Gojoe
Gojoe is a 2000 Japanese jidaigeki action film directed by Sogo Ishii. In several English-speaking countries, it was released as Gojoe: Spirit War Chronicle; the film is a martial arts film set in twelfth century Japan about a battle between the Minamoto and Taira clans. Set in 12th-century medieval Japan, the film takes place after the war between the Heike and Genji clans, which concluded in the defeat of the latter. However, lurking at the Gojoe bridge in Kyoto, a mysterious force ravages the lands of the Heike. At the same time, Benkei, a samurai turned Buddhist monk out of repentance for his past crimes, learns from an oracle that a great evil is coming, he receives a divine signal from Acala, represented by a Sankrite inscription on his chest, informing him that he only will be forgiven after slaying the demon of the Gojoe bridge. After borrowing a sacred sword from a yamabushi sect, Benkei sets out to destroy the monster and save his soul. At the scene of one of the battles in Gojoe, Benkei meets a former weaponsmith Tetsukichi who now survives from scavenging armors and swords from battle corpses.
Although skeptical to Benkei's claims and the existence of a demon, Tetsukichi joins him in his quest. They soon discover the demon is in reality a young warrior with a demon mask and extraordinary sword skills, he is Shanao, a former lord of the Genji clan, out for revenge against the Heike clan and wants to destroy all false gods and every single religion. Benkei and Shanao face off, but the monk's sword breaks when his will vacillates due to his reluctance to fight. Turning to Tetsukichi to forge him a new sword to duel Shanao one more time, Benkei will have to overcome his doubts to defeat the evil. Film producer Takenori Sento, who helped produce The Ring horror film series, wanted to create a box office hit by making an action film in the jidaigeki genre; the film was first shown in North America as part of the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was shown at the 2001 Sitges Film Festival; the film was set for an October 2001 theatrical release in Japan. Actor Tadanobu Asano won the award for Best Supporting Actor at the Hochi Film Awards in 2000 for his role in this film and in Taboo.
Variety gave the film a mixed review, stating that "Despite an impressive opening and suitably titanic finale, yarn about various warriors battling one another during the "Dark Ages" is way overlong at 2-1/2 hours and soon palls with its endless succession of sylvan swordplay." The Japan Times compared the final action scene to the "excessive episodes of the "Dragonball Z"" and that the film may "bring in the same kids who made the "Ring" films an event—but it's not going to make anyone forget "Shichinin no Samurai." Kurosawa's masterpiece delivers the essence of battle with gut-wrenching authority. Film4 gave the film a positive review, stating that "What it lacks in humour, Gojoe more than makes up for in its sheer, unrelenting intensity, something which few other directors would be able to sustain over so long a duration." Gojoe on IMDb
Noise rock
Noise rock is a noise-oriented style of experimental rock that spun off from punk rock in the 1980s. Drawing on movements such as minimalism, industrial music, New York hardcore, artists indulge in extreme levels of distortion through the use of electric guitars and, less electronic instrumentation, either to provide percussive sounds or to contribute to the overall arrangement; some groups are tied to song structures, such as Sonic Youth. Although they are not representative of the entire genre, they helped popularize noise rock among alternative rock audiences by incorporating melodies into their droning textures of sound, which set a template that numerous other groups followed. Noise rock fuses rock to noise with recognizable "rock" instrumentation, but with greater use of distortion and electronic effects, varying degrees of atonality and white noise. One notable band of this genre is Sonic Youth who took inspiration from the no wave composers Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham. Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore has stated: "Noise has taken the place of punk rock.
People who play noise have no real aspirations to being part of the mainstream culture. Punk has been co-opted, this subterranean noise music and the avant-garde folk scene have replaced it." While the music had been around for some time, the term "noise rock" was coined in the 1980s to describe an offshoot of punk groups with an abrasive approach. An archetypal album is the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat. Treblezine's Joe Gross credits the "cult classic" with being the first noise rock album, accordingly, "perhaps it’s an obvious starting point, but it’s the starting point. Period."While noise rock has never had any mainstream popularity, the raw and feedback-intensive sound of some noise rock bands had an influence on grunge. Among them are Wisconsin's Killdozer, most notably San Francisco's Flipper, a band known for its slowed-down and murky "noise punk"; the Butthole Surfers' mix of punk, heavy metal and noise rock was a major influence on the early work of Soundgarden. Starting in the 1990s, noise punk developed as a form of party music, with the band Lightning Bolt serving as key players in the 2000s noise punk scene in Providence, Rhode Island.
