Film Music by Toru Takemitsu Vol. 2: Films Directed by Masahiro Shinoda

In preparation for my next few articles dedicated to the films of Masahiro Shinoda (which rejuvenated my interest in his films after Criterion's fantastic release of Pale Flower (Kawaita Hana) (1964) last month), I decided to do another music upload. This time it's the second volume of JVC's Takemitsu film score compilations with this one being devoted solely to his soundtracks for the films of Masahiro Shinoda.

Auteur(ists?) 8-Bit Conversion: Sweet Home (1989) for Cinemas and the NES

As long as video games have been around, there's always the guarantee that if a movie is marketable enough, then a video game version can't be far behind. In the United States alone there are dozens of games based on famous film franchises like Star Wars (1977) or the numerous characters Disney owns. Recently different developers have made video game adaptations of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) and Brian De Palma's Scarface (1983), but usually it's incredibly rare to see an auteur's vision made into a video game. It's even more difficult to name cases in the early days of gaming when the scope of what was possible in a game was limited mostly because of the hardware limitations. But Sweet Home (Suite Homu) (1989) is one of the rare instances where a collaboration by two of Japan's most famous auteurs of the last thirty years, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Juzo Itami, resulted in a highly influential video game adaptation of the same film.

Sweet Home (Suite Homu) (1989) Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Sweet Home (Suite Homu) (1990) for the Famicom/NES - Dev. Capcom.

Nikkatsu Movie Music - Joe Shishido

Nikkatsu Eiga Ongakushu Star Series Joe Shishido

In 2008, Nikkatsu released compilation albums based either on their famous directors (Seijun Suzuki, Kon Ichikawa), actors (Yujiro Ishihara, Akira Kobayashi) or other themes (Nikkatsu New Akushon, Stray Cat Rock series) and I've been doing my best to get my hands on them, but I could just never find the one on Joe Shishido. While preparing my first real article for this site that's all about Mr. Joe Shishido, I finally did it and found the album. I had to do some deep scouring in the nether regions of the internet to find this album, but now it's mine to listen to anytime! It can be yours too!