and thin face, but also in his stoical expression. Regardless of what befalls him, and sometimes the film seems like a variation on the biblical story of Job, Igarashi meets it with calmness and resignation.

The Blessing Bell (and I have no idea to what the title refers) is a most unusual film, even for Sabu. But it's also intriguing, inventive, and fascinating.

ACF Rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars; very highly recommended.

For info about The Blessing Bell and to order tickets, click here.

For info about and to order tickets for Saturday afternoon's screening of Troubleman, the final presentation in the series, click here.

ACF 871: Sabu's "Drive" at Japan Soceity

DRIVE © 2001 DRIVE Film Partners

Drive, Salaryman, Drive!

Drive
Written and directed by Sabu
Japan, 2002, 102 minutes

Last night, Japan Society's series of six films directed by Sabu continued with this variation on the theme of an everyday salaryman put into an unplanned and extraordinary situation.

Asakura Kenishi (Shinichi Tsutsumi) suffers from stress-induced migraines. After observing him at his doctor's office, we find him sitting in his car as he watches a lovely young woman (Kou Shibasaki) with a red umbrella looking at some flowers. While we know that he's expecting her to appear, we don't know if he deliberately has stopped to watch her, stalker-like, or if this is something that happens in the normal course of their daily routines, him waiting for a light, her shopping for flowers.

But this being a Sabu film, things are about to take a sudden, abrupt turn into the weird and unexpected, which they do in the form of three masked men who jump into his car and force him to pursue another masked man in a separate vehicle. Obviously this other party is a partner-in-crime who's betrayed them, as evidenced by the large back of loot he's making off with by himself.

Unfortunately for the trio, they've picked the wrong guy for a high speed pursuit. See, Asakura is fanatical about observing speed limits, obeying stop lights, and not making illegal turns. Neither the importuning of his unsought "companions" nor those of irate drivers can get him to "get a move on."

With Drive, Sabu injects an element of the supernatural into his usual mix: the ghosts of samurai and soldier, to be specific. It's a delightful film, perhaps the "lightest" of those in the series, and has a delicious ending.

ACF Rating: 3 out of 4 stars, solidly recommended.

For information about the film series Run, Salaryman, Run: A Retrospective of Sabu's Film Works, click here. The next film that will be shown is The Blessing Bell (2002), which will be shown tomorrow,Friday, February 4th, 2011, at 7:30 PM. For info about it and to order tickets, click here.

ACF 869: Sabu's Non-Stop at Japan Society

Non-Stop a.k.a. DANGAN Runner (c) 1996 Nikkatsu Corporation

Non-Stop / Dangan ranna
(a.k.a DANGAN Runner or D.A.N.G.A.N. Runner)
Written and directed by Sabu
Japan, 1996, 82 minutes

Sabu's debut feature, from which Japan Society's Run, Salaryman, Run: A Retrospective of Sabu's Film Works derives its name, was shown last Saturday night, with an introduction and Q&A with the director. I unfortunately was not able to attend, but I'm certain it was a great evening. And I did get to see the film on a DVD screener, which is the next best thing to having been there.

Tomorowo Taguchi (Tetsuo, The Iron Man, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, and many other films, including others by Sabu) plays Yasuda, a total loser. He can't even keep his job as a lowly kitchen assistant and also has lost his girlfriend. So he plans the perfect bank robbery!

Unfortunately, as he's about to pull it off, he realizes he's forgotten to obtain a mask, so he goes to a nearby convenience store to shoplift one of those white gauze ones. Diamond Yukai (a rock singer in real life) plays Aizawa, the store clerk who catches Taguchi in the act and starts chasing him through the streets. Along the way, they literally bump into Takeda (Shinichi Tsutsumi), a low-level yakuza to whom Aizawa owes money for drugs. Takeda takes off after the duo and an incredible three-man race ensues.

Takeda (Shinichi Tsustusmi) joins the race

Non-Stop has been compared in some ways to the German film Run, Lola, Run. I've seen Lola..., which came out two years after Non-Stop, but it's been quite awhile, so aside from the running through the streets, I can't comment on whatever else the two may have in common.

But I can say that Non-Stop is a fascinating, imaginative, and often very funny film. There's one sequence where each of the three runners imagine having sex with a comely young woman they have passed. Shots of each of the guys are brilliantly intercut with scenes of their make-believe sexual trysts with the damsel, complete with spot-on changes in their breathing as each of them reaches their fantasy climax. Great stuff and hysterical.

