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November 22, 2024
 

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Kaori Shoji
Kaori Shoji writes about movies and movie-makers for the Film Page, plus takes a turn at the Bilingual Column. Biggest mistake of her career: taking the very dignified Nagisa Oshima to McDonald's for an iced coffee.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 11, 2008
'Hot Fuzz'
Hercule Poirot once proclaimed that "the police in England are only adequate, but the English detective is a thing of marvel!" Sherlock Holmes would have agreed, having put up with the uninspired adequacy of Scotland Yard for most of his career. But no more: The English police or rather "the fuzz in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 4, 2008
No room for the boys
Celine Sciamma could be a French Lisa Loeb, her straight hair and glasses offsets keen, intelligent eyes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 4, 2008
'Naissance des pieuvres'
Karl Marx once divided the world into the haves and have-nots, but in the world of teenagers one of the main divides — less significant but nonetheless painful — is that of the pretty and unpretty.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 27, 2008
'One California Day'
All over California people move encased in metal and chrome, going from house to office in their cars. It's a contradiction of California living that, despite the beautiful weather and spacious streets, no one is outside.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 20, 2008
'Eastern Promises'
Filmmaker David Cronenberg continues to be obsessed by the human body, and all the things people do to it, in the brilliantly staged "Eastern Promises."
CULTURE / Film
Jun 13, 2008
A skilled scrutinizer of perversity
Tom Kalin is best known for his 1992 feature debut "Swoon," a stylish but keenly observed thriller about a gay couple who, in the 1920s, murdered a child. His latest film, "Savage Grace," is also about a relationship defined by perversity.
CULTURE / Film
Jun 13, 2008
'Savage Grace'
There's much that's grotesque about "Savage Grace," but director Tom Kalin and writer Howard A. Rodman deliberately candy-wrap the unseemliness in decorous crepe paper — with the result that the poisonous goo leaks from the edges with a creepily gothic effect. Savage Grace Rating: (3 out of...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 10, 2008
Investigating the linguistic allure of hard-boiled detectives
In Japan as elsewhere, there's an enormous demand for detective fiction, especially in the realm of terebi dorama (TV serials) (テレビドラマ). A well-made keiji-mono (police detective story) (刑事モノ) always soars to the top of the ratings list, partly because viewers can never seem to get...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 6, 2008
'27 Dresses'
One hesitates to say, but there's something slightly creepy about a superorganized, superefficient planner of other people's weddings who still lugs around a bulging filofax to sort out her many matrimonial tasks. Unlike a long-ago J-Lo (see "The Wedding Planner"), she doesn't do this for a living, either....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 30, 2008
'The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian'
What's the use of a fairyland in which trees don't dance, animals don't talk and one's once majestic castle has fallen into ruins? Returning to the world of Narnia, the Pevensie brothers, Peter (William Moseley) and Edmund (Skandar Keynes), look thoroughly petulant if not downright pissed off, in the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 23, 2008
'The Hottest State'
Let me tell you what's wrong with most chick flicks: They're hard on real chicks.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 23, 2008
In pursuit of the authentic
Ethan Hawke makes no bones about his literary career: his well-received first novel, "The Hottest State," was written with the movie in mind.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 16, 2008
Fight vs. apartheid through foreign eyes
Danish director Bille August never had personal ties to South Africa, but he remembers what a "powerful force" Nelson Mandela was throughout the 1980s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 16, 2008
'Goodbye Bafana'
A good politician — as opposed to a dramatic revolutionary — is hard to find, but Nelson Mandela could safely be called one of the best living examples of that rare and precious category.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 13, 2008
Hopes of silence in Tokyo undergo brutal assault
The concept of chinmoku wa kin (silence is golden) isn't a Tokyo thing. Like a lot of other nifty modernities, such as buttered pancakes and the subway system, it was imported into Japan and adopted into city living when the country opened up to the West in the late 19th century.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 9, 2008
'Mr. Brooks'
The serial-killer genre that gave us characters as diversely memorable as Dr. Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) and "Serial Mom" (Kathleen Turner), had been on the wane. Murder-as-entertainment was no longer a novelty — in terms of body count, any franchise horror movie could up the numbers in a fraction of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 2, 2008
'P2'
In late-1980s America, there was a rash of crimes that occurred in parking lots or were instigated from parked cars. Women and children were told to stay away from parked vehicles that looked suspicious and warned against going near parking lots after dark.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 25, 2008
'I'm Not There'
A bio-pic is difficult to get right, but a bio-pic of a living musical legend — in this case Bob Dylan — seems too daunting to contemplate.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 18, 2008
'Factory Girl'
"In the future, everyone can be famous for 15 minutes" is one of Andy Warhol's choice aphorisms. When he said that in the late 1960s, the point had already been proven with a vengeance by Edie Sedgwick: Warhol's one-time muse, collaborator and platonic lover (with Warhol, such a thing was possible)....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 11, 2008
'Atonement'
The hype on "Atonement" is that it's a story about guilt, passion and sex: a crowd-pleasing triumvirate. Though the story does bank on these factors, it's really an emotional experiment and a literary conceit designed to intrigue the intellect rather than titillate the senses. You shouldn't really expect...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
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.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

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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