Director and producer Koji Wakamatsu has died. Wakamatsu had just been named filmmaker of the year at the 2012 Busan Film Festival. Wildgrounds has an interview, which Kimberly Lindbergs of Cinebeats helped translate, Keyframe has an obituary and Subway Cinema had a brief overview of Wakamatsu’s career paralleling a […]
Character actor Hideji Otaki has died. Otaki worked with directors including Akira Kurosawa, Juzo Itami, Masahiro Shinoda and Koreyoshi Kurahara in films such as Kagemusha; Minbo: The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion; A Taxing Woman; Gonza the Spearman and Black Sun. The Japan Times and The Kyodo News […]
“These days, being a yakuza boss isn’t what it once was. In exchange for supreme status you get blamed for everything. In August of 2008, three months after the countermeasures laws went into effect, the Yamaguchi-gumi boss found himself dealing with one of his low-ranking underling’s unpaid McDonald’s […]
” Is it not strange that after all this time we have not spoken about those incidents that haunt our memories?” Noir Nation is reprinting Edogawa Rampo’s story, “The Precipice” in excerpts.
Anime News Network‘s Rebecca Silverman interviews mangaka/comics creator, Naoki Urasawa. “[A]fter last year’s earthquake and tsunami I went to visit the afflicted areas. People I met, victims of the disaster, told me how much they had always liked Master Keaton as a character. I wanted to do something […]
Movie Morlocks‘ Kimberly Lindbergs explores Toshiro Mifune’s influence on Westerns, Westerns’ influence on Akira Kurosawa, and Red Sun, a Western directed by Terence Young and starring Toshiro Mifune, Charles Bronson, Alain Delon and Ursula Andress.
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The Cultural Gutter 