Movies - The Happiness of the Katakuris

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	Movies - The Happiness of the Katakuris

The Happiness of the Katakuris (Japanese: Katakuri-ke no kōfuku) is a 2001 film directed by Takashi Miike, with screenplay by Kikumi Yamagishi.

The film is a surreal horror-comedy, which includes claymation sequences, musical and dance numbers, a karaoke-style sing-along scene, dream sequences, and Hitchcockian symbolism. It is a cross between Psycho
, The Sound of Music
, and Dawn of the Dead
, with Michael Jackson's music video Thriller
thrown in for good measure.

The Happiness of the Katakuris is based on the Korean film, The Quiet Family
, but is by no means merely a Japanese remake; it is a complete re-imagination and re-invention of the original.

The film won a Special Jury Prize for its director at the 2004 Gérardmer Film Festival.

Main cast

Kenji Sawada
— Masao Katakuri
Keiko Matsuzaka — Terue Katakuri
Shinji Takeda — Masayuki Katakuri
Naomi Nishida
— Shizue Katakuri
Kiyoshiro Imawano — Richâdo Sagawa
Tetsuro Tamba
— Ojîsan Jinpei Katakuri
Naoto Takenaka — television reporter
Tamaki Miyazaki — Yurie Katakuri
Takashi Matsuzaki — Utanômi

Plot summary

The Katakuris are a four-generation family of failures (grandfather, father and mother, children, and granddaughter, who narrates the film) who use the father's redundancy pay to buy a guest house in the country. Somehow, each of their guests ends up dead – by suicide, accident, or murder – and once they have made the decision to save their business by burying the bodies and concealing the deaths, they find themselves sucked into a nightmare of lies and fear (not helped by the arrival of the daughter's con-man boyfriend, an escaped murderer with police in hot pursuit, and an erupting volcano).

Tagline: "The hills are alive with the sound of screaming!"

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Happiness of the Katakuris ]

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