Friday, August 19, 2005

Clown Samurai

You must read Clown Samurai. It's a hard-boiled, film noir-style crime drama, with a twist:
Clown Samurai follows the adventures of Ogata Utamaro, a failed clown with the training of a warrior. Japanese but born in England, Utamaro was taught the way of the samurai by his grandfather as a child. In adulthood, Utamaro found his calling as a clown, a profession of which his father did not approve. Disowned, he traveled to the United States, where he found work as a rodeo clown in the south. We find him now depressed and jobless living in a large northern city after a disaster in his life. No longer able to make children laugh, Utamaro is drawn into the world of organized crime, where it will take everything he has just to survive.

The dialog is deadly serious, and the artwork is done in a dark, posterized style. Plus the main character is a killer clown with a samurai sword. It's drop-dead funny.

2 comments:

Jinny said...

I wish I found clowns funny because the film sounds interesting.

For a clown-free wicked-funny cinema experience, I highly recommend, "My Wife is a Gangster".

You can find it at Vision Video.

Unknown said...

It's a comic of the non-animated variety, i.e. comic book format.