So... if you ever meet my friend Andreja and wish to annoy her (or in fact, it will suffice if you encourage her to read your blog - an actual meeting is not necessary ;)), there is a simple way to do it. All you need to do is write about the wonderful world of Japanese film & TV and choose to focus on someone who is not Matsumoto Jun ;)
I am therefore going to continue to annoy her for the time being, as I'm still rather into Matsuda Ryuhei right now ;)
Anyway, according to Amazon.com I should receive my irresistibly homoerotic and artsy Matsuda Ryuhei DVD on the 27th of May. Of course Amazon.com is totally wrong because I actually received it on the 9th of May. Strangely enough it came via Deutsche Post, to be more specific - from Frankfurt. This would perhaps not be so weird except that it's a region 1 DVD. I have tried to explain to my mum that getting to the bottom of these mysterious workings will help me understand the universe, but unfortunately I don't think she believed me.
Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (the Matsuda Ryuhei film I received in this mysterious manner) is also trying to understand the universe, but I'm not expecting it to help my own personal quest to do so as I rather doubt I will ever understand the film ;) The good news is that I really enjoyed it anyway. I don't feel the inclination to write a proper, linear review (the film doesn't have a proper, linear story so why should it be reviewed that way ;-P), so I'll just be totally random and gush about Ryuhei instead ;-P
The bad news for Andreja is that now that I've seen two Ryuhei films I have concluded that his face is not the only thing that makes him interesting to look at on screen ;) I expect he may be appearing more on this blog if I manage to get hold of some of his other films.
Btw, I am clearly *not* alone in obsessing about his face. Here's a quote from the 'Making Of' feature on the Big Bang Love DVD, it's Ryuhei's co-star - Ando Masanobu (who is also very gushworthy) speaking:
With Ryuhei... since I've worked with him before, we work together well... and we hang out together outside of work. I like Ryu's face, so... even like this time... I've viewed him from various angles. He's maturing more and more, and getting more distinctive. It made me happy to see the sculptured, adult face of Ryu.
But enough about his face - as it happens I've discovered that Matsuda Ryuhei is actually a good actor ;) I kind of expected he might be (if he wasn't, I don't think he'd hold people's attention that well in Gohatto - even with that face ;)), but it's still nice to see it confirmed. Unlike this reviewer I found his part very different to Gohatto. I mean yes, it's similar in that he doesn't have much dialogue and mainly he "just is", but this is the case for all the actors in Big Bang Love - it's that sort of film. Otherwise it's very different to Gohatto. Unlike Sozaburo Kano, Ariyoshi Jun is a very vulnerable character and the whole body language is played like that. It's actually quite amazing how much information about the character Ryuhei can put through just by "being".
A random, but I thought interesting fact about the making of the film is the nude scene. In the special features Takeshi Miike explained that there wasn't any nudity in the script (it's a scene early on in the film when the two main characters are arrested - there's a strip search). But the costume designer strongly felt that there should be nudity there and that it was necessary for the film's artistic integrity. Miike liked her argumentation, but didn't really feel it was right to push the actors into it. The costume designer, however, felt so strongly about it that she started debating it with the cast. Miike had no idea how far the actors would go when they were shooting that scene and was positively surprised when they did strip.
The reason why I found this particularly interesting is that it sounds from this that nudity is a bigger deal in Japan than it is in the West. We are, after all, talking about a director known for making films with very extreme and perverse violence - Ichi, The Killer would certainly qualify as one of the most extreme films I've seen and I've seen a lot of "nasty" stuff. So to hear him express reservations about having his cast do nudity is interesting to say the least.
I've started wondering whether I've ever seen nudity in a Japanese film before and I don't think I have. In fact I only know of one other Japanese film (which I haven't seen) that definitely has nudity in it (full frontal at that) and that's The Realm of the Senses (1976). AFAIK to this day it has not been released in Japan uncut (I don't think it's the only country where that's the case, but still ;-P).
