Re: [microsound] a few more movies

[ndk <ndkent@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Most movies where Toru (or Tooru ... that long o) Takemitsu did the sound
> are awesome.

minor point, I know you can't do the "o" in e-mail with the line over
it, but "oo" tends to mean another sound when using the standardized
japanese to roman transliteration.

But of course I heartily agree with the reccomendation of the man. Seing
his name on the credits almost guarantees something far beyond an
average film. He was very choosy and found his way to most good
directors.  Of the features I've seen, "Woman in the Dune" is the most
overtly concrete and experimental. Stunning range. Ethnic, Japanese
court music,  his famous in the style of Mahler for Kurosawa, pop
jingles, steamy jazz, and elements crossing from one to another.

The (also) late director of "Woman in the Dunes", Hiroshi Teshigahara
worked with Takemitsu on practically all his (sadly) too few films. 
> 
> Here's his list at IMDB:
> http://us.imdb.com/Name?Takemitsu,+T%F4ru
> 
> Kwaidan is a favorite of mine.

Yes, one of extremely few theartical feature films where the composer
supervised the entire soundtrack, sound effects, vocal treatments, etc.
Its kind of "stealthy" and disorienting because what he's basicly done
is made the entire audio track as musique concrete, but it's subtle and
not constantly saying "look we are being experimental here" and its in
the context of a late 19th century Japanese culture loving author's
concocted "traditional" Japanese ghost stories.

Fortunately both this one and "Woman in the Dunes" have been
retransfered. Watch out because when I first saw them many small vendors
were unloading crap videos that exploited a U.S. copyright lapse. So
watch out for seriously degraded questionable dupes, you want to hear
and see this material in a print or tape marked "retransfered" or
"restored" which have hopfully have replaced most of the old dubs and
16mm prints.
> 
> A documentary about him:
> http://us.imdb.com/Title?0110601
> Used to show on Bravo a lot a few years back.  Basically a must see for all
> sound folks out there.  This guy is, looks, and sounds about as "avant
> garde" as you can possibly get.  I can't wait to find and see this again.

About 2-3 years ago Sony was selling the documentary on tape, they had a
good one on Bernard Herrmann also in the same tape series but made by
different people. 

I'm not sure if "avant garde" begins to do him justice! I'd say he was
be one of the least biased and in his own way one of the most
enthusiastic artists when approaching sound.

nicholas d. kent

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