Heavy Lifting Done!

Except for 5 posters I still can't identify, I've finished the last task of the Pink Film Archive projects: identifying and sorting 1,380 posters at the Nakamura Eigeki site. Lending an appropriately hushed, but intense solemnity to the occasion, the task was completed while listening to Arvo Pärt's Te Deum album. If any boob-fans out there are looking for a good entry into Pärt's oeuvre, I recommend this one without reservation. The only thing now remaining is the starting of entries for the new films illustrated by the Nakamura posters, then my Pink Film Archive projects are, basically, done! Constant maintenance will be required, of course-- new movies, and newly-discovered posters of old films, including scanning some images from books and magazines in my collection. There is also a fairly large backlog of images of older films (1960s & 1970s) needing to be cleaned and uploaded.

I began this project of accumulating images of posters to several thousand Pink Films back in 2006, mistakenly thinking that Wikipedia would welcome this kind of dedication to an encyclopedic coverage of a film genre. After learning otherwise, and shopping around for some place to offer this work, I started the Pink Film Archives at Blogspot in October 2011. And uploading that work is now, basically... DONE! No need to worry now about the loss of those hours spent locating, sifting through and identifying those posters, in the event of sudden incapacitation, death or even disk crash. My legacy is secure... Yet, as if to remind me of the impossibility of the project ever truly being finished, I see that OP Eiga has just put out their monthly crop of four new large poster images-- three new films and a re-release.

Now that the heavy lifting is over, let's sit back and watch Miss LUU do her own heavy lifting in this image from her blog. She makes the job seem so much more pleasant.

All the Boob News that's Fit to Print

As far as work on the Pink Film archives, I spent most of the week sorting and categorizing several dozen large (400px) Pink film poster images from Shizukatsu Theatre. I had dug them up out of a search through the Internet Archive a few years ago, back when I was under the mistaken impression that "the sum of human knowledge" included Japanese cinema, cult films, and softcore erotic cinema, and that contributions to these realms of knowledge would be welcome. Anyway, that work is not wasted, since these posters will soon be posted at my Pink Film blog(s), and eventually linked from IMDb. I'm back to sorting through the Nakamura Eigeki 181-px posters now.

Several events in the Japanese branch of the Boobpedian universe demand our attention today. Since CNN has probably neglected these news stories, allow me to present them. First, the great Miyabi Hayama made her final public appearance today, according to the IZM blog. Say goodbye to Miyabi, above right. Gone but never to be forgotten.

Though Ms. Hayama's magnificent presence will be sorely missed, IZM's stable of big, beautiful, bouncy babes still thrives. Iori Kuroki announced a new IZM DVD, Bakunyû chi-fujin (爆乳痴夫人; ICD-183). Madam Kuroki would probably be much more a favorite of mine had I not seen images of her smoking... Smoking, piercing or tattoos... Dekkappai just says, "No". Dekkappai says "Yes" to booze!





The grand Ms. Sara Aikawa, at right, appears in her new IZM DVD Chô shiri nikukai (超尻肉塊; ICD-182). And below, our protagonist in the video measures up the Herculean labor ahead of him.












Meanwhile over at the JAMS' blog, new images of the always-welcome Tamaki Yasuoka have been posted. Here she is, at left, in her JAMS DVD, WZA-04.

Bulbasaurus Rex

I spent the day's online time making a big push to get the Nakamura Eigeki poster identification project completed. I made a pretty good dent in it, getting up to the last poster (#1399) but I have to go back and pick up a few pages of posters that didn't have text linked to them, which will make their identification much more difficult. The next step, after finishing with these numerical listings, will be to go through the alphabetic listings and swap out any posters that have better resolution. The alphabetic lists also sometimes have better identifying text-- including plot summaries.
I also downloaded the new batch of 15 large posters from the same site today. I found quite a few new films and posters. A highlight of the day's work was a new poster to the 2006 film Hadaka no sanshimai: Inkô in its 2010 re-release as Tonari no sanshimai yari kurabe (隣の三姉妹　やりくらべ; seen above left). Starring the lovely Sakurako Kaoru (right) and picking up awards for Best Film (10th), Best New Director (Yasufumi Tanaka) at the Pink Taishô, and Pearl Prize at the Pinky Ribbon Awards, it sounds like one worth looking for.


In anticipation of the announced Cheech & Chong reunion film my son has been interested in seeing one of their old films. I found a cheap copy of Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams (1981), made an Easter gift of it and watched it with him (with Korean subtitles on for the wife). It was the first time for my wife to see one of these-- They were no doubt banned in Korea at the time of release, drug humor being off-limits. She laughed at times, but after the film claimed not to be at all favorably impressed. Come to think of it, even in the wilder Japanese cinema-- as extreme as it can go into sex and violence-- I can't think of any film genre there comparable to our own esteemed drug comedies. As I remember from the old days, Cheech and Chong's films usually started out with a few mildly funny little bits, then drifted off into dull aimlessness. Actually I think this is the first time I ever made it through to the end of one of their films. I wonder if the reunion film is going to be of the same low quality as these old brain-dead comedies, or if the ensuing decades will bring some improvement to their work together... Stupid, gross-out comedies can be fun, of course. They don't need to be god-awful. In fact I enjoy a good one now and then. We'll probably go and see the new one when it comes out no matter the reviews. I'll be prepared for the worst, but hold out dim hopes for better. As far as the old one we saw today: Got a couple real laughs out of it in the first half hour, then was bored for an hour. Six out of Ten. My son's at the age where he's a little too old for an Easter egg hunt, but he's still young enough to be disappointed not to have the Easter egg hunt, so the Cheech and Chong DVD made a good compromise. They now join his other not-to-be-emulated role models Harold and Kumar. Meanwhile, in these pics from her blog, the gorgeous LUU dons a Pokémon get-up to remind dear old Dad of innocent days not so long past. The thought of spending time playing with a couple Bulbasaurs never looked so tempting...

