Shinji Somai

[Calvin]

In case anybody missed the news that was posted elsewhere - in a victory for this forum, Cinema Guild have picked up Typhoon Club and P.P. Rider for US release.

According to Third Window, Typhoon Club isn't owned by Toho but by Chu Eibo and they aren't too hard to licence from. They're in negotiations for a UK release. If it has never been with Toho, I don't know why it has taken so long for it to be licensed but better late than never! It was Third Window who previously told me that Somai's works were with Toho and I guess that I just assumed he meant Typhoon Club; presumably Tokyo Heaven and Lost Chapter of Snow are still with Toho, as they've released them on Blu-Ray, but if Typhoon Club and PP Rider aren't then Tonda Couple probably isn't either.

Third Window also said that they tried to get Moving a few years ago but apparently it's being remastered this year

[Michael Kerpan]

Oh how wonderful it would be to get a beautifully remastered, well-subtitled release of Moving! I hope I can live long enough to see this,

[feihong]

In case anybody missed the news that was posted elsewhere - in a victory for this forum, Cinema Guild have picked up Typhoon Club and P.P. Rider for US release.

Fantastic!

[Calvin]

Third Window also said that they tried to get Moving a few years ago but apparently it's being remastered this year

The new restoration of Moving is in the Venice Classics line-up

[cinemaguild]

Just wanted to update folks that we will be opening TYPHOON CLUB (4k remaster) at IFC Center on September 8 along with P.P. RIDER. There will be a national rollout following that, so if you want to see it let your local arthouse know!

We also have something very special planned for the Home release! Stay tuned!

[Michael Kerpan]

cinemaguild -- Great news. Hope you can eventually get hold of my favorite Somai film (Moving) eventually. And after that, take a look at some of Jun Ichikawa's sadly neglected films. (I'm being super greedy).

[feihong]

Just wanted to update folks that we will be opening TYPHOON CLUB (4k remaster) at IFC Center on September 8 along with P.P. RIDER. There will be a national rollout following that, so if you want to see it let your local arthouse know!

We also have something very special planned for the Home release! Stay tuned!

Looking forward to this. Can't wait to see what you have planned for the home release––will there be home releases for both Typhoon Club and P.P. Rider, or just for Typhoon Club?

Thank you for the update. These are great films, and it's wonderful that more people will finally be able to see them!

[cinemaguild]

will there be home releases for both Typhoon Club and P.P. Rider, or just for Typhoon Club?

Both will get home releases.

[pzadvance]

Extremely excited for those!

[Calvin]

Third Window Films' UK release will be out on November 27th.

Shinji Somai’s beloved cult film Typhoon Club is widely heralded as the director’s seminal feature and considered to be one of the greatest Japanese films ever made.

Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, Typhoon Club features a lively cast of young talent including idol Youki Kudoh (The Crazy Family, Mystery Train) facing existential intrigues, budding sexuality, and rising social tensions in the days leading up to a typhoon’s arrival. Stranded in their schoolhouse as the storm settles in, the group undergoes an awakening as they dispel all insecurities, fear and desire under the swell of the tempest.

BLU-RAY CONTENTS

New 4K digital remaster from the original negatives
Feature audio commentary by Tom Mes
Selected audio commentary by Josh Slater-Williams
Assistant Director Koji Enokido Talk Event
Introduction by Ryusuke Hamaguchi at the Berlin Film Festival
Trailer
Slipcase with artwork from Gokaiju
‘Director’s Company’ special edition featuring insert by Jasper Sharp - limited to 2000 copies

[cinemaguild]

We just released our new trailer and poster for TYPHOON CLUB. Opening September 8 at IFC Center in NYC then expanding across the country.

Check our the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/848720926?share=copy

[feihong]

Love the poster, and the trailer is cute. All these mundane, awkward moments between characters, low-key shots with little action, coupled with quotes from famous filmmakers about how Somai's movies have the power to change your life and how this is one of the greatest Japanese movies there is. I feel like this is a good way to generate some buzz for the film! And the 4k resto looks fantastic.

I have not gone to a theater since the lockdown, but I will definitely be there when this reaches Los Angeles.

[Calvin]

Cinema Guild have acquired the new restoration of Moving and will release it in 2024.

[Michael Kerpan]

This makes me very very happy.

