Japanese Directors - Morita Yoshimitsu

[Michael E Kerpan]

Any hope of doing subtitles for the mystifyingly neglected works of Shinji 
Somai -- such as "Ohikkoshi".  I would love to show this DVD to lots of 
people -- but not many of them want to watch unsubbed Japanese DVDs.

MEK


On Thursday 27 July 2006 20:55, rwdavisjr at comcast.net wrote:
> First, by way of introduction...  I've been "sitting in the back and
> listening" to the informative discussions for the past year or so. My
> name's Bob Davis. I live in LA but teach film production and aesthetics at
> California State University in Fullerton, next to Disneyland. I am a
> contributing writer to American Cinematographer, covering especially Asian
> film (recent pieces on films from Kore'eda, Iwai, Tran Anh Hung, Kim
> Ki-duk, Tsai Ming-liang, Chris Doyle, that kind of thing). I teach, among
> other things, courses on New Asian Cinema, etc etc...
>
> Re the Top Ten lists. I don't particularly want to debate the relative
> merits of the likes of Ozu, Oshima, and Suzuki. But I did want to point out
> something I found pretty surprising and immensely satisfying about the
> lists. And that is - #20 in the Kinema Junpo critics/filmmakers survey:
> Morita Yoshimitsu. Morita, one of the few here who started making films in
> the 80s or 90s, is known in the West mainly for his first mainstream film,
> Family Game. But, while he's certainly churned out his share of major
> commerical garbage over the past twenty years, he's also delivered a
> handful of great films - Tokimeki ni shisu, Sorekara, haru, Keiho, Black
> House, Mohouhan... - in a style that is really quite idiosyncratic and, for
> me, fantastic.
>
> I've recently been awarded a grant to create subtitle streams for several
> contemporary Japanese films, including some of the above. [Most of his
> Morita's films are available, unsubbed, on very high quality r2j DVDs.] The
> first batch of streams will be deposited in the CSUF library in early fall.
> But the grant also stipulates that subtitle streams be made available to
> interested scholars throughout the country. [Note: The streams will come as
> files on a DVDR which also just happens to contain the film. It is assumed,
> for legal purposes, that the recipient of the stream will use the
> associated film for synch reference only and that an original copy of the
> film itself will be purchased by the stream user and resynched.]
>
> So, if anyone who has a university affiliation is interested in seeing the
> prototypes of the first batch of newly subbed films - Family Game, Tokimeki
> ni shisu, haru, Black House, Kobayashi Masahiro's Flic, Sono Sion's Yume no
> naka e, and maybe also Yoshida Yoshishige's Mizu de kakareta monogatari and
> Saraba natsu no hikari, with, hopefully, more to come if the grant is
> renewed - please send me an email at rdavis at fullerton.edu and I'll let you
> know when the discs are ready.
>
> Apologies for the long mail. bd
>
>
>
> 1995                       2000 (A)               2000 (B)
> 1  Ozu                       1  Kurosawa            1  Kurosawa
> 2  Kurosawa                  2  Ozu                 2  Ozu
> 3  Mizoguchi                 3  Mizoguchi           3  Kinoshita
> 4  Oshima                    4  Kinoshita           4  Yamada
>    Naruse                    5  Naruse              5  Mizoguchi
> 6  Ichikawa Kon              6  Yamada              6  Ichikawa
> 7  Kawashima Yuzo            7  Ichikawa            7  Naruse
> 8  Uchida Tomu                  Uchida              8  Kitano
> 9  Yamanaka Sadao               Oshima              9  Imai
>    Kinoshita Keishuke           Fukasaku            10 Imamura
>    Okamoto Kihachi              Kawashima           11 Obayashi Nobuhiko
>    Suzuki Seijun             12 Shindo Kaneto          Miyazaki
> 13 Fukasaku Kinji               Makino Masahiro     13 Uchida
>    Kumashiro Tatsumi         14 Imamura Shohei         Oshima
> 15 Kato Tai                     Okamoto             15 Fukasaku
>    Masumura Yasuzo              Kitano Takeshi         Yamanaka
>    Yamada Yoji                  Suzuki              17 Kawashima
>    Ito Daisuke                  Masumura               Masumura
> 19 Imai Tadashi              19 Miyazaki Hayao      19 Kumashiro
>    Somai Shinji              20 Morita Yoshimitsu      Kobayashi Masaki
>                                 Yamanaka Sadao