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Yoshiwara: The Pleasure Quarter (1960)

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Posted on March 11, 2006 by Ben Jennings

In making its belated Australian debut at the Melbourne International Film Festival last year, Tomu Uchida’s 45-years-old Yoshiwara: The Pleasure Quarter veritably brought the house down. It is a gorgeous, sumptuously colourful widescreen melodrama in a similar vein to Uchida’s Chikamatsu’s ‘Love in Osaka’, but with an even more astonishing shift in tone in the final act.

Uchida’s standby actor Chiezo Kataoka stars as the disfigured Jirozaemon, a wealthy but naïve and lonely textile manufacturer. When his friends drag … (read more)

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Zatoichi: Tale of Zatoichi Continues (1962)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Mat

Zatoichi, the legendary blind swordsman who moonlights as a masseur, is back in Zatoichi: The Tale of Zatoichi Continues. As the name suggests this film continues the tale of Zatoichi that began in Zatoichi: The Tale of Zatoichi.

Nearly, a year has passed since the events of The Tale of Zatoichi, and Ichi is travelling back to the location of the previous film to pay his respects to a dead friend. On his way, Ichi is asked … (read more)

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