Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 26, 2009

Movies about impostors and grifters tend to view their roguish heroes with everything from indulgence to outright admiration, but rarely disapproval. One reason, I think, is that the movie business attracts BS artists of every stripe, from the hustlers peddling grade-Z action pics in film market booths...

CULTURE / Film

Jun 19, 2009

Salaryman comedies go back the prewar days. Even Yasujiro Ozu portrayed the tragicomic trials of the salaryman in such films as "Tokyo no Chorus" ("Tokyo Chorus," 1931) and "Umarete wa Mita Keredo" ("I was Born but . . .," 1932), though the genre reached its popular peak in the 1960s, when Hitoshi Ueki...

CULTURE / Film

Jun 12, 2009

Mental illness, as Kazuhiro Soda notes in his documentary "Seishin" ("Mental"), is one of the big taboos of Japanese society.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 12, 2009

Samurai get put through paces

Anyone who knows anything about musicals knows they require endless rehearsals in order to be staged successfully. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers didn't just jump up and glide around a sound stage as the cameras rolled; they had to practice each step of those seemingly effortless dance routines over...

Japan Times

JAPAN / Media

Jun 7, 2009

It's so cool to play an oily toad

Actors who direct and star in their own films may be motivated by something other than vanity, but they usually manage to make themselves look cool — or at least cooler than they would have if someone else had been in the director's chair.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 5, 2009

'Ultra Miracle Love Story'

Johnny Depp seems to be a role model for Japanese actors with leading man looks, but who almost never plays straight leading man roles. That is, roles in which they romance and win the leading lady — comic fight-and-make-up scenes optional. If Depp's career is any indication, this is a brilliant...

CULTURE / Film

May 29, 2009

'High Kick Girl'

Movie-action scenes are as choreographed as "Swan Lake," but the exceptional ones that make it real — Buster Keaton standing stock still as the side of a house falls on him in "Steamboat Bill Jr., Jackie Chan sliding 30 meters down a pole in a shopping mall in "Police Story" — linger on in...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 22, 2009

Swamped by laughter

I'd met Satoshi Miki several times before interviewing him for "Instant Numa." Our senses of humor mesh well enough that the recording of the interview often sounds like a sitcom laugh track.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 22, 2009

Comedy is big box office in Hollywood now, with such comic odes to male immaturity as "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" grossing north of $100 million. In Japan, on the other hand, making the locals laugh in a movie theater is still the hardest job in the industry — and the returns...

CULTURE / Film

May 15, 2009

Kankuro Kudo was once hailed as the boy wonder of Japanese show business, first as a scriptwriter for hit TV shows ("Ikebukuro West Gate Park" in 2000, and "Kisarazu Cats Eye" in 2002) and then hit films ("Go," "Ping Pong," "Zebraman"). In 2005, he released his first film as a director: "Mayonaka no...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 8, 2009

'Yomei Ikkagetsu no Hanayome'

Films commonly target one sex more than the other. Akira Kurosawa made them mainly for men and Yasujiro Ozu, mainly for women, but today both directors are regarded as masters by critics of both sexes, targeting be damned.

CULTURE / Film

May 1, 2009

Big, original, visionary films are rare in today's Japanese film industry, which overwhelmingly prefers sure bets developed from hit manga, anime, TV dramas, novels and other media properties.

CULTURE / Film

Apr 24, 2009

'Rain Fall — Ame no Kiba'

Japanese film folks used to regularly complain that they could never compete with Hollywood because the budget gap was simply too great. A guy in a rubber Godzilla suit didn't have the same impact as the gee-whiz effects that Lucas, Spielberg and company could command and that cash-strapped Japanese...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 17, 2009

Counterfeiting is one of those movie crimes that, by the laws of script writing, is doomed to fail, like the overelaborate heists that end with the thieves either dead or captured and their loot billowing up in clouds of green from an open briefcase.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 10, 2009

'Crows Zero II'

Japan has its share of teenage punks, but compared with their scarier counterparts in the United States, they are rather tame. Instead of spraying enemies and strangers with automatic weapons, they settle their disputes with methods usually far less lethal, from fists to head butts.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 3, 2009

'Hatsukoi — Natsu no Kioku'

First love, or hatsukoi, is a perennial, popular theme for seishun eiga ("youth films"), ranking right up there with tragic early death.

CULTURE / Film

Mar 27, 2009

Film critics like to be surprised, which comes from being unsurprised too many times. This critic, however, has become tired of "The Sixth Sense" school of script writing, enamored as it is of that 1999 hit's sleight-of-hand ending. But while a good magician can fool the eye in dozens of ways, a scriptwriter...

CULTURE / Film

Mar 27, 2009

Masterpiece maker

The Japan Times interviewed Yoshihiro Nakamura at the Ebisu headquarters of the Amuse talent agency, where Nakamura was holding forth all day for the press. Despite the PR grind, he was relaxed, with a ready laugh, and spoke in a distinctive low, rumbling voice.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 20, 2009

Punks, in their various post-Elvis incarnations, have been a feature of Japanese society — and films — for almost half a century. More recent, though, is the vogue for what might be called punks-brawl-for-fun films, which celebrate the joy and glory of smashing heads together with your four...

CULTURE / Film

Mar 20, 2009

Punks, in their various post-Elvis incarnations, have been a feature of Japanese society — and films — for almost half a century. More recent, though, is the vogue for what might be called punks-brawl-for-fun films, which celebrate the joy and glory of smashing heads together with your four...

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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