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| Unchain - Movie Club 2018 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 3 2018, 08:31 PM (284 Views) | |
| Lencho of the Apes | Feb 3 2018, 08:31 PM Post #1 |
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Let's go do some crimes
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What did y'all think of Unchain, then? It would be interesting if there were a trend in Japan toward feature-length dockos about private-sector people who wouldn't otherwise be visible to a broad public. I tended to watch it by mentally translating everything I saw onscreen into what I understood to be the analogous social stratum in western-hemisphere culture, doing the comparison/contrast thing to keep myself oriented, but I don't think that helped me toward any meaningful insights. Feeding out crumbs of information about the guys' mental-health issues as a structural device to generate suspense: maybe exploitative and not-so-cool, I wouldn't be eager to defend that practice in a debate. Likewise, I wouldn't want to defend the filmmakers' practice of staging reunions between the characters for the sake of something potentially juicy that they might get on their cameras. So... it told me a little bit about street-level sports/martial arts culture in Osaka, but that's not something it ever would have occurred to me to be curious aabout. What's y'all's take on this? If anyone's really into the sports-doc-boxing thing, I have a documentary about the odd little cluster of world-champion flyweights that came from the town of Merida, Yucatan... Hey, I remember BrotherDeacon was assembling a boxing watchlist at some point; maybe we can get him in here for this one. Edited by Lencho of the Apes, Feb 4 2018, 12:30 AM.
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| "The four cardinal points of the compass? In reality, there are only three: North and South." | |
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| josiahmorgan11 | Feb 3 2018, 09:07 PM Post #2 |
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g legs' sweetheart
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A more vibrant and exciting activity? not really. maybe someone else does. maybe the thread itself doesn't seem too vibrant or exciting but I'm actually just plainly quite enjoying seeing some films that I've never even heard about before. I thought Unchain was good, probably my fav of the ones we've seen so far, but I don't have any answers to your questions, Lencho, especiallyt eh morality of building a doc in sch a way. |
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| kanafani | Feb 3 2018, 11:57 PM Post #3 |
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The exploitation aspects of unchain did leave me feeling sort of uneasy and unclean, like I was watching things that should have remained private, or at least not shown that way. The movie fails (or maybe it does not even attempt) to lend greater dignity to this sorry bunch. It sticks to reality tv show asthetics and strategies. I did not feel much sympathy for these dudes, and I was not much moved by their pain. There is not enough mystery here, not enough to unsettle me and connect back to me personally and to the universe at large. The characters come out flat and ‘uncinematic’. Most of us are uncinematic, I guess, but a more thoughtful filmmaker would have lent more depth to these guys. I kept thinking of a far superior documentary that also centers on a troubled individual, but with a much more vibrant and devastating effect: Stevie by Steve james. My favorite parts of unchain are the long, uncut fight scenes. They’re messy and sad and unheroic, and they communicate something about the brokenness and emptiness at the center of these people’s lives that the rest of the movie fails to do.
Edited by kanafani, Feb 4 2018, 12:00 AM.
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| letterboxd | |
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| Holymanm | Feb 4 2018, 10:58 AM Post #4 |
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moats n groats
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man i've had the exact opposite experience with it... each time i've watched it it's touched me on the deepest level, and i've felt for the characters like they were my own family. i do tend to like inordinately movies - especially japanese movies - about outcasts and fuck-ups and people in general with crippling senses of their own deficiencies though... ![]() not enough, not enough, not enough, not enough |
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| Holymanm | Feb 4 2018, 11:05 AM Post #5 |
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moats n groats
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regarding possible exploitation through making the movie - my gut reaction is that it's just too important and too beautiful a story not to be told. i know that sounds a bit ludicrous because no one else likes the movie though... (exaggerating)but really, i think all you can ask is if the characters in it are - were - happy about the movie being made. i really wouldn't imagine they'd have any big problems with it. unchain himself clearly thrives on love and friendship and acceptance, and the worst one can really say about how they treated him in the movie is that they made him reunite with his old friends and laugh about the good old days...? i just never would've thought of this movie that hardly anyone will ever even see (until i picked it here, sorry) could really be an opportunistic violation of privacy or anything. toyoda himself, as a person, is both extremely sympathetic, as i am, toward these types of people, and also sort of one of these people himself. he's no slick hollywood producer; he's a young and extremely talented fuck-up who made a few beautiful, moving films and then sort of threw it away and got japanese-blacklisted on a marijuana arrest, and apart from a few indie sort of movies he's scarcely been heard from since, some 10 years later. (i think he's making a comeback with a ryuhei matsuda movie this year though!!!) but my point being, it's really not a case of someone swooping in and exploiting these people - the movie itself is made by one of these people, who's an old friend of the subjects themselves. no? |
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| nrh | Feb 4 2018, 04:33 PM Post #6 |
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headache
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love toshiyaki toyoda's first couple films. think this one makes much more sense after you've seen blue spring and 9 souls. edit - should say in addition to his legal problems mid-2000s saw dramatic financial issues in the japanese film industry. a lot of very promising careers were stalled, and many directors who had been making very personal auteur driven work ended up spending a decade or so doing tv and commercial work. Edited by nrh, Feb 4 2018, 04:36 PM.
