This haunting, kabuki-inflected version of a Japanese folk legend is set in a remote mountain village, where food is scarce and tradition dictates that citizens who have reached their seventieth year must be carried to the summit of Mount Narayama and left there to die. The sacrificial elder at the center of the tale is Orin, a dignified and dutiful woman who spends her dwindling days securing the happiness of her loyal widowed son with a respectable...

Portrayal of a sensitive young artist who is dragged through the mud by a tabloid entertainment magazine after an innocent encounter with a pop singer and decides to sue.

"Spy networks gather information for the clans supporting and opposing the shogunate."--Www.kitparker.com.

Okuyama, after being burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and estranged from his family and friends, agrees to his psychiatrist's radical experiment: a face transplant, created from the mold of a stranger. As Okuyama is thus further alienated from the world around him, he finds himself giving in to his darker temptations.