It's this month's Bales Challenges' dad's VaderJaws' birthday! Celebrating with Vader, or sharks, or churches, or Chvrches. Erm… let's stick to sharks.

 

A strange woman appears in the life of a young man. He falls in love with her, but the fishermen know. She's the wife of a shark killed years ago. And she's out for revenge.

 

Doing Hooptober parallel to Bales. Expect some contamination of the September/October posts.

Celebrating International Talk like a Pirate Day*: a [favourite] pirate film.

 

* International Talk like a Pirate Day takes place on September 19.

Orange: a building or structure*

“Today is the first day of a life of sacrifice.”

– Moritoo Endō

Partially filmed near the 厳島神社 (Itsukushima Shrine) with its striking vermilion torii.

 

Shot on Eastmancolor, relatively cheap and globally available, and influenced by Hollywood colour melodramas of the time, in particularly Rudolph Maté's Mississippi Gambler (1953) (source), and in its turn greatly influenced the implementation of colour in global cinema to come.

 

Jigokumon won two Academy Awards in 1955, for Best Costume Design and Best Foreign Language Film.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Someone goes to a spa, beach, or retreat*

“There’s something almost poetic about finding a hairpin in the bath. It’s like the sole of my foot has been pierced by poetry.”

– Nanmura, via

Relaxing at an onsen, a soldier steps on the titular kanzashi. Now injured with too much time on his hands, he and his fellow nosy patrons go out looking for its owner.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

 

Someone enjoys a drink or beverage*

“On the bus, the air was so thick, he felt woozy. A wailing infant shook with tears and the woman beside him reeked with the stink of cheap perfume.”

– narrator

On a sweltering summer day, Detective's Murakami's Colt gets stolen on a crowded bus. He must delve deep into the sticky sweaty seedy underbelly of Tokyo to retrieve it.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

A scene with a cat for Garfield the Cat Day (USA)

 

A mother and daughter who are raped and murdered by a rogue samurai, return as cat-shaped onryō, vengeful spirits.

An actor, director or character from Utah – National Utah Day (USA)

 

Billy the Kid steps out of a huge poster of Monument Valley right into a Tokyo bar and becomes its bar keeper. Together with a samurai, a WW2 G.I, Marx-Engels (not a typo), the Japanese weather service number 177 and others, he keeps the tavern safe from various thugs roaming the streets.