.

Yoshimasa Ishibashi

.

MILOCRORZE!

.

Up yours, Matthew Barney. The real art gallery weirdo is Yoshimasa Ishibashi, Japan’s guru of bizarre video art. A well-known video artist who claims that Walt Disney and George Lucas are his biggest inspirations, Ishibashi is responsible for Vermilion Pleasure Night. A variety comedy show that aired for only five months in 2000, VPN has had a huge influence on Japanese comedy and set the stage for movies like Funky Forest: the First Contact. Best known on the show was the recurring sketch, The Fuccon Family, about a family of mannequins who remain happy no matter how many times their son, Mikey, is dismembered or possessed by Satan. Ishibashi spun off the Fuccons into a 78-episode TV series called Oh, Mikey! in 2004, but apart from that he’s been very, very quiet. He’s used the time to focus on his truly freaky video art projects, screening his work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern in London and modern art museums throughout Japan. His new movie, MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY, is a funky slab of surreal visuals, dance numbers, samurai battles that resemble Suzuki Seijun at his most lysergic and love, love, love. MILOCRORZE is a movie that has a passionate desire to implant Ishibashi’s deliriously trippy vision deep within your brain.

.

Watch an entire subtitled episode of Vermilion Pleasure Night:

.

.

Tak Sakaguchi

.

Tak with polar bear.

.

Way back in 2003, at the second New York Asian Film Festival ever, we screened a low budget movie called Versus. Shot for nickels in a stretch of abandoned forest, it was all about a guy fighting a growing army of yakuza zombies by kicking them really hard in the head. What carried the movie wasn’t its metaphorical resonance, it was the intense, explosive charisma of its star, Tak Sakaguchi. Eight years later, Tak is back with a movie he directed, wrote, starred in and action choreographed, Yakuza Weapon. Now, there are a lot of action stars in the world, and some are better fighters than Tak, some are better looking and some make slicker movies. But nobody does what Tak does. Because only Tak Sakaguchi can makes Tak Sakaguchi movies. ??What is a “Tak Sakaguchi movie?” It’s intense. Tak got his start fighting in underground street matches for money, and he brings with him the dangerous, cocky charm of a guy who can take a punch. His action choreography isn’t designed to be pretty or impress girls, it’s designed to demonstrate that the shortest distance between your head and the ground is Tak’s fist. But more than that, a Tak Sakaguchi movie is macho. They are man movies. That doesn’t mean women can’t like them – Tak’s lady fans are legion – but there’s a reason his directorial debut was called Be a Man! Samurai School. Because Tak wants to teach you about Mandom.

.

Tak Sakaguchi movies are simple (kids form a baseball team to fight zombies, a family gets attacked by zombies, a yakuza gets a rocket launcher for a leg) and often the solution to the problems their characters confront are to hit things in the face until they fall down. No one talks about their feelings, no one worries about how they look, no one has second thoughts about their career. What you wind up with are movies that smell like Charles Bronson and taste like John Wayne. What you wind up with are ultra-whacked-out, ultra-violent, ultra-man movies. What you wind up with are Tak Sakaguchi movies.

.

Tak with brown bear.

.

YUDAI YAMAGUCHI

.

.

If you see a Japanese movie that’s totally and completely deranged, chances are that Yudai Yamaguchi had one of his weird fingers in it. After graduating from film school he made a bunch of award-winning short films, some of them with Tak Sakaguchi. They were spotted by Ryuhei Kitamura who hired Yamaguchi and Tak to work on his new film, Versus, with Tak starring and doing the action and Yamaguchi writing the screenplay and shooting second unit. His directorial debut was the super-stupid zombie baseball flick, Battlefield Baseball, that stars Tak and that became a surprise word-of-mouth hit in Japan after winning Grand Prize at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival. He followed that up with Meatball Machine (2005) and then the live action adaptation of seminal stupid high school manga series, Cromartie High School (which premiered at the New York Asian Film Festival). A few years later he was back with 80’s horror tribute, Tamami: the Baby’s Curse and then he directed several of the fake commercials for Tokyo Gore Police.

.

A scene from Yamaguchi’s
masterpiece: CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL.

.

YOSHINORI CHIBA

.

Director Nishimura (left) and producer Chiba (right).

.
A behind-the-scenes creative talent whose work has literally changed the face of the Japanese film industry, 44-year-old producer Yoshinori Chiba began work in advertising at Gaga, but soon transitioned into production when he met director Keita Amemiya, whose Zeiram he produced in 1991. The Japanese V-cinema boom hit soon after, and Chiba found himself associated with a filmmaker whose name became virtually synonymous with the budding genre: Takashi Miike. Their Fudoh: the New Generation was one of Miike’s biggest hits overseas, and Chiba’s subsequent credits read like a “best of” list from the world of Japanese genre film: Zero Woman, Eko Eko Azerak, Battlefield Baseball, Neighbor No. 13, Death Trance, Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, and Yatterman, a major studio production which became the biggest hit of Miike’s career. In 2009, he created The Sushi Typhoon which has two films, Yakuza Weapon and Karate-Robo Zaborgar in this year’s festival.

.

ARATA YAMANAKA

.

.

You know the karate-uniformed guy in Love Exposure who teaches the lead character how to successfully take up-skirt photographs? Or the steely-looking yakuza door guard shooting the hell out of zombies in Helldriver? Or the evil Sigma Organization member dressed like a Native American? Or the neck-tattooed, buzz-cut government agent who fights Tak Sakaguchi at the opening of Yakuza Weapon, then replaces his arm and leg with deadly devices? All of those roles have one thing in common: they were all filled by talented, handsome Japanese action actor Arata Yamanaka. Born in Osaka, Arata began work as a regular actor, but after meeting Tak, began to study action under him for several years, joining action team Zero’s in 2008, in time to appear in Love Exposure. Following action-heavy roles in Tak’s Yoroi: Samurai Zombie and Tokyo Gore Police, Arata appeared in supporting roles in big studio films Rescue Wings and The Accidental Kidnapper, as well as several productions from genre label Sushi Typhoon. More recently, he’s popped up in Yudai Yamaguchi & Takashi Shimizu’s TV series Soil, as well as Sion Sono’s Cannes Directors Fortnight film Guilty of Romance.

.

.