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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
Dec 4, 2009
'Julie and Julia'
On some Hollywood actresses an apron would look all wrong. Amy Adams, however, wears the mantle of housework with a generous willingness that compensates for the occasional clumsiness of her lily white hands. After her stint in house cleaning and trash removal in "Sunshine Cleaning," Hollywood seems...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 27, 2009
'The Informant!'
Steven Soderbergh's latest, "The Informant!," comes off like the smartest, funniest kid in the class — a wiz at everything he does from physics to basketball, but somehow friendless.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 20, 2009
'Loft'
It's probably easy to make a complete hash out of something like "Loft" — five men share a loft purely for the purpose of enjoying their mistresses until one evening the bloodied, nude body of a young woman is left on the bed, her wrist handcuffed to a bedpost.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 13, 2009
'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers'
Wayne Wang, often described by U.S. film critics as "our resident Chinese filmmaker," has returned —if not exactly to his roots then a turf where he feels especially comfortable. After drumming up ubiquitous crowd pleasers like "Maid in Manhattan" and "Because of Winn-Dixie," it looks as though Wang...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 13, 2009
Hollywood fails to take the Chinese out of Wayne's world
Wayne Wang has a special position in American cinema — though drawing story and characters with the compassionate warmth that has become his trademark he remains an outside observer, perched on the periphery of many screen lives.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 11, 2009
Life in Japan can be a long and fraught train ride
Here's an illuminating little tale: In the early years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), a Japanese official was sent to France to study the police system (which, incidentally, was replicated here). Traveling across the Paris suburbs in a crowded train one summer afternoon, the official was assailed by acute...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 6, 2009
'Synecdoche, New York'
Sreenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who spun American cinema on its head with striking scripts for "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," goes for fiendishly obsessional, intellectual acrobatics in his directorial debut.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 30, 2009
'Mother'
Korean auteur Joon-ho Bong's latest, "Mother," combines the calculated suspense and sophisticated psychological thrills of his breakthrough work "Memories of Murder" (2003), with observations of East Asian motherhood gone over the edge.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 23, 2009
'Four Nights with Anna'
Bleak doesn't begin to describe "Four Nights with Anna." Or more to the point — sheer, undiluted creepiness. The work marks the re-emergence of Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski to filmmaking after a 15-year absence and, debates of whether it was worth the wait aside, the film is a return to form.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 16, 2009
'Becoming Jane'
"Becoming Jane" catches Anne Hathaway at a dip in her career — in the valley terrain where the "Get Smart" series stands like midrate hotels in a remote holiday resort, situated between the high-profile "The Devil Wears Prada" and the deceptively low-rent, indie-sheen of "Rachel Getting Married." She's...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 14, 2009
Plant-eating guys just waiting to get chomped on
It has finally happened: the inevitable relationship phenomenon. I was at a party the other day where every one of the couples present were paired off in the kokusan onna (国産オンナ, domestic woman)-gaikokujin otoko (外国人オトコ, foreign man) combination, a sight that would have caused my...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 9, 2009
'My Sister's Keeper'
"My Sister's Keeper" unfolds around Kate Fitzgerald, a 14-year-old girl with leukemia, but it is fundamentally about the dynamics of a family defined by her illness. Based on the best-selling 2007 novel by Jodi Picoult, it's difficult to keep the floodgates from swinging open and drenching the eyes even...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 2, 2009
'The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab'
Food — once abhorred by Hollywood directors like Billy Wilder for the way it "messed up a scene," (on the other hand, iced drinks and cocktails were a favored adornment) — has become as important to cinema as romance. Or even more so, if the recent batch of self-help manual-like love stories are...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 25, 2009
'Fast & Furious'
The article "the" is missing from the latest installment of the "The Fast and the Furious" franchise, now in its fourth sequel — a probable maneuver to lead people into thinking this is the original and arguably the best "THE Fast and THE Furious" — and lure them into theaters. Grammatical antics...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 18, 2009
'Homecoming'
A favorite aunt of mine used to try one diet fad after another and upon the failure of each one, pull out her old standby excuse: "Marie Antoinette worried over her weight her whole life. In which case there's just no help for the rest of us!" Never mind the lack of logic, I believed her. Now a similar...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 11, 2009
'The Burning Plain'
Charlize Theron is a rare Hollywood actress who has carved out a reputation for fearlessness and sheer guts. A former ballet dancer from South Africa, she has avoided roles that solely bank on her chiseled, amazingly statuesque beauty and instead gone far, far out on limbs where very few blonde bombshell...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 9, 2009
A soft spot for the good old/bad old Showa days
One vice I can't rid myself of is listening in on conversations between JK (an abbreviation for joshikōsei, 女子高生, or high school girls) on commuter trains. This has become easier these days due to the introduction of joseisenyōsharyō (女性専用車両, women-only cars) on almost every major...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 4, 2009
'The Ugly Truth'
The rom-com, once a source of solace for the working woman who, after a hard day's work, could at least count on undemanding entertainment to tide her through the evening, has become something different. It's no longer the sweet and smart girlfriend equivalent, unjudgmental if a little cynical. That...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 28, 2009
'30 Days of Night'
Director David Slade, who gave the world the vein-freezing, hemoglobin-depleting "Hard Candy" four years ago, has turned his hand to making a genuine horror film — a vampire thriller that plops A-list actor Josh Hartnett in the middle of a seemingly low-rent basement production called "30 Days of Night."...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 21, 2009
'The Good, the Bad, the Weird'
In what's being touted as South Korea's most expensive production to date ($17 million), three of that country's heartthrobs go on a nonstop, nonsensical action rampage that tears the screen apart and has the viewer cowering in the seat. It's not that "The Good, the Bad, the Weird" is scary, but its...
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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