I'm not sure why Japan Society is screening the six films in the series in the order they have chosen. Personally I would've preferred a chronological approach (or at least enough lead time so I could have watched the screeners in that order), but no matter. The bottom line is that Non-Stop clearly was an auspicious start to Sabu's directorial efforts, and that his subsequent films -- at least the other three that I've so far watched -- prove that he has made good on this promising beginning.

Non-Stop merits an ACF rating of 3.5 out of 4 stars; very highly recommended.

The Sabu retrospective will continue on Wednesday, February 2nd at 7:30 PM with Drive (2002).

ACF 866: Sabu's Postman Blues to be screened tonight at Japan Society

(Postman Blues copyright 1997 Nikkatsu Corporation)
Bike, Salaryman, Bike!
Noguchi, Sawaki, and Joe race through the streets

Postman Blues / Posutoman Buruzu
Written and directed by Sabu
Japan, 1997, 110 minutes
When: Friday January 28, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Where: Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, NY
(between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

The second film in Japan Society's retrospective of six works by Sabu is also the second film chronologically of those being screened. Like Monday, which was shown two nights ago, it stars Shinichi Tsutsumi. Here he plays Sawaki, a postman who rides around town on his red bicycle making his deliveries.

When he delivers a letter to Noguchi (Keisuke Horibe) an old school mate who's now a low-level yakuza, he's invited inside. He leaves not knowing that two additional objects have found their way into his mailbag, and police staking out the yakuza's apartment mistake Sawaki intially as a drug runner. Later, and with the aid of a police profiler, they postulate that he's also a murderer, a schizophrenic, and a terrorist!

Sayoko and Sawaki

Meanwhile Sawaki befriends two terminal ill cancer patients. One is Sayoko (Kyoko Toyama), a lovely young woman he's found out about when he reads a letter that she wrote and that he was to have delivered. She provides the romantic interest.

The other cancer patient is a hit man named Joe (Ren Ohsugi). My take is that this is a nod to venerable Japanese actor Jo Shishido, widely known for his role as hit man Goro Hanada in Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill (1967).

Joe wants to win a hit man competition, and there's a terrific reference to an iconic character from a famous Hong Kong art-house film. First we see the character as one of several in a waiting room at the preliminary elimination round. My reaction was, "Wait a minute, is that supposed to be...?" A moment later my suspicion was confirmed as the name of the character in Sabu's film has the name of the actual actress from the Hong Kong film. I won't spoil things here, but will reveal the information at the end of this post for anyone interested.

Joe and Sawaki

So we have a lead character who's a victim of mistaken identity, somewhat like Cary Grant's character in Hitchcock's North by Northwest, yakuza, overzealous cops, and two terminally ill characters, one a friend, the other a love interest.

I found the humor in Postman Blues to be much lighter and brighter overall than that of Monday, where the humor was pretty much on the dark side. There's some zany, madcap racing through the streets as Sawaki tries to help his yakuza friend, who's in trouble with his boss, and to make a promised appointment with Sayoko, all the while being trailed by the cops.

While I'm not about to give away the ending, I will say that it's open to interpretation. It might be construed as sad, bittersweet, happy, or any blend the three. Whatever your take on it, I can just about guarantee that you'll find it deeply touching.

While I liked Monday, and rated it 3 out of 4 stars, I really enjoyed Postman Blues. So I'm giving it 3.5 stars, very highly recommended.

For information about Run, Salaryman, Run! A Retrospective of Sabu's Film Works at Japan Society, click here.

And for those interested, here's the spoiler about the Hong Kong film referenced:

There's a would-be hit woman, who's a friend of Joe's, in the waiting room who's dressed just like Brigitte Lin in Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express, blond wig and all. When it's her turn to compete, the name that's called out is -- are you ready? -- Brigitte Lin!

ACF 863: MONDAY leads off retrospective of films by Sabu tonight at Japan Society

Takagi (Shinichi Tsutsumi) dances it up

Monday
Written and directed by Sabu
Japan, 2000, 100 minutes
When: Wednesday January 26, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Where: Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, NY
(between 1st and 2nd Avenues)
Introduction and Q&A with director Sabu
Opening screening will be followed by an afterparty

Salaryman Takagi (Sabu regular Shinichi Tsutsumi) wakes up one Monday morning with the mother of all hangovers, fully clothed in a hotel room with no idea of how he got there and no memory of what happened over the previous weekend.

