Japanese Masterpiece Collection (Boxset) (Region 3 DVD) (English Subtitled) Japanese movie

Region Coding: Region 3 (Locked)

Starring: 
Nakadai Tatsuya
Hara Setsuko
Baisho Mitsuko
Suzuki Kyoka
Mori Masayuki
Mifune Toshiro
Iwashita Shima
Suzuki Honami
Tamba Tetasuro
Ogata Ken
Mikuni Rentaro
Watanabe Fumio
Mochizuki Yuko
Kurosawa Akira
Zaizen Naomi
Imamura Shohei
Kobayashi Masaki
Oshima Nagisa
Ishida Junichi

Audio Tracks: 
Dolby Digital

Languages: 
Japanese

Subtitles: 
English, Traditional Chinese

Number of DVDs: 
5 discs 

Distributor:
Panorama (HK)

Release Date:
06 Jan 2005

The famous story of the too honest and goodhearted prince, the perverse beauty and the gloomy merchant's son takes place in Hokkaido instead of Petersburg. The beauty toys with the affections of both men, while the prince is also attracted to an upstanding general's daughter...After his international breakthrough and success with Rashomon, Kurosawa updated Dostoyevsky's novel with this minor classic. Following closely the plot of his favorite literary work but in a slavish manner, the Japanese master managed to capture the original's greatness, filtered through his won sensibility.
 

Street Of Love And Hope (1959) a.k.a. A Town Of Love & Hope / Ai to kibo no machi
Director: Oshima Nagisa

A poor boy becomes friends with a rich girl. He has a pigeon which he sells, but since it is a homing pigeon, he can actually sell it over and over again. The bird becomes the symbol of his friendship for the girl as well, but in the end she has her brother shoot and kill it. This directorial debut of Oshima Nagisa immediately estadlished the young filmmaker as the leader of the Japanese New Cinema in sixties. The unsentimental and harsh realistic style was vastly different from the melodramatic tardintional of Shochiku Company, the studio who financed the film, at the time. Oshima suggested that there's are no compromise between the rich and the poor and class distinction are closely linked to criminal tendencies.

24 Hour Playboy
Director: Morita Yoshimitsu

An entertaining and boisterous film by Morita Masamitsu, the director of a series of renowned films including The Family Game, Lost Paradise and Copycat Killers. Nagashima is a playboy who refuses to be tied down by marriage. Suffering from insomnia recently, he is eager to find a glamorous girl who can make him fall asleep. He leaves his tiresome girlfriend Mari, and soon finds himself trapped in dangerous triple liaisons involving two nightclub hostesses and a dewy-eyed girl. When all three of them start pestering him about marriage, Nagashima makes up his mind to flee…Like other realistic works of Morita’s 24-hour Playboy reflects the changing values towards love, sex and marriage in Japan in the early 1980s. 

Harakiri (1962) a.k.a. Seppuku
Director: Kobayashi Masaki

In this grim yet exquisitely composed film, Kobayashi Masaki delves into the world of the 17th-century samurai, examining "the honor in death--and the death of honor" (Time). After an unemployed samurai is forced to commit harakiri before a feudal lord, his father-in-law returns to the scene, seemingly to play out the same agonizing suicide ritual. Kobayashi begins at the story's end, then recounts the narrative as told by the father-in-law. The effect is almost unbearably suspenseful, leading to an explosive climax of supreme defiance and samurai swordplay, erupting from a battle of wills, called bluffs, and hotly defended honour. For connoisseurs of samurai action, Harakiri is not to be missed. 

Vengeance Is Mine (1979) a.k.a. Fukushu suru wa ware ni ari
Director: Imamura Shohei