So I need Kinga's expertise here! Is nudity indeed a much bigger taboo in Japan or have I just been watching the "wrong films" and Miike is weird? ;)
In terms of other randomness, at the end of the 'Making Of' feature they asked everybody to say something about what film in general means to them (I actually felt most of the 'Making Of' was boring but that was one of the best bits). Ryuhei's answer is very quotable so I will quote it ;-P
I sometimes think... that all I'm about is acting. I go to movie sets, and there I discover who I am. Movie sets are like mirrors. Things you want to do, places you want to go... you confirm all these things there.
Finally, to totally scare you away from the film, here's a quote from Takashi Miike that made me lol:
Recently I've realized that movies that put me to sleep are good movies. Ones that bore me and put me to sleep. They give you tranquillity. There are things in the world that make you angry and sleepless. So movies that help you sleep are great. So if someone buys the DVD, absent-mindedly watches it, and eventually falls asleep... and between dozing and consciousness, the movie is still going, still flowing... as they enter the world of dreams; I think it's a piece that could be watched like that.
Showing posts with label Matsuda Ryuhei. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matsuda Ryuhei. Show all posts
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Matsuda Ryuhei: "I like to play people who constantly want to go out and kill people. They feel more comfortable for me somehow."
Since I've already started gushing about Matsuda Ryuhei on this blog, I figured I may as well do a whole post just about him ;)
The quote in the title is from this site (where you can also read a short bio). I shortened the title quote a bit cause it was just too long, so the full quote (which is somewhat less sensationalistic, but still amusing) is:
I like to play people who play video games all the time, or people who constantly want to go out and kill people. Those kind of roles enable me to pull out deep emotions of anger and grief, feelings I've experienced in the past. They feel more comfortable for me somehow.
There's not much material available about him in English (as is the case with most Japanese stars I think), so that site has pretty much the only English quotes of his that I found (but the title one is quite a gem, don't you think? ;) ).
I find Matsuda Ryuhei quite a curious case - I think largely because of my already mentioned fixation on his looks. This is weird in that he's the only actor I can think of, who I find cute because of his face ;-P (I'm not saying I never find actors cute, it's just that their face usually doesn't have much to do with it ;-P).
But it's not just that. It's the style of his acting too. He's restrained to a ridiculous degree (perhaps part of the reason why he likes and is good at playing the sort of characters he describes ;) ). For most of Gohatto (the only Ryuhei Matsuda film I've seen which actually makes me very ill qualified to write this post, but whatever ;-P) he's just there in a very upright pose, with almost no noticeable change of facial expression. The only time his expression changes is in one of the film's final scenes when he's about to kill someone (he laughs). For a demonstration, check out the trailer of Gohatto below:
Oddly enough, this sort of style works very well for Ryuhei (when Orlando Bloom does upright roles with no facial expression change he doesn't seem to be as lucky ;-P).
AFAIK, Ryuhei has done quite a few roles in that sort of style successfully. The trailer for Blue Spring looks similar, as does this hilarious scene from Izo (which has Ryuhei as a God-like figure ;) ).
But he has done some parts which sound like they're a bit "against type", which are naturally the reason I'm writing this post (they amuse me ;-P).
So there's a film which goes by the title Karaoke Terror (I kid you not), which is about a group of middle-aged karaoke loving women and a group of 20-something year old karaoke loving boys. One day, one of the boys tries to pick up one of the middle-aged women and to his surprise (he thought he was what they dreamed of) is turned down. In revenge he murders one of them in a very gory way, so they murder one of them in an even more gory way and so on (I assume it goes on until there is nobody left). There is a trailer on youtube (the trailer features only karaoke, no terror):
Another film which sounds "against Ryuhei type" is Koi No Mon, which is some sort of oddball, broad comedy and they're even going away from his effeminate looks (he's got facial hair in this ;) ):
The quote in the title is from this site (where you can also read a short bio). I shortened the title quote a bit cause it was just too long, so the full quote (which is somewhat less sensationalistic, but still amusing) is:
I like to play people who play video games all the time, or people who constantly want to go out and kill people. Those kind of roles enable me to pull out deep emotions of anger and grief, feelings I've experienced in the past. They feel more comfortable for me somehow.
