| smoke & mirrors |
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| written by cammelltoe |
January 9, 2006 - 1:41 PM PST |
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1 out of 3 members found this review helpful
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| Would have given this one a '10' if i didn't see it on the heels of seeing 'harakiri' and 'samurai rebellion', both of which were also directed by kobayashi,and both of which have a much more resonant emotional pull, due in a large part to great central performances--- from Tatsuya Nakadi and Toshiro Mifune, respectively. If you haven't seen those two films, i urge you to. the pleasures of 'kwaidon' are less visceral and more, uh, etheral, for lack of a better word. lush pictoral beauty combined with an awesomely discordant sound design is what's on the menu, offering a consistently eerie, nightmarish atmosphere. however, the plot and character work is not edge-of-your-seat stuff. |
| Beautiful Horror |
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| written by Chibisuke |
April 5, 2004 - 10:33 AM PDT |
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7 out of 9 members found this review helpful
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| Kwaidan is a series of Japanese folk tales for the silver screen. I found it to have been done really well for it's time. Especially when it came to wide shots. I think my favorite story in here is "The Woman of the Snow". I found a lot of the background work to beautiful yet mezmerizing. The story itself is a good one to teach the viewer to keep promises made. My second favorite was "The Black Hair". This one kinda freaked me out since I have somewhat of a phobia towards mounds of long hair (if anyone has read the mangas "Tomie 1 & 2" by Junji Ito you know what I mean). This story is very good at proving the point of "you don't know what you've got until it's gone". My third favorite was "Hoichi the Earless" for the fact that it had a history lesson within the tale. But more than that I found the costumes and the overall production of the story to be done beautifully...for a ghost story that is. Overall these three out of the five stories were very much worth the watch. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. :o) |
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