I recently received an email about a movie that looks pretty entertaining. Check out the trailer and information on the film and its release dates below.
YAKUZA APOCALYPSE THEATRICAL RELEASE 6 JANUARY 2016
*THE MOST LUNATIC VAMPIRE ACTION FILM YOU’LL EVER SEE*
Manga Entertainment is excited to announce a UK theatrical release of cult Japanese director, Takashi Miike’s latest cinematic feast, Yakuza Apocalypse. The film, which recently wowed audiences at the London Film Festival and had its world premiere at Cannes Directors Fortnight is coming to UK cinemas January 6.
In what The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin refers to as ‘demented brilliance’, the film is arguably the craziest vampire-gangster genre mashup ever witnessed. Miike’s signature blend of deranged horror, slapstick and action are all on display here, making Yakuza Apocalypse not only his most fun film but also the most bizarre to date.
Yakuza Apocalypse tells the story of Kageyama who is ridiculed for being the only member of the Yakuza clan unable to brand himself with their signature tattoo due to sensitive skin. However, when a dying Kamiura, the most feared boss in the Yakuza underworld, bites Kageyama he is transformed into a bloodthirsty monster who will stop at nothing to avenge his former boss.
“This is definitely the most insane vampire movie you’ll ever see and we are extremely proud to be bringing it to the big screen! For those familiar with Miike’s controversial yet fun work, you’ll be happy to know he is on fine ‘crazy’ form with this action-packed and blood-soaked horror. Yakuza Apocalypse is also from the producers of The Raid 1 & 2 so you know the fight scenes are exceptionally kinetic and the story is a thrilling spectacle!” – Andrew Hewson, Marketing Manager at Manga Entertainment
Director: Takashi Miike
Cast: Yayan Ruhian, Hayato Ichihara, Rirî Furankî
Synopsis: Due to his sensitive skin, Kageyama is ridiculed by his fellow Yakuza clan members for being the only one who cannot be branded with their signature tattoo. When Kamiura, the fearsome Yakuza boss who also happens to be a bloodsucking vampire is brutally killed by a competing clan, he passes on his vampire powers to his loyal lieutenant. Now Kageyama is transformed into a bloodthirsty monster who will stop at nothing to avenge his former boss.
A trailer for the new “Evil Dead” remake was played at and leaked from ComicCon, and it “wallows in limb-severing and tongue-splitting” because apparently when you are driven into evil madness, it expresses itself with DIY body modification. Tell me something I didn’t already know by the time I was summoning demons at age eight while sticking needles in my unmentionables. Anyway, here’s a screencap, and you can watch the cam-leak in the attached video as well — the tongue splitting is the highlight knockout punch that they put right at the very end of the trailer to seal the deal. Because you know there’s nothing more fucked up than someone splitting their own tongue. Gotta love mainstreaminbg and gentrification.
[Edit: The video has been pulled, unsurprisingly, so you’ll have to wait for the official trailer to be posted or make due with the thumbnails I snagged. At least they should be legal fair use, not that this stops people from filing over-reaching DMCA takedown demands…]
There are times when a film comes about that can have a profound effect on the viewers. Sometimes it could simply be a single scene, for others the story itself carries the most weight. Whatever the reasons, when a person has fallen in love with a film, they’ll often do something to recognize these feelings. For the vast majority of people, simply buying a copy of a film, or viewing it multiple times is enough. Yet for others, simply owning a film isn’t enough. Which is why we see so many film inspired modifications. From tattoos to scars, film symbolism is fairly prevalent within the modified community. So it should come as no surprise that someone went out to get a small branding that reminds them of their favorite film.
If you don’t recognize the symbols, they’re from the film The 5th Element. Each square represents one of the four classical elements: earth, water, fire, and air (wind). When combined with the 5th Element, they summon Captain Planet. Or is it save the world from destruction? I get the two confused.
If you want to see who the arm belongs to, as well as some pictures of the branding taking place, just keep on reading, or head on over to the branding galleries.
So do you have a favorite movie? Are your feelings strong enough towards that film that you would get a modification that would remind you of the film?
I’ve intentionally been avoiding writing a story about the Millennium Trilogy for a while now. While I haven’t read the books, I have seen the films which are believably good, but despite the title, the tattoo in question doesn’t really play a major role in the films. Sure the character of Lisbeth sports a massive back piece, but seeing as how you only see it a couple of times and the actress, Noomi Rapace, didn’t actually get it tattooed on herself I just assumed that the entire thing was a non-story.
Today I was pleasantly proven wrong.
