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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 16, 2014
'Bilocation'
"There will never be another you" goes the jazz standard, but is it true? Have you ever thought that your spitting image might be wandering the world somewhere? What if you encountered you on the street? I would make fast tracks in the opposite direction.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 16, 2014
'Fune wo Amu (The Great Passage)'
Director: Yuya Ishii
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 11, 2014
An inside look at the anime industry
Many books about anime and its makers have been published abroad in English and other languages, but few are by Japanese critics and scholars. In Japan, it's the reverse, with non-Japanese anime writers excluded from publishers' lists.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 9, 2014
Fukada's young castaways on adulthood's shores
Born in Tokyo in 1980, Koji Fukada released his first film in 2004, but his breakthrough was 2010's "Kantai (Hospitalité)," a witty black comedy about a mysterious stranger who talks his way into a job at a small Tokyo printing shop and is soon insinuating himself into the lives of the shop's proprietor...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 9, 2014
'Hotori no Sakuko (Au Revoir l'Eté)'
Compared to his avant-garde French new-wave peers, Eric Rohmer seemed to direct in a lighter, more conventional key: All those casually chic young heroines photographed in the more attractive parts of France, all those stories about their various love troubles. Also, from a Hollywood perspective, his...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 9, 2014
'Kagi Dorobo no Method (Key of Life)'
Director: Kenji Uchida
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 2, 2014
Our movie highlights of the coming year
Another year, another raft of unmissable movies. Here are the most hotly anticipated releases for JT film critics Mark Schilling, Kaori Shoji and Giovanni Fazio — get them in your diary now.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 2, 2014
'Seventh Code'
One of the more baffling and maddening aspects of the pop music scene here for a lot of foreign observers, especially those who write about it for the English-language media, is the long-continuing and now overwhelming popularity of girl idol groups, whether or not their names end with "48." For the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2013
Mark Schilling's 2013 Top 10: Farewell to Ghibli's anime masters
Japanese films did quite well both commercially and critically in 2013, with Hayao Miyazaki's final feature animation, "Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)," thumping the Hollywood competition at the local box office. But the industry's over-reliance on sure-thing manga, TV shows and novels for source material...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2013
Second opinion: Our Top 3 films in cross-review
Regular JT film critics Mark Schilling, Kaori Shoji and Giovanni Fazio got together at the Uplink theater/restaurant in Shibuya to talk about each other's No. 1 films for 2013: "Cloud Atlas" (Fazio), "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (Shoji) and "Kaguya-hime no Monogatari (The Tale of Princess Kaguya)"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2013
'Mugiko-san to (With Mugiko)'
One reason for the lasting popularity of "Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story)," the 1953 Yasujiro Ozu masterpiece about a momentous visit by an elderly couple to their adult children in Tokyo, is that all too many of its viewers can see themselves in the film's selfish son and daughter who don't have time...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2013
'11.25 Jiketsu no Hi (11.25: The Day Mishima Chose His Own Fate)'
Director: Koji Wakamatsu
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 19, 2013
'Matsuri no Uma (The Horses of Fukushima)'
The earthquake, tsunami and reactor meltdowns of March 2011 may have faded from the world's consciousness, but for many Japanese filmmakers, both young and old, it has been a life- and career-defining event. Documentary makers, especially, have gone north by the dozens to film the aftermath and interview...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 19, 2013
'Strawberry Night'
Director: Yuichi Sato
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 12, 2013
Young, dead and dealing with the consequences
A veteran director of feature episodes in the classic "Ultraman" tokusatsu (special effects) series, Kazuya Konaka may not be the most obvious choice for a drama about teen suicide, but a look at his filmography, including 1998's "Nazo no Tenkosei (The Dimension Travelers)" and 2008's "Tokyo Shojo...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 12, 2013
'Seki Seki Ren Ren (Deep Red Love)'
Japan's suicide rate is nearly twice that of the U.S. and three times that of the U.K., with the number of people taking their own lives each year only recently dipping below 30,000. It is also the leading cause of death among Japanese in their teens and 20s. Why this should be so in a society so orderly,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 12, 2013
'Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke)'
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 7, 2013
Re-examining Yasujiro Ozu on film
Yasujiro Ozu once had a reputation for making films only other Japanese could understand.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 7, 2013
Tracing the unhurried history of iconic director Yasujiro Ozu
Dec. 12, 1903: Yasujiro Ozu is born in Tokyo's Fukagawa district, the second of five siblings. His father is a prosperous fertilizer wholesaler from Matsusaka, Mie Prefecture. Ozu lives in Matsusaka with his brothers and sisters from 1913 to 1924.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 5, 2013
'Hajimari mo Owari mo Nai (No Beginning, No End)'
When I first saw a trailer for Shunya Ito's "Hajimari mo Owari mo Nai (No Beginning, No End)," an all-but dialogue-free film starring dancer/actor Min Tanaka, I thought it might be a 95-minute performance piece — and thus better reviewed by a dance critic than by me.

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