Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 26, 2013

'Masaki Kobayashi Against the System'

Director: Masaki Kobayashi

Japan Times

CULTURE / TV & Streaming

Apr 24, 2013

Yoshimoto seeks laughs and profit beyond Japan

Osaka-based Yoshimoto Kogyo, the giant talent agency that celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, has made an enduring business out of that fleeting phenomenon: laughter.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 19, 2013

Ishikawa knows when to throw away the script

Japanese directors of TV dramas often make films that are basically big-screen versions of small-screen shows. No surprise, since their TV-network backers want product that will work equally well with multiplex audiences and home viewers.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 19, 2013

'Petaru Dansu (Petal Dance)'

Friends come and go, don't they? Years pass, lives change and people we regularly hung out with or were actually close to become no more than memories or, today, updates on Facebook. But as Hiroshi Ishikawa's "Petaru Dansu (Petal Dance)" shows simply, but rightly and poetically, we may still care more...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 19, 2013

'Tsuki to Cheri (Electric Button)'

Director: Yuki Tanada

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 12, 2013

Funahashi: 'Good stories don't need happy endings'

A graduate of the University of Tokyo's cinema studies course, Atsushi Funahashi studied directing at the School of Visual Arts in New York and shot his first two films, “Echoes” (2002) and “Big River” (2005), in the United States.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 12, 2013

'Sakura Namiki no Mankai no Shita ni (Cold Bloom)'

Grief doesn't have a sell-by date, not really. Decades after a loss, the absence is still felt, the memories remain.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 12, 2013

'Ahiru to Kamo no Koinrokka (The Foreign Duck, the Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker)'

Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 5, 2013

'Sakura, Futatabi no Kanako (Orpheus' Lyre)'

I used to think that religion in Japan was for most a matter of custom, not belief. You clap your hands at the shrine because that's what people do, not because you think the resident gods are actually listening.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 5, 2013

'Rentaneko (Rent-a-Cat)'

Director: Naoko Ogigami

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 29, 2013

'Daijobu 3kumi (Nobody's Perfect)'

Teaching kids is usually not thought of as a physically taxing job, but take it from one who has done it: It is, especially in Japanese schools, where one teacher may have to deal with 40 bundles of not-always-well-behaved energy. I spent much of my class time at a Tokyo boys' high school in the 1980s...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 29, 2013

'Outrage Beyond'

Director: Takeshi Kitano Language: Japanese (subtitled in English)

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 22, 2013

Kids with guns on film, blasting at the culture gap

Contemporary Japanese films are often extremely violent; the lives of ordinary Japanese, much less so. According to a multinational study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Japan's homicide rate in 2009 was 0.4 per 100,000 population, for a total of 506 deaths. Similar figures for...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 22, 2013

Tokyo Teyandei: The Story Teller's Apprentice

Rakugo, the ancient Japanese art of sit-down comedy, has inspired movies including Shinpei Hayashiya's "Rakugo Monogatari (Rakugo Story)" (2010) and Hideyuki Hirayama's "Shaberedomo Shaberedomo (Talk, Talk, Talk)" (2007), but Yuji Kanda's "Tokyo Teyandei: The Story Teller's Apprentice" (simply called...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 22, 2013

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 15, 2013

'Purachina Deta (Platinum Data)'

Why are so many Japanese sci-fi thrillers so sure our near-future rulers will try to tyrannize us, dehumanize us or, as in "Batoru Rowaiaru (Battle Royale)," make us slaughter each other, even when our only crime is possessing raging adolescent hormones? Given what I've seen of Tokyo's Kabutocho financial...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 15, 2013

Yume Uru Futari (Dreams for Sale)

Miwa Nishikawa's "Yume Uru Futari," a blackly comic, unsparingly sharp drama about a couple who scam lonely single women with fake marriage offers to fund the building of their new izakaya pub — and how their deception comes back to bite them in unexpected ways — has just been released on...

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...

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.

Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.

The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'

By Tomoko Otake

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