A randomly comprehensive survey of extraordinary movie experiences from the art house to the grindhouse, featuring the good, the bad, the ugly, but not the boring or the banal.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Nagisa Oshima (1932-2003)
Retired by illness since the 1999 film Gohatto, Nagisa Oshima will be remembered following his death from pneumonia as one of Japan's greatest and most controversial film directors. A key figure of Japan's own "New Wave" of Sixties cinema, Oshima gained global notoriety for his 1976 sex film In the Realm of the Senses, but probably received his widest exposure with American audiences with his 1983 David Bowie POW drama Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. Follow this link to read my reviews of some less familiar Oshima pictures, with The Christian Revolt and Sing a Song of Sex standing out as favorites worthy of greater attention.
Yes, very sad news of the passing of one of the Japanese cinema's most profound stylish adherents, Samuel. My own favorites by Oshima are SENSES, BOY, THE CEREMONY, DEATH BY HANGING and DIARY OF A SHINKIKU THIEF. Hope Criterion will now move to release some of these, as they have long remained M.I.A. on DVD. Lovely tribute.
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