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November 22, 2024
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 17, 2012
'Shokuzai (Penance)'
How much will they miss you when you're gone? Directors typically keep putting off the answer to that question as long as possible, working until they drop. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose 2008 dysfunctional family drama "Tokyo Sonata" won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 10, 2012
'Kirishima, Bukatsu Yamerutteyo (The Kirishima Thing)'
High schools are mercilessly hierarchical societies. At mine in rural Pennsylvania varsity basketball players occupied the summit. (Football players didn't because we didn't have a football team.) For a mere honor student to absent-mindedly sit in the "reserved" seat of one of these titans in the lunch...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 3, 2012
'Nippon no Uso: Hodo Shashinka Fukushima Kikujiro 90-sai (Japan Lies)'
Caring too much can be an occupational hazard for journalists in disaster or war zones. The mantra of big media is objectivity, not advocacy. Also, the media spotlight keeps shifting, while victims are still suffering. You either move with it — or get left behind.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 3, 2012
Hasegawa gets the perfect portrait
Making a documentary on a crusading 90-year-old photojournalist who is famously fearless and uncompromising is not for the timid. Saburo Hasegawa, who has been directing television documentaries on a range of social issues since the 1990s, was initially afraid that his subject, Kikujiro Fukushima, might...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 29, 2012
The story of a U.S. Marine who convinced his enemies to live
ONE MARINE'S WAR: A Combat Interpreter's Quest for Humanity in the Pacific, by Gerald A. Meehl. Naval Institute Press, 2012, 246 pp., $34.95 (hardcover) Of war memoirs there is no end, though soldiers of any given war eventually fade away. Also, their memories of a conflict may remain vivid decades later,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 27, 2012
'Kazoku no Kuni (Our Homeland)'
Many Japanese directors make family dramas — it's the default setting for serious filmmakers here — but they are usually not telling their own family stories, however fictionalized.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 20, 2012
'Okami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki (Wolf Children)'
Mamoru Hosoda is a leading contender to succeed Hayao Miyazaki for the title of anime master of masters — the one everyone in the industry, Japanese or foreign, looks up to and steals from.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 13, 2012
'Heruta Sukeruta (Helter Skelter)'
One of the signs of aging is that the sort of loud music you loved as a teenager now bores and irritates you, if it doesn't drive you out of the room entirely. Movies can be the same way: Try as I may to channel my inner 15-year-old in the screening room, I sometimes mentally push the volume control...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 13, 2012
Hitoshi Matsumoto gets big laughs in Japan but the comedian wants more
Comics who direct films may start by making audiences laugh, but if they are at all successful they typically turn serious. The classic example is Charlie Chaplin, who went from slapstick two-reelers to speechifying against totalitarianism in "The Great Dictator."
CULTURE / Books
Jul 8, 2012
New religions in the land of the rising sun
CELEBRITY GODS: New Religions, Media, and Authority in Occupied Japan, by Benjamin Dorman. University of Hawai'i Press, 2012, 296 pp., $42.00 (hardcover)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2012
'Kueki Ressha (The Drudgery Train)'
Directors often find themselves boxed in by fan expectations. If a filmmaker who is known and loved for quirky pieces does a serious film or two, fans tend to complain he or she is sliding down a slippery slope toward dreaded respectability.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2012
Director Nobuhiro Yamashita's commercial film departure
Starting with his first film "Donten Seikatsu (Hazy Life)" from 1999, director Nobuhiro Yamashita explored slackerdom, Japan-style, with a laconically knowing eye and a laidback sense of humor. Rejecting the broad approach of so much local comedy, he developed gags from off-beat, spot-on observations...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 29, 2012
'Rinjo: Gekijoban (The Last Answer)'
Japanese murder mysteries, whether on the big or small screen, are typically puzzles, with the characters serving as pieces whose deaths mean little more than Col. Mustard's in the board game Clue. The detective may be eccentric, hard-boiled or a combination of both, but he does not usually show emotion...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2012
'Seesaw'
Many Japanese indie films never achieve the grail of a theatrical release, and some arrive on theater screens here only after a long journey on the festival circuit. Seeing the latter on a distributor's lineup years after shooting wrapped, I feel like saying otsukare-sama ("job well done") to the filmmaker...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2012
'My House' takes Tsutsumi home
"Auteur" is not the first word that leaps to mind to describe Yukihiko Tsutsumi. In a directing career that began with a segment of the 1988 comedy anthology "Bakayaro! I'm Plenty Mad," the prolific Tsutsumi has made films in a variety of genres — mystery/thriller ("Spec: The Movie"), dystopian fantasy...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2012
'Michi — Hakuji no Hito (Takumi: The Man Beyond Borders)'
Millions of Japanese have become fans of things Korean, from weepy TV dramas to perky girl pop groups, since the start of the hanryu￣ ("Korean Wave") popular-culture invasion over a decade ago. Many of the younger generation, however, have only a hazy awareness, if that, of the dark period between...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2012
'11.25 Jiketsu no Hi: Mishima Yukio to Wakamono-Tachi (11.25: The Day Mishima Chose His Own Fate)'
On Nov. 25, 1970, at the Self-Defense Forces headquarters in Ichigaya, Tokyo, renowned author Yukio Mishima committed suicide by seppuku (ritual stomach cutting) after urging a crowd of jeering soldiers to overthrow the government in the name of the Emperor.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 1, 2012
'My House'
Two summers ago my son, then 26, shot a documentary about homeless people living on the banks of the Tama River. From hearing his stories and watching the finished product, I learned (or rather had confirmed) that local movie stereotypes of the homeless as lovable eccentrics or pathetic losers didn't...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 1, 2012
Remembering Kaneto Shindo
When Kaneto Shindo died Tuesday at age 100, he was not the world's oldest active director — that honor belongs to Portugal's Manoel e Oliveira, at 103 — but he had had an amazingly productive and celebrated career, which started in 1934. Among his best-known films abroad are 1960's "Hadaka no Shima...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 25, 2012
'Mada, Ningen (Still Human Beings)'
Young indie filmmakers have it tough everywhere, but in Japan the hurdles they face are only getting higher. The so-called mini theaters (art houses) that once screened domestic indie films have been closing their doors or changing their programming to more populist fare. Meanwhile, a growing number...
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.
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
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.

Podcast

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