Mizoguchi

"We're excited because our regression model formulation is straightforward and physically reasonable," says Teruyasu Mizoguchi, senior author.

It did not even matter that I knew what was in store, having seen three film versions of the basic plot, including the Kenji Mizoguchi classic “The 47 Ronin,” from 1941.

In “Adventures in Moviegoing” with Aster, the director chooses films that have shaped his life, from Kenji Mizoguchi’s “Sansho the Bailiff” to Lucrecia Martel’s “The Headless Horseman.”

Kogonada pays homage to a hero, director Kenji Mizoguchi, with long tracking shots and sensitivity to female endurance throughout — and in Episode 7’s re-creation of 1923’s Great Kanto earthquake, applies what he calls the Japanese master’s “haunted camera,” the stately, almost funereal tracking shots used in such ghost stories as “Ugetsu.”

Japanese cinema, after all, had long since faded from its mid-20th century glory, when critics and other filmmakers from around the globe celebrated directors like Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu as giants of world cinema.