[feihong]

I neglected to mention it until now, but when Typhoon Club and P.P. Rider came to Los Angeles in a sort-of double feature (they were playing in the same theater, in the same room, but I had to buy two tickets), I got to see them at the Laemmle's Royal. At 45 yrs. old I was either the youngest or the next-to-the-youngest patron there––which was funny. The films were every bit as wonderful in the theater, but an interesting element was that the restoration of Typhoon Club reveals a lot more bright space in the image than is present on the Japanese blu ray. The Japanese blu-ray doesn't look terribly much like a restoration in retrospect. I was very surprised how dark the Japanese blu ray looked in the background of the classroom scenes. Very specifically, there's a scene where Akira and Ken and some unidentified other boys are doing wrestling moves on one another in the background, while someone––I think it's Michiko––is roaming through the foreground of the image. On the Japanese blu ray, the boys in the background look like they're in the dark, in a corner of the room. I was struck watching the restoration that they appeared to be fully-lit by the classroom lighting––not as bright as the foreground characters, but the contrast and color was markedly different than what was present on the Japanese blu ray.

A lot of little details of Typhoon Club were apparent for the first time. I noticed a space where at least a full scene with some sort of confrontation must have been cut. I was always perplexed who the girl was who got up on the gymnasium stage and announced the impromptu graduation ceremony during the typhoon, and seeing the image writ large in front of me, I realized it was Midori, lesbian leader of the trio of girls who sort of run through the background of the primary Rie/Mikami/Ken/Michiko drama. Why hadn't I recognized her before? Now I could piece it together; when Midori introduces the faux-graduation ceremony, she looks considerably different than she does in the last scene she was in. Last time we saw the trio, the others were letting them into the main school building after they raided the drama club for clothes. Midori at that point looked just as we'd seen her before, in ponytails on either side of her head, wearing the full school uniform, with the whole ensemble really tightly composed. Midori appears for the most part very buttoned-up, but when she plays MC on the stage, her hair is down, for the first time, really changing the look of her face. But there are other unexplained details. There's a bloodied welt on Midori's forehead, and when the shot pulls back, as the kids are dancing to reggae, we see that Midori's uniform is now torn to shreds. Even more than Michiko's uniform, torn apart by Ken in the intended rape scene, Midori's uniform now looks like it's just notionally hanging off her body. We have no explanation for what's happened to Midori between scenes. She looks like she's been assaulted, or beaten up––but it's not clear how or why. None of the other girls in her trio seem to be harmed at all––and the main quartet look the same as in the previous scene.

The trio's storyline is very subordinate to that of the main quartet, but this makes me think there was at least some attempt in the script to balance the groups' screentime. In fact, I find the trio's antics more essentially interesting than what the main quartet are doing during this part of the film, and I think the trio's expressions of tension more directly mirror main character Rie's journey of self-discovery. But maybe that was why the conflict was cut in the first place? Anyway, a fascinating little mystery in the movie of what might have been filmed, and then dumped, and why that came to be.

Meanwhile, P.P. Rider remains perfect. Blowing it up to full size just makes it more of itself, and there's nothing not to love. Great movie. The Greatest movie. But I will say that the rather deliberate awkwardness of the filmmaking in both pictures is far more evident on the big screen than on a small one. The handheld shots are very scrappy-looking on the big screen, and the abrupt way with editing and with sound is very pronounced in a screening. I wasn't quite expecting that. All the cuts in the movie feel very harsh, very unplanned––as if they continued to play out scenes and just cut them short at some point. I have been thinking a lot of how much Takeshi Kitano in particular seems to have been inspired by Somai's films––the crane scene in Sonatine seems to me a deliberate homage to the one in Sailor Suit Schoolgirl with a Machine Gun, and the abrupt, elliptical cutting of Somai is something Kitano employs also. But it's interesting to see how much––especially in the films that follow Boiling Point––Kitano works to smooth those elliptical cuts, with passages of silence, with drawn-out moments that serve as leaders from one scene into the next. Kitano's camera gets increasingly still in Sonatine and Hana-Bi, and the pictures around that time, to make this style smoother. But in Somai it's very consciously rough, calling attention to the act of shooting the film. Pretty interesting.

[Calvin]

Third Window are prepping a UK release of Luminous Woman

[therewillbeblus]

I really hope they include the extended cut

[feihong]

I guess this is part of their Third Window's Director's Company series. Luminous Woman is listed in the little catalog of Director's Company films that shipped with The Guard from the underground. So is Tokyo Heaven, so that might be one Third Window plans to release as well. Both Luminous Woman and Tokyo Heaven have incredibly beautiful blu rays out in Japan (sans English subtitles), so the sources they can get should be great.

