Shinya Tsukamoto

[A Car With No Doors]

Have we got any fans of this brilliant filmmaker's work here?

Tetsuo: The Iron Man is obviously his best known movie, and for good reason. It's probably that got me heavily into watching films in the first place, as opposed to seeing them as something to be consumed passively. It crackles so amazingly with this intense kinetic energy and never lets up: everything from the frantic stop-motion work to the quick-cut, stylised editing of the film is just designed to twat the viewer in the face and it's something I admire as both a low-budget cinematic work and as a purely visceral experience.

Although his later films have become more thoughtful and subdued, I'd say the energy has never really left his work, with stuff like Tokyo Fist and Kotoko blending the physicality and obsessions with disfigurement and injury[nb]which are gone through quite excellently in Tom Mes' Iron Man book, although it only goes up to 2005's Vital[/nb] with more explicit themes of transformation and mental illness/intrusive thoughts/paranoia respectively.

Spoiler alert

Tokyo Fist in particular seems to be a grounding of the themes of Tetsuo in that it presents the changing of the body through training and personal harm as something to be embraced by its protagonists, much like your blokey in Tetsuo seems to accept his fate at the film's end

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His latest film is apparently an adaptation of Fires On The Plain: it hasn't been released over here yet but I really do hope it is soon, he's a very talented man who deserves more recognition.

I leave this thread to you to discuss Tsukamoto, and perhaps recommend similarly intense filmmakers for my own selfish purposes.

[captaincockring]

Yes you could count me as a fan of Tsukamoto...I even like Tetsuo III.

[A Car With No Doors]

Yes you could count me as a fan of Tsukamoto...I even like Tetsuo III.

Heh, that's actually one of his that I haven't seen, largely due to the overall negative reception. Do you think it's any cop then? Even if I don't like it it'd be nice for a sense of completism.

[captaincockring]

Heh, that's actually one of his that I haven't seen, largely due to the overall negative reception. Do you think it's any cop then? Even if I don't like it it'd be nice for a sense of completism.

It's not immediately brilliant like Tetsuo or to a lesser extent Body Hammer, but it's got its qualities.

The biggest problem is the gaijin in the lead to be honest, if you can vault that hurdle it's a good film.

[Dirty Boy]

I saw Tetsuo on late night ch4 and at the time i'd never seen anything like it. In retrospect it clearly owes a huge debt to Eraserhead, but it's got enough of it's own style, particularly in the big battle sequence in the second half. The robotic drill penis is hilarious and yet i remember feeling genuinely sorry for yer fella and his girlfriend when he starts 'the change'. I loved the soundtrack too.

Never seen any of Tsukamoto's other films. Should i?

[Van Dammage]

Bullet Ballet was quality.

[Osmium]

I love his stuff and check every week to see if Fires on the Plain is available yet. I thought Kotoko was great and a return to form after the low-key Nightmare Detective films and the retread of old ground with Tetsuo 3.