One Cut of the Dead

Man, how do you talk about this film?  One Cut of the Dead is a Japanese movie from 2017, which is basically about a film crew doing a zombie movie in an interesting location, who suddenly find themselves under attack from real zombies. An even bigger problem is that this seems to be how the film’s director wants it!

The movie was written and directed by Shin’ichirō Ueda, and was made for an incredibly low budget (around $25,000) and over time ended up making something like a thousand times its budget in revenue.

Spoilers ahead (Sort of, anyway)

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes

It was way back in 2006 that I was on an international flight heading toward the United States where I first came across a movie which quickly became one of my favorites–my absolute favorite Japanese slapstick time travel comedy, and one of the most talked about on this blog: Summer Time Machine Blues, directed by Katsuyuki Motohiro and written by Makoto Ueda (see here or here, for example).

Now, thanks to another blog I follow here, I’ve became aware of another project that is also written by Ueda, and is a clear winner for my second favorite Japanese time travel comedy–Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes. It doesn’t have quite the charm of the earlier project, but boy does it come close.

Spoilers ahead!

The Hidden Fortress [50 Films Older Than Me #10]

Just lately, it was my birthday! And to add to all the real life goals and challenges that that brings, I’ve created at least one as it relates to movies and this blog–watch a film I’ve never seen before which came out in each year of the fifty years before I was born, and then write a bit about it.  This is Post #10.

Spirited Away [50 New-Old Movies for the 51st Year #8]

A couple of months ago, I turned 50 years old!  And to add to all the real life goals and challenges that that brings, I’ve created at least one as it relates to movies and this blog–watch a film I’ve never seen before which cam out in each year of my life (thus the “Old-New” terminology), and then write a bit about it.  This is Post #8.  Spoilers ahead.  

Cafe Funiculi Funicula

For the third time, I have found myself drawn to a Japanese time travel movie while on the plane.  First, it was Summer Time Machine Blues, way back in 2006.  Then it was Orange, in 2016.  Now, it’s Cafe Funiculi Funicula, a melodramatic, sentimental supernatural drama about time traveling coffee.  It’s not my favorite movie, but it was emotional and interesting, and I think it’s sealed the deal for me on Japanese time travel movies–I’m going to be checking for them on every plane ride I take from now on.

Some spoilers here.

Weekly Geeky Question #6: Japanese Science Fiction Slapstick Comedy…the Sequel!

Every week in 2018, the plan is that my friend Rod is going to ask me some geeky question that will answer in a post. This week is Week #6, and the question has to do with one of my favorite movies:  Summer Time Machine Blues.

What would the theoretical sequel to Summer Time Machine Blues be about?

47 Great Movie Moments #23 – Summer Time Machine Blues (part 2)

Continuing with this series of 47 moments in film that I love (Why 47?), today we hit #23, as I mentioned yesterday, this is again going to be about Summer Time Machine Blue, a favorite film of mine that I’ve written about a lot.  It’s the focus of this week’s Weekly Geeky Question, and so I thought it was time to cover two of my favorite movie moments which are found in this film.  Amusingly enough, the two moments, even though they come from very different parts of the movie (one near the start and the other near the end), actually both cover roughly the same event!

And as I mentioned last time, because I’ve just done a whole bunch of screenshots for my other posts, I thought I’d use them here to better visualize the moments I want to talk about.

47 Great Movie Moments #22 – Summer Time Machine Blues (part 1)

Continuing with this series of 47 moments in film that I love (Why 47?), today we hit #22.  This week we’re going to be talking a lot about Summer Time Machine Blues, a favorite film of mine from 2005.  It’s the focus of our Weekly Geeky Question, and I just posted a detailed plot summary in order to make sense out the Question I’ll be posting in a couple of days.

Anyway, I wanted to feature the movie here a couple of times to highlight two of my favorite moments, so it felt appropriate to do it now.  

Incidentally, because I’ve just done a whole bunch of screenshots for my other posts, I thought I’d use them here to better visualize the moments I want to talk about.

Summer Time Machine Blues – a primer in prep of this week’s Geeky Question

This week’s forthcoming Weekly Geeky Question is all about one of my favorite movies, Summer Time Machine Blues.  The question that is coming, like some of the previous ones, plums the depths of my geekiness in a way that makes me feel compelled to write a “pre-post”.  In this case, it’s to give a fairly clear plot breakdown of the film,

The purpose of the article is not to review the movie, I’ve done that elsewhere, including here.  But rather, I just want to give a fairly detailed plot breakdown of the movie, because I know most people will never have seen it, and and the answer I’ll soon be posting won’t really make a lot of sense if you don’t know this film.

So, for anyone interested, here is a Spoiler-filled point by point overview of what happens in Summer Time Machine Blues, directed by Katsuyuki Motohiro.

47 Movie Blogs #16 – Epic Foreshadowing / Reveal Moments

Today’s topic is to do with those great moments where something is revealed, and it’s surprising but also satisfying, because you can immediately see that the story “played fair”.  This plot twist hasn’t come completely out of the blue, but rather was set up in a way that you noticed, but didn’t quite put together.