Bushido Man (Takanori Tsujimoto!!!) (2013)

[HungFist]

Twitch review: "Bushido Man will restore your faith in action cinema."
- http://twitchfilm.com/2013/07/fantasia- ... -more.html

Brief interview:
http://www.soundonsight.org/fantasia-fi ... shido-man/

and in case you missed it before, my review of the film from last February is here

[HungFist]

More reviews:

"Some of the most impressive fight sequences in recent memory."
- http://iconsoffright.com/2013/07/30/fan ... shido-man/

"Reinvents itself from start to finish with the martial arts battles"
- http://www.soundonsight.org/fantasia-fi ... shido-man/

"Sonomura stages some epic mano-a-mano showdowns"
- http://www.libertasfilmmagazine.com/lfm ... -festival/

"A loving celebration of martial arts films and a great martial arts film in its own right"
- http://badassdigest.com/2013/08/06/fant ... um=twitter

"Savory good time"
- http://www.isugoi.com/bushido-man-review/

"Full of real fighting spirit"
- http://www.flixist.com/fantasia-review- ... 6160.phtml

"Funny, exciting and colourful"
- http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the- ... 72.article

[HungFist]

R2J DVD ANNOUNCED! 2013/11/02
- http://www.allcinema.net/prog/show_dvd. ... sid=896602

[HungFist]

[HungFist]

Here's a brief look at the Bushido Man R2J DVD

As suspected before, no subs. Extras are limited to a 15 min film festival feature (Canada) and trailer. The biggest problem with the disc is the encode. There's a crazy amount of compression artifacts in some scenes. Now, the film was shot on very modest equipment, but I don't recall that many artifacts when I first saw the film in Yubari. I could be mistaken and maybe this is the best the film is ever gonna look on home video, but I'd love to see a foreign Blu-Ray. Other than artifacts, this is how the film is supposed to look like.

Briefly browsing through the fights I still stand behind my earlier review. There's a lot of fun to be had here, with some jaw dropping fights like straight out of a 1980's Hong Kong film. Indeed, the actors are even playing their roles in Hong Kong mode (read: not acting very well). Camerawork and editing is also quite good, similar to director Tsujimoto's earlier film Bloody Battle. The film's biggest problem is when it goes to humour/parody mode in a few scenes after the halfway. Marc Walcow especially - I love the man and what he's done for Japanese cinema, but please God don't let him in front of the camera again. A few of the fights also go into the joke territory, but that can be forgiven as there are a total of 8 fights in 87 minutes, and most of them are long (6-10 minutes).

Fight index:
1. Mitsuki Koga vs. Kensuke Somomura (Kung Fu Master). Pure gold. A flashback to Hong Kong kung fu cinema. 6 min.
2. Mitsuki Koga vs. Naohiro Kawamoto (Bojutsu Master). Another excellent Hong Kong style fight. 4 min.
3. Mitsuki Koga vs. Masaki Suzumura (Nunchuku Master). Don't get your hopes up for this. 1 min.
4. Mitsuki Koga vs. Kazuki Tsujimoto (Blind Samurai). Moody swordfight with samurai philosophy. 8 min.
5. Mitsuki Koga vs. Masanori Mimoto (Knife Master). Fast paced and brutal fight, quite good actually. 7 min.
6. Mitsuki Koga vs. Kentaro Shimazu (Gun Master). This is a bit of a comedy and trick fight, a let down. 3 min.
7. Miki Mizuno vs. Marc Walcow and gang (Gun-fu). Despite some decent action, this is embarrasing post-modernism. 3 min.
8. Mitsuki Koga vs. Final Opponent (kung-fu, swordfight, nunchuku, gun-fu): Imagine Story of Ricky as a superbly choreographed martial arts film. Pure jaw dropping fighting insanity. 8 min.

DVD screencaps
















edit: two larger caps to highlight the worst compression problems:
upload/HungFist/bushidoa1.png
upload/HungFist/bushidoa2.png

[HungFist]

Great! US BD coming June 10th from Shout Factory!
- https://www.shoutfactory.com/product/bu ... -battles-0
(via Kung Fu Bob)

The R2J encode is crap, crap, crap! Gonna get the Shout Blu now.