An envelope of purification salt, which is used to ward off evil spirits during a funeral, stimulates his recollections of what went on during the very bizarre preceding 48 hours.

As his memory returns, Takagi recalls -- and the viewing audience witnesses in a series of flashbacks -- the disarming of a potentially dangerous pacemaker, a meal with his girlfriend that went horribly wrong, drunken debauchery with a snarly young yakuza, and sundry other developments of madness and mayhem.

Takagi and Yuko, the yakuza girl (Yasuko Matsuyuki)

Tonight's screening of Monday is the first of six films by Sabu that constitute Japan Society's mini-series Run, Salaryman, Run! A Retropsective of SABU's Film Works, which runs through February 5th. Sabu, a writer and actor (he was Kaneko in Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer) as well as a director, is an iconoclastic filmmaker with a unique sensibility marked by dark humor and a sense of the absurd. He's made a total of eleven films to date and has also directed for TV (Troubleman, which will be the last film shown in the series on February 5th). Usagi Drop , his most recent film, is in post-production and due out later this year.

I was not familiar with his work before watching the screener of Monday that I received. As I write this I've seen some of the other films that will be shown in this series -- an all too rare exposure of his films in the U.S. -- and have a better take on him than when I'd only seen Monday. His pace is sometimes slower than we're accustomed to in the west, and some scenes go on longer than what we're used to. But it was not at all like I felt like I was watching paint dry; just experiencing a somewhat different cinematic sensibility of timing and pace.

Sabu's works will not appeal to all. If you're looking for a straight-forward narrative style and conventional humor, his works probably won't appeal much to you, if at all.

But if you're after an experience that's hip, eccentric, twisted and very amusing, Monday will reward you quite handsomely. 3 out of 4 stars, solidly recommended.

ACF 860: Sabu film retrospective at Japan Society, NY, January 26 - February 5, 2011

America’s First Major Retrospective of Japan’s Explosive Film Auteur
Features 6 Films with 1 International Premiere

Run, Salaryman, Run! A Retrospective of Sabu’s Film Works
When: January 26-February 5, 2011
Where: Japan Society
333 East 47th Street New York, NY
(between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

** With Live Appearances by Sabu **

Japan Society will be presenting an intriguing mini-series of six films by the talented and iconoclastic film director known as Sabu. So far I've watched screeners of Monday and Non-Stop, and highly recommend both. I hope to get reviews of these and some of the other films posted soon. Meanwhile, here's complete information about the series:

Born Hiroyuki Tanaka (1964), Sabu is the cult auteur of "punk n' roll," alternative comedies, often imitated, never equaled, and far too rarely shown in the U.S. since his 1996 feature debut, Non-Stop a.k.a DANGAN Runner.

Japan Society’s Film Program now breaks the barrier with America’s first major retrospective Run, Salaryman, Run! A Retrospective of SABU’s Film Works, featuring 6 of Sabu’s 11 feature films, (a twelfth is due in 2011) from January 26 through February 5.

In addition to Non-Stop a.k.a DANGAN Runner, Run, Salaryman, Run! includes Monday, Postman Blues, Postman Blues, Drive, The Blessing Bell, and the big screen International Premiere of Troubleman. Sabu makes live appearances to introduce Monday, Postman Blues, and Non-Stop, and take part in a Q&A following each of the three films.

Smart, fun and explosive, Sabu delivers the high speed, high style, hard luck, and quirky lusts and lunacies of post-Bubble Japan. In a world of hazards and happenstance, he zeroes in on blue and white collar everymen tossed into dangerously absurd situations from which they desperately try to run. Speeding along at breakneck pace, Sabu brings a fresh and frantic twist to traditional film genres (the yakuza film, the thriller, etc.), juicing their lean, clean-cropped premises with electroshock cinematic style and über edgy music scores.