Speaking of Luminous Woman, I was finally able to learn a little bit about who writer Yozo Tanaka is, through William Carroll's recent, exceptional book, "Suzuki Seijun and Postwar Japanese Cinema." It's interesting to see where this guy comes from, because his name is on soooo many great, creative Japanese films from the 70s until fairly recently. His output slims down to a trickle after Luminous Woman is released––I think the film wasn't a success, as Somai seems to have to retreat to smaller budgeted films afterwards, and both he and Tanaka's creative output loses all its velocity afterwards. Essentially, Tanaka graduates from Waseda University in the 60s, part of a clique of 60s radicals studying film, along with fellow screenwriter Atsushi Yamatoya. He and Yamatoya both find their way into writing scripts for Wakamatsu Pro, Koji Wakamatsu's left-wing pinku production house. This takes them within spitting distance of Nikkatsu Pictures, where they start doing rewrites and submitting scripts. Members of Tokyo film clubs that screened Seijun Suzuki's movies, they both make sort of a beeline for him at Nikkatsu, and become part of his drinking clique, along with production designer Takeo Kimura, cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine, and others. They form the Guryu Hachiro––the Group of Eight––in the late 60s, and encourage Suzuki to push the envelope with more radical films. The first film whose script they make a large contribution on is Fighting Elegy, which has usually been credited to Kento Shindo, but which Carroll identifies as being entirely rewritten by Guryu Hachiro. Their first group credit is on Branded to Kill. After Suzuki is fired, Guryu Hachiro continues to write scripts for him for years and years, in all different genres––there are samurai films, movies about Japanese Red Army-style terrorists, a film set in North Africa, a domestic drama––all of these are listed in one of the appendixes of Carroll's book––tantalizing projects that never came to be––or were eventually adapted for other filmmakers.

Meanwhile, Nikkatsu has closed, and then reopened its doors as a pink film producer. The offer is extended to their staff to make films of any subject matter they want––and since many of the veterans of Nikkatsu Action Cinema refuse to go along with the new paradigm shift, a lot of lower-tier creatives at the company get promoted. Tanaka, more than Yamatoya or even Chusei Sone, maybe, jumps at this chance. He writes screenplays for a sizable host of the company's biggest porno successes, including Flower & Snake and Wife to Be Sacrificed. At the same time, Tanaka writes the first episode of the TV anthology series Horror Theater Unbalance––titled A Mummy's Love––for Suzuki. This is a short TV movie which prefigures the erotic, supernatural horror of Suzuki's later Taisho Trilogy. Suzuki is at this time already developing Zigeunerweisen. Carroll's book and more recent prints of the film itself credit Yozo Tanaka as the sole screenwriter for all three Taisho Trilogy films, but I have read another interview with Suzuki, which I don't believe is referenced in Carroll's book, in which he claims that all of Guryu Hachiro worked on the screenplay to Zigeunerweisen. Atsushi Yamatoya, through connections at Shochiku, gets Suzuki the gig directing Story of Sorrow and Sadness, which he writes on his own for Suzuki. Yamatoya then gets hired as the head writer on the Lupin III TV series, and he brings Suzuki on board as a creative producer of sorts. There are recounts of Suzuki sleeping through story meetings and getting very difficult over some proposed episodes, including the one Hayao Miyazaki had submitted. At this time, Tanaka is writing the Detective Story TV series, for director Yukihiro Sawada and star Yusaku Matsuda. Zigeunerweisen is released, becomes a big hit, and Tanaka immediately writes Mirage Theater as a follow-up. He is still writing Roman Porno for Nikkatsu, but then he scripts Sailor Suit Schoolgirl with a Machine Gun for Shinji Somai. I have no info on this, but I'm guessing that, since Chusei Sone was a member of Guryu Hachiro, he may have made the introduction of Tanaka to Somai. This ends up being a fruitful collaboration for both of them, and Tanaka goes on to write The Catch, Lost Chapter: Passion in Snow, Luminous Woman and The Friends for Somai. Working on Sailor Suit Schoolgirl seems to get Tanaka in the door with Kadokawa as well, and from '81 to about '87 he writes movies for them as well, including Cabaret and The Lady in the Black Dress. His output definitely slows during the 80s––he writes 5 films in 1981 alone, and by '87 he is only writing two a year. But after Luminous Woman, from '87 to 2010, when he seems to retire, he only writes 6 films total (including Yumeji, his last film for Suzuki). Villon's Wife, his next-to-last film, is written for director Kichitaro Negishi, for whom he wrote several screenplays for. He also wrote frequently for Yasuo Furuhata.

