Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 31, 2007

The ways of Japanese TV drama producers must be as mysterious to their Hollywood counterparts as the statues of Easter Island.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 24, 2007

Action stars in Hollywood tend to have long shelf lives. Jackie Chan, born in 1954, is still making slick kung-fu moves in "Rush Hour 3," while Sylvester Stallone, born in 1946, returned to the ring this year in "Rocky Balboa." And Harrison Ford, born in 1942, is back again for a fourth round as Indiana...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 17, 2007

Back in 2004, when the sci-fi anime "Appleseed" was released, Studio Ghibli president Toshio Suzuki told me that it was the "future of animation." Not so much for the story, which was a retread of a Shirow Masamune manga about a half-human, half-bioroid (biological android) future society, as for the...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 10, 2007

'Mizu ni Natta Mura'

Japan is said to be a land of constant change, where city centers are perpetual construction sites and a house is ready for the wrecking ball after three decades. Venice has pretty much the same look in 2007 as it did in 1807. The Tokyo of 1958 has vanished so utterly, however, that Takashi Yamazaki...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 3, 2007

Following his smash success with "Ring" (1998) and "Ring 2" (1999) — films that launched the worldwide J-horror boom — Hideo Nakata went to Hollywood, where he was hyped as the next Asian directing phenomenon — a Japanese version of John Woo and Ang Lee. But instead of churning out...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 27, 2007

'Kappa no Coo to Natsuyasumi'

Movie reviewers come in two broad categories — the ones who try to write truthfully about films, even if the director is a best buddy, and the ones who let personal factors, such as the free lunch from a PR guy, influence their judgment. The two can overlap, though, as I discovered when I went...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 20, 2007

'Tennen Kokkeko'

Nobuhiro Yamashita scored an international hit in 2005 with "Linda, Linda, Linda," a comic drama about a schoolgirl band whose lead singer drops out just before a big school festival. When it was screened at the Udine Far East Film Festival last year, the audience whooped with laughter at its deadpan...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 13, 2007

'Funuke Domo, Kanashimi no Ai o Misero'

Black comedies about dysfunctional families are common enough in Japan, from Sogo Ishii's anarchic "Gyakufunsha Kazoku (The Crazy Family)" (1984) to Takashi Miike's batty "Katakurike no Kofuku (The Happiness of the Katakuris)" (2001), which also has the distinction of the being the first Japanese zombie...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 6, 2007

'Koi Suru Nichiyobi Watashi Koi Shita'

In the 1990s the WOWOW satellite station financed a series of films under the banner J Movie Wars. With producer Takenori Sento at the helm, J Movies Wars became a fertile breeding ground for young directing talent, including Naomi Kawase, who won the Cannes Camera d'Or prize in 1997 for her debut feature...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 29, 2007

'Sidecar ni Inu'

Kichitaro Negishi has a typical resume for a Japanese baby boomer director: Graduation from an elite university (Waseda), apprenticeship in the porno industry (Nikkatsu), awards for his first straight feature ("Enrai," 1981), followed by success as a maker of TV commercials and music videos. Meanwhile,...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 28, 2007

Einsteins of anime

Headquartered in a nondescript office building in Kichijoji, a Tokyo suburb with a bohemian flavor, Studio 4°C hardly looks, from the outside, like the epicenter of anything. Yet this animation production house, founded in 1986 by Eiko Tanaka, Koji Morimoto and Yoshiharu Sato, has made some of the...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 28, 2007

Feting Japan's finest animators

Omnibus films are hard sells to ticket buyers and critics; the former because they want a full cinematic meal, not a plate of hors d'oeuvres, the latter because they see a package of segments as a sort of horse race — and proclaim disappointment when all the horses/segments don't cross the finish...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 22, 2007

'Mogari no Mori'

Naomi Kawase has spent much of her career fending off labels, be it "woman director," "New Wave young hope" or "maker of autobiographical documentaries" the latter a genre she did much to popularize, starting with her student work in the late 1980s.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 15, 2007

'Zukan ni Notte Nai Mushi'

We all need to escape, once in a while, from being serious people in the real world, trying to ace the big test, land the big contract, or earn an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. Rinko Kikuchi, who accomplished the last feat for her turn as a hearing-impaired high-school girl in "Babel,"...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 8, 2007

'Kantoku Banzai!'/'Dai Nipponjin'

It was a marketing gimmick of the first order to open Takeshi Kitano's "Kantoku Banzai!" and Hitoshi Matsumoto's "Dai Nipponjin" on the same weekend. This head-to-head duel between films by the two reigning kings of Japanese comedy can only boost the box office of both.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film / SHORT TAKES

Jun 8, 2007

Director: Kazuhiro Soda Language: Japanese with English subtitles in Tokyo

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 1, 2007

'Shaberedomo, Shaberedomo'

Japanese are often stereotyped (and tend to stereotype themselves) as bad communicators — or just plain silent. Men, especially, are praised for being miserly with words, though their wives may long for something more than the furo, meshi, neru (bath, food and sleep) that is said to be the sum...

CULTURE / Film

May 31, 2007

Doing it her own way — Kawase's determined path to success

Naomi Kawase has been tagged as "Japan's leading woman director" since her first feature film, "Moe no Suzaku (Suzaku)," won the Camera d'Or prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 25, 2007

'Ore wa Kimi no Tame ni Koso Shini ni Iku'

Shintaro Ishihara has a lot in common with Michael Moore: Both were long outriders in their particular political cultures, both have been called, more or less rightly, self-promoting blowhards — and both have an outsize talent for show business that has enabled them to imprint their personalities...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 18, 2007

Unafraid of rightist rage

Directors tend to be articulate types, especially when discussing (or rather spinning) their own films, but Kazuyuki Izutsu has few equals in the art of spoken communication, in or out of the director's chair. From snappy one-liners about dull movies to verbal bombshells aimed at local rightists, Izutsu...

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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