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| mesnalty | Feb 4 2018, 05:08 PM Post #7 |
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g legs' flame
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Yeah, I didn't get the sense that Toyoda was being exploitative - Unchain and the other guys seemed like willing co-constructors of the film. |
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| Holymanm | Feb 5 2018, 02:04 AM Post #8 |
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moats n groats
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yay! blue spring is in my top 10 of all time, and is the ultimate embodiment of my taste in cinema - if i had to pick one movie ever made to exemplify my taste, it'd be that. i don't think it would go over very well here though so yeah that's why i am so excited for a toyoda-matsuda reunion! Nakimushi Shottan no Kiseki (2018) (and pornostar and the blood of rebirth and others are also good good) and i'd never thought about it or learned much about it, but that might make sense, regarding the industry. what happened to k. ishii? he made a whole bundle of elaborately creative flicks and then mostly just disappeared |
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| Holymanm | Feb 8 2018, 02:14 PM Post #9 |
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moats n groats
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forgot to respond to this - definitely would be interested!
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| Mario Gaborovic | Feb 8 2018, 02:15 PM Post #10 |
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g legs' wife's lover
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Please reupload it again, the link is dead. How about 1fichier for a change? It stays there for months.
Edited by Mario Gaborovic, Feb 8 2018, 02:16 PM.
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| Holymanm | Feb 8 2018, 03:00 PM Post #11 |
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moats n groats
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can someone upload it again please...? i just moved and i don't have access to it anymore, or i would re-up it |
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| javierquintero | Feb 8 2018, 03:46 PM Post #12 |
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Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock. - Walter Benjamin
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I just did it. Check the resources folder |
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| Lencho of the Apes | Feb 8 2018, 03:58 PM Post #13 |
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Let's go do some crimes
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Link posted. |
| "The four cardinal points of the compass? In reality, there are only three: North and South." | |
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| Holymanm | Feb 9 2018, 12:23 PM Post #14 |
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moats n groats
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thank you to both!!
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| Brotherdeacon | Feb 13 2018, 12:05 AM Post #15 |
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It conjures willy-nilly
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I've never seen a Toshiyaki Toyoda film before Unchain (2000)--I believe this is the only doc he made. But, I really enjoyed some of the film a lot. A measure of my interest had to do with the specifics of Unchain (the eponymous protagonist) and his co-hort: the boxing scenes, the family ties, the casual street backgrounds etc, but mostly it was a fusion of director's style and the subjects' guilelessness. I don't think it jumped on easy targets as its only interest: violence, testosterone, gym rat loyalty, losers versus winners, etc. There was something less traditional, almost benign and unsensational as both a method and tone. For lack of a better way of expression, it felt as if the film maker was showing respect, not only to these boxers, but to everyone else in Osaka--even those we only see in a quick cut close-up as they puff on a cigarette or stare off into space with a sense of homelessness and despair about them. Our motley crew is embedded in a larger world than their friendship, or ambition, or psychiatric profiles. They are alive and have chosen to box or drink together of pour yellow paint on their heads and start a ruckus, but I never had the impression that their lives were any more noteworthy than anyone's life in our contemporaneous neighborhood, city, country, globe. I have a difficult time explaining the most affective region of the film, but it felt like a fresh, new voice--slightly amiss from a more traditional treatment. The use of archive film from the different bouts, the length of time we spent on each fight, the non-professional (sic) viewpoints or camera movement. Somehow it all seemed too important for a standard filmic distance of technical virtuosity or attempted virtuosity. It's as if the director incorporated the boxing subjects into the decision making (whether real or imagined). The great doc Soyanara CP by Kazuo Hara from the early 70s comes to mind, but without such a dramatic and gut-wrenching impact. Instead, Unchain seemed content with a normalcy even of our lead character's psychotic explosions and glimpses of his inner-world. Could be you, could be me. No particular judgment except for an overall respect and some insight into the interior and physical cost of living in our world, especially in chasing dreams, in falling down, in getting back up as simple reaction or a deep philosophy. I'll look for others by Toyoda, seems like a young Turk I'd best catch up on. Edited by Brotherdeacon, Feb 13 2018, 07:49 AM.
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| “Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us. “ | |
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| Holymanm | Feb 16 2018, 09:07 PM Post #16 |
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moats n groats
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^ 100% absolutely watch Blue Spring! I'm at this gym in Madrid right now and they're playing a lame contemporary honky tonk dance version of Unchain My Heart and it is really not pumping me up... but it is making me think of Unchain Kaji and his bravery, so now I'm pretty pumped! |
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(exaggerating)
so yeah that's why i am so excited for a toyoda-matsuda reunion!

12:42 AM Jul 11