“Sabu has drawn comparisons with Buster Keaton, Johnnie To and Doug Liman,” says Samuel Jamier, director of Japan Society’s Film Program. “His debut was definitely a precursor to Run Lola Run, and his innovative use of music could easily be described as Tarantino-esque. But his satirical jamborees, more than just friendly black comedies, are unlike anything else on the silver screen: they are stamina tests, survival riffs, and victory rolls. His work is the embodiment of the waning days of ‘Cool Japan’, and an important marker of the vibrancy and vitality of contemporary Japanese cinema.”

Tickets are $12/$9 Japan Society members, students & seniors. Members can purchase the Sabu Series Discount Pass and receive passes to all 6 films for $40 (limit two passes per member). For trailers, tickets or more information, visit www.japansociety.org/film. (You may need to click on "Upcoming Events" in the right-hand sidebar.)

SCREENING SCHEDULE

Monday
- Wednesday, January 26, 7:30 PM
** Introduction and Q&A with director Sabu **
** Opening screening followed by an afterparty **

2000, 100 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles.
Directed by Sabu
With Shinichi Tsutsumi, Yasuko Matsuyuki, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima, Tomorowo Taguchi
Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation.

It is the mother of all Mondays for salaryman Takagi (Shinichi Tsutsumi), who wakes up fully clothed in a unfamiliar hotel room, with a massive hangover and no recollection of the past 48 hours and how he got there. As an envelope of purification salt (used in Japan to ward off evil spirits during a funeral) falls out of his pocket, memories blood back. From a funeral wake that literally ended with a bang, to a deplorable date with his girlfriend, and a drunken descent into a nocturnal world of scowling yakuza and hostess clubs, the increasingly consternated salaryman wonders exactly how wrong things went during his lost and found weekend. Winner: FIPRESCI Prize at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival, "for its austere, dark wit and keen eye for human foibles."

Postman Blues
- Friday, January 28, 7:30 PM
** Introduction and Q&A with director Sabu **

1997, 110 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by Sabu
With Shinichi Tsutsumi, Keisuke Horibe, Ren Osugi, Keiko Toyama
Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation.

In this wacky comedic thrill ride, both a superb parody of the gangster genre and a masterful exercise in style and storytelling, Sawaki (Shinichi Tsutsumi) is an ordinary postman whose unassuming life takes a strange turn when he crosses paths with his old high school buddy Noguchi (Keisuke Horibe), now a low-level yakuza drug mule, just as he finishes cutting off his finger as an apology to his boss. Unbeknownst to both men, Noguchi's freshly chopped-off pinky rolls off the table and into Sawaki's mailbag. The chance encounter and missing pinky land the postman in hot water when the police mistakenly identify him as a schizophrenic-paranoid drug dealer, sadistic murderer and terrorist working for the yakuza. Things get more problematic when the unwitting postman befriends two terminal cancer patients: a lone hitman called Joe (Ren Osugi) and a pretty woman named Sayoko (Keiko Toyama).

Non-Stop a.k.a. Dangan Runner (Dangan Ranna)
- Saturday, January 29, 7:30 PM
** Introduction and Q&A with director Sabu **

1996, 82 min., 35mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by Sabu
With Tomorowo Taguchi, Diamond Yukai, Shinichi Tsutsumi, Akaji Maro, Ren Osugi
Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation.

Sabu's 1996 debut feature, a wild forerunner to the German arthouse smash hit Run Lola Run, by Tom Tykwers, features Tetsuo star Tomorowo Taguchi as a down-on-his-luck would-be bank robber, whose desperate plan to retrieve cash and a semblance of dignity quickly go south. Caught red-handed stealing a gauze face mask to conceal his identity, he is given chase by a strung-out convenience store clerk (played by real life rocker Diamond Yukai), who happens to be a washed-up drug-addled rock singer. In turn, the irate employee is chased by his drug supplier, Takeda, a third-rate yakuza (Shinichi Tsutsumi). As they run for their lives and each other, their stories flash back and forth, continuing a strange chain of events that only gets stranger while the three-man race continues at full speed into the night and through the streets of Tokyo. "Effortlessly clever."--Scott Tobias, The A.V. Onion Club

Drive
- Wednesday, February 2, 7:30 PM

2002, 102 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by Sabu
With Shinichi Tsutsumi, Ren Osugi, Kou Shibasaki, Susumu Terajima, Masanobu Ando.

