Viewing notes: May 2017

O-Ei watches her father, the famous artist Hokusai, completing a dragon painting in Keiichi Hara's Miss Hokusai (2015)

Two recent Japanese animated features – Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s Patema Inverted and Keiichi Hara’s Miss Hokusai – and Caltiki: The Immortal Monster, an early low-budget horror from Mario Bava, illustrate the range of styles and content available to fantastic film.

A 3D New Year

The fossil claw, in your eye, in Jack Arnold's Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D (1954)

At my annual New Year’s ritual of dinner and movies at my friend Steve’s, I finally got to sample the home 3D viewing experience; we sampled a number of movies, old and new, cheap and expensive, but while the experience had some interesting aspects, I can’t imagine wanting to watch in 3D too often.

Blasts from the past

King Hu’s Legend of the Mountain (1979)

Recent Asian releases from Eureka

Shameless exploitation

My adventure with Jack Nance on the fringes of Hollywood

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