Luminous Woman stands out in a huge filmography as one of his most ambitious screenplays. The scale of the production is large, and the length of the script is obviously more significant than for most of Tanaka's pictures. I don't have any box-office info on the film, but based on the low availability of the film for decades, my guess is that the picture was a flop. Somai moves to much lower-budget pictures afterwards (Tokyo Heaven, immediately afterwards, looks like his cheapest movie since his first one), and Tanaka's career just seems to slam on the brakes. He doesn't write a film for 4 years after Luminous Woman, and from then on there are huge gaps in his filmography of years at a time between films. Obviously, life or waning interest could account for that tapering-off as well. Perhaps he was burnt out. But when I look at Luminous Woman, it seems a lot like a hugely ambitious passion project for somebody, and if I had to guess who was most invested, my guess is that it might be Tanka. The film seems so unlike Somai's other pictures, but Tanaka––who loves a good "town-mouse, country-mouse" story, really goes all-out in this one. They even seem to have written opera lyrics for the movie. Anyway, it's pretty interesting to learn more about Tanaka. In my early years of reading about all this, I thought he might not really exist, and that the name might have been a placeholder. Now that a lot more research has been uncovered, it seems clear he has not only been a screenwriter capable of working with a wide range of opinionated, outspoken auteurs, but that he has himself been a mover and a shaker behind the scenes––especially at Wakamatsu Pro in the 60s, at Nikkatsu in the 70s, and for Seijun Suzuki for decades on end (probably Atsushi Yamatoya deserves the crown there, going so far as to bring Suzuki on to his own projects, but Carroll says both he and Tanaka were set upon integrating themselves into Suzuki's coterie and influencing its direction towards more surreal and artsy directions. Tanaka seems the most notable on that score––a screenwriter capable of developing complex, artful and personal projects, which made for vivid movies from a wide variety of directors. Yamatoya was no slouch either, writing Story of Sorrow and Sadness, The Fang in the Hole and Capone Cries Hard for Suzuki, Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter for Yasuharu Hasebe, Star of Dave: Beautiful Girl Hunter, and he did long runs as a lead writer on Lupin III and Tomorrow's Joe 2. He and Tanaka seem to have helped each other into gigs frequently. Yamatoya wrote an episode of Detective Story for Tanaka. Both of them wrote occasionally for Chusei Sone, for Yasuharu Hasebe, for Toshiya Fujita, and for Yukihiro Sawada––all filmmakers within the Seijun Suzuki orbit. In fact, Tanaka is, I believe, still living––making him one of the last major Seijun Suzuki collaborators still alive (the only other significant collaborators of Suzuki's I can think of who are still alive are actress Yumiko Nogawa, who appeared in 5 of Suzuki's films and headlined three of them, and Akira Kobayashi, the number 2 star at Nikkatsu, who also appeared in 5 Suzuki films). It would be great to learn more about Tanka's work with Suzuki, with Wakamatsu, with Chusei Sone, with Somai. One of the great things Carroll's book provides is a much tighter connection between all these filmmakers in the pop-art tradition. Nobuhiko Obayashi, it turns out, wrote articles for movie magazines about Seijun Suzuki films early on. I'm sure there are more interesting connections to be discovered.

[Michael Kerpan]

I need to get Will's book He's an old sort-of-friend -- from back in the days when I hobnobbed with Japanese film studies academy folks on a regular basis....

[Calvin]

I really hope they include the extended cut

Is there one? I know that the Kadokawa Blu-Ray included a bonus disc with 46 minutes of deleted scenes but have they ever been shown re-integrated into the film? Fingers crossed they make it onto the Third Window release though, along with the 48 minute making-of.

[therewillbeblus]

I've only seen a 157-minute cut on back channels, which is almost 40 minutes longer than the released cut. feihong could give a more thorough rundown, but I'd hate to see some of that material excised

[feihong]

Back in the thread there's more information about it, but from what I understand the extra scenes––which are included on the Japanese blu ray––the audio elements are supposed to be lost, I think? I don't know what the film looks like with those scenes integrated, or if there's audio for those scenes in this longer cut. I've personally only seen the theatrical version, which is 118 minutes––and I've seen the extra scenes included separately. Those extra scenes frequently featured clapperboards and most of them have no sound as they appear on the second disc of the blu ray set.

Edit: Just found the longer cut, planning to watch it tonight.

[Calvin]

Third Window have replied to a Facebook comment asking if they'll release Moving saying that they're "working on other Somai films first which don’t have western releases yet (Moving will be released in the US and other countries)". Luminous Woman is obviously one of them and I'd bet on Tokyo Heaven being another, given that it was also under the Directors Company banner.

Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion and The Terrible Couple look to be with Toho but I think all of Somai's other films would be theoretically license-able.

[feihong]

I believe Love Hotel is also listed as part of the Director's Company series, though maybe Nikkatsu might still own the film.