Before we begin, here’s the trailer for the first film: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”
I use Google news alerts to flag stories that have specific key words in them. Tattoo of course being one of them. So you can imagine that with these films gaining international acclaim, the books being bestsellers, and casting rumors flying around for the American adaptations, my inbox has been filled for the past few months of stories about the trilogy. For the most part I just dismiss them, but since they finally got around to casting the role of Lisbeth in the American films, the e-mails have died down.
Yet here I am today, talking about the thing I promised not to discuss on ModBlog. The reason I’m bringing it up now? Well, I’ll let this article from The Mirror fill you in.
Winning a career-making role in the Dragon Tattoo films brought a strange mixture of pleasure and pain to rising star Noomi Rapace. The 30-year-old actress knew she had to nail the part of androgynous anti-hero Lisbeth Salander – or risk offending the many fans of the creator, best-selling author Stieg Larsson. So to really convince as the punky, chain-smoking, kick-ass computer hacker, Noomi embarked on a remarkable transformation. She went on a strict diet, trained in kickboxing and Thai boxing and even took her motorcycle licence. A non-smoker, she began puffing her way through “thousands of cigarettes” both on-set and off it. And she wouldn’t even consider faking all those piercings in Salander’s ears and nose because, as Noomi puts it, “I wanted to feel those piercings in myself.”
You’ll often hear of actors undergoing massive physical changes for a role. De Niro gained a significant amount of weight for his role in Raging Bull, while Christian Bale lost a frightening amount of weight in a short period of time for his role in The Machinist, only to gain it all back plus more in a couple months to be ready for his role in Batman Begins. Actors are required to change themselves to some degree for a role, sometimes it’s simply a costume, and others require a lot more commitment. So for Noomi Rapace, in order to fully transform into the character of Lisbeth she drastically changed not only her physical appearance, but also her behaviour months before filming.
While the diet and smoking is one aspect of the transformation, this being ModBlog I wanted to focus on her mods. You get a brief glimpse of them in the trailer but having seen the films it is obvious that she didn’t just opt for one or two piercings to personify the character. I counted about 10-12 seperate piercings spread out over her lobes, cartilage, nostrils and septum. While by ModBlog standards this isn’t anything too significant, to see an actress portray a character so well, and commit to that many mods is something significant. While the character of Lisbeth is certainly troubled, and goes through several drastic events over the course of the series, what we’re seeing is essentially a mainstream film that doesn’t treat modifications as some form of joke or used as shock value.
I’m sure we’ve all seen films where a “punk” character appears on screen wielding a vast array of facial piercings simply to appear intimidating to the viewer, yet in these films the piercings appear to be just a natural extension of the character. In fact, in the scenes where she isn’t wearing her piercings you get a sense of discomfort looking at her, as if something is missing. Which of course there is. I think an accurate analogy to this would be the NYC skyline post 9-11. The image of the skyline had been etched into the minds of millions of people, and now, looking at it, there is something missing. I’m not making any political statements or anything like that, but the idea that something is removed from an image that everyone was used to seeing makes one feel that sense of “not right”. Of course the NYC skyline itself evokes a lot of feelings, but I think you get where I was going with this. I really think that with Noomi Racpace’s commitment to the role, combined with a skilled filmmaker, that this may be the first portrayal of a modified person that actually captures the essence of the modified culture. Where the focus is on the character, and not the mods, yet when the mods are removed you can tell something has changed not only on her physical exterior, but something inside her as well.
If you were to take a look in a mirror one day and all of your mods were gone, how would you feel? What about those close to you, how do you think they would react if a modification you’ve had for years was suddenly gone without a trace? Because we don’t treat our modifications as something other than what they are, an extension of our ideal selves, we can sense the incompleteness that occurs with a mod is removed. Yes I realize people retire mods all the time, but even then, those first few days really can reveal how much our mods are a part of us.
Looking back at these films with the knowledge of the actor’s commitment to the part, it really shines a light on how a person who is modified isn’t defined by their mods, but by who they are as a person. While this isn’t anything new to us, there still is a large portion of the population that doesn’t realize it. Given that the titular dragon tattoo is the one modification in the film that isn’t a real mod, I thought I should close this post out with a real dragon tattoo from the BMEzine.com tattoo galleries.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has seen the films. Can anyone else who has seen them weigh in? Did Noomi Rapace actually getting the piercings done change your view of the films and her portrayal, or does her performance stand out on its own without the piercings being a factor?
This tattoo claims to be the “The World’s First Human Centipede Tattoo”, and I am tempted to believe it. Has anyone else gotten a tattoo inspired by the, not really a hit, movie “The Human Centipede“? If so let me know, we can check up on dates, cross check references and determine once and for all if this tattoo by Jimmy Knuckles at Shaman Modifications in Austin is rightfully declared the world’s first “Human Centipede” tattoo!
