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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 7, 2016

'Hitchcock/Truffaut': An auteur meets his (movie) maker

The French got Alfred Hitchcock well before the Americans did. In the 1950s, when the tubby director's Hollywood overlords still regarded him as a producer of light entertainment — the Robert Zemeckis of his day, perhaps — the writers at France's Cahiers du Cinema magazine recognized his deeper genius....
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2012

Territorial disputes don't rain on Asia's largest parade of cinema

There was very little talk at the 17th Busan International Film Festival, Asia's biggest movie event of the year, of the ongoing conflict between Japan and South Korea over ownership of those rocks in the Japan Sea. It so happens that the festival's Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award was being given to...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 3, 2008

The new language of translated films

CINEMA BABEL: Translating Global Cinema, by Abe Mark Nornes. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2008, 304 pp.,$22.50 (paper) Though foreign film is now seen by all, we are still dependent on translation to discover what is going on up on the big screen or on the little tube. This translation of dialogue can be...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Jul 13, 2016

The Qualite Fantastic! Cinema Collection festival has choice gems among the trash

Opened in 2012, Cinema Qualite has been a welcome anomaly amid the grim decline of Japan's once-vibrant "mini theater" (arthouse) scene.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 13, 2014

Film fest fans can get a fix at any number of events this month

The Tokyo International Film Festival may be finished, but movie buffs still have a lot of choices for festivals this month.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 20, 2013

Yoji Sakate celebrates in style

To celebrate its 30th anniversary this year, the Tokyo-based Rinkogun theater company determined to present four original plays by its founder, the renowned playwright and director Yoji Sakate.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 9, 2013

Explore the many ways to read cinema

Marcel Broodthaers' films mostly deal with relations between images and words, which is unsurprising given that he was a poet first who turned to film because he came to understand the medium as an extension of language. In their combination, he sought harmony between poetry, visual art and cinema. It...
COMMENTARY
Aug 29, 2008

Pioneers who pushed cinema into politics

MADRAS, India — When Indian Telugu film star K. Chiranjeevi entered politics recently in the south Indian state of Andhra, it merely affirmed a widely held belief that cinema and public affairs are firmly linked to each other. Chiranjeevi, who has acted in 138 movies, said it was the former state chief...
CULTURE / Film
Mar 18, 2001

Donald Richie: being inside and outside Japanese cinema

In his five decades as a writer, Donald Richie has investigated everything from the glories of noh to the mysteries of the Japanese tattoo, while attempting everything from the travel narrative ("The Inland Sea") to the historical novel (the meticulously researched, wittily engaging "Kumagai"). He is...
Japan Times
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Dec 30, 2022

Hirokazu Kore-eda calls for Japanese cinema to support young directors

The Palme d'Or-winning director seeks to change tough working conditions for up-and-coming filmmakers by collaborating with proteges on a new Netflix series.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 18, 2020

Want to know Japanese cinema? Get to know Mark Schilling

The Japan Times film critic Mark Schilling celebrates 30-plus years of reviewing Japanese cinema with his latest book, 'Art, Cult and Commerce: Japanese Cinema Since 2000.'
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS
May 27, 2017

Sumiba Yakitori Enza: U.S. cinema meets grilled chicken

It's not quite cinema-dark inside Enza, but it's not far off. Indeed, the cinema connection is apposite: In many ways Enza is as much about yakitori as it is about icons of American cinema.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 30, 2016

Retreat from the heat to the cinema this summer

The summer blockbuster is dead — or at least, it has ceased to exist as a distinct entity. Four decades after "Jaws" set the template for mass-market Hollywood spectacle, the so-called event movie has expanded its turf so dramatically that July and August, once the most fiercely contested box-office...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Dec 26, 2014

U.S. moviegoers trumpet free speech as 'Interview' opens to sell-out cinema crowds

"The Interview," the Sony Pictures film about a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, opened in more than 300 cinemas across the United States on Christmas Day, drawing sell-out audiences in many theaters where outspoken patrons said they were championing freedom of expression....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 5, 2013

Silent cinema takes a Grimm turn in 'Blancanieves'

A wise man once told me that however original and unique you may think your great new idea is, you'd better act on it quickly, because somewhere in the world someone else is having the exact same idea at the exact same time.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 7, 2013

Money, censorship and the future of Asian cinema

Flitting around Roppongi Hills during the week of the Tokyo International Film Festival, you get to meet and chat with any number of interesting people, but one of the better conversations I had was sitting down for coffee with Jacob Wong, curator of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, held each...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 27, 2013

'There will be people who walk out of the cinema, I'm sure'

In a drab building in central Scotland, one afternoon in the armpit of winter, an actor who looks a lot like nice-guy James McAvoy is persuading a room full of blokes to — I'm paraphrasing here — Xerox their cocks.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 17, 2013

Revisiting the works of director Takashi Miike

Takashi Miike is one of the few Japanese filmmakers now working, Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki being two others, who enjoy a measure of recognition outside Japan's insular film world. Though hardly a household name in Kansas, Miike has long been a favorite with the international Asian Extreme Cinema...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 27, 2012

Cinema underneath the stars

Sometimes just looking at the ocean is enough to cool your body down on a hot summer night. Maybe that's why this year's Starlight Cinema event is taking on the theme: A Blue Oasis in the City.
CULTURE / Film
Dec 10, 2010

'Film Socialisme'

Jean-Luc Godard once said in an interview in the magazine Cahiers du Cinema during the 1980s that 1960's "A Bout de Souffle (Breathless)" was his least favorite of his own films. The interviewer responded that he understood, and that the problem with Godard's first, most watched and most commercially...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Nov 26, 2010

Cinema celebrates famed French film director Godard

Toho Cimena Chanter celebrates famed film director Jean-Luc Godard during a three-week-long film festival starting Nov. 27.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 6, 2010

Film fans in Tokyo get the chance to enjoy cinema under the stars

The 11th Star Light Cinema program is currently being held at Ebisu Garden Place in Tokyo and this weekend will be your last chance to enjoy cinema under the stars (well, under a glass dome, at least).
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 5, 2009

Deciphering 'A Page of Madness'

Teinosuke Kinugasa's "A Page of Madness" ("Kurutta Ichipeiji," 1926) was long thought lost. Only some 75 years later did the discovery of the missing negative allow the picture to be finally viewed by the present generation. At the same time there emerged a critical need to evaluate it because it seemed...
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2001

'Ichiban Utsukushii Natsu'

CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2001

Bridging the gap

Ichiban Utsukushii Natsu Rating: * * * * Director