List of noise rock bands List of noise musicians
Industrial music
Industrial music is a genre of experimental music which draws on harsh, transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. AllMusic defines industrial music as the "most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music", "initially a blend of avant-garde electronics experiments and punk provocation"; the term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by members of Throbbing Gristle and Monte Cazazza. While the genre name originated with Throbbing Gristle's emergence in the United Kingdom, concentrations of artists and labels vital to the genre emerged in Chicago; the first industrial artists experimented with noise and aesthetically controversial topics and visually, such as fascism, sexual perversion, the occult. Prominent industrial musicians include Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazazza, SPK, Boyd Rice, Cabaret Voltaire, Z'EV. On Throbbing Gristle's 1977 debut album The Second Annual Report, they coined the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". Chicago-based independent label Wax Trax Records featured a heavy roster of industrial music acts.
The precursors that influenced the development of the genre included acts such as electronic music group Kraftwerk, experimental rock acts such as Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa, psychedelic rock artists such as Jimi Hendrix, composers such as John Cage. Musicians cite writers such as William S. Burroughs, philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche as influences. While the term was self-applied by a small coterie of groups and individuals associated with Industrial Records in the late 1970s, it was broadened to include artists influenced by the original movement or using an "industrial" aesthetic. A few years in the 1980s, artists on Chicago-based Wax Trax Records such as Front 242, KMFDM, Front Line Assembly and Sister Machine Gun gained prominence on the industrial music scene. Over time, the genre's influence blended with styles including ambient and rock. Electro-industrial music is a primary subgenre; the two other most notable hybrid genres are industrial rock and industrial metal, which include bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, both of which released platinum-selling albums in the 1990s.
These distinct genres are referred to as industrial. Industrial music drew from a broad range of predecessors. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the genre was first named in 1942 when The Musical Quarterly called Dmitri Shostakovich's 1927 Symphony No. 2 "the high tide of'industrial music'." In 1972 The New York Times described works by Ferde Grofé as a part of "his'industrial music' genre called on such instruments as four pairs of shoes, two brooms, a locomotive bell, a pneumatric drill and a compressed-air tank". Though these compositions are not directly tied to what the genre would become, they are early examples of music designed to mimic machinery noise and factory atmosphere. In his book Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK, Alexei Monroe argues that Kraftwerk were significant in the development of industrial music, as the "first successful artists to incorporate representations of industrial sounds into nonacademic electronic music." Industrial music was created by using mechanical and electric machinery, advanced synthesizers and electronic percussion as the technology developed.
Monroe argues for Suicide as an influential contemporary of the industrial musicians. Groups cited as inspirational by the founders of industrial music include The Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Martin Denny. Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle had a cassette library including recordings by the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Charles Manson, William S. Burroughs. P-Orridge credited 1960s rock such as The Doors, Pearls Before Swine, The Fugs, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa in a 1979 interview. Chris Carter enjoyed and found inspiration in Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream. Boyd Rice was influenced by the music of tiki culture. Z'EV cited Christopher Tree, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Tim Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Captain Beefheart, among others together with Tibetan, Javanese and African music as influential in his artistic life. Cabaret Voltaire cited Roxy Music as their initial forerunners, as well as Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express. Cabaret Voltaire recorded pieces reminiscent of musique concrète and composers such as Morton Subotnick.
Nurse with Wound cited a long list of obscure free improvisation and Krautrock as recommended listening. 23 Skidoo borrowed from Fela Kuti and Miles Davis's On the Corner. Many industrial groups, including Einstürzende Neubauten, took inspiration from world music. Many of the initial industrial musicians preferred to cite artists or thinkers, rather than musicians, as their inspiration. Simon Reynolds declares that "Being a Throbbing Gristle fan was like enrolling in a university course of cultural extremism." John Cage was an initial inspiration for Throbbing Gristle. SPK appreciated Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze. Cabaret Voltaire took conceptual cues from Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, Tristan Tzara. Whitehouse and Nurse with Wound dedicated some of their work to the Marquis de Sade. Another influence on the industrial aesthetic was Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Pitchfork Music cites this album as "inspiring, in part, much of the contemporary avant-garde music scene—noise, in particular."
