Nishikata Film Review: scifi

Showing posts with label scifi. Show all posts

10 May 2012

Takashi Iitsuka’s Super Organic Battle Action Adventure

The young filmmaker Takashi Iitsuka (飯塚貴士, b. 1985) wowed Nippon Connection 2012 with the international premiere of his short film Encounters (エンカウンターズ, 2011). The half hour action adventure action figure drama has previously screened at festivals in Japan such as the Sendai Short Film Festival and the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival.

Encounters uses neither stop motion animation nor any CG effects. It is purely old school live action puppet action – a technique which Iizuka has christened “Super Organic Battle Action.” Using handmade action figures and monster puppets, Iizuka carefully manipulates the characters either by hand or fishing wire. The result is a loving send up of the great monster movies of Ishirō Honda (Godzilla, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Mothra vs. Godzilla). The campiness of the film and the use of marionette effects recalls the “supermarionation” techniques employed in the UK cult classic Thunderbirds (Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, 1965-6).

The story centers on two buddies, Max and John, who have taken a trip to the countryside to help Max get his mind off his girlfriend troubles. Just as the countryside and a chance encounter with a friendly stray dog named Kifune seem to be lifting Max’s spirits, a furry super-monster crashes into the scene and has a confrontation with some armed forces. The story then spirals into a pastiche plot line that throws in all the elements typical in a Japanese scifi action adventure: a mad scientist, fear of robots, love and friendship conquering all, and so on.

Talking to Iitsuka at Nippon Connection, I discovered that he did indeed play alone with action figures a lot as a kid. He was an only child and did not have the means to buy too many toys. He had a hero figure in Ultraman but lacked monsters – a problem he remedied by creating his own monsters using PET bottles. His aim with Encounters was to transfer the fun and spontaneity of such child’s play into the film.

His eyes lit up with delight when I mentioned the Thunderbirds and he added that he was also a big fan of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-8), a dark scifi “supermarionation” also by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. In terms of action films, in addition to being inspired by the Ultraman franchise, Iitsuka is also a big fan of The Delta Force movies starring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin. This would explain his choice of Waffen Film Studio for the name of his one man production company. “Waffen” is German for “weapons”.

All levels of production were done by Iizuka himself: cinematography, editing, sound, music, set building, costumes and special effects. He made about 5 or 6 sets and manipulated the figures either marionette-style using fishing wire (which you can cheesily still see in some frames) or by hand (but without the hands being seen). For one sequence, for example, he built the set on top of the bathtub so that he could manipulate the figures from underneath. Some of the figures and sets were made using materials that he already had but others were built with supplies from the hobby shop. Some of the most interesting designs were done using papercraft and based on photographs Iitsuka took himself.

Iitsuka even does all the voices including a falsetto for Max’s girlfriend in a flashback sequence. The subtitles are kind of odd – at times very inspired – as when a wordy curse in Japanese is translated to English simply as “Jesus!” At other times the English subs are awkward and badly spelled – but that just adds to the fun. The subtitles, which were done by Naoki Suzuki of the Sendai Short Film Festival, complement the kitschiness of the film and the quirkiness of the Japanese dialogue. Iitsuka designed the dialogue as a spoof of the unusual Japanese dub s done on Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Shazzan (1967-9) and The Fantastic Four (1967-9) when they were first imported to Japan.

See opening to Japanese dub of Shazzan here, and The Fantastic Four here:

The film was shot on a Sony Video Z5J and edited using Abobe Software, Premiere, Aftereffects, etc. Iitsuka told me that he hopes that people will get a message of hope from the film. He is working on his next Super Organic Battle Action Adventure and was planning to explore German hobby shops for materials after the festival. An art school grad, Iitsuka has a natural eye for framing - doubtless honed by years of TV watching. The concept could easily have turned out completely schlocky, but I found the result brilliant. I hope that Iitsuka’s Encounters obtains the cult following that it deserves, and I look forward to seeing where his imagination takes him to next.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

You can follow Iitsuka on Twitter (JP only)
A 20 minute cut of the film is available on imdb (JP/EN)

01 March 2012

A Wonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965)

This 15-minute stop motion animation is an important landmark in Japanese animation history. A Wonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965) is the first independent film by Tadanari Okamoto (岡本忠成, 1932-90) after he founded his own studio Echo Productions (Echo Kabushiki-gaisha) in 1964. It is also the first stop motion / puppet animation to win the Noburo Ofuji Award, which for 1965 was jointly awarded to Okamoto and experimental animation pioneer Yōji Kuri. Okamoto was to go on to win this prestigious award more times than any other animator.

