sick, very sick people, I don't know where people like this come from !!
What is wrong with you people ?!??!?
By the way, where can I find that movie? do they have it on DVD ?

We can always hope !!

HEY! Steve is cute. What do you expect from a bunch of MA? MA is like playing Twister. With clothes that fall off easily.

I saw that DVD at a local rental shop. I bet you could pick it up on amazon. I didn't know what I was renting, I thought it was a samurai movie. The fight scenes IMHO were quite good. The rest was a little shocking!

Ok well now I want to see it....on a scale of 1-10 what would you rate it?

what is this world coming to ???
What is wrong with you people?
A perfectly good thread, highjacked !!!!!!
Shame on all of you !! all of you I say !!!!!!
Icequeen: taking any applications for your torture room???

That is though. I found the movie to be pretty good. But the 1-10 scale is hard.

For sword fight scenes (and I mean real swords), probably a 9 or a 10. The techniques looked pretty good, and the choreography never looked contrived.

For giving you something to think about, again I rate it quite high. I found myself going back over the story over and over again. Perhaps an 8. It was a little confusing at times, especially the last few minutes (maybe I should have watched it twice...), so I docked some points there.

The story telling was also good. It has been some time since I watched it though, so my memory is likely a little funny. In parts it is an action movie, in parts a bit of a mystery, in parts, well, ahem, see the earlier description.



I found a review here: http://www.indiewire.com/movies/rev_001005_Taboo.html

To save you the trouble, here are its contents:

As for Oshima's latest, "Gohatto" or "Taboo," it's being labeled "the gay Samurai movie." Yes, his recent near-fatal stroke has had no affect on his infamous quirkiness.

Based upon Ryotaro Shiba's novel, the tale takes place in the Kyoto of 1865. There the rather intense Shinsengumi militia is in the midst of choosing two new recruits to become samurai warriors. The pair chosen are the hunky Hyozo Tashiro (Tadanobu Asano) and the lovely and seductively long-haired Sozaburo Kano (Ryuhei Matsuda).

Sozaburo is so beautiful, all the guys are falling for him, especially Tashiro. But other than Tashiro, his admirers are getting killed off. Is the murderer an outsider or a jealous lover or Sozaburo himself?

This, however, is just one of the numerous plot lines of a film that fascinatingly takes us into an intriguing all-male culture the majority of us know little about. With humor, passion and an artist's vision, Oshima creates a world set in the past that reflects upon the present. The Japanese present.

As he has in all of his films, Oshima is again rebelling against the hypocritical rigidity of a society that has thousands of rules regulating one's every behavior. Here being beheaded for borrowing money seems fair punishment. And you thought Islam was tough.

In the press notes, Oshima is quoted as saying, "I spend all my life breaking taboos. . . In the past, no one dared touch the subject of homosexuality whether it was latent or overt. It was censured. In my opinion, one cannot understand the world of the samurai without showing the fundamental homosexual aspect."

Here! Here!

Sadly, Gohatto's ending, the final 15 or so many minutes, is a hundred times more confusing than Martha Stewart's advice on how to plant a simple herb garden on your kitchen window sill. I have yet to meet a critic or a normal person who can explain what the hell is happening.

But thanks to indieWIRE's vast research resources, I have found the site that explains everything. So after you see Gohatto, just log onto: http://www.shochiku.co.jp/gohatto/index_e.html for a minute or two. Your reward: intellectual bliss. Or at least the feeling of "What the **** happened there?" will ebb from your soul.

Thanks, I found that to be most interesting. I wonder if it's something that can be rented.

69 I'm ALWAYS taking applications for my torture rooms. Just sign in blood. Can you scream...REALLY LOUD?

Hey !!!! I was voluntering justme !!!!!!
I bruise easliy :)

I love you Ice Queen....

justme has no problem with torture or sodomy for that matter...

You guys probably say that to all the girls that come here. With the exception of Tigerfly. She was stamped taken. I hope that doesn't offend you TF. I don't say it in a bad way, I think it's cute.

ice queen: don't make us flash you !!

flash flash flash

"hey dudes, just wanted to clarify, there has never been a legitimate art called bushido has there? i was pretty sure it was "the way of the warrior" and a blanket name for all JMA and that no1 had ever assigned it to a single style?"

Deciding to contribute something of substance, I'll share what little I know of bushido:

It was the guiding philosophy of the samurai. The 8 principles of bushido were/are:

Jin - to develop a sympathetic understanding of people
Gi - to preserve the correct ethics
Chu - to show loyalty to one's master
Ko - to respect and to care for one's parents
Rei - to show respect for others
Chi - to enhance wisdom by broadening one's knowledge
Shin - to be truthful at all times
Tei - to care for the aged and those of a humble station

This guided the samurai through their everyday life, most notably through the Tokugawa period until the ending of their class in the late Tokugawa/early Meiji era (I forget exactly which).

The ending of the samurai class ( offically) was the begining of the Meiji era, also called the Meiji restoration due to the restoration of the Emperor as the leader of the nation and the ending of the shoginate.