Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

CULTURE / Film

Nov 5, 2010

'Genpin'/'Umareru (To Be Born)'

The pain of childbirth, Genesis says, is God's punishment for the original sin of womankind — if only Eve hadn't given Adam that apple! But in Japan, traditionalists contend, it's to be embraced, not lamented, since the deeper the agony, the deeper the motherly love. So hold the epidurals, please,...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 29, 2010

'Raiou (The Lightning Tree)'

When Ryuichi Hiroki had a big hit last year with "Yomei 1-kagetsu no Hanayome (April Bride)," a drama about a young woman's struggle with terminal breast cancer, I was glad for him. In a directing career of two decades, he had never enjoyed this sort of commercial success and, unlike the hacks who serve...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 22, 2010

'Wakiyaku Monogatari (Cast Me if You Can)'

When I hear rants from foreigners about the badness of Japanese acting, I don't rise to the defense of the hammy emoting or smarmy mugging I've seen on the screen here, of which there's been plenty. But I do run through the long list in my head of the Japanese actors, from stars to supporting players,...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 15, 2010

'Inshite Miru: 7-kakan no Desu Gemu (The Incite Mill -7 Day Death Game-)'

J-horror is over. The moment for the ghostly ladies with the long black hair has passed. But people still want to be scared at the movies — and among the Japanese films doing it most successfully now are the hybrids of the horror, mystery and thriller genres that treat murder as a game.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 8, 2010

I was into car chase movies for about two minutes in the 1970s — "Bullit," "The French Connection," "Duel" — but they quickly became cliches, then jokes. "Smokey and the Bandit," "Cannonball Run" and — need I say more?

CULTURE / Film

Oct 8, 2010

Movie program offers some Japanese gems

For foreign residents, monolingual or no, Tokyo International Film Festival offers a good chance to see new Japanese films with subtitles, especially in three of the main sections: Competition, Special Screenings and Japanese Eyes.

Japan Times

JAPAN / Media

Oct 3, 2010

India's expanding film industry boasts more than just Bollywood

Everyone knows Bollywood — the film industry centered in Mumbai (formerly called Bombay, hence the "B" in Bollywood) whose singing and dancing entertainments are shown throughout the country — and now the world.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 1, 2010

'Nanase Futatabi: The Movie (Nanase Again)'

Some genres of Japanese movies are hard to "place" for Westerners, since they have no precise Hollywood equivalent. The ero guro (erotic and grotesque) genre, for example, is often lumped into the horror category by overseas festivals and DVD distributors, but the films are usually less about jack-in-the-box...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 24, 2010

'Jusannin no Shikaku (13 Assassins)'

Takashi Miike's rise is complete: This one-time director of cheapo shock pics — which he churned out like sausages and were beloved by foreign Asian Extreme fans — is now a proven hit-maker and recognized auteur, with his new samurai swashbuckler "Jusannin no Shikaku (13 Assassins)" screening in...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 17, 2010

'Kimi ga Odoru, Natsu (The Summer You Danced)'

Melodramas have been a staple of Japanese film for decades, proving over and over the observation that Japanese audiences, more than anything else, love a good cry. I've gone to screenings where the women sitting around me take out their handkerchiefs even before the lights go down. The men start blubbing...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 10, 2010

Yukihiko Tsutsumi's band drama "Beck" is being hyped as one of the big Japanese movies of the year for the usual reason: The manga on which it's based, by Harold Sakuishi, has sold 15 million copies. Distributor Shochiku justifiably expects monster box office numbers, no doubt thinking of "Nana," another...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 3, 2010

'Kaidan Shin Mimibukuro: Kaiki (Tales of Terror: The Bizarre)'

Starting in 1990 as a compilation of 100 "true horror" tales from ordinary folks around Japan, "Kaidan Shin Mimibukuro (Tales of Terror)" has spawned a series of short films broadcast on the BS-TBS cable and satellite channel and three theatrical omnibuses. The franchise is the snack food of J-horror....

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 27, 2010

'Tokyo-jima (Tokyo Island)'

It's a common fantasy — being the only guy on an island of beautiful women. But to be the only woman on an island of men, including the good, the bad and the ugly? Somewhat different, isn't it?

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 20, 2010

Pearl-diving sirens return

The castaway on a deserted tropical isle has inspired everything from "Robinson Crusoe" to innumerable New Yorker cartoons — but it was no joke to Kazuko Higa, the young wife of an assistant plantation overseer living on the small Pacific island of Anatahan in the closing days of World War II.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 20, 2010

Japan's first film nude still radiant decades after getting skirty

Arranging an interview with Michiko Maeda took nearly a month — she has long been media-shy — but when she finally agreed to meet film writer Yoshiaki Suzuki and me at a Tokyo beer hall, she epitomized kimonoed grace and charm, while saying this would be her final interview.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 20, 2010

One of the iron rules for Hollywood scriptwriters is that the audience must root for the hero. Character flaws and bad behavior are permitted, but, in the final analysis, the hero should not be a jerk.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 13, 2010

Radical director of porn and politics delivers yet again

Koji Wakamatsu is living proof that a lifelong rebel can thrive in Japan's go-along-to-get-along film industry. Today he is celebrated as not just another '60s survivor — he helped pioneer the pinku (pink, or soft porn) genre in that era, mixing in radical politics and experimental aesthetics with...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 13, 2010

Once an enfant terrible, who as a young filmmaker challenged censors and outraged conservative critics with everything from surreal S&M sex to sympathetic portrayals of Palestinian radicals, Koji Wakamatsu has not mellowed so much as ripened.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 6, 2010

'Kinako — Minarai Keisatsuken no Monogatari (Kinako — The Story of an Apprentice Police Dog)'

Animal movies are a thriving genre of Japanese films that foreign critics, scholars and viewers by and large cordially detest. It's similar to the typical gaijin reaction to natto (fermented soy beans) — i.e., disgust at a humble, but beloved, made-in-Japan specialty.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 30, 2010

'Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Natsu (Japan's Longest Summer)'/'Ishii Teruo: Eiga Tamashi (Teruo Ishii: The Soul of Film)'

August is the season in Japan for a never-ending stream of films and TV programs about World War II. Quite naturally, from the Japanese perspective, most of this outpouring examines the war's closing days, particularly the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some outsiders (including this one)...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.

The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan

By Johan Brooks

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