Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 16, 2009

'Senritsu Meikyu 3-D'

3-D,we've been hearing for decades, is the future of movies. Finally, the future is here, with 7,000 3-D screens expected to be up and running worldwide by the end of the year and Hollywood frantically ramping up production of 3-D films, both animated and live-action.

CULTURE / Film

Oct 9, 2009

Osamu Dazai: genius, but no saint

Major Japanese cultural figures often become subjects of films when big birth or death anniversaries roll around. The hero (far more rarely, the heroine) is usually portrayed as a sainted genius, tragic or otherwise. Osamu Dazai, however, was one such figure who didn't fit the saint template.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 9, 2009

'Villon no Tsuma'/'Pandora no Hako'

Kichitaro Negishi's "Villon no Tsuma" ("Villon's Wife") is based on an Osamu Dazai short story with autobiographical overtones: An alcoholic writer steals a large sum of money from a small drinking establishment and, when he does a disappearing act, his wife offers to pay it back by working for the owners...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 9, 2009

A twisted path to true love

Born in Tokyo in 1950, Kichitaro Negishi got his start in the film industry making soft-porn movies for the Nikkatsu studio. He directed his first film, "Orion no Satsui yori: Joji no Hoteishiki" ("From Orion's Testimony: Formula for Murder") in 1978 and in 1981 made his straight-feature debut with "Enrai"...

CULTURE / Film

Oct 2, 2009

'Akumu no Elevator'

Movies are confidence tricks played on willing victims. The bullets are blanks and the sex is faked, but we usually want to believe, as long as the lights are down, that it's all real. Creating that belief — or rather, that suspension of disbelief — has long been Hollywood's goal.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 25, 2009

Hirokazu Kore'eda is the most internationally acclaimed Japanese director of his generation, whose films are regularly invited to major world festivals and receive the sort of respectful attention from foreign scholars and critics usually accorded only to dead Golden Age masters.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 18, 2009

'Kamui Gaiden '

Producers, both here and abroad, have been busy scouting film properties among the anime and manga of the 1960s and 1970s, from kiddie cartoon fluff such as "Yattaman" to the apocalyptic thriller "MW," created by manga maestro Osamu Tezuka.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 11, 2009

Every once in a while, a distributor will ask audiences not to reveal anything about a film's ending — a gimmick that became popular with "The Crying Game" (1992).

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 4, 2009

'Killer Virgin Road'

Are most single women obsessed with marriage despite their protests to the contrary? Disappointed in love, do they fall to insecure pieces, taking solace in late-night cartons of ice cream?

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 28, 2009

'Ballad: Namonaki Koi no Uta'

Takashi Yamazaki was known primarily as a computer-graphics whiz when he directed the ensemble drama "Always Sanchome no Yuhi" ("Always: Sunset on Third Street," 2005). True to form, the recreation of 1950s Tokyo by Yamazaki's team at the Shirogumi effects house was hyper-realistically detailed, while...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 21, 2009

'20-Seiki Shonen'

Yukihiko Tsutsumi's hit "20-Seiki Shonen" ("20th Century Boys") trilogy is based on one of those "what if" premises that may look almost childishly obvious, but, from a commercial standpoint, is simply brilliant.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 21, 2009

Indie hardman opens the tear ducts

Sion Sono is Japan's edgy indie director par excellence, whose internationally acclaimed films expose social ills and challenge taboos in a variety of genres and moods, from the death-trip chills of "Jisatsu Circle" ("Suicide Club," 2001) to the black-comic laughs of "Ai no Mukidashi" ("Love Exposure,"...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 14, 2009

'Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl'

Japanese filmmakers will almost always tell you that they make films for the domestic market first and foremost. If foreigners happen to like them too, that's a nice little bonus, like an after-dinner mint.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 7, 2009

"Revenge," George Orwell once wrote, "is bitter," but it can also be sweet, can't it?

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 31, 2009

'Yamagata Scream'

Japanese horror movies, under the label J-Horror, were once quite the international thing. Hollywood remade the shockers "Ring" (1998) and "Juon" ("The Grudge," 2002), while foreign video labels snapped up rights to the originals. All that is now a distant memory, though. Fantastic film festivals in...

CULTURE / Books

Jul 26, 2009

The quirky terrain of an otaku mind

"Otaku" is one of those Japanese words that has no precise equivalent in English. "Geek" translates the knowledgeability as well as the social ineptness of the stereotypical otaku, but not quite his (and, more rarely, her) intense interest in what so-called serious adults regard as trivial pursuits:...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 24, 2009

Films produced by Fuji TV — one of Japan's five national TV networks — have regularly hit the top of the box-office charts in the past decade. Fuji's biggest franchise started in 1998 with "Odoru Daisosasen The Movie" ("Bayside Shakedown"), a thriller starring Yuji Oda as a rambunctious detective...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 17, 2009

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

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

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...

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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