Kagero-za

Home Vision Entertainment has a page up for their upcoming DVD release of director Kinji Fukasaku's 1971 Sympathy for the Underdog (Bakuto - Gaijin Butai).  The film is set in sunny Okinawa and is one of my favorites of the director's yakuza titles. I did the liner notes. The packaging is very swank. I'm happy.

10,000 Bullets has the first review up of Ventura Select's Karate for Life DVD. They gave me a shout out, saying "one can’t help but feel (Macias's)  enthusiasm for the films of Sonny Chiba while reading his insightful liner notes."

It all makes me very excited for TOP SECRET DVD PROJECT X in which I'll be taking more of a producer's role in addition to working on the extras. Title is taboo for now, but here's a hint. It's an Asian film.

Comments

[Carl Horn]

This is my favorite Fukasaku film (of the six or seven I've seen). I tell people it's the one to study for style, should you and your pals ever find it necessary to waste an entire dock full of rivals before punching out of this life. I'm very glad to see you're doing the notes. The cover design is fantastic!

[Patrick Macias]

Couldn't resist posting an excerpt from the notes...

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It’s one of my favorites among the late director sixty-one films, although Kinji himself would admit to a flaw in its construction.

Fukasaku believed that the film’s yakuza protagonist’s lacked sufficient dramatic motivation. In the place of passion and decisive action, Koji Tsuruta (1924-1987) is allowed to generate a monumental amount of world-weariness in the lead role of Gunji. A veteran of numerous old-style “chivalry” yakuza films, Tsuruta’s epic case of melancholia came from being a patriotic kamikaze pilot who’d missed his chance to take to the skies before the war ended. Or at least, that was the story. Years later, it was discovered that Tsuruta was never considered for suicide duty, and his existential despair was merely an effective tool used for womanizing.

[Daniel Zelter]

Now that Tartan has set up shop in the U.S., any chance that project is Battle Royale?

[Jules Corrosive]

Can I take credit for it when you release it?