R.I.P., Kyoko Kishida

Boy, here's one that slipped through the cracks. A tip o' the hat to Slate for alerting me to last week's passing of Japanese actress Kyoko Kishida, 76, who starred in Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes, which is on my all-time short list of favorite movies (the book by Kobo Abe is pretty darn good, too). The bizarre scenario, the stark imagery, the raw eroticism... you owe it to yourself to see this. One of the very best of the Japanese New Wave cinema of the 1960s, which was up there with France's and Italy's, and consistently had more striking photography, if you ask me.