CriterionCast

Happy Birthday, Yasujiro Ozu!

I know it’s getting late out there, but I just recently realized that today just so happens to be the anniversary of Yasujiro Ozu‘s birth and death. Ozu passed away on his 60th birthday, due to complications from his struggle with cancer. To help remember this incredible director, I thought I’d share some links with you all.

We’ve covered two of Criterion’s releases of Ozu‘s work in the collection: Late Spring and A Story Of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds.

David is currently making his way through the various Eclipse releases, and so far has covered two films. From the Silent Ozu box set, he reviewed Passing Fancy. He then went on to cover Early Spring from the Late Ozu set.

I’d also highly recommend going through our friend Moises Chiullan‘s Ozu series over at his Arthouse Cowboy blog.

The BFI has recently released several of Ozu’s works on Blu-ray, and hopefully we’ll get some here in the States from Criterion in 2011. In 2010 we got the incredible There Was A Father and The Only Son two disc box set, with some beautiful art care of comic illustrator, Adrian Tomine.

I’ve loved everything that I’ve seen of Ozu’s work so far, although I have barely scratched the surface. One of my favorite supplements was on the Late Spring DVD set, the film Tokyo Ga by Wim Wenders. It’s a really interesting look at Ozu, Japan, and the art of documentary filmmaking.

What is your favorite Yasujiro Ozu film? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.




The covers below will link to the corresponding Amazon pages.

Ryan Gallagher

Ryan is the Editor-In-Chief / Founder of CriterionCast.com, and the host / co-founder / producer of the various podcasts here on the site. You can find his website at RyanGallagher.org, follow him on Twitter (@RyanGallagher), or send him an email: [email protected].