There's not much material available about him in English (as is the case with most Japanese stars I think), so that site has pretty much the only English quotes of his that I found (but the title one is quite a gem, don't you think? ;) ).
I find Matsuda Ryuhei quite a curious case - I think largely because of my already mentioned fixation on his looks. This is weird in that he's the only actor I can think of, who I find cute because of his face ;-P (I'm not saying I never find actors cute, it's just that their face usually doesn't have much to do with it ;-P).
But it's not just that. It's the style of his acting too. He's restrained to a ridiculous degree (perhaps part of the reason why he likes and is good at playing the sort of characters he describes ;) ). For most of Gohatto (the only Ryuhei Matsuda film I've seen which actually makes me very ill qualified to write this post, but whatever ;-P) he's just there in a very upright pose, with almost no noticeable change of facial expression. The only time his expression changes is in one of the film's final scenes when he's about to kill someone (he laughs). For a demonstration, check out the trailer of Gohatto below:
Oddly enough, this sort of style works very well for Ryuhei (when Orlando Bloom does upright roles with no facial expression change he doesn't seem to be as lucky ;-P).
AFAIK, Ryuhei has done quite a few roles in that sort of style successfully. The trailer for Blue Spring looks similar, as does this hilarious scene from Izo (which has Ryuhei as a God-like figure ;) ).
But he has done some parts which sound like they're a bit "against type", which are naturally the reason I'm writing this post (they amuse me ;-P).
So there's a film which goes by the title Karaoke Terror (I kid you not), which is about a group of middle-aged karaoke loving women and a group of 20-something year old karaoke loving boys. One day, one of the boys tries to pick up one of the middle-aged women and to his surprise (he thought he was what they dreamed of) is turned down. In revenge he murders one of them in a very gory way, so they murder one of them in an even more gory way and so on (I assume it goes on until there is nobody left). There is a trailer on youtube (the trailer features only karaoke, no terror):
Another film which sounds "against Ryuhei type" is Koi No Mon, which is some sort of oddball, broad comedy and they're even going away from his effeminate looks (he's got facial hair in this ;) ):
Friday, April 25, 2008
My absence, my laptop and my Japanese film phase
As you may have noticed my promised comeback to the internet has not happened ;-P (apologies to anyone still waiting for replies to e-mails, you will have to wait longer ;-P). In fact this month it got so bad that I haven't even been using my RSS reader which has resulted in a total ignorance to current events (and I'm usually totally addicted to my RSS reader!).
If anybody wants an explanation for this behaviour (am I correct in thinking that nobody gives a damn? ;) ) then lets blame it on me having bought a laptop. I've become totally obsessed with it, or should I say obsessed with tweaking it (it's been 2 weeks - I still haven't tweaked it to the state I want it to be in ;-P). Does anybody care that I have a distribution called 'Arch Linux' on it currently? ;-P or that is has a firewire? ;-P oh, and it's an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad R61i and it has a trackpoint, wheee! Anyway, my laptop has become such an important existence in my life that I just had to mention it ;)
In terms of other stuff, I've been slipping in and out of a Japanese film phase for the last few weeks. It started with Japanese TV dramas and Matsumoto Jun (courtesy of Kinga ;) ), but I think it's going to lead me into the territory of cinematic films also. I've revisited what was my favourite Japanese film uptil now - Gohatto - and reminded myself of how much I like Matsuda Ryuhei. This in turn has resulted in me hopefully getting a DVD of a film I haven't yet seen called Big Bang Love, Juvenile A by the end of next month (also starring Matsuda Ryuhei).
