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August 15, 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
Jul 4, 2013
'Shadow Dancer'
Director: James Marsh
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 4, 2013
'Monsters University'
Pixar's 2001 hit "Monsters Inc." revolved around one great premise: What if the monsters that lurk underneath children's beds, were actually terrified of the kids? It was a great gag, and the rest of the film fell into place around it. Also adding immensely to the film's charm were the contrasting comedic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 4, 2013
'Lawless (Yokubo no Virginia)'
The relationship between singer Nick Cave and filmmaker John Hillcoat has been a fruitful one over the years; while Hillcoat has done a lot of music-video work for Cave's gothic-blues group The Bad Seeds, Cave has also worked on Hillcoat's feature films, providing music for "The Road" (2009) as well...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013
'Compliance'
Of all the films you'll see this year, "Compliance" has, for sure, the most unbelievable plot of them all. The little tagline at the beginning saying "inspired by true events" hasn't stopped people from taking outrage at director Craig Zobel's supposed exaggerations, with "Nobody could possibly be that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013
'Borgia (Season One)'
Director: Various
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 21, 2013
'After Earth'
It's the year 1,000 A.E. — After Earth, hence the name of the movie — a millennium since humanity fled an ecologically ravaged Earth for a new home on another planet. Commander Cypher Raige (Will Smith) and his sulky 13-year-old son Kitai (Jaden Smith) are out on a routine training mission when their...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 21, 2013
'21 & Over'
When "Hangover" screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore got green-lighted to direct their first film, it's pretty easy to imagine their marching orders from their producers: give us the same, but different.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 21, 2013
'Les Miserables'
Director: Tom Hooper
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 14, 2013
Unflinching survival epic recounts tsunami horror
Director Juan Antonio Bayona came out of nowhere — well, Barcelona and the world of music videos, actually — to drop "The Orphanage" on an unsuspecting world in 2007. This chilling and intelligent reinvention of the haunted-house genre went on to become No. 1 at the Spanish box office and also did...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 14, 2013
'The Impossible'
Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter" had the misfortune of having opened in local cinemas just before March 11, 2011. After the trauma of a real-life tsunami hitting Japan, few were in the mood to see a Hollywood special-effects version of the same.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 14, 2013
'Spring Breakers'
Harmony Korine started his career back in 1995 by writing the screenplay for youths-behaving-badly movie "Kids," and some two decades later he's still playing the same card. "Spring Breakers" is set amid the annual college-student migration to Florida during spring vacation, where drunken public debauchery...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 14, 2013
'The Rum Diary'
Director: Bruce Robinson
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 7, 2013
'Olympus Has Fallen'
This latest bit of Hollywood "propatainment," "Olympus Has Fallen," is basically "Die Hard" in the White House, with Gerard Butler's disgraced former Secret Service agent trying to save the president (Aaron Eckhart) from a team of crack North Korean commandos who plan to pry America's nuclear launch...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 7, 2013
'Life of Pi'
Director: Ang Lee
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013
'Oblivion'
I have seen the future and it looks like about half a dozen other sci-fi films poured into a cauldron and left to smelt. Influences are one thing, but "Oblivion" is a bit of a Frankenstein's monster, its plot composed almost entirely of bits hacked off from other well-known films.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013
'The Grandmaster'
Ever since Ang Lee scored big with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" back in 2000, nearly every other Chinese-language director of note has tried a similar attempt at crossover success with a martial-arts movie. The latest to do so is Hong Kong's Wong Kar-wai, yet the irony is that he has already made...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013
'Glorious 39' (Japan title: Hitler Code 39)
Director: Olivier Assayas
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 24, 2013
'Antiviral'
Hypochondriacs should avoid "Antiviral" like, well, the plague. This creepy near-future-dystopia flick features enough coughing, sneezing, night sweats, bloody vomiting and gnarly sores to make even the jaded viewer feel like gargling and showering with antibacterial soap.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 24, 2013
Son of Cronenberg debuts with sickly body horror
Imagine you are David Cronenberg, a filmmaker but also a parent. You tell your kids that your job is making movies; naturally, they want to see one. So which do you show them? "Scanners," with its exploding heads? "Rabid," where porn-star Marilyn Chambers drinks human blood? Or maybe "The Fly," where...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 24, 2013
'The Tree'
Ten-year-old Simone (Morgana Davies) has just lost her dad, felled by a sudden heart attack, and she finds solace high in the branches of a massive fig tree that grows outside her home under the big skies of rural Queensland. Sometimes, late at night, she thinks she can hear his voice; her mother, Dawn...
Japan to revise consumption tax exemption for overseas tourists
Tourists walk through Nakamise shopping street near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo in April
Japan's tourism industry hit by cancellations after megaquake alert
A beach closed due to a megaquake alert in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, from Friday to Thursday.
Focus shifts to incoming typhoon as Tropical Storm Maria dissipates
Newly formed Tropical Storm Ampil, which is forecast to approach eastern Japan this weekend, is seen on the left side of this satellite image.
Kishida to step down in September in bid to show ‘LDP has changed’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference Wednesday at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo.
Publisher finds surprise audience after translating history textbooks
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher's textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23.
Economic security is about strengthening and sustaining growth, former minister says
Former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi says changes in the international balance of power, along with deepening economic interdependence, have led some countries to attempt to use their economic power to impose their will on others.
Ice bandanas, convenience store breaks: Running under Japan’s summer sun
Blistering heat is becoming a fixture of summer in Japan, but a few tweaks to your routine can make your outdoor runs bearable — if not enjoyable — until cooler temperatures return.
Japan issued its first-ever megaquake alert. What does that mean?
Naoshi Hirata (center), chairman of a committee tasked with evaluating the risk of a Nankai Trough earthquake, speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
France brings down the curtain on its Olympic party with Tom Cruise and Leon Marchand
Fireworks are set off during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday.
Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
Flaring at the Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. Flaring, a common sight at LNG plants, is a controlled burning of gas for reasons ranging from depressurizing equipment to disposing of gas that can’t be used. The practice is a "waste of money" and negatively impacts climate change and human health, says the International Energy Agency.

Podcast

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

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’
By Thu-Huong Ha

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