Finally got around to watching the longer cut of Luminous Woman, and it's kind of what I expected. I think the themes of the film get much-needed, fuller explication in the longer version––and the emotional color of the performances get much, much more chance to breathe (as a result Monday Michiru's performance is loads richer). But the film is clearly too long in the extended cut for the amount of story and character––and themes, honestly––that it's bringing to the table.

The shorter theatrical version makes big leaps in logic and story and character which can't quite be accounted for––the restored scenes make it clear what's meant to be going on here, and there is a better balance of Sensaku's journey to Tokyo, contrasted with Yoshino's journey to Hokkaido. But damn, does the film drag forward only slowly. I think hearing the actors' voices––and hearing some of the richly emotional score to the film in these scenes would have made them feel more energized and meaningful. But it's quite clear how much Michiru is carrying any sense of urgency in the picture––Muto really doesn't make that happen.

But there are still narrative problems. In the sequence from when Akanuma burns himself alive to when Yoshino dumps Sensaku, Yoshino becomes an opera star––and it's very unclear how this is happening. I think this is screenwriter Yozo Tanaka making a swipe at tabloid journalism––the tabloid journalists in the film that swarm around Yoshino because she was friends with Akanuma, and he was playing a tape of her song while he did himself in, apparently give her enough attention to make her a star. Nonetheless, the emotional arc Yoshino goes through here––getting rushed into fame and dumping Sensaku because of it––that arc doesn't breath at all in this sequence. I would say the villain––even with the restored scene of him slapping Yoshino when goes mute in mid-concert––needs about one more scene of skullduggery to really come across.

And probably some stuff needed just to be wound more tightly and made more compact in this narrative. I think the scene where Sensaku talks to the ghost of his dead father (devoured by cats––this gets repeated a lot in the deleted scenes, like it's meant to be a joke) is fabulous, and it does a lot of the lifting needed to get the themes of the movie really clear––it would have been more meaningful if Sensaku had mentioned his father at all in the early part of the picture. If marriage would not only help Sensaku farm and rebuild the village, but also make his father happy, then the confrontation with the father would be so necessary it couldn't be removed. I'd probably cut the scene when Sensaku gets beaten by the villain, and Kuriko comes to talk to him––if I were editing the film, I guess I'd trade that scene for another one with Monday Michiru, is what I'm thinking. The screenplay seems to be trying to make a mystery over whether Sensaku has a chance still with Kuriko, or with Yoshino. This is bizarre––the scenes with Yoshino smolder and are unique. The scenes with Kuriko make it clear that Sensaku's romance with Kuriko is insubstantial. The tension in the last part of the movie ought to be better resolved, perhaps. There's this vague notion when Sensaku returns to rebuild his village that he has unfinished business in the city, and then we get this suite of scenes for Sensaku's return. I'm not sure these scenes needed to be drawn out to the length they were––even in the theatrical cut, they seem drawn-out. Cutting straight to the sanatorium as the theatrical cut does when Sensaku returns is too abrupt, but the sanatorium scene itself is too drawn-out––as is the final showdown.

But all-in-all, I think the longer cut feels better, is more validating of the whole journey of the story, and I can imagine that with dialogue and music, it might just lend something satisfying to the story. It strikes me, now that I think on it, that up through this film, Yozo Tanaka is the writer who lends Somai's films pathos. Sailor Suit, The Catch, Lost Chapter, and this film have a lot of emotional catharsis in them––which is something Somai eschews in his work with other writers. Love Hotel, The Terrible Couple, and especially Typhoon Club and P.P. Rider, all very much downplay their emotional elements, and reveal a lot more of Somai's sardonic nature. The flip side of that, though, is that those movies seem more mordant and playful, whereas the play in the Tanaka movies has this melancholy (Lost Chapter especially) to it, or melodrama (Luminous Woman or Sailor Suit). Tokyo Heaven, which Somai does after Luminous Woman, manages to meld Somai's cynicism, melancholy and play in a new way––the film is full of repressed longing––which I think Somai carries over to Moving very well (and less well in subsequent movies––though Tanaka returns to script The Friends, and brings that emotional quality again more effectively than in the Tanaka-less Wait and See). I enjoyed Luminous Woman much more this time around than I had the couple of times I saw it in the theatrical cut––even if the extended version forces one to use one's own cinematic imagination nearly as much as On the Silver Globe does.

[Calvin]

I don't think it being owned by Nikkatsu would necessarily preclude Love Hotel so...we'll just have to wait and see!

Thank you for your thoughts on Luminous Woman, feihong. Do you have any ideas as to the provenance of the extended cut? Are the additional scenes what are included as deleted scenes on the Japanese Blu-Ray release (without sound, I believe)?