Gang Busters

I spent my morning 20 minutes online returning to the Nakamura Eigeki project, starting at #AF501, which means I've got about 800 more posters to sift through (though, actually, about half have already been done). I stopped at #500 on Friday, then spent the weekend online time updating this blog, adding chit-chat to justify posting gratuitous images of plump Asian beauties and old movie posters. Speaking of the former, say "Howdy ma'am" to earth-goddess Tamaki Yasuoka at left.

You know, there really ought to be a place online where one can add serious information about an unlimited variety of topics, uncensored, even such traditionally despised fields as B-films and Japanese erotica... You know, sort of a "sum of human knowledge"... Oh right, one was started, but was destroyed from within by narrow-minded, pseudo-intellectual bigots and their nitwit stooges. My serious work goes now to the two Pink Film archives, Boobpedia, and IMDb, and here I chit-chat with myself, rather than co-workers at a larger project, to mull over things and keep it interesting... But then like any American who has lived through the past half century or so, I'm accustomed to seeing good ideas go spectacularly bad. And besides, I swore not to rant about that hellhole anymore. Instead let's say "HOWDY Ma'am!" to Ms. Rose Aoyama at right.

Seeing Guns Don't Argue (1957) the other day put me in the mood to see the film before it, Gang Busters (1955). Again, how much is true, and how much is just police-state fantasy/propaganda, I don't know, but I'd estimate 10% former, 90% latter. Again, it was an entertaining little 70 minutes or so if taken with a pound of salt. This one didn't have the big-name gangster power that Guns did. It told the story of the Public Enemy #4, John Omar Pinson and his even lesser-known cohorts. Pinson's shenanigans and multiple prison-breaks are re-enacted by Myron Healey (who played Dillinger in Guns). It seems kind of strange that they would use these stories for the first film and the big-name gangsters for the second, two years later. Anyway, it's another passably entertaining little cops & robbers yarn. I'd be interested to see the original TV series now. Five out of Ten.

Taking a Break

While Hana Uehara-- at right in もしLカップの上原花が愛人だったら 7つのムチムチ不倫 (Gas-242), to be released next month-- gives some lucky chap a nice rise-and-shine, I spend my own morning uploading the new re-release posters from Nakamura Eigeki. This will make a good stopping point for a break from Pink film poster work for a while while I wander off to do a few other things. I plan to be back to this blog in a week or so.

Spent my free time today beginning the uploading of some of the Nakamura Eigeki posters to the Pink Film Archives. I've got about 60 posters to new films sorted and identified, an equal number of re-release posters to existing films, and a few better images than are presently posted, which will replace the old ones. I'll upload them and clean out the backlog, then get back to the project Nakamura Poster project. It's going require going through about 2,000 poster images-- most of them duplicates, of course, but I'm finding a surprising amount of new material also.


The evening's viewing pleasure featured Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947), an entertaining little comic-book noir featuring Boris Karloff as... guess who... The actor who plays Dick Tracy (Ralph Byrd) doesn't have much presence, and Karloff, of course, has presence and then some. Gruesome Meets Dick Tracy might be a more accurate title, as reflected in the order of the cast billing shown in the poster to the left.

Went to see The Artist today. I had been slightly reluctant to see it, for some reason. I love silent film. But maybe it was because we enjoyed Hugo so much and were disappointed it had lost for Best Film & Best Director to this unknown upstart Artist. Anyway, we both absolutely loved it. I rarely agree with the Best Film selections (I couldn't even watch more than 15 minutes of Hurt Locker), but they got it right this time. It's a joyful celebration of film history (a point it shares with Hugo), a treat for film buffs, and just a plain fun, touching, wonderful movie. I look forward to seeing it again.

Everyone seems to assume the main character is based on Valentino, because of his name (George Valentin), but he looks a lot more like Douglas Fairbanks to me. It's put me in the mood to dig out some Fairbanks films from my collection and watch them again.

Spent most of my free time today identifying, labeling and categorizing Pink Film posters from the Nakamura Eigeki theater collection. Tough work, but fascinating and fun work for an old puzzle-solver/collector/list-maker such as myself.

Tonight I finally finished uploading all my current Pink film posters to the blog-- the Pre-1990 Pink Film blog. Now I'll have to go back and do some catching up-- identify and download the new posters that have been posted to my online sources, and to clean up and then upload the posters I set aside for later work. Also there is a huge collection of smaller (160px wide) posters from the Nakamura Eigeki site which I will have to sort through, identify, sort, and eventually upload. Adding descriptions to the Picasa Web images will be a long, long project, and then linking them to IMDb... Anyway, stage one, started in October, is now officially complete.