Toshiaki Toyoda

  • Toshiaki Toyoda – Kûchû teien AKA Hanging Garden (2005)

    2001-2010DramaJapanToshiaki Toyoda

    A family struggling to live together even with the outrageous behaviors from each family members.Read More »

  • Toshiaki Toyoda – Planetist (2018)

    2011-2020DocumentaryJapanToshiaki Toyoda

    A mysterious and wondrous islands surrounded by an unparalleled natural environment exists in Tokyo Prefecture that is referred to as the Galapagos of the East. They are called the Ogasawara Islands. A man lives on one of these islands. He is 65-year-old Miyagawa Noritsugu, a legendary surfer–a tarzan of the sea–who established the world’s first swimming-with-dolphins tour. Artists of every type are summoned to the island and shown around by Miyagawa. The imaginative power of these intensely perceptive individuals is drawn out by this tour and a never-before-seen Ogasawara comes to life. In order to chronicle these islands, director Toyoda Toshiaki moved to Ogasawara and took 5 years to complete this documentary. The film’s pièce de résistance are the scenes didgeridoo instrumentalist Goma, actors Kubozuka Yosuke and Shibukawa Kiyohiko, drummer Nakamura Tatsuya, and guitarist Yamaji Kazuhide are performing out among majestic natural surroundings.Read More »

  • Toshiaki Toyoda – Senritsu seshimeyo AKA Shiver (2021)

    2021-2030ArthouseDocumentaryJapanToshiaki Toyoda

    Quote:
    Essentially a series of vignettes that present an impressive combination of image and sound, “Shiver” seems to focus on concepts as tradition, through a distinct jidai-geki approach, nature and particularly water, as exhibited in the waves of the sea and the flow of the waterfalls, and the human body as connected to the playing of different percussion instruments. More intensely though, Toshiaki Toyoda focuses on the ways music is formed from a vibration that becomes a sound, that becomes a rhythm, that eventually becomes a piece of music.Read More »

  • Toshiaki Toyoda – Go Seppuku Yourselves (2021)

    Toshiaki Toyoda2021-2030DramaJapanShort Film

    Completing Toshiaki Toyoda’s politically urgent Resurrection Trilogy following Wolf’s Calling (2019) and The Day of Destruction (2020), this electrifying short follows a man tasked with assisting in the ritual suicide of a samurai who won’t die without condemning the corrupt powers that be.Read More »

  • Toshiaki Toyoda – Nakimushi Shottan No Kiseki AKA The Miracle Of Crybaby Shottan (2018)

    Toshiaki Toyoda2011-2020AsianDramaJapan

    Toshiaki Toyoda takes on the true story of Shogi (Japanese chess) player Shoji “Shottan” Segawa. Despite consistent dedication, Shottan (Ryuhei Matsuda) fails to go professional by the time he’s 26, permanently forfeiting his chance according to the game’s strict rules. When he makes a name for himself as an amateur years later, however, he makes an unprecedented bid to go professional at 35 and forever changes the game. Informed by Toyoda’s personal Shogi experience (he trained to go professional as an adolescent), this star-studded biopic of late-blooming self-realization is an inspirational study of perseverance against all odds.Read More »

  • Toshiaki Toyoda – Wolf’s Calling (2019)

    2011-2020JapanShort FilmToshiaki Toyoda

    Synopsis
    A girl finds an old handgun in her attic and the symbolic object conjures a mystical scene of samurai gathering within the moss-grown location of Kasosan Shrine in Tochigi Prefecture.Read More »

  • Toshiaki Toyoda – Hakai no Hi AKA The Day of Destruction (2020)

    2011-2020DramaHorrorJapanToshiaki Toyoda

    Seven years ago, a mysterious monster was found deep in a rural coal mine. Since then, rumors of a plague spread through the small town, and people experience an unexplainable mental illness.Read More »

  • Toshiaki Toyoda – Poruno sutâ AKA Pornostar (1998)

    1991-2000CrimeCultJapanToshiaki Toyoda

    Quote:
    A young and almost autistic-acting man arrives in Tokyo and wanders the streets, running afoul of some Yakuza and proving to be more than he appears to be. The young man speaks very little and his favorite phrase seems to be “not needed” and that’s generally in reference to Yakuza. He is taken into this gang and proves that he’s not well balanced by shooting a couple of drug dealers and then makes a pin cushion out of a rival gang leader, so he’s revered by those that he seems to hate, although they’re quite wary of him with good reason. The young man also hooks up with one of the Yakuza babes, maybe she’s a hooker, maybe she’s just a hanger-on, I couldn’t really tell, but somehow they get their mitts on some acid that was taken from the drug dealers that they young man shot and are going to flee to Fiji, but not before they get into skate-boarding some and wander the streets. This has lots of seemingly disparate parts that all come together in the end, and for a film that’s fairly low key it’s also quite bloody and violent. I guess it’s maybe some kind of commentary on disaffected youth in Japan but it also kicks butt and is well worth seeing for fans of crazed Japanese movies.Read More »

  • Toshiaki Toyoda – Aoi haru AKA Blue Spring (2001)

    2001-2010DramaJapanToshiaki Toyoda

    Quote:
    In their graduation year, the disaffected students turn their concrete box of a school into a backdrop against which to create their own version of society. The newly elected boss Kujo (played with cool panache by rising star Ryuhei Matsuda) disdains all the rules, including those that have led to his election. Into this power vacuum, his scandalized friend and lieutenant Aoki (Hirofumi Arai) enters with vicious intent. As graduation looms, the pupils study violence and death.Read More »

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