SCFZ poll: Sion Sono

[flip]

Polling the films of Sion Sono.

The rules:

- your list can include no more than half of the Sono films you've seen, up to a maximum of 5. So if you've seen seven of his films, for example, you can list only a top 3. It's only if you've seen ten or more of his films than you can list the maximum of five.

- i'll assume ballots are ranked unless you tell me otherwise. unranked ballots are fine.

- deadline for ballots: next Tuesday, in seven days, whatever day that is

- if anyone is watching films for these polls, then i'll extend the deadline up to three days, if someone requests an extension

- next poll: i won't be seeking nominations in this poll (this is an extra directors poll because Rabie won the Cannes contest)

umbugbene created an index on letterboxd of all of our previous polls here: letterboxd.com/umbugbene/list/index-of-all-scfz-director-polls/

[flip]

because i'm not sure how many views sono has, we'll use the extended rules:

- if you have seen an odd number of sono films, you can round up instead of down when deciding the length of your ballot (e.g. if you have seen 5, you can vote for 3 instead of the usual 2)

- if you have seen more than 10 sono films, you can vote for more than 5 (e.g. if you have seen 13, you can vote for 7), up to a maximum of 8 films

[flip]

Suicide Club
Kaze
Love Song

seen six

[mesnalty]

Seen 10:

1. Love Exposure
2. Why Don't You Play in Hell?
3. Red Post on Escher Street
4. Tag
5. Antiporno

[Lencho of the Apes]

Guilty Of Romance
Himizu
Noriko's Dinner Table
Tokyo Tribe

[ofrene]

seen 10

Himizu
Love Exposure
Why Don't You Play in Hell?
Noriko’s Dinner Table
Love & Peace

[john ryan]

Seen 19

1. Tokyo Tribe
2. Why Don't You Play in Hell
3. Love Exposure
4. Himizu
5. The Forest of Love
6. Love & Peace
7. BAD FILM
8. I am Keiko

[Rabie]

Seen 16

1- Love Exposure
2- The Whispering Star
3- Antiporno
4- Himizu
5- Guilty of Romance
6- The Forrest of Love
7- Tag
8- I'm Keiko

[flip]

i've been watching a few sono films (saw four) and i might watch one or two more, so i won't tally this for a day or two -- if anyone still wants to post a ballot (or edit a posted one) there's still time!

[...]

What the heck, may as well add my two cents worth, or two votes worth anyway

Suicide Club
The Whispering Star

[flip]

i don't know sono all that well, but i'm fairly sure our winner is not a surprise... but the ordering of the rest of the films might be. and seeing how many sono films from the last 10-15 years got support, i'm wondering if i should be paying more attention to him. we also got votes for 17 different sono films, which seems impressive to me:


results
1. Love Exposure (2008) — 22 pts
2. Why Don’t You Play in Hell? (2013) — 15 pts
3. Himizu (2011) — 12 pts
4. Suicide Club (2001) — 8 pts
5. Tokyo Tribe (2014) — 6 pts
5. Antiporno (2016) — 6 pts
7. The Whispering Star (2015) — 5 pts
7. Guilty of Romance (2011) — 5 pts
9. Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005) — 4.3 pts
10. Red Post on Escher Street (2020) — 3 pts
11. Tag (2015) — 2.8 pts
12. Kaze (1998) — 2 pts
13. Love and Peace (2015) — 1.5 pts
13. The Forest of Love (2019) — 1.5 pts
15. Cold Fish (2010) — 1 pt
15. Love Song (1984) — 1 pt
17. Bad Film (1995) — 0.3 pts
18. I am Keiko (1997) — 0.2 pts
19. Strange Circus (2005) — 0.1 pts

[St. Gloede]

I can't believe I missed this, and that only 6 people votes.

Seen 18 by Sono, these are the 8 best:

Love Exposure (2008)
Why Don't You Play in Hell? (2013)
Suicide Club (2001)
Antiporno (2016)
Cold Fish (2010)
Tag (2015)
Noriko's Dinner Table (2005)
Strange Circus (2005)

[flip]

I can't believe I missed this

you didn't miss it

i added your ballot to the results

[St. Gloede]

Cheers.

[nrh]

for the handful of sono fans here - if i am someone who likes some of his '90s films (I am Keiko, Bicycle Sighs, Wind) but disliked Love Exposure, Cold Fish and Guilty of Romance enough that I basically gave up on him in 2011, is there anything from the last decade i might like?

[St. Gloede]

No, that's very unlikely. He did, in the mid-10s move into a bit of a mid-00s Miike approach with being all over the place - so if you like Miike you may like some of the film from then onwards - though a lot of it is essentially Cold Fish/Guilty of Romance redos - including the recent Forest of Love.

You may like The Whispering Star (2015) as it is a very low-key, non-plot driven and more experimental effort in b/w - but it also feels pretty digital.

[nrh]

interesting, i saw sallitt on twitter ask if there were any sonos he'd like if he loved the whispering star, and the responses were basically not much past 2000 or so. i guess he may have written it much earlier than it was filmed?

[St. Gloede]

It is certainly possible, though knowing how he never looks back (I interviewed one of his producers/distributors, though not for this film, recently) I would say it is unlikely. This was part of his extreme productivity in 2015 (7 projects in total, including a mini-series) - so it may easily be something he threw together on the spot and as such happened to resemble his earliest films for just that reason of sudden, restrained creativity. Impossible to tell - unless he's quoted somewhere.

[nrh]

never trust a press release but it looks like his distributor is using that line - Sion Sono’s first feature with his newly established independent production company is the realization of a script he wrote two decades ago but reworked to reflect the present.

https://thirdwindowfilms.com/films/the- ... sion-sono/

of course "reworked to reflect the present" can mean a lot of different things, esp if it is sono we are talking about.

[St. Gloede]

Nice find! (and it is actually the owner of Third Window Films I interviewed, but this film never came up)

[Rabie]

for the handful of sono fans here - if i am someone who likes some of his '90s films (I am Keiko, Bicycle Sighs, Wind) but disliked Love Exposure, Cold Fish and Guilty of Romance enough that I basically gave up on him in 2011, is there anything from the last decade i might like?

the whispering star is the obvious ( i don't remember where i read that he wrote the room, i'm keiko and this in the same time and they're tonally similar ), you may try himizu as it's different from what you disliked, the rest is a big no but curious about love and peace which i didn't watch yet

[flip]

i posted this poll to letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-277/