Nikkatsu rolls along

Time for an update on the Nikkatsu screening series, I think.

We just returned from Austin, Texas, where the utterly amazing Fantastic Fest presented three of our films, which had a great response from the audience. More details and hopefully some photos later, but here is some coverage from the festival blog:

A Colt is My Passport
The Warped Ones
Like a Shooting Star

Tonight is the opening night of the series at New York's Japan Society, and Kaiju Shakedown writer Grady Hendrix has published a terrific overview of the series in today's New York Sun, which I encourage you to read. My only quibble is that he neglects to mention the imminent publication of Mark Schilling's companion book by FAB Press. Harvey Fenton of FAB was in Austin and premiered the new publication there, with Mark Schilling providing a finishing signature. It's a nice little book, kind of a chapbook rather than a larger-sized shelf monster. It's thankfully filled with photos and posters from the films, and is honestly the only English-language reference guide on the genre right now. Most Japanese film histories don't even admit the existence of these films, so Mark's guide should be a particular treasure for Japanese film fans, and I encourage everybody to pick it up at Amazon or elsewhere, where it's available for under $11.

Todd Brown's Twitch Film has also been providing Fantastic Fest coverage, and there's some Nikkatsu talk in there amongst all the other films. They called Velvet Hustler (aka Like a Shooting Star) an "undiscovered masterpiece," proclaim that The Warped Ones is "anarchic, fresh, and original," and said that A Colt is My Passport was "so good that about halfway through I was thinking how much I wanted to see it again." If that doesn't sell the series, I don't know what will!

We're still plugging away at programming the films into other venues, and things are looking good for about a half-dozen events in other cities around March of next year. Keep your fingers crossed and guns loaded.