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November 23, 2024
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2013
Kokuhaku (Confessions)
Director: Tetsuya Nakashima
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2013
'Arekara (Since Then)'
It's rare indeed that I ever wished a new Japanese film were longer — and I am not the only one. "This could be shorter by (name your number) minutes" is such a cliche of Japanese film reviewing and commentary that I inwardly groan every time I read or hear it; and yet more often than not, it's right....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 1, 2013
Fifth Okinawa fest celebrates community films
Since its start in 2009, the Okinawa International Movie Festival has been more than its name implies. It has the usual competition sections: one called Laugh for comedies and another called Peace for dramas, though not all the films fit neatly into these two bins. But it has also been a promo event...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 1, 2013
'Su-chan Mai-chan Sawako-san'
Yonkoma manga, or four-cell gag comics, are popular here with both sexes and all ages, but they account for relatively few of the many hit live-action films made from manga. For one thing, it's not so easy to string all those gags together into a three-act story. Doable, yes. Done well? Not so often....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 1, 2013
'Ai no Mukidashi'
Director: Sion Sono
Japan Times
LIFE
Feb 24, 2013
Sharing films with a master critic
Donald Richie was my friend and mentor for more than 20 years and my inspiration before that. When I was preparing to come to Japan for the first time in 1975, I read many books about the place, but Donald's masterpiece "The Inland Sea" was the one that entranced me. My first long trip after my arrival...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 22, 2013
'Yokomichi Yonosuke'
Plenty of Japanese directors make films about socially awkward or marginal guys: Given all the on-screen examples (as well as their many real-life inspirations), it seems that the onetime country of the samurai has become the land of the otaku and freeter (unemployed or underemployed), clasping to emotional...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013
'Sado Tenpesuto'
Beginning with 2001's "Ichiban Utsukushi Natsu (Firefly Dreams)," a Yasujiro Ozu-esque drama about a friendship that develops between a rebellious teenage girl and an elderly former actress in the countryside, John Williams has been directing films in Japan with Japanese talent that do not proclaim...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013
'My film remixes "The Tempest" '
A Welshman who moved to Nagoya in 1988 and has been based in Japan ever since, John Williams is the rare foreigner who has worked in the Japanese film industry in not only the usual facilitator roles, as line producer and translator, but has also directed his own well-regarded films here. His first...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 8, 2013
'Kiiroi Zo'
Ryuichi Hiroki has become the go-to director for romantic dramas that quality-wise are a cut above the local formula weepers whose starred-crossed lovers are parted by a slow, beautiful death (though Hiroki's couples are hardly immune to life's vicissitudes). At the same time, his films in this genre...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2013
'R-18 Bungakusho Vol. 1: Jijojibaku no Watashi'
Sex is universal, but kinks can be local. Japanese S&M, at least the varieties I've seen in films over the years, is less about black leather and fishnet stockings, more about candle wax and artfully elaborate knots designed to display the flesh of the (inevitably female) subject in enticing ways.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 26, 2013
Looking back on a major turning point
Routinely acclaimed as a giant of world cinema in his lifetime, Akira Kurosawa has slipped in the global director league rankings since his death in 1998.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 25, 2013
'Minasan, Sayonara (See You Tomorrow, Everyone)'
Those directors who return to the same theme over and over commonly use the same actor to embody it. Akira Kurosawa cast Toshiro Mifune as the intense hero in film after film about masculine, if not always traditionally macho, heroism. Juzo Itami starred wife Nobuko Miyamoto as the tough cookie taking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 17, 2013
'Furasshubakku Memorizu 3D (Flashback Memories 3D)'
Music documentaries nearly all feature nonmusical moments, such as Bob Dylan sardonically jousting with journalists in 'Dont Look Back.' 'Furasshubakku Memorizu 3D (Flashback Memories 3D),' a documentary of didgeridoo player Goma offers no such moments.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 17, 2013
Matsue: 'Goma's positivity left me revitalized'
Since his 1999 debut "Anyon Kimuchi (Annyong Kimchi)," a documentary about his zainichi (ethnic Korean) family, Tetsuaki Matsue has been interested in those on the margins of Japanese society — though he is hardly the director-as-crusader.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 17, 2013
Nagisa Oshima: a leading force in film
Film director Nagisa Oshima, who died in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, of pneumonia on Tuesday at age 80, was a leader of Japan's postwar New Wave movement.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 11, 2013
'Tokyo Kazoku (Tokyo Family)'
A director for the Shochiku studio since 1961, Yoji Yamada is best known for the Tora-san series about a wandering peddler, played by Kiyoshi Atsumi, who is forever falling in love but never gets the girl. In speaking about the 48 installments of this popular series, which started in 1969 and ended...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 6, 2013
Complex tales of censorship in 20th-century Japan
THE ART OF CENSORSHIP IN POSTWAR JAPAN, by Kirsten Cather. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 342 pp., $45.00 (hardcover) REDACTED: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan, by Jonathan E. Abel. University of California Press, 2012, 376 pp., $44.95 (hardcover) Censorship in Japan has long been hot-button...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / BEST OF 2012
Dec 28, 2012
Japan's female directors make a strong showing
Female Japanese directors were once like those rare species periodically discovered in Asian jungles and immediately labeled endangered. This year, however, in their highly individual ways, they made some of Japan's strongest, most ambitious films. By now the only thing endangered is local industry prejudice...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 21, 2012
'Ooku: Eien- Emonnosuke ・ Tsunayoshi-hen (The Castle of Crossed Destinies)'
Based on Fumi Yoshinaga's best-selling manga about a feudal-era Japan ruled by a fictional matriarchy, 2010's "Ooku (The Lady Shogun and Her Men)" was a typical Japanese costume film with gorgeous kimonos and a story of drama in high places.
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.

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