Kaori Shoji - The Japan Times

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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.

LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL

Oct 21, 2008

Confessions of a not so eco-friendly woman

Contrary to the national effort to increase eco-awareness, encourage environmentally friendly behavior and promote domestically grown vegetables; contrary to the general trend to alienate smokers and lovers of nitrite-drenched hot-dogs — here I stand, alone, a veritable black smudge on the environmental...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 17, 2008

'Every Little Step'

Cameras go behind the scenes of a Broadway audition for the first time in "Every Little Step" (released in Japan as "Broadway Broadway"), a documentary about dancers auditioning for a part in the revival of "A Chorus Line," itself a musical about dancers auditioning.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 10, 2008

After viewing "Get Smart," I understand why 80 percent of women in the developed world cite the following as the top problem in their personal lives: they'd like to change their jobs and start over, but they don't exactly know what to do. Call off the dogs: What most of us want to do, in the innermost...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 3, 2008

'Goya's Ghosts'

Milos Foreman's "Goya's Ghosts" significantly lowers the bar of the creative biography, a bar that Foreman himself had raised to unprecedented loftiness in "Amadeus." It's still the one film whose robe most aspire to touch, even fleetingly, before falling to the knees in abject worship.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 26, 2008

'Be Kind Rewind'

How much cute can a straight man generate (and we're not talking about his looks here) without getting thwacked on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper? If the man happens to be French filmmaker Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "The Science of Sleep") the answer is: TONS. During...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 19, 2008

'Lou Reed's Berlin'

During my youth I decided that one day in decrepit middle age I would aim to become one of three people: Mother Teresa, Fyodor Dostoevski or Lou Reed. Then I grew up and got real — the first two were impossibly lofty, but Reed was a goal to strive for. With his public moods that fluctuated between...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 12, 2008

One of the mildly perverted joys of "Married Life" comes from confirming that the Hollywood cinematic marriage was just as problematic in 1949 as it is today — and for much the same reasons. And then the film runs out of mileage. Based on the 1959 novel, "Five Roundabouts to Heaven," by John Bingham...

LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL

Sep 9, 2008

The withered middle-aged guy becomes a hot item in Japan's dating market

If you happen to be an over-45 male, looking a little tired, inclined to decline party invitations because you can't stand the hassle, comfortable in your own company and not really caring what other people think — so, the news is ALL good, at least in urban Japan. You are, or are extremely close...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 5, 2008

Taking Hitler by the horns

As the son of a Jewish mother who escaped the Holocaust by moving to Switzerland ("at the very last moment!"), Dani Levy has had a lifelong fascination with the Third Reich.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 5, 2008

'The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler'

Since "The Downfall" (2004), stories about Hitler or German life under the Third Reich have been rapidly emerging from Germany created by a new generation of directors born long after World War II. "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" from 2005 is the standout, a heavily introspective work about a girl who...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 29, 2008

'Je m'appelle Elisabeth'

One of the outstanding things about the life of Elisabeth (age 10), aka "Betty" in "Je m'appelle Elisabeth" (International Title: "Call Me Elizabeth") is the vast amount of time she has to go for long, solitary bike rides, discover and investigate the ruins of an old house, and tell herself stories at...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 22, 2008

Grappling with Japan

They met in a cafe in Manhattan. She was working on a comic strip for her book, which was about a young artist and her quest for an apartment and a day job in Brooklyn. He was a successful French film director (although she didn't know this at the time) having coffee with his two small sons. The boys...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 22, 2008

Like any other big city, Tokyo does things to you. The three directors in the omnibus movie "Tokyo!" however, inflict their penetrating stare upon the city and don't flinch when the city gazes right back — they all give as good as they get. They know that what happens here is both unique and ubiquitous...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 15, 2008

'Sex and the City'

Hmmm. This is tough. Trashing "Sex and the City" is like saying you don't own one pair of great strap-on heels or a little black dress. It's like admitting to years of celibacy. Immediately, you're seen as less than a woman (the modern definition of one anyway), one with no sense, no taste, weird and...

LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL

Aug 12, 2008

It ain't too bad being a joshi or a danshi

For a long time I couldn't pronounce the word otoko (男, man) without slightly blushing; I didn't much like the word in English either, but in Japanese it sounded a little vulgar and what women of my grandmother's generation would call hashitanai (はしたない, crude and ill-mannered).

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 8, 2008

'It's a Free World'

In the world of U.K. filmmaker Ken Loach ("Raining Stones," "Sweet Sixteen," "The Wind That Shakes the Barley") the working class have dignity; they speak and act with principle, even when these happen to be misguided. They may be bogged down by poverty, lack of schooling, recessions and unemployment,...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 1, 2008

'Love in the Time of Cholera'

It's easy to fall in love with a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but certain obstacles stand in the way of loving his characters. As time goes by and one becomes increasingly mired in the concerns of the 21st century — "Should I buy an iPhone?" "How many minutes do I have left on this exercise...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 25, 2008

'Kung Fu Panda'

He's fat, he's lazy, he's an underachieving slob. But Po the Panda could just be the answer to the prayers of a martial-arts master in "Kung Fu Panda," this summer's animation blockbuster from Dreamworks, opening in Japan to precede the Beijing Olympics.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 18, 2008

'Manufactured Landscapes'

It takes director Jennifer Baichwal close to 10 minutes to move from one end to the other of the electronic-parts factory in Fujian, China — the fast-moving camera glides along the floor showing aisles and aisles of yellow-jacketed workers bent over their tasks.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 18, 2008

The photographer who snaps it as it is

In his teens, photographer Edward Burtynsky worked in the factory of General Motors in his native Ontario. The experience gave him a taste for "seeing large things in a big perspective," as he describes it. He built his career on stark, amazingly beautiful images of the effects of industry on the environment...

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.

Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.

The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'

By Tomoko Otake

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