Notes from a Personal Film Festival (it's mostly currency conversions)

 These are, um, not coherent, I don't think. I'm just putting them here cause it's the stuff I wrote at about this time, as part of whatever this project is or was:

7.1

VIOLENT COP 

2 mins- homeless man killed WITH A BIKE AS BLUNT INSTRUMENT

-camera almost entirely on victim, handheld, moving, perps (teenage ‘homeless hunters’) are off camera, just impact, voices

TK’s jacket is beautiful. 

- charges into kid’s house, kicks shit out of him, tells him to come to police station and confess, man do we hate that kid

--cammea stays on TK administering the beating, like it did w the homeless man taking it

-kids throw bottles at boat off of bridge, run away, anarchy, TK emerges from same shot,  bear like walk, opposite direction as kids, jaunty music

- is this his first film? Unreal how good he is, but otoh he is doing a TON of work w camera in a way new directors do. It’s not bad. You honestly wish that directors would keep on having that much fun w it as they keep making movies + for the most part I think TK does

-the amount of sarcastic tension in HOW it all unfolds is really beautiful, it goes in so many directions, and doesn’t exist as commentary, its all deadpann.

-TK is playing one of those cafe-table arcade games like they got in Alps

-so I am bad at math and economics but theory is 10,000 yen=about $75 when film was made ($75 1989 dollars or 2023 dollars, this is less clear), cop feaks out when TK randomly asks to borrow that, makes sense. Cab ride cost about $13. So probably 1989 dollars or I am just fucking this all up

- is the punch line that kuckchi, the rookie is the (a) bad guy? Its been a miniute.

-Kiryu’s violence twords Harukas romantic partner tracks w TKs behavior here, but it is obvious that TK is a lunatic and the problem

-in fairness, both Yuta and the guy TK just smacked around could def have used the smacking but that is pretty much a separate issue

perfection: TK and rook meet three other cops to arrest a bad guy-- TK engages in some pointless hostility w new cops. Bad guy beats up rook and cops 1 and 2 while TK could have helped and does not, escapes. Perp fights and kills cop 3. It’s a beautiful thing where cop 3 was watching the back and hanging out w kids, and then the kids just watch the fight,(v Peckenpah) but the TK twist is that the murder weapon is metal bat they had been playing w, such a nice layer, jazz score starts during this fight. Then long chase. Just amazing, Finally TK goes after perp in car, seems to hit perp, but perp jumps up and takes a bat to cop car, TK DOES hit him w car, and then tries to, literally kick him while he is down, rookie tries to prevent this and TK kicks roockie.

-point: TK has yet to use violence on an armed, equal opponent. Other cops do, but it works poorly for them. 

- yeah looks like Rook is passing tips to some shady characters

-TK’s cop friend confesses to selling drugs in an American style restaurant. Camera films trough window + we hear no dialog

-fired from the police TK goes to a museum and the batting center

-w less than 20 min left someone attacks TK and kinda messes him up, TK takes getting stabbed, severely beaten pretty well

-just beautiful where TK shoots one Yakuza and while the 2^nd in command watches completely imobile

YAKUZA WOLF

-Sonny Chiban1972

- was recommended by Amazon after I did Violent Cop, so bit of a detour. Looks like a kind of classic less good Yakuza film. Chiba has already killed at least 3 people, before the credits roll.

-never hurts to brush up on the basics.

-real kinda ‘yakuza-expoloitation’ film. A lot will come down to if we get some good tattoos. Haven’t seen any so far. 

Sorta hard to see how they get another 45 mins or so out of this… not good at all. But ultra violent in a way that the games are not

also sonny chiba’s main deal is he has a cool gun but we never get a good shot of it, lame [and NO TATS DOUBLE LAME]

there was a fun brawl

-the end was a SUPER involved reference to the end of Corbucci’s og Django, you do a Corbbcui beat w considerably less restraint that’s an achievement, I guess

OUTRAGE CODA

One of the TK’s guys is wearing Goro Majima’s jacket

-this is contemporary, so feel better about currency conversion. About twenty-thrity million yen as an apology for killing a guy (one hundred thirty to two hundred k USD)

-5 mil yen is suggested (about $35 k) as an apology

-one hundred mil yen (over haf mil USD) for more sincere apology to direct Yakuza superiors

7.2

OTRAGE CODA (cont)

-Sanno’s and Kimurra’s, looking back, what is their deal, does it matter?

Hannabishi= Kansai Yakuza (kinda like the Omni)

The kinda rotund, v awesome, schemy, Yakuza ends up surviving + taking over Hanabishi? Surprised. But he was cool.

OUTRAGE

- ripped off at a bar for 600,000 yen=4 grand, alright that’s worth starting some shit over.

Kimura=Mr. Smiles. He starts as an underling of Murase, who TK is ordered to start shit w to cover up for his boss. 

