The official webpage for Hiroyuki Kawasaki's Sanada kunoichi ninpô-den: Kasumi is now online, and there's a downloadable trailer for the movie on that page (viewer discretion is advised). The movie's principal cast is as follows: Young-mi (a.k.a. Yonmi), Saki Anz (Anzu Saki; she was in Naoyuki Tomomatsu's Death Penalty Female Prisoner Saori (Akai tejô: shikeishû Saori) - a.k.a. "Red Handcuffs: Condemned Prisoner Saori"), Yui Mamiya (she was in (Hiroyuki) Kawasaki's Shichinin no kunoichi: oniyasha), Hideki Satô, Masato Takaoka, Kôji Maeda, Tomotake Shigematsu, Shin'ichirô Toyonaga, and Shôichi Imai.
Total Media Corporation (TMC K.K. / K.K. Tî Emu Shî) is scheduled to release Sanada kunoichi ninpô-den: Kasumi on DVD (DJM-006) in Japan on September 22nd.
Trailer (downloadable 5.7 MB WMV file)
Official webpage
This film looks terrible. The random sex scenes in the trailer were hilarious. Wait.. is this a porno?
well, as michelle pointed out to me, http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/003348.html , these are apparently semi-soft-core "porn" flicks, called "pinku" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinku_eiga
i find their inclusion here a bit out-of-place, but hey, i don't run the site.
yeah what's up with all the porno of late? trust me you are driving a lot of readers away with this misogynist crap. its time to clean this site up and return it to its former glory or readers will go elsewhere.
i agree very distasteful. there's a difference between quality and quantity, and posts like these fit the later.
Okay, I see two different issues here. First is labelling this thing porn, which I really don't see. A pair of breasts does not a pornographic film make, especially considering that the three shots in the trailer all seem to be lifted from the same scene. I saw nothing more graphic in there than what you could find in any rated R film - and some PG-13 films - in the US. When we post clips with sexual content they are labelled as viewer discretion advised - this one is clearly labelled that way - so people who want to avoid it can.
Issue two is why include the low budget Japanese v-cinema stuff at all since a lot of it is obviously low grade. The answer is that a LOT of the current crop of art house directors in Japan started there and v-cinema is still used as a proving ground for directors. Tomorrow's big names are there today. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shinji Aoyama and Hideo Nakata all started off making pinku films.
Okay ... three issues ... the misogyny ... again, I don't think that this one in particular goes there but I agree that a lot of Japanese films do - rape fantasy is quite common even in mainstream Japanese films - and I find it quite distasteful as well. There are certain Miike films that I stay away from entirely because of this. But rather than just writing off a very large cultural phenomenon I'd prefer to engage it and talk about why it happens, how it rose and what it has to say about human nature. It's why I posted the exploitation thread a while back - to try and get people to engage that issue but, sadly, most of those objecting to exploitation film didn't bother to get involved.
We have intentionally built a diverse group of writers here, with diverse tastes and a range of moral outlooks. Frankly, I want people to disagree and argue about this stuff. That said, we won't post porn and if you think something has crossed that line feel free to drop me a note via the contact form and if I agree the post will come down but just be aware that I may not agree with you as far as what is acceptable and useful fodder for discussion ...
And, all that said ... the trailer may not have offended me but it definitely didn't look like a particularly good film. It's like they were aiming for a Hanzo the Razor / Lady Snowblood / Lone Wolf vibe but without the skill or budget behind the camera ...
It looked to me like she was trying to emulate Azumi....and making an extremely weak attempt at it. Actually, it made me laugh. She looks sexier on the poster.
Hehe, it certainly looks like a bad movie. But I don't think they were aiming very high, seeing how they call it "Junk Film" on the official site.
Anyway, I don't mind the occasional pinku news. I don't find a pair of breasts that offensive, strange as it may sound. And it gives me a bit of a view on a branch of the Japanese movie industry that I didn't even know existed.
Mr. Todd Brown and logboy I just want to thank you for covering the wide range of films that you do.TWITCH in my opinion is one of the best world cinema sites on the net.Please dont change a thing.There are tons of films out there that rarely get covered.Pinku films being one of them.Where do people think filmakers like Miike and Tarantino get some of their ideas from?Keep up the great work guys.
It is precisely the types of post that Gom comes up with that keep this site lively and off-the-beaten path. I may only see a tiny fraction of these films, but the trailers and information alone give a fascinating insight into another cultures unusual form of expression. What other culture even has this genre? I don't think one should not be so quick to label or write it off by the standards of western entertainment. An open mind is a healthy thing.
Keep the posts coming...
Also, I disagree with Logboy above with the statement...Whether or not you consider the pinku genre as trash...There is absolutely nothing wrong with trash for trash's sake...one persons trash is another's treasure, and well there is no harm done here...entertainment is and always will be subjective. We get a lot out of what we watch, but what we bring into it.
/end disconnected ramble.
i was thinking of something said this week somewhere esle when i said i didnt like 'trash for trash sake' - that theres already enough good films out there that dont get any attention, so why intentionally or exclusively focus on the bad things so heavily? sure, people like crappy / trashy movies (me included) but i dont like them simply because theyre trash, or i dont regard them as trash (i like the lighter side of viewing more than stodgy drama - but i also like them too, just to a lesser extent)... theres no need to get locked into trash for the sake of it when theres so much more dying to be seen. having said all this, i think many may regard pinku films directly as nothing more than trash - but as with any genre theres a huge variety in approaches, and some of japans key 'art house films' also happen to be pinku / romanporno movies (ai no carida / watcher in the attic, and so on)... plus all the other issues ive written about above.
-----