Salaryman Asakura (Shinichi Tsutsumi) is having a rather ordinary day, parking in the same spot from where he watches every day, at the same time, the fantasy figure of Kou Shibasaki as she walks around the corner, when an unwanted trio of bank robbers barges into his car, interrupting his reverie. Doubled-crossed and left stranded by one of their own, they hijack the unfortunate salaryman and order him to drive after the stolen loot. As it turns out, they didn't quite pick up the ideal joyrider for the lam: the stressed white collar Asakura, first seen being diagnosed for hypertension, refuses to go over the speed limit. The gang quickly grows frustrated and decides to stop at a café to formulate a plan. More bad luck ensues, involving an edifying run-in with a punk rock band, more twists and turns, and angry ghosts.

The Blessing Bell (Kofuku no Kane)
- Friday, February 4, 7:30 PM

2002, 87 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by Sabu
With Susumu Terajima, Naomi Nishida, Seijun Suzuki, Reila Aphrodite.

A lyrical and meditative tale that is often reminiscent of both Mike Leigh's Naked (1993) and Takeshi Kitano's early yakuza films, The Blessing Bell follows the wanderings of its blue-collar protagonist, Igarashi (Susumu Terajima) through the 24 hours that follow the closing of the factory he works for. After a fruitless job hunt, the newly unemployed man walks into other lost souls: a yakuza boss who has literally been stabbed in the back, a man who murdered his wife's lover (but not his wife), a hopeless single mother, the ghost of an elderly man in a hospital (played by director Seijun Suzuki) and a suicidal salaryman. Coincidentally, he also runs into a burning building, gets hit by a car and wins the lottery. Winner: Netpac Award, 2003 Berlin International Film Festival; and Grand Jury Prize, 2003 Cinemanila International Film Festival.

Troubleman (Toraburuman)
- Saturday, February 5, 5 PM
** International Premiere **

2010, 180 min., HD Cam, color, in Japanese
Directed by Sabu
With Shigeaki Kato, Terunosuke Takezai, Mayuko Iwasa, Riju Go, Susumu Terajima

Sabu's latest work, written for TV and presented for the first time outside Japan, stars Shigeaki Kato as Kazuo Tokuda, an insurance agent whose life is turned topsy-turvy when he gets thrust into a web of mystery and intrigue involving murderers, would-be rapists and a gang of angry yakuza! As things turn out, trouble is nothing new for this man, who might just be the very embodiment of bad luck.

Sabu (Photo courtesy of Sabu)

Hiroyuki Tanaka, better known as Sabu, is an award-winning Japanese director/screenwriter/actor born in Wakayama, Japan in 1964. After appearing in several gangster-type roles, he wrote and directed his first movie, Non-Stop (a.k.a Dangan Runner), in 1996. Having completed 9 features, his films often star the actors Shinichi Tsutsumi, Susumu Terajima, and Ren Osugi. Two of his films, Hold Up Down and Hard Luck Hero, starred members of the boy band V6. Awards from the festival circuit include the Bangkok Film Festival for Postman Blues, the Fant-Asia Film Festival for Drive, and the Berlin International Film Festival for Monday and Blessing Bell.

Reviewers often compare Sabu to Takeshi Kitano, lumping him with other “Kitano-generation” directors like Hiroshi Shimizu and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Though many of Sabu and Kitano’s films share themes and actors, Sabu is a versatile and creative director in his own right. He started to branch out from his customary comedy-crime niche with the introspective Zen film The Blessing Bell, and again with the thematically and intellectually dark Dead Run. He continued to work as an actor for some years after his directorial debut, being cast in Takeshi Miike’s famous Ichi the Killer, among other films.

Recently, Sabu returned from his 5-year hiatus with The Crab Cannery Ship in 2009, a politically-charged remake of the 1929 proletariat novel. In a recent interview about the film with Screen International correspondent Jason Gray, Sabu said he doesn’t read manga and isn’t influenced much by novels, but he cited music as a major source of inspiration. “Yeah, music's really important to me” Sabu told Gray. “When I write a script, it's always while listening to music. And when I use it in a film I like music playing on a car radio, or the sound of a train, or the noise of a city rather than background music.”

Crab Cannery opened to widely positive reviews. Following Crab Cannery, Sabu wrote and directed the television series Troubleman in April 2010. Currently, he is working on the post-production of a comedy titled Usagi Drop with superstar Kenichi Matsuyama.