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November 23, 2024
 

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Giovanni Fazio

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Giovanni Fazio
Giovanni Fazio has been The Japan Times' resident film crank since 1993. When not at the movies, he is busy recording and playing live with his band Makyo and running the independent electronica label Dakini Records.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 17, 2012
'In Time' / 'Carnage'
Try to imagine a future where the super-rich live in gated, patrolled fortress-communities, completely isolated from the short, brutish lives of the underclass who must toil or die, just a paycheck away from having their life-force literally terminated by the powers that be. No, it's not America under...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 10, 2012
'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'
On one level, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is simply an Agatha Christie story for Nine Inch Nails fans. You may think I'm joking, but think about it: an isolated island full of disgruntled relatives in a wealthy family, an unsolved murder with loads of potential suspects, and a sleuth who uncovers...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 3, 2012
'The Hunter' / 'Poetry'
One of cinema's most constant motifs is the flawed, morally corrupt character who in the last reel listens to his conscience and decides to do the right thing. There's a good reason for this: Audiences know all too well how easy it is to be a "good German," and desperately wish it weren't so. You often...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 27, 2012
'J. Edgar'
Now here's a counterintuitive marketing strategy: Put heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio on your poster, shot in unflattering white light, looking old, jowly and snarling. Presumably the promoters of "J. Edgar," director Clint Eastwood's biopic of long-time FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, know what they're doing,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 20, 2012
'Road to Nowhere' / 'Two-Lane Blacktop'
Every film buff knows the Terence Malick story by now: a visionary director who made a couple of landmark films in the 1970s, then disappeared for two decades before staging a late-life comeback, which culminated with "The Tree of Life" winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year. Fewer know the story...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 13, 2012
Bearing witness to brutality in 'Devil's Double'
"Should I ask him whether it's true or not?" That's the question I had for my editor regarding my interview with Latif Yahia, the Iraqi exile whose story about being the lookalike body-double for Saddam Hussein's psychotic son Uday has been parlayed into a best-selling book and a movie. "Probably," said...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 13, 2012
'The Devil's Double' / 'Un Prophete'
It's sometimes funny how filmmakers' careers play out, and how the hand of fortune can give them a boost or a brush-off. Take Lee Tamahori: This Kiwi director had a powerhouse of a breakthrough film with "Once Were Warriors," an unflinching tale of alcoholism and revenge set in Auckland's Maori community,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 6, 2012
'Magic Tree House' hits the big screen at last — but only in Japan
If your fantasy-based series of children's books has hit sales above at least 50 million copies, with translations into more than 20 languages, then you can certainly expect Hollywood to come calling. Such was the case for author Mary Pope Osborne, whose "Magic Tree House" series has 48 books published...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 6, 2012
'Perfect Sense'
Will the world end with a whimper or a bang? That may well depend on whether you're at the multiplex or the art house. While blockbusters continue to relish the visual bombastics of Armageddon (the most wanton example being "2012"), a number of smaller films are also delving into the dark dramatic potential...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 30, 2011
Films that make you feel it like the first time
My one wish for the New Year would be to wipe my brain clean of all the movies I've ever seen. With a fresh slate, I could sit back and enjoy, say, some new neo-noir without comparing it to "Chinatown." On a bad day I'll think that cinema is most intense at first blush, that the films that imprint themselves...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 23, 2011
'Restless'
Gus Van Sant's "Restless" is a film about love, an ode to doomed but pure teenage infatuation. But it's also about love of a film, in this case Hal Ashby's cult classic "Harold and Maude." It's one of those cases where the lift (or "homage") is so overt and massive that it's hard to consider "Restless"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 16, 2011
'London Boulevard'
London Boulevard" starts off with a premise worthy of any British crime film: Hard man Mitchel (Colin Farrell) is just out of prison, after serving time for murder, and he's not eager to go back in. His sketchy South London friend Billy (Ben Chaplin), however, welcomes him back with open arms and pressures...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 9, 2011
'Elle s'Appelait Sarah'
Elle s'Appelait Sarah," like so many films these days, uses the device of multiple narratives. First you've got a story set in the present, where journalist Julia (Kristin Scott Thomas) is investigating a bit of repressed French history: the 1942 roundup of Parisian Jews, where thousands of people were...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 2, 2011
'50/50' / '30 Minutes or Less'
Hey, did you hear the one about my metastatic tumor? Comedy and cancer may mix about as well as champagne and toilet cleaner, but along comes the film "50/50" to attempt just that.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 25, 2011
'Crazy, Stupid, Love'
Crazy, Stupid, Love" — how could you not love a movie with a title like that? Well, if you're the film's distributor, maybe: Warner tamely re-titled it "Love Again" for the local market (just as "Friends With Benefits" was neutered into "Stay Friends"). Clearly they want it to seem more like a love-conquers-all...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 18, 2011
'George Harrison: Living in the Material World' / 'Under Control'
Director Martin Scorsese was one of the first to score big with the rockumentary format with his 1978 film "The Last Waltz," which covered the farewell concert by The Band and their musician friends such as Neil Young and Van Morrison. He's kept a hand in it ever since, making boomer rock docs on Bob...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2011
'Contagion' / 'Moneyball'
Cinema imagines the apocalypse on a regular basis, touching on everything from Mayan calendar-related polar shifts to the ever-popular walking dead. Few films, however, dare to deal with scenarios that could actually happen; that's what makes Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion," which looks at a deadly global...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2011
Sleeping Beauty
Director: Julia Leigh
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 4, 2011
'Rabbit Hole" / "Another Year"
As the marketing budgets for movies about alien invasions, Nordic gods and talking cars grow exponentially bigger, they increasingly tend to define our notions of what cinema is or could be. This has resulted in a generation or two out there who see little reason to go to a movie about, well, people....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 28, 2011
'Winter's Bone' / 'Gomorrah'
Nearly one in 10 Americans are out of work, about a million homes are foreclosed on each year and the dollar is at historic lows, but you'd never know it from watching American films. In Hollywood, whatever the topic -NYC rom-com, lesbian parents, ape uprisings, viral outbreak — the American Dream...
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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