Takahisa Zeze

[nrh]

thread for a director i think i'm the only one who's interested in here

[nrh]

yarn, or tapestry, 2020

probably the finest of the mainstream romantic melodramas Zeze has been making throughout the 2010s, an alternately harsh and sentimental story of lives lived over 30 years between the late '80s and 2019. two lives connect and diverge, the easy seriousness that anchors his independent productions anchors this in the feeling of 3 decades of recently remembered life. it is a wonderful quirk of all of zeze's melodramas that the blue collar jobs his characters fall into - here a worker at a cheese factory, a woman who goes from hostess bar to nail artist in 2 different countries - get as much attention as the ups and downs of relationships.

[nrh]

from yarn, a cat sits in the alley while 2 friends meet to drink and sing karaoke while starting relationships that will stretch for another ten years

[roujin]

Zeze seems to have handled the jump from pink film guy to mainstream guy with aplomb (something that his contemporaries don't seem to have been able to do, or maybe not have been interested in doing). Based on the longevity of his career and your rankings on that list.

I need to see them all, obviously. I'm primarily interested in Moon Child.

[wba]

I've been interested for a couple of decades, cause he had been hailed as one of the most interesting pink directors during the 1990s, though I haven't seen anything by him yet. I have also heard great things about HEAVEN'S STORY (2010) from those friends of mine who have watched it back then.

[nrh]

maps in the cold-blooded trap 1998

[nrh]

Zeze seems to have handled the jump from pink film guy to mainstream guy with aplomb (something that his contemporaries don't seem to have been able to do, or maybe not have been interested in doing). Based on the longevity of his career and your rankings on that list.

I need to see them all, obviously. I'm primarily interested in Moon Child.

the contemporary who seems to have made the jump best would be ryuichi hiroki, who went from pinkus (much more standard pinkus than zeze's from what i've seen) to indie films to big glossy mainstream productions over the course of a similar timespan; it's probably the case that hiroki's big hits for toho in the late 2000s opened the door for them to hire zeze for 'life back then' in 2011 (with same leads as hiroki's toho hits).

it's a much more confusing question of why the other "four kings of pink" didn't manage to extend their careers into the 2000s. i think hisayasu sato burned a lot of bridges, and it's clear that zeze was already pitching himself as a mainstream art director already in the '90s (he talks about doing dual presentation of his early films with naomi kawase's work in the around that time for example). but it is confusing why so many promising japanese filmmakers from the 90s, involved with pinku or not, had their careers fade or fall apart in the 2000s.

[Otello Cagliostro]

Maps in movies is one of the most beautiful things ever

[sally]

Maps in movies is one of the most beautiful things ever

absolutely! the cine-tourist died recently but his website is a now-stilled treasure trove of such things

https://www.thecinetourist.net/

[nrh]

did we never have a maps in movies thread? that seems like the kind of thread we would have had.

[Otello Cagliostro]

Maps in movies is one of the most beautiful things ever

absolutely! the cine-tourist died recently but his website is a now-stilled treasure trove of such things

https://www.thecinetourist.net/

what an amazing find, thanks a lot !

[Otello Cagliostro]

did we never have a maps in movies thread? that seems like the kind of thread we would have had.

would be really fun, i would add the matrix scene where he shows the code of the matrix since it's technically a map of the digital world. He even says he only sees "blond, brunette" or whatever, switching it up like that would be very fun too...

[sally]

did we never have a maps in movies thread? that seems like the kind of thread we would have had.

amazingly, i don't think we did. next time i come across one....(or anyone!)

[DT.]

thread for a director i think i'm the only one who's interested in here

What's the best one to start with?

[nrh]

thread for a director i think i'm the only one who's interested in here

What's the best one to start with?

there are kind of two roads to take -

start with raigyo from '97, which is probably the peak of the work he was doing in the '90s, associated with the pink film industry - desolately bleak, formally rigorous, definitely in dialogue with what aoyoama and kiyoshi kurosawa were doing around the same time.

the other would be heaven's story, his nearly five hour long independent production from 2010, which more or less sets the tone for what he does in that decade. its hard to recommend a movie that long but it's definitely the most representative of the recent films, and my other favorite (chrysanthemum and the guillotine, about anarchists and a women's sumo wrestling troupe in 1920s japan) is over 3 hours anyway.

[DT.]

Heaven's Story has been on my radar for a while (and is finally on KG), but I don't have much time for longer movies nowadays. So I'll go with Raigyo for now - thanks!

[nrh]

anarchy in japan[suke] is one of my least favorite zeze films but the commentary track is amazing