The album consists of g
Burst City
Burst City is a Japanese dystopian punk rock musical / action film. Released in 1982, the film was directed by Sogo Ishii. A showcase for various specific punk rock bands of the time, such as The Roosters, The Rockers, The Stalin, the film is purely demonstrative of the culture and attitude of the punk rock community of Japan in the mid-to-late 1970s and the early 1980s, is considered a defining film of that subculture; the plot is not complex, as much of the action and drama of the film relies on musical interludes, character interactions, commentary on the class system in the film's fictional universe. What plot there is follows two different threads. In the first, residents in a dystopia future attempt to rebel against the construction of a nuclear power plant in their part of Tokyo, they race cars and brawl to the music of The Rockers and The Stalin. In the second, a small mute and his hard-core friend ride their bikes around the city hunting down the person who murdered the mute's brother.
The two threads combine when the bikers meet the power plant construction workers and discover that the oppressive businessman who runs the power plant is the same man they've been searching for. The bikers and punks all band together to take on the businessman and his yakuza buddies; the "battle police" arrive, everything erupts into violence. Ishii created Burst City right in the middle of the punk movement in Japan, many contemporary punk musicians took on leading acting roles in the film, as well as performing songs in the film. Ishii wanted to feature musicians from all three of the major punk hubs in Japan: The Stalin were from Tokyo, Machizo Machida was from Kansai, The Roosters and the Rockers were from Kyushu; the cast and crew lived on the post-apocalyptic set. To give the film a fresh, revolutionary feel, Ishii experimented with a lot of different techniques; the editing style is fast and chaotic, some scenes combine a mix of undercranked shots and regular speed shots with striking results.
Musical numbers and scenes of performers getting ready backstage are shot in a documentary style. The backgrounds are populated with thousands of extras in eccentric costumes and hairstyles, all captured in grainy 16mm film; the film was distributed by the Toei studio. It was released on Region 1 DVD by Discotek in June 2006, on Bluray in January 2016 by Toei; the film is regarded among critics and audiences alike. Its hyperkinetic, unrelentingly high energy style was wildly different from other films of the period and innovative; the film is regarded for being purely inspired from music, the way the punk aesthetic and music exerts its influence over every element and character in the film. It has been called one of the "starting points in contemporary Japanese cinema", along with Ishii's own Shuffle, Panic in High School, Crazy Thunder Road. It's debatable. Todd Brown of ScreenAnarchy argued that "while Burst City is a watershed film, it stands up better as a cultural document than as a film, per se," but Simon Abrams wrote on RogerEbert.com that the director "perfectly captures his subjects' prickly, defiant attitude, making Burst City a defiant reaction to nuclear proliferation."
The Burst City original soundtrack was released by SEE SAW on March 5, 1982. Japanese cyberpunk Cyberpunk Punk film Burst City on IMDb Burst City at AllMovie
Panic High School
Panic High School known as High School Big Panic and Panic in High School, is a 1978 Japanese youth suspense action film directed by Sōgo Ishii and Yukihiro Sawada. The film is a remake of a film of the same name released the year before and directed by Ishii, it was released in Japan on August 19, 1978. Atsuko Asano Hideaki Esumi Minoru Uchida Shigeru Yamamoto On Midnight Eye, Nicholas Rucka calls it "a funky late 70s film with a knock-out soundtrack, AWOL snap zooms, more shrieks than should rightly be in anything but a horror movie." Panic High School on IMDb Panic High School at Movie Walker Panic High School at KINENOTE
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
Masakatsu Funaki
Masaharu Funaki is a Japanese actor, mixed martial artist and professional wrestler known professionally as Masakatsu Funaki, who has wrestled in All Japan Pro Wrestling, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, Newborn UWF, Wrestle-1. He is the co-founder of Pancrase, one of the first mixed martial arts organizations and non-rehearsed shoot wrestling promotions. Funaki was Pancrase's biggest star. Not only the organization's co-founder and most popular fighter, Funaki was one of Pancrase's most successful fighters to date, scoring submission victories over numerous MMA champions such as Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock, Semmy Schilt, Guy Mezger, Yuki Kondo, Minoru Suzuki, Bas Rutten through the course of his Pancrase career, he is the only fighter in mixed martial arts to hold wins over both Shamrock brothers and Bas Rutten, was the first man to win the King of Pancrase title twice. Funaki is considered to be one of the greatest Japanese fighters in mixed martial arts history. Sherdog.com ranked him as the #1 mixed martial artist in the world for the years 1996 and 1997, had him ranked as a top 4 pound for pound fighter from 1993 to 1998.
