author

 
Menu
Search
 
November 22, 2024
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access

Meta

Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 17, 2009
'Futoko'
Since its start in 1978, the Pia Film Festival has served as a proving ground for young Japanese indie filmmakers, with many of its prize winners going on to greater fame, if not always fortune. Among them are Ryosuke Hashiguchi ("Gururi no Koto"), Shinobu Yaguchi ("Happy Flight"), Naoko Ogigami ("Kamome...
CULTURE / Film
Jul 10, 2009
'Kani Kosen'
Why does a novel about exploited workers on a crab cannery boat, published 80 years ago by a young communist writer, later tortured to death by the police, become a hot movie property now?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 3, 2009
'MW'
Japanese live-action films based on manga take various forms, from the silly to the serious, though few are anything like Hollywood comic-book movies, whose superheroes, with their CG-assisted superpowers, are pure wish fulfillment. It's not that the Japanese films are always less fantastic, but their...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 26, 2009
'Dear Doctor'
Movies about impostors and grifters tend to view their roguish heroes with everything from indulgence to outright admiration, but rarely disapproval. One reason, I think, is that the movie business attracts BS artists of every stripe, from the hustlers peddling grade-Z action pics in film market booths...
CULTURE / Film
Jun 19, 2009
'Shugo Tenshi'
Salaryman comedies go back the prewar days. Even Yasujiro Ozu portrayed the tragicomic trials of the salaryman in such films as "Tokyo no Chorus" ("Tokyo Chorus," 1931) and "Umarete wa Mita Keredo" ("I was Born but . . .," 1932), though the genre reached its popular peak in the 1960s, when Hitoshi Ueki...
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009
'Seishin'
Mental illness, as Kazuhiro Soda notes in his documentary "Seishin" ("Mental"), is one of the big taboos of Japanese society.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009
Samurai get put through paces
Anyone who knows anything about musicals knows they require endless rehearsals in order to be staged successfully. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers didn't just jump up and glide around a sound stage as the cameras rolled; they had to practice each step of those seemingly effortless dance routines over...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jun 7, 2009
It's so cool to play an oily toad
Actors who direct and star in their own films may be motivated by something other than vanity, but they usually manage to make themselves look cool — or at least cooler than they would have if someone else had been in the director's chair.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 5, 2009
'Ultra Miracle Love Story'
Johnny Depp seems to be a role model for Japanese actors with leading man looks, but who almost never plays straight leading man roles. That is, roles in which they romance and win the leading lady — comic fight-and-make-up scenes optional. If Depp's career is any indication, this is a brilliant strategy,...
CULTURE / Film
May 29, 2009
'High Kick Girl'
Movie-action scenes are as choreographed as "Swan Lake," but the exceptional ones that make it real — Buster Keaton standing stock still as the side of a house falls on him in "Steamboat Bill Jr., Jackie Chan sliding 30 meters down a pole in a shopping mall in "Police Story" — linger on in memory...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 22, 2009
Swamped by laughter
I'd met Satoshi Miki several times before interviewing him for "Instant Numa." Our senses of humor mesh well enough that the recording of the interview often sounds like a sitcom laugh track.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 22, 2009
'Instant Numa'
Comedy is big box office in Hollywood now, with such comic odes to male immaturity as "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" grossing north of $100 million. In Japan, on the other hand, making the locals laugh in a movie theater is still the hardest job in the industry — and the returns for comedies...
CULTURE / Film
May 15, 2009
'Donju'
Kankuro Kudo was once hailed as the boy wonder of Japanese show business, first as a scriptwriter for hit TV shows ("Ikebukuro West Gate Park" in 2000, and "Kisarazu Cats Eye" in 2002) and then hit films ("Go," "Ping Pong," "Zebraman"). In 2005, he released his first film as a director: "Mayonaka no...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2009
'Yomei Ikkagetsu no Hanayome'
Films commonly target one sex more than the other. Akira Kurosawa made them mainly for men and Yasujiro Ozu, mainly for women, but today both directors are regarded as masters by critics of both sexes, targeting be damned.
CULTURE / Film
May 1, 2009
'Goemon'
Big, original, visionary films are rare in today's Japanese film industry, which overwhelmingly prefers sure bets developed from hit manga, anime, TV dramas, novels and other media properties.
CULTURE / Film
Apr 24, 2009
'Rain Fall — Ame no Kiba'
Japanese film folks used to regularly complain that they could never compete with Hollywood because the budget gap was simply too great. A guy in a rubber Godzilla suit didn't have the same impact as the gee-whiz effects that Lucas, Spielberg and company could command and that cash-strapped Japanese...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 17, 2009
'Nisesatsu'
Counterfeiting is one of those movie crimes that, by the laws of script writing, is doomed to fail, like the overelaborate heists that end with the thieves either dead or captured and their loot billowing up in clouds of green from an open briefcase.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 10, 2009
'Crows Zero II'
Japan has its share of teenage punks, but compared with their scarier counterparts in the United States, they are rather tame. Instead of spraying enemies and strangers with automatic weapons, they settle their disputes with methods usually far less lethal, from fists to head butts.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 3, 2009
'Hatsukoi — Natsu no Kioku'
First love, or hatsukoi, is a perennial, popular theme for seishun eiga ("youth films"), ranking right up there with tragic early death.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2009
'Fish Story'
Film critics like to be surprised, which comes from being unsurprised too many times. This critic, however, has become tired of "The Sixth Sense" school of script writing, enamored as it is of that 1999 hit's sleight-of-hand ending. But while a good magician can fool the eye in dozens of ways, a scriptwriter...
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

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

SWCC keeps changing with keyword ‘new challenges’
SWCC keeps changing with keyword ‘new challenges’

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER