The enormous international success of Ghost in the Shell made soft spoken Japanese auteur a household name for fans of animation and hard sci fi, his unique vision fusing with the cybernetic world of Masamune Shirow to create one of the true landmark moments of international science fiction, a hugely influential piece of work that has been liberally borrowed from - most notably by the Matrix films - in the years since.  But those who know Oshii only from Ghost in the Shell are missing out on a much larger body of work - one that spans live action and animation, features and shorts, television and cinema and gallery - and the unique quirks and humor, not to mention the over riding philosophical concerns, that populate his entire body of work.

Oshii’s first listing on the IMDB - not the most accurate source for Japanese animation, I’ll grant - comes as early as 1978 when he worked on the classic television series Gatchaman.  From there he made his way through the television ranks, eventualyl making his foray into features with a pair of theatrical films based on television series Urusei Yatsura.  His influence has been key in the development of the Patlabor franchise of television series, straight to video OVAs and theatrical features - of which he has directed two - and he has for years been a key player at animation house Production IG, where he has done most of his own work and for whom he wrote and produced the classic military fable Jinh Roh: The Wolf Brigade.  He has fostered such talents as Satoshi Kon, he has shot a stunning live action picture (Avalon) in Poland, and created original, immersive art installations.  Despite being painfully soft spoken and media shy Mamoru Oshii has emerged as one of the most important and influential voices in Japanese film and animation around the globe.  You’ll find a host of Oshii related trailers below the break.

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Without a doubt the most potent force in Spanish language film internationally today, Mexican born Guillermo Del Toro seems to have developed something of a Midas touch.  Del Toro has always managed a neat balance between personal projects and larger scale for-hire Hollywood jobs, his early resume boasting the likes of his tiny independent debut Cronos, Hollywood creature feature Mimic, and much loved Spanish language fairy tale The Devil’s Backbone.  But it was with his entry in the Blade series - his is the second film, and the best of the lot by a comfortable margin - where Del Toro really hit his commercial stride.  That film proved he was capable of turning a profit without abandoning his unique aesthetic - and with a comic book film, no less - which in turn got him the freedom he needed to make Hellboy.  The crowning achievement to his career thus far, however, is certainly Pan’s Labyrinth, again a Spanish language fairy tale set in the midst of the Spanish Civil War and a thematic partner to The Devil’s Backbone.  A huge international success, Pan’s won Del Toro awards by the boatload while also turning a tidy profit. 

Not content just to ride his own success, Del Toro has since partnered up with fellow Spanish language heavyweights Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Innaritu to launch their own production company and Del Toro is finding himself in the producer’s chair with more frequency, his latest producing effort - The Orphanage - proving a significant success.  Del Toro’s golden streak remains intact, opening the door for him to pursue whatever goals his heart desires.

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Japanese auteur Seijun Suzuki was very nearly consigned to the scrap heap of history thanks to the sheer, unwavering strength of his own vision.  Hugely prolific throughout the fifties and sixties Suzuki turned out strictly controlled product for the tightly wound Japanese studio system - a system that didn’t exactly encourage experimentation - fast and cheap for over a decade before gradually settling into a unique style built around shocking use of color and staging techniques more at home in experimental theater than on the big screen.  Suzuki ramped up his experimentation slowly, trying out techniques unnoticed at first, but his stylistic excesses soon began hurting his box office take and he was finally, famously, fired from the studio essentially for being too damn strange and saddled with a reputation for being difficult that restricted him to making only six feature films in the seventies and eighties combined as opposed to the forty one he produced in the fifties, sixties and seventies.

Now in his eighties and in failing health Suzuki has experienced a late life revival that has seen his body of work embraced by international festivals and art house DVD labels around the globe.  We collect a number of Suzuki trailers below, ranging from his latest - and likely final - effort, the musical Tanuki Goten, to his better known classic titles such as Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter plus some less known work below but when dealing with someone as prolific as Suzuki, much of whose work has still never been seen outside of Japan, there are some major gaps.  Any help tracking down trailers from more of his films would be greatly appreciated.

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Just look at that photo, a prime example of pure, sculpted manhood!  Ah, David Hasselhoff without you we’d ... well, we’d have to find someone else to make fun of.

The well coiffed singer turned actor burst into the public eye with Knight Rider before becoming the punch line for countless jokes for being so strangely popular in Germany and becoming the producer and star for the most popular shop ever in worldwide syndication - at least it was at the time - and also one of the worst, the lifeguard jiggle-fest Baywatch.  Since then he’s become an internet phenomenon for a well publicized alcohol fueled meltdown, a reality show judge, continued cranking out records that people wouldn’t touch if you paid them to in North America but sell rather well, thanks, throughout Europe and proven himself to have a rather good sense of humor about himself with off beat appearances in places such as the Spongebob movie.

But before the talking car - and to some extent after, as well - the Hoff’s domain was bad b-movies.  Some of them only marginally bad, some of them - such as the legendary Starcrash, which also stars Christopher Plummer who really should’ve known better - are spectacularly awful.  We collect here trailers and clips from some of the best starting with his first big screen film (Revenge of the Cheerleaders and ranging up to 1990s Final Alliance in which he co-stars with a puma.  And if anybody out there has trailers or clips from the films he made in Germany, I’d love to see them ...

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Love him or hate him, it seems everybody who’s ever come across the work of Danish auteur Lars von Trier has a strong opinion about him.  The man has the ability to divide audiences like few others and stands as one of the great provocateurs of world film today.  But buried in the hubbub of the arguments he tends to cause it’s easy to overlook just what a great innovator and influencer of film he has been.  One of the four founders of the Dogme 95 movement, von Trier championed a return to simplicity in film that influenced film makers around the globe and whose repercussions are still being felt today.  He’s challenged ideas about how to use technology, experimented with how film can interact with an audience and consistently shown a fantastic eye for the brightest young talents in his part of the world with more than a few young actors launching their careers thanks to roles in a von Trier film.  He casts a huge shadow as a producer and distributor of film, his companies owning production houses, sound stages, sales outfits and just about anything else you could care to name, right on down to porn label Puzzy Power.

Beyond the industry influence von Trier has always proven a fascinating person.  Famously neurotic he refuses to fly and, as a consequence, will likely never set foot away from continental Europe - a fact that infuriated many Americans when his very America-critical Dogville was released.  He has gone on record stating that his own fears and neuroses served as a primary influence for his sterling TV horror mini-series The Kingdom - a series that will likely never be finished due to far too many of the cast dying off.  Von Trier is famous for his ego as much as his work - the ‘von’ is purely an affectation that he added to his own name in film school to make himself sound more important - and can be so difficult for actors to work with on set that while shooting Dancer in the Dark Bjork famously removed her blouse, tore it into strips and ate it when he refused to consider a costume change.  Which says as much about her as him, true enough, but you get the point.

What follows beneath are trailers for all of his theatrical features, two films he has written for other directors and his TV series The Kingdom.  As much as there is, however, there are a few things missing that I’d really like to add:  if anyone out there has a trailer for his TV movie Medea, his non-Kingdom TV series work, any of his student work, or the D-Dag millennium project he did for Danish national television with the other three Dogme founders please upload them to the system.

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For the latest in our regular column looking back over the careers of film makers we hold dear to our hearts we take a look at the early films of Peter Jackson.  Sure, everybody knows the Kiwi director now as the man at the helm of the epic Lord of the Rings films but to say life was not always so for the man is a bit of an understatement. 

Jackson got his start making extreme low budget films that showed off his love of genre film and off kilter sense of humor, films built more out of his raw talent and creativity than with any sort of budget or “professional” crew.  His 1976 debut, The Valley features Harryhausen inspired stop motion effects and is completely unavailable in any format, and it was not until his 1987 sophomore effort Bad Taste that his films could be seen by an audience on any significant scale at all.  Classic splatter-comedy Brain Dead aka Dead Alive followed, along with demented puppet animation Meet The Feebles - a sort of Muppet Show with a vicious case of Tourette’s Syndrome - before Jackson would show his serious side with Heavenly Creatures, a story based on real events that features the first ever starring role for a young Kate Winslet.  Spoof documentary Forgotten Silver would follow before Jackson made the jump to Hollywood productions with the under seen horror comedy The Frighteners which would, of course, pave the way for his massive Lord of the Rings success.

Trailers for Jackson’s splattery pre-LOTR work below the jump.

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One of the most unique and distinctive forces in world film, Japan’s Shinya Tsukamoto burst on to the international scene with his iconic film Tetsuo: The Iron Man in 1989.  The story of a man slowly transforming into metal Tetsuo is a pounding piece of work embraced as a cyber-punk classic around the world, shot in stark black and white and starring the director himself in one of the lead roles.  Tetsuo showcases what has proven to be the director’s key obsession: our relationship to our own bodies is a theme that has recurred throughout his entire body of work, most of which he stars in himself and most of which is shot in some sort of monochrome color palette.  Originally an actor whose film making is an extension of his work in experimental theater, Tsukamoto is both one of Japan’s small handful of start to finish auteurs, handling virtually all aspects of finance and production himself, who nonetheless has a pair of director-for-hire films on his resume (Gemini, Hiruko the Goblin) and also remains one of Japan’s busiest and most sought after actors appearing in projects as diverse as video games (Metal Gear Solid 4) and numerous projects for the likes of Takashi Miike, Takeshi Shimizu, Teruo Ishii and more.

Trailers for the cult icon’s entire body of work appear below the break.

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Japanese director Yoji Yamada has risen to great international acclaim in recent years thanks to his much loved samurai trilogy (Twilight Samurai, Hidden Blade, Love and Honor) but many of his recent fans are unaware that the man is a well established veteran of the Japanese industry who has been honing his craft for decades and has a very extensive back catalog of films that are largely unavailable outside of his own country.  We can’t do much about the complete films but Twitch reader Fabool has just uploaded trailers for a solid handful of more obscure Yamada titles and I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to bundle them all together for your perusal.  You’ll find ‘em after the break!

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