Roslindale Monogatari

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens / Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (F.W. Murnau, 1922) The old Kino DVD of this film actually looked quite good (far better than older versions I had seen) but, though it had two musical scores, neither struck me as satisfactory. The new Kino DVD looks better -- and, perhaps more important, sounds vastly better, thanks to the reconstructed, newly recorded, original (1922) score of Hans Erdmann. This version of Nosferatu , or its British cousin (from Masters of Cinema), is an indispensable one for fans of Murnau and of "silent" cinema in general. This is one of my favorite silent films (and one of my two favorite Murnau films, along with Last Laugh ). The cinematography by Fritz Arno Wagner is, to my mind, unsurpassable. While the acting style is florid here, it certainly suits this material. So much has been written about this film that any brief comments I can offer are essentially superfluous, however. More important by far are scre...

Ao to shiro de mizuiro - Scenario Toryumon 2001 (Takahashi Naoharu, 2001) Aoi Miyazaki's second starring role was as an unhappy (and quite troubled) school girl in Akihiko Shiota's devastating (and outrageously under-appreciated) Gaichu / Harmful Insect (2001). In that film, her best friend was played by Yuu Aoi. In this short (45 minute long) made-for-television movie, filmed not long after Gaichu , Aoi Miyazaki once again plays an unhappy school girl and Yuu Aoi plays her ex -friend. Moving from middle school to high school, Miyazaki got marked for generalized bullying by her classmates -- and her friend, eager to purge herself from the taint of the long prior friendship, is especially merciless. As a result, Miyazaki has only one remaining goal at school, to jimmy open the locked door to the school's roof and throw herself over the edge. The arrival of a new male student (payed by Shun Oguri), looked down on by others due to his juvenile delinquent past history, is v...

Nagaya shinshiroku / The Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Yasujiro Ozu, 1947) Ozu's first post-war film (after a 5 year gap in his career) dealt with one of Japan's most pressing (and least attended to) social problems -- the existence of large numbers of homeless children, who were either war orphans or otherwise lost or abandoned. Here, a young boy, six or so years old (Hohi Aoki) has been found by Chishu Ryu (playing a fortune teller of sorts). When he brings the boy home to the house where he rents a room, its owner (Reikichi Kawamura) has no interest in housing a stray child. The two decide then decide to palm the boy off on the curmudgeonly shopkeeper who lives across the street (Choko Iida). Iida has no enthusiasm for the proposal, but acquiesces. She is chagrined to find that the boy still wets the bed at night -- and tries to track down the boy's missing father. Having no luck in this endeavor, she and the boy return home. After he wets the bed again, the boy...