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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 9, 2014
Asia's myriad film genres celebrated at Udine festival
Why go to a film festival that specializes in the sort of popular Asian genres — from Hong Kong actioners to South Korean comedies — that the other "better" sort of festivals have traditionally sniffed at?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2014
Young Japanese filmmaker's dystopian dream
Several years ago, a film project of mine was selected for J-Pitch, a government-backed initiative that introduces new filmmakers to veteran producers outside Japan, in the hope (in my case, a faint hope) that they will co-produce an original film. At a J-Pitch seminar where new filmmakers delivered...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2014
'Momose, Kocchi wo Muite (My Pretend Girlfriend)'
First love, or hatsukoi, is a big topic in Japanese teen films, as well as almost everywhere else in popular culture. It's attractive because of its innocence and purity, as well as the almost inevitable fleetingness of the relationship — if indeed, it is one; someone is often far more besotted than...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2014
'Gomennasai (Ring of Curse)'
Director: Mari Asato
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 1, 2014
'Live'
When I was 12 I thought the movie parodies in "Mad" magazine were hilarious. Now I suppose I'm harder to please — or just older — but parodies that self-consciously mock their source, while cutely paying homage to it, quickly put me in a trance.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 1, 2014
'Soshite Chichi ni Naru (Like Father, Like Son)'
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 24, 2014
Painful love in decaying Hokkaido port town
My interview with Mipo Oh, the director of the turbulent new love drama 'Soko Nomi Nite Hikari Kagayaku (The Light Shines Only There),' did not begin smoothly.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 24, 2014
'Soko Nomi Nite Hikari Kagayaku (The Light Shines Only There)'
Japan's image overseas might have a funhouse aspect, but even many outlanders who live here only get a selective view of the place, since their Japanese colleagues and friends mostly come from the educated, middle-class stratum of society and live more or less stable, law-abiding lives.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 24, 2014
'Yokomichi Yonosuke Monogatari (The Story Of Yonosuke)'
Director: Shuichi Okita
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 17, 2014
'Thermae Romae II'
Hideki Takeuchi's "Thermae Romae" — literally "Roman Bath" — was 2012's surprise box office smash in Japan, earning nearly ¥6 billion, the second-highest that year.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 17, 2014
'Hidamari No Kanojo' (Girl in the Sunny Place)
Director: Takahiro Miki
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 10, 2014
'Crows Explode'
In Japanese films, high-school classrooms are often portrayed as rowdy environments where kids can talk, tease, flirt and fight, without any visible adult supervision. But when the teacher walks through the door the fun — if that's what it is — usually ends.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 10, 2014
'Kirishima, Bukatsu Yamerutteyo' (The Kirishima Thing)
Director: Daihachi Yoshida
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 5, 2014
Cycling Sayama
A forested area bordering western Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture offers day-trippers a chance to experience the great outdoors on two wheels.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 3, 2014
'Sanbun no Ichi (One Third)'
Caper movies have their conventions, one being that the crook anti-heroes may get to run their fingers through their loot, but they hardly ever get to keep it. The prototype is Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing" (1956), in which elaborate planning and clockwork execution pay off in a blackly comic reversal...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 3, 2014
'Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de (The After-Dinner Mysteries)'
Director: Hijikata Masato, Ishikawa Junichi
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2014
Trial by media, conviction by word of mouth
Yoshihiro Nakamura makes movies that puzzle, surprise and illuminate their themes both cleverly and literally (the fireworks of "Golden Slumber," the comet of "Fish Story"). Everyone's heard of the "butterfly effect" — how a small action in one place (a butterfly flapping its wings in a South American...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2014
'Shirayuki Hime Satsujin Jiken (The Snow White Murder Case)'
The Japanese are big fans of mysteries of the puzzle-plot sort, with murders committed in the kinds of odd and ingenious ways that real killers seldom use. The detective hero not only cracks the case, but delivers a detailed postmortem to an appreciative audience, somewhat like a chess master analyzing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2014
'Kashikoi Inu wa Hoezu ni Warau (Shady)'
Director: Ryohei Watanabe
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Mar 27, 2014
Okinawa film fest gives fans an up-close view of the stars
Why go to Okinawa for movies? For anyone familiar with the international festival circuit, especially at its higher, artier end, the Okinawa International Movie Festival may well prompt this question — and a negative answer. "It's not a real film festival!" a fellow foreign journalist exclaimed to...

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