Frankly, it seems like the kind of film only me and Ziggy could enjoy (it seems artsy enough for Ziggy's snobbish side to appreciate it and if his snobbish side fails then there's still hope in the homoerotic content ;) ). I do have some hope for Kinga too (after all, she's weird enough to enjoy Peter Greenway films), but I'm fully expecting them to be the only people in my acquaintance, who have a shot at liking it ;-P However, I've been surprised before ;) so I will post a list of reasons why you may be interested in the film even if you are not Ziggy or Kinga ;) (the trailer will for sure scare you off, but you haven't gotten that far into the post yet ;-P):
1) There is Matsuda Ryuhei in it ;) ok, maybe that's not an interesting enough reason for somebody who has no idea who I'm talking about ;-P But I think he's pretty much the only actor I've seen, who is *truly* eye candy to me. Usually I cannot tell whether I find a guy attractive or not just by looking at a photo. I have to see them move, talk, smile and so on and then I can tell you. Matsuda Ryuhei is the only guy I know of who I can just see a photo of and say he's beautiful (perhaps beautiful more in the way that I would find a woman beautiful, but that's still something, right? ;-P). His effeminate looks are probably why he keeps getting cast in homoerotic films (if I'm not mistaken this is his third such film). What is more in this film they've cast him alongside a guy who looks more masculine and rough, so the aesthetics of his looks are going to get even more showcased. If I have gotten you curious about him at all then check out some pics - this is from Gohatto, the only film of his that I've seen and incidently his debut film (he was only 16 at the time) and this is from Big Bang Love which I hope to own on DVD in about one month's time (it was made 2 years ago, so he would have been about 23).
2) You get to see sexy Japanese men naked ;) (you can see a little bit even on the trailer ;-P) Oh, and in case anyone's curious - yes, you get to see Ryuhei in the nude too (not on the trailer though).
3) It's a Takashi Miike film. For some people I guess that will be a turn off rather than a turn on, but I thought it was worth mentioning ;-P Frankly, for me when I initially hear a film is by Takashi Miike it is a bit of a put off (I know him as the master of gore since the only film of his I've seen is Ichi The Killer - which I didn't dislike, but it did nothing to convince me I want to see more). Big Bang Love, however, doesn't seem to be of the gory sort at all (at least none of the reviews or clips seem to indicate this) - so if it's the gore putting you off (as I assume it would be for most people) I think you are safe :) (yes, Kinga - this is largely directed at you ;) ).
4) It looks a bit claustrophobic. For some reason I have a soft spot for films which have a "trapped" sort of atmosphere. I can get through even a bad prison sort of film for this reason (and prison is precisely the setting of this film). So for any other weirdos like me I guess it's worth mentioning.
5) It's homoerotic, but I guess you've gathered that by now ;-P I guess for many people again this would be a put off, but I think there's quite a few people reading this blog who have either a contrary reaction or a neutral one.
6) Aesthetically it looks beautiful (and I'm not just talking about Ryuhei - though he adds to it ;-P).
Having done my best to get anybody other than Ziggy and Kinga interested enough to at least see the trailer (and probably doing the contrary - i.e. putting off even Ziggy and Kinga ;)), here it is:
I imagine that more of my Japanese film phase is to come on this blog as I have yet to gush about Matsumoto Jun ;) (who I actually like more than Matsuda Ryuhei ;-P).
P.S. As Ziggy has been heavily mentioned in this post, you may be interested to learn that he has updated his blog for the first time in about a year ;)
If anybody wants an explanation for this behaviour (am I correct in thinking that nobody gives a damn? ;) ) then lets blame it on me having bought a laptop. I've become totally obsessed with it, or should I say obsessed with tweaking it (it's been 2 weeks - I still haven't tweaked it to the state I want it to be in ;-P). Does anybody care that I have a distribution called 'Arch Linux' on it currently? ;-P or that is has a firewire? ;-P oh, and it's an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad R61i and it has a trackpoint, wheee! Anyway, my laptop has become such an important existence in my life that I just had to mention it ;)
In terms of other stuff, I've been slipping in and out of a Japanese film phase for the last few weeks. It started with Japanese TV dramas and Matsumoto Jun (courtesy of Kinga ;) ), but I think it's going to lead me into the territory of cinematic films also. I've revisited what was my favourite Japanese film uptil now - Gohatto - and reminded myself of how much I like Matsuda Ryuhei. This in turn has resulted in me hopefully getting a DVD of a film I haven't yet seen called Big Bang Love, Juvenile A by the end of next month (also starring Matsuda Ryuhei).
