Japanese cinema blogathon begins!

This week sees not only the start of the NY Asian Film Festival - this Friday! - but also a weeklong blogathon dedicated to Japanese cinema. For full details, see this post at Wildgrounds.

I hope to be back a couple of times this week with some posts devoted to unseen Japanese cinema and possible American DVD releases.

Until then, in honor of the NYAFF's NY premiere of Nobuhiko Obayashi's astonishing film HOUSE, here are some of his most famous commercials (made before his feature film debut), for men's fragrance "Mandom" and starring everybody's favorite vigilante, Charles Bronson.

Obayashi was one of the first Japanese commercial directors to work frequently with foreign stars as pitchmen, something that's now very commonplace in the industry. These commercials really show his wild style of shooting and editing, too. He made something like 3000 of them over the course of his career!