-he attempts to cut off his finger w a box cutter, w which TK then slashes him in the face

Sanno-kai= larger Yakuza org, Ikemoto is part of Sanno, TK is part of Ikemoto

OR

SANNO-KAI is TK’s fam?

-Yakuza is at a hostess bar (v club Shine) + then a street cart before getting kidnaped by rival gang +brutally murdered [these are both v Yakuza 0 images, but 0 comes out 3 years latter-- actually sequence also tracks w stuff we see in Yakuza5]

[it is an inversion of a squence in Yakuza 5 where they start at the food truck and then go to the hostess bar-- Yakuza 5 had not come out yet]

-Kimura calling TK “Anaki” + then stabbing him during a prison baseball game is pretty fuckn’ Yakuza. Also “Brother I’v been waiting” I almost could have understood that without the subtitles! Only line in entire film that’s true for, but go me! [‘wait’ get’s repeated pretty often when you play games w chasing folks levels]

-cop does SAY TK is dead at the end of film

BEYOBD OUTRAGE

SANO is the umbrella org for TK’s family. So SANO →Ishikoa → TK

5 mil yen for help in yakuza dispute = about $35 k, considered cheap

yakyza operated batting center. 1000Yen ($7) not enouh to play ‘for hours’

-Koreans show up 40m min into film 

-Mr. Fuse (awsome head of Hanabishi) disappears in b/t Beyond and Coda, replaced w lame stock trading Yakuza

7.6

Zatoichi

Miramax= Harvey Wienstien? Does everyone know this? It’s an image you see a LOT w big connotations for a certain generation of film people – powerful since the 1990s, having to retroactively add a ‘that fuckn guy’ to it is weird.

Guy cuts his budy drawing on Zatoichi: if you are not Zatoichi violence is a path to fucking up.

TK loves his festivals, religious processions + shrines… what’s weird is more director’s DON’T. 

In order to try to listen for one of my three or four words of Japanese, I find myself watching Zatoichi w my eyes closed…

guys running the game have obvious/ awesome yakuza tats

idk maybe this is his masterpice, just something else. In it’s own way it’s one of the great ‘not really like other movies’ w Night of the Hunter, Elevator to the Gallows

-which is odd in that it is a re boot of one of the great genre-franchises ever but man, this is just a really singular film. The only way that it isn’t mind blowing is that Kitano is THAT good, that you can kind of accept this from him...w literally anyone else, anything this out there would be a very real question of how did this happen, but w TK you knew he was capable to the point that you can almost loose sight of how crazy good it is

-also weird that this movie, at least for Westerners like me who were into Kitano before og Zatoichi flics, totally eclipses what is, clearly, one of the great franchises in cinema. Odd dynamic all around. But, having seen, I think, a few more original Zaotichi films since last I saw, impressive how much of this is Kitano

-the bad guys are an interesting portrait of a yakuza org – and a dope yakuza org w all the misdirection but also propelled by people taking in discarded members of society. 

-someone should make the first person Zatoichi game, which is just a black screen, you press buttons, ideally getting combos, and periodically a level ends and you get a results screen that says you’ve killed several hundred dudes. 

-one dude has what looks like a cartrige revolver-- it does him absolutely no good

-duel w sharkskin man is TK’s 'gets one in every film' scene on a beach

-is TK’s sword cane style the most obvious influence of OG Zatoichi?

-TK never identifies as Yakuza in this film, that I can tell (huge caveat)but OG Zatoichi def self identifies as Yakuza 

-the word they use for “boss” is translated as “captain” in modern yakuza pictures

KIKUIJRO [including this in the film/currency conversion festival, but I actually watched it AFTER I got done w TK in Yakuza 6. That ended up being fuckn' POIGNANT and I strongly recommend doing things in this order [other TK films, fight him in Y6, watch Kikujiro], if you ever find yourself in that situation]

-1999, before first Yakuza game. Kids arc has kind of a Harkua thing (lonely child looks for parent)

-this movie is good, so far

-tries to hit his wife up for exta 10 k yen ($70), she says 50 k ($350) is enough to take the kid to see his mom. Not clear how far away, movie 20 + yr old. Amounts seem weird.

-promptly lost gambling on bicycle races. Is this still a thing? Why was it ever a thing? You’d think rigging them would be … not difficult

-so TK shakes kid down for 2 k yen ($14)

-TK attempts to drive a cab—kiryu in yakuza 5?

-TK has a tat, but it’s pretty much game style not full body

-he does use it as a plot/image/character beat in an involved way you almost NEVER see-- just lovely.

-man does he love filming people, mostly himself, walking. Good at it, too. 

-he’s just good at movies generally. Extremely fuckn good.

-festivals apparently og yakuza stomping ground, tk might be in for og yakuza stomping…

-200 Y for ear of corn ($1.40)/ 500 for 2 ($3.50)