The son of a movie theater owner, Masaharu Funaki was exposed to martial arts films at an early age. He idolized Bruce Lee above all others, but eagerly watched the films of Sammo Hung and Sonny Chiba, his father would abandon young Funaki and his family. Instead of entering high school, he applied to New Japan Pro-Wrestling, who sent him to the New Japan dojo, he was in the same class as Keiichi Yamada, Shinya Hashimoto, Minoru Suzuki, Masahiro Chono, Chris Benoit. The New Japan Dojo had a reputation for being harsh on its trainees, both mentally and physically, with the intent of only graduating the best of each class. However, Funaki stunned the New Japan trainers with his athleticism and natural talent for submission grappling. Along with the former Olympic alternate Minoru Suzuki, Funaki formed a strong bond with the dojo's head grappling instructor, Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Funaki debuted as a junior heavyweight at the age of 15. After debuting for New Japan in a losing effort against three-year veteran Tatsutoshi Goto, Funaki did not receive a push from the promotion, stuck in the junior heavyweight division during a time when NJPW owner Antonio Inoki decided to shift the focus of the company towards the heavyweight division.
Funaki did, have many memorable matches with Naoki Sano and Keiichi Yamada and became the first person to take the Shooting Star Press from Yamada. In 1988, he was sent on a learning excursion to Europe, competing in the Catch Wrestling Association in Austria and Germany and for All Star Wrestling in England; when New Japan top draw Akira Maeda became so frustrated with backstage politics that he shoot kicked Riki Choshu and broke his eye socket, was subsequently suspended for refusing to go on an excursion to Mexico, Maeda left NJPW to form the Newborn UWF promotion. Funaki, seeing an opportunity to showcase his talents, wanted to follow. Maeda negotiated the acquisition of Funaki's contract, along the contracts of friend Minoru Suzuki and mentor Yoshiaki Fujiwara for an undisclosed amount of money. In Newborn UWF, Funaki became a top draw for the promotion acting as a nemesis to Akira Maeda; when Newborn UWF folded in December 1990, Funaki decided to sign with mentor Fujiwara's new Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi promotion.
Funaki left PWFG in 1993 to form the mixed martial arts promotion Pancrase. Funaki's MMA career began. Funaki went on to defeat Bas Rutten, Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock, Minoru Suzuki, Guy Mezger, among others. Frank Shamrock said, "Funaki was like a mad scientist, he took the idea of submissions to an higher level than the rest of the Japanese contingent. He had this insatiable desire to push his body harder, and as an entertainer he understood the need to entertain."This realization for the need to entertain resulted in Funaki "carrying" some of their opponents during fights. In essence, in order to entertain the crowd and Suzuki would give their opponents opportunities to create drama before finishing them off. Josh Barnett said, "when you're that good, you can have a guy thinking he's doing so much better than he expected and have no idea that they're just letting you last like a cat playing with a mouse." Frank Shamrock added, "I know for a fact those guys were light years ahead of everyone else, they were so good that they would go towards entertainment before they finished a match."
However, this did backfire on Funaki on at least one occasion. In a match against Jason DeLucia, Funaki allowed Delucia to catch him in a kneebar in order to create drama and planned on using a rope escape once Delucia had the submission locked in. Funaki mistakenly allowed himself to get too far from the ropes and was forced to tap out. Funaki debuted in the main event of Pancrase's first show, taking on apprentice and training partner Ken Shamrock. Although Funaki led the pace of the match earlier with strikes, Shamrock captured his back, took him down and submitted him with an