A Wonderful Medicine is an adaptation of the short-short story Nusunda Shorui (盗んだ書類) by novelist Shinichi Hoshi (1926-1997), acclaimed for his “short-short” science fiction stories – many of which were illustrated by another Ofuji award-winning animator Makoto Wada and one of Kuri’s fellow Animation Sannin no Kai members Hiroshi Manabe. Short-short stories belong to the genre flash fiction, and as such tend to be not only short but also boast fresh, innovative storylines and unexpected endings.

The evil genius imagines the medicine giving him powers of defying gravity / the winding road leading up to the scientist's lab

In an opening reminiscent of To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955), an open top convertible winds its way up a coastal hill to a lookout point. But instead of Cary Gant and Grace Kelly, the car holds a tall, skinny, evil genius with a Poirot moustache and his short, checked-cap-wearing lackey. The two men are targeting a moustachioed elderly scientist who quirkily has a boy assistant and a talking crow.

Posing as a potential customer, the evil genius spies on the scientist and overhears him making a new discovery. Believing this new “wonderful medicine” to be something useful for his plans for world domination, the evil genius and his lackey plan a bold mission to steal the “wonderful medicine.” Comical at every turn, they are almost foiled by the alarm systems and the talking crow, but in the end their cunning allows them make off with their prize. In a hilarious twist at the end (spoiler alert), the lackey – who is coerced into being the guinea pig – takes some of the “wonderful medicine” which turns out to be a cure for turning a wicked heart into a good and wholesome heart. Overcome by his new-found sense of morally upstanding principles, the lackey confesses his crime to the scientist, who is delighted to learn that his new medicine works as intended.

Examples of special effects

Compared to Okamoto’s graduate work Mirror (1960), one can see an improvement in the fluidity of character movement and general expressiveness of the characters – skills which Okamoto acquired during his period working under Tadahito Mochinaga at MOM Productions. In an amusing touch, the scientist and the evil genius, whose mouths cannot be seen, both talk via their moustaches going up and down. The establishing shots, both exterior and interior, set the scene beautifully. The most innovative sequences occur when the crow tries desperately to prevent the thieves from taking the medicine. Scribbles and even foam have been overlaid on top of the scene in order to depict the chaos of the fight in a dynamic fashion – I am guessing that as with Eastern European puppet films of this period (hugely influential on Okamoto throughout his career), and indeed as with Kihachirō Kawamoto’s early puppet films, this film was shot on the horizontal surface of an animation table with the camera looking down from above. This would have allowed Okamoto to add depth and special effects on plates of glasses placed at different camera distances above the puppets.

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu / Animation

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.1

A Wonderful Medicine appears on the first DVD of the Collected Works of Tadanari Okamoto (JP only), which I reviewed for Midnight Eye. This review belongs to my series on the Noburo Ofuji Award.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

14 September 2011

Shigeru Tamura’s Top Animated Films

The fantastic world of Shigeru Tamura’s illustrations and animations is a curious combination of science fiction landscapes with 19th and early 20th century characters that look more European than Japanese. When I looked up Tamura’s response to the Laputa 150 poll, I half expected the list to include a lot of Eastern European animation because the young boy in URSA minor BLUE is called Yuri. While the list does include Yuri Norstein’s celebrated classic The Hedgehog in the Fog (1975), Tamura’s list actually reveals his fascination with a wide spectrum of animation styles.

Tamura lists 15 animation favourites in no particular order. He clearly loves early animation such as Winsor McCay’s groundbreaking film Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), the early Felix the Cat series, and Betty Boop’s comical outing as Snow White (1933). He also displays a fondness for classic animation series such as Mickey Mouse when he was at his best in the 1930s and the Tex Avery classics (Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, et al.).

As Tamura works mainly with hand drawn and computer animation, I was surprised to see such a variety of stop motion animation on his list. From the pioneering stop motion work in the original King Kong movie to the surreal worlds of Jan Svankmajer’s Alice (1988), the Brothers Quay's Street of Crocodiles (1986) and the bolexbrothers’ The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993), Tamura clearly has an admiration for innovative filmmakers. It’s particularly interesting to note his choice of Wallace and Gromit’s A Grand Day Out (amusingly called “Cheese Holiday” in Japanese) as a favourite rather than Nick Park’s more polished later Wallace and Gromit films. A Grand Day Out is pleasingly rough around the edges and has a more outlandish plot than the others.

What distinguishes Tamura’s own work for me has always been his bold use of colours and his fantastic imaginary worlds. I can see how the psychedelic colours of Yellow Submarine (1968), the imaginative worlds of Fantastic Planet (1973) and Laputa: Castle in Sky (1986), and the poetic splendour of Night of Bald Mountain (1933) would appeal to Tamura’s poetic sensibilities. If you haven’t seen the films and series on Tamura’s list, I highly recommend seeking them out.