I recently wrote about how the Saddle Ranch Chop House abuses their “Anti Gang Tattoo” Policy to keep out heavily tattooed “gang members” like myself and my tattooer friends but the real reason that we were at City Walk was to see the newly released movie Avatar.
Now anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a huge movie buff. Most of the time the biggest response you’ll get from me is “it was okay.” which generally means just that. When asked about Avatar, I said I liked it which means a lot coming from me. One of the things I liked was the integration of mods into the characters. It was so seemless and natural that is it wasn’t for the fact that some characters had stretched lobes and some didn’t, I would have assumed it was just the way they were “born”.
The movie’s male lead is a “jar head” and has stereotypical tribal tattoos. I couldn’t find anything better so I’m using the images from the movie’s website. He’s got a tribal half sleeve on one arm which you can see a smidge of and a tribal armband on the other arm.
I’d be interested to know if these are Sam Worthington’s real tattoos or if they were fakes used for the movie. Google was about as helpful as ever in directing me to celebrity tattoo sites that had the typical Angelina Jolie tattoos and not much else. This stuff isn’t as interesting, click through to see some more shots from the movie.
Nothing like scantily clad tiger/cat people to make your night more enjoyable. The female lead in the movie, Neytiri, has what look like 1/2″ stretched lobes, as did several of the other planets indigenous population. Coupled in with natural “stripes”, which remind me of Katzen, they flowed extremely well. I know it’s only a movie and these are just characters but that’s one beautiful looking cat lady.
The last “modification” though not a consensual one, is a mod that we’ve featured here on Modblog many times. We’ve seen all sorts of facial scarification like this one done on bouncers, bounty hunters and other people who want to look like they’ve either been stabbed or attacked by bears. Either way, I think the makeup department did a great job on this one because it looked really realistic on screen.
All of that being said, I definitely would recommend the movie. We saw it in 3D but I think it would be exceptional without the added special effects.
If I had more time, I’d make an IMDB style database of all the mods in movies, just for fun.
**Images are courtesy and property of Fox. Visit their website for more information on the movie.
Please excuse the late start, folks! I wish I could say I was out celebrating Canada Day, but alas, I’ve just been dealing with technical difficulties here at headquarters. (Read: There was a spider on my modem and I was too afraid to go turn it on.) At any rate, let’s ratchet up the tension and have a breakneck-speed afternoon, shall we? Let’s get going with this Thoroughly bad-ass Boondock Saints-themed sleeve by Ryan Schepp out of Wingnut Tattoo in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. I have to say, though, you know what my favorite thing about this tattoo is? It doesn’t have a poorly thought out sequel in production.
So, you want a tattoo celebrating one of your favorite movies, but one that alludes to other artists as well? What to do?
I really wanted a Star Wars tribute tattoo, and my artist really wanted to do one. I didn’t want anything overused or anything, like the insignia or a lightsaber, and I didn’t want a huge scene with ships and everything, so we decided to kind of create something. I liked the shape of the AT-AT walkers, but they were kind of beefy. I was thinking I wanted something more slender, like a Dali elephant, and here it is! I’m so happy with how it turned out, and I’m really glad to have something completely original on my body.
(Star Wars/Salvador Dali mash-up tattoo by Paul at Old School Tattoo in Bellingham, Washington.)
On this Friday the 13th, let us reflect on what we’ve learned from horror movies: You cannot kill Jason—you can only make him angrier. You can send him to New York, you can send him to Hell or you can send him to outer goddamn space…doesn’t matter. You’re just pissing him off. Perhaps it’s time to resign yourself to the fate that awaits you: no matter what you try to do, you are going to be killed by a psychotic hell-demon in a hockey mask, and tough shit.
(Tattoo by Billy Toller at Cherry Bomb Tattoos from New Port Richey, Florida, and the 2009 Philadelphia Tattoo Arts Convention.)
Well, quite a whirlwind of a week this time around, no? Let’s refresh our memories:
And that’s it for us today, folks. We’ll be around over the weekend though, as per usual. Sorry about no podcast this week—there were some scheduling conflicts with one great guest we had lined up, but we should be getting in touch with him in the next couple of days, so don’t you worry. At any rate, stay safe, have a good weekend, and as always, thank you for your continued support of BME.
Comes from Greece this cutting does! No information attached was there, but too good to pass up it was! Give thanks we would like to, anonymous stranger!
EDIT: Whoops, apparently this has been posted before. On the plus side, at least we can now give credit (again!) to Ryan Corrigal at Strange City in Edmonton, Alberta. I will, however, leave this post up, as a testament to the dire consequences that can result from not including artist information as part of a BME submission. (I.e., I end up looking like a jackass.) Also, please don’t send in stolen images.
