Fudoh and Kikujiro : Two films
iView Author: Vishrant (Unknown, India)
Email: withheld
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Fudoh : the new generation
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instead of watching a dozen tarantino movies, watch one takashi miike movie. it will quench your thirst for bizarre for quite some time. fudoh is one of the top takashi miike movies when it comes to bizarre. it is filled with wicked scenes from beginning till end. fudoh doesn’t rest to take a breath. and you didn’t get bored either. given that you like takashi miike kind of cinema.
movie opens with the elder brother and younger brother playing base ball in there garden. father fudoh is a big yakuza gang lord and his elder son is also a yakuza. his elder son get some trouble with other yakuza organization. for this his father is held responsible in the counsil. and if this mistake is not corrected there is a possibility of a war between these two gangs. to amend the mistake the solution that is offered to father is that if he cut his one arm that will settle the matter. father fudoh instead of cutting his arm chooses to cut his son’s head. and present it to the members as apology. young riki fudoh witneses this.
now after ten years riki fudoh is a young man. who seeks revenge for his brother.
this gang of assassins is something you have never seen before. you simply could not have because no body else can deliver that kind of thing other than takashi miike. he get away with the things that will make one cringe. that also may be the charm of miike. here you have two kids as killers. and they also play football using head of a man as there football. which is busted by another gang member. who is really big. i mean really big. with curly long hair. after a blast he appears again wearing a mask on half of his face. the other two members are skirt wearing girls from riki’s school with even more weird techniques of killing.
its war and its violent. blood is all over. people being chopped off, sliced, decapitation, shoot out and what not. a lady yakuza member whose tattoos only become visible when her body heats up. and all this some how works – that’s miike magic.
its a takashi miike movie. that is enough said. also because nothing can be said that will give you any good hint about the kind of imagery you are going to witness.
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Kikujiro
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in kikujiro a kid pairs with my favorite yakuza takeshi kitano. no body else shoots with the uber coolness of takeshi kitano. here he is not playing a yakuza. although i have no problem with him playing yakuza in his every film. he is so cool. here also he is a cool man. he is floating with life, not in any hurry and hang around with his wife. don’t take him for a stupid man. he is going to extort the kid. don’t take him for a mean person either, because he is not. and you will know why. he is a man who knows the difference between being sincere and being serious.
little boy masao, a gloomy kid, lives in the neighborhood with his grandmother. his grandmother consoles him by saying that her mother has gone for work so that he can study. masao is not particularly popular among his playmates either. it is summer vacation and he is left alone with nothing to do. so he decides to visit his mother. kikujiro’s (takeshi kitano ) wife send him with the boy to take care of him. and thus begun their journey together. which is going to be rewarding to watch. and i can not say that it was rewarding for those two characters also. one is a innocent kid. other is a grown man who has again attained the innocence of the kid.
it is not those two characters who are there to gain from their journey together. it is us the viewers. and it also could be the simple case of me looking for the things which are not there in the first place. deriving conclusions on my own. there is only one way to decide that i am right or wrong about this film. watch it. probably you may not like it. probably it may appear too slow for you. or too bland. any thing could happen. so i am withdrawing from any responsibility. watch it on your own risk. and be ready to be highly rewarded or highly disappointed or mildly rewarded or mildly disappointed. anything is possible because as i said this is a very personal kind of movie. it is not the personal in kind of european cinema, where viewer is made to witness the going on in the movie makers mind. those kind of movies don’t interest me. i am not interested in twisted minds.
kikujiro is not that much about the movie as it is about the viewer. if you are in hurry for something than you better don’t watch it. for it will look sheer waste of time. watch it when you are not in any kind of hurry. when you have two hours of pure leisure at your hand. after watching the movie don’t search for me. no matter what you feel after watching the movie, its your responsibility. i enjoyed the film because it represented something of tao of life for me.
Tags: Takashi Mike, Tarantino, yakuza takeshi kitano
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Don’t think I’m nitpicking.
But there is a reason why the first letter of every sentence is capitalized.
i would not doubt that
there must be a reason
.
to me, it looks more beautiful
without the bump of capital letter at the beginning of every sentence
.
satyam shivam SUNDARAM
kikujiro trailer
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=jlkDjuHyEa4
Nice article. I loved Kikujiro and the simplicity of it. Typical Kitano movie.
Haven’t yet got my hands on Fudoh but, have seen other Miike movies to have an idea..
. Very interesting and prolific movie maker. Did yo get to see his latest Sukiyaki Western Django?
a fudoh clip
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz4FhOT2e0I
not yet
Kikujiro is shown pretty regularly on UTV World Movies. Loved it.
thank god for torrents
meaningful cinema
.
question is
can a thriller be counted as meaningful cinema
.
a thriller like sixth sense
what meaning does it have
.
it is entertaining like hell
all good thrillers are
.
but for me, a viewer – shot taking angles means nothing to me
what does a thriller have to offer other than entertainment
.