BayAnime.com

Landmark’s Lumiere Theatre, 1572 California Street, San Francisco (415) 267-4893
Tickets are $10.50 for general admission and $8.00 for seniors, students, and children

Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA (510) 464-5980
Tickets are $10.00 for general admission and $8.00 seniors and children

Showtimes and tickets will be available starting Tuesday, May 17, at: http://www.landmarktheatres.com/tickets and theatre box office

Cult director Takeshi Miike delivers a bravado period action film set at the end of Japan’s feudal era in which a group of unemployed samurai are enlisted to bring down a sadistic lord and prevent him from ascending to the throne and plunging the country into a wartorn future. Highly prolific, Miike is credited with over 80 films since making his directorial debut in the early 1990s. Landmark films in his illustrious career inc…lude Audition, Sukiyaki Western Django, Ichi the Killer, One Missed Call, The City of Lost Souls and the Dead or Alive yakuza trilogy. The film premieres locally at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

“The year is 1844. A young lord rapes and kills with impunity by virtue of his political connections. Though the era of the samurai is fading, an honest government official covertly enlists thirteen swordsmen to assassinate this sadistic lord before he can seize more power. With the clock ticking, the assassins lay a deadly trap for the lord and his army of bodyguards, culminating in one of the bloodiest, muddiest swordfights ever put to film. As the leader of the thirteen samurai, Koji Yakusho (Tokyo Sonata, Babel) invokes Toshiro Mifune at both his most contemplative and charismatic. But it’s [director] Takashi Miike who steals the show through sheer spectacle—the climactic battle scene lasts a breathless forty-five minutes—filling the screen with visual references to more than just the original film; there are echoes of every samurai classic imaginable, not to mention some distinctly Miike touches. Let’s just say, when the blood spills it flows.”—Colin Geddes, Toronto Film Festival.
The film’s running time is 126 minutes; it is not rated.

“A classic samurai film”—Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter

“13 ASSASSINS is a stone-cold, limb-severin’, bull-burnin’ masterpiece.”—Aint it Cool News

“The film is a relentless locomotive. Enthralling and entertaining.”—Glenn Heath, Jr., Slantmagazine.com

“Takashi Miike is in top, slashtastic form”—Leslie Felperin, Variety

“13 ASSASSINS is pure pleasure. It culminates in a magnificent 45-minute showdown that has to be the best final battle sequence in cinema since, oh Kill Bill at least.”—Lee Marshall, Screendaily.com

“It delivers such intensity that it’s hard to breath, that it’s difficult not to stand up and cheer. There are few samurai films (classic or modern) that are as satisfying as this one.”—Cole Abaius, Filmschoolrejects.com

This post was submitted by Landmark Theatres.

Mizuho Nishikubo (Miyamoto Musashi: Soken ni haseru yume, Japan 2009)
Location: Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema, SF Intl Animation Festival
Tickets: General admission $12.50, Senior $11, SFFS member $10 [Buy Tickets]

Quite likely the first anime-style documentary, this wholly unique film penned by master anime director Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, The Sky Crawlers) is set in Japan’s early Edo period during the early 17th century and focuses on the real-life events surrounding the development of the Niten Ichi-ryu (a classical style of Japanese swordsmanship) by Musashi Miyamoto. Oshii playfully questions the tale’s—and his own film’s— veracity, weaving together facts and myths while alternating between reverence and silliness in his treatment of events and exaggerations about the “the seeker of the way of the invincible sword” in this refreshingly offbeat look at militarism and machismo. While there is a relatively recent prevalence of animated nonfiction features including  Chicago 10, Waltz with Bashir and Persepolis, the specific use of anime with nonfiction remains rare. One of only a handful of true animation auteurs, Oshii, throughout his career, continually has reformulated the uses and meanings of animation, presenting a nuanced and urgent personal world view in a series of changing contexts and with massively popular results. As Oshii states, “My goal is to always make a new kind of movie that nobody has seen before.” Once again, He has definitely succeeded with this genre-bending marvel.

U.S. Premiere. Written by Mamoru Oshii. Photographed by Hisashi Ezura. (72 min, Production I.G.)

Location: Asian Art Museum, Samsung Hall (Space is limited and is on a first-come, first served basis.)
FREE general admission courtesy of Target

Films by Akira Kurosawa
Arguably the most celebrated Japanese filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa had a career that spanned from the Second World War to the early nineties and that stands as a monument of artistic, entertainment, and personal achievement. With the production of Seven Samurai (1954), the most popular and important Japanese film of its time, Kurosawa began a long and fruitful obsession with medieval Japan. Kurosawa pioneered widescreen cinematography in Japan, and his films inspired the “Spaghetti Western” genre in Italy. Kurosawa reinvigorated the samurai film genre in Japan and revitalized the American Western in the process.

2:00 pm
Sanjuro
Japan, 1962, 96 minutes, Black and White, DVD, not rated
Japanese with English subtitles

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Akira Kurosawa’s tightly paced Sanjuro. In this sly companion piece to Yojimbo, the jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan’s evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a “proper” samurai on its ear.

Source: http://www.asianart.org/samurai/films.htm#july5

Location: Asian Art Museum, Samsung Hall (Space is limited and is on a first-come, first served basis.)
FREE general admission courtesy of Target

Films by Akira Kurosawa
Arguably the most celebrated Japanese filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa had a career that spanned from the Second World War to the early nineties and that stands as a monument of artistic, entertainment, and personal achievement. With the production of Seven Samurai (1954), the most popular and important Japanese film of its time, Kurosawa began a long and fruitful obsession with medieval Japan. Kurosawa pioneered widescreen cinematography in Japan, and his films inspired the “Spaghetti Western” genre in Italy. Kurosawa reinvigorated the samurai film genre in Japan and revitalized the American Western in the process.

11:00 am
Yojimbo (The Bodyguard)
Japan, 1961, 110 minutes, Black and White, DVD, not rated
Japanese with English subtitles

The incomparable Toshiro Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa’s visually stunning and darkly comic Yojimbo. To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, wily masterless samurai Sanjuro turns a war between two evil clans to his own advantage. Remade twice, by Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars) and Walter Hill (Last Man Standing), this exhilarating genre-twister remains one of the most influential films ever produced.

Source: http://www.asianart.org/samurai/films.htm#july5