Frankly, it seems like the kind of film only me and Ziggy could enjoy (it seems artsy enough for Ziggy's snobbish side to appreciate it and if his snobbish side fails then there's still hope in the homoerotic content ;) ). I do have some hope for Kinga too (after all, she's weird enough to enjoy Peter Greenway films), but I'm fully expecting them to be the only people in my acquaintance, who have a shot at liking it ;-P However, I've been surprised before ;) so I will post a list of reasons why you may be interested in the film even if you are not Ziggy or Kinga ;) (the trailer will for sure scare you off, but you haven't gotten that far into the post yet ;-P):
1) There is Matsuda Ryuhei in it ;) ok, maybe that's not an interesting enough reason for somebody who has no idea who I'm talking about ;-P But I think he's pretty much the only actor I've seen, who is *truly* eye candy to me. Usually I cannot tell whether I find a guy attractive or not just by looking at a photo. I have to see them move, talk, smile and so on and then I can tell you. Matsuda Ryuhei is the only guy I know of who I can just see a photo of and say he's beautiful (perhaps beautiful more in the way that I would find a woman beautiful, but that's still something, right? ;-P). His effeminate looks are probably why he keeps getting cast in homoerotic films (if I'm not mistaken this is his third such film). What is more in this film they've cast him alongside a guy who looks more masculine and rough, so the aesthetics of his looks are going to get even more showcased. If I have gotten you curious about him at all then check out some pics - this is from Gohatto, the only film of his that I've seen and incidently his debut film (he was only 16 at the time) and this is from Big Bang Love which I hope to own on DVD in about one month's time (it was made 2 years ago, so he would have been about 23).
2) You get to see sexy Japanese men naked ;) (you can see a little bit even on the trailer ;-P) Oh, and in case anyone's curious - yes, you get to see Ryuhei in the nude too (not on the trailer though).
3) It's a Takashi Miike film. For some people I guess that will be a turn off rather than a turn on, but I thought it was worth mentioning ;-P Frankly, for me when I initially hear a film is by Takashi Miike it is a bit of a put off (I know him as the master of gore since the only film of his I've seen is Ichi The Killer - which I didn't dislike, but it did nothing to convince me I want to see more). Big Bang Love, however, doesn't seem to be of the gory sort at all (at least none of the reviews or clips seem to indicate this) - so if it's the gore putting you off (as I assume it would be for most people) I think you are safe :) (yes, Kinga - this is largely directed at you ;) ).
4) It looks a bit claustrophobic. For some reason I have a soft spot for films which have a "trapped" sort of atmosphere. I can get through even a bad prison sort of film for this reason (and prison is precisely the setting of this film). So for any other weirdos like me I guess it's worth mentioning.
5) It's homoerotic, but I guess you've gathered that by now ;-P I guess for many people again this would be a put off, but I think there's quite a few people reading this blog who have either a contrary reaction or a neutral one.
6) Aesthetically it looks beautiful (and I'm not just talking about Ryuhei - though he adds to it ;-P).
Having done my best to get anybody other than Ziggy and Kinga interested enough to at least see the trailer (and probably doing the contrary - i.e. putting off even Ziggy and Kinga ;)), here it is:
I imagine that more of my Japanese film phase is to come on this blog as I have yet to gush about Matsumoto Jun ;) (who I actually like more than Matsuda Ryuhei ;-P).
P.S. As Ziggy has been heavily mentioned in this post, you may be interested to learn that he has updated his blog for the first time in about a year ;)
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