Art of the Gun Triple Feature: Black Angel/Black Angel 2/Pistol Opera [3 Discs]

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 3
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Subtitle: Eng
• Features:
  • Anamorphic widescreen presentation
  • Tokyo Shock trailers!
  • 3 discs included inside

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Makiko Esumi
       Sayoko Yamaguchi
       Kan Hanae
       Masatoshi Nagase
       Daisuku Iijima
       Kirin Kiki
       Kenji Sawada
       Tomio Aoki
       Haruko Kato
       Jimpachi Nezu - Nogi

• Director:

  Takashi Ishii, Seijun Suzuki

• Producer:

  Takashi Ishii, Kazuo Shimizu, Katashima Ikki, Satoru Ogura

• Screenwriter:

  Takashi Ishii, Takeo Kimura, Kazunori Ito

• Cinematographer:

  Kazuto Sato, Yonezo Maeda

• Composer (Music Score):

  Goro Yasukawa

• Editor:

  Yoshio Kitazawa, Akira Suzuki

• Production Designer:

  Kodama Kzufumi

• Art Director:

  Teru Yamazaki

• Lighting:

  Kazuo Yabe

• Special Effects Supervisor:

  Shinji Higuchi

REVIEW:

• In the late 60's, Seijun Suzuki was fired by Nikkatsu Studios because his flamboyant stylistic experiments were rendering the B-movie Yakuza flicks he'd been hired to churn out unintelligible to audiences. In the 1990's, however, Suzuki was rediscovered by a new generation of enthusiasts, and his more audacious projects, like Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill, are now considered classics precisely because they transcend their humble beginnings as genre movies. Pistol Opera, made more than 30 years after Branded To Kill, finds the septuagenarian Suzuki freed from the constraints of budget and genre. It is the fullest flowering of his uniquely mind-boggling visual and narrative style. Its dreamlike narrative works on at least two levels of reality. The main story follows the gorgeous heroine Miyuki, who wears a black robe and high-heeled boots on the job, as she battles her fellow assassins in a series of ritualized and often hilarious duels. A second, much more dreamlike story line is made up of Miyuki's interactions with her boss, a mysterious veiled woman who hands out assassination assignments (and with whom she has a relationship that is both sexual and violent), and the elderly woman and adolescent girl who live in a traditional Japanese dwelling with them. Both story lines play out within hallucinatory visual compositions that are drenched in garish colors and conjure up abstract, otherworldly locales where the line between reality and dreams dissolves. Pistol Opera is a dazzling achievement by a completely original cinematic pioneer who is finally getting his due four decades after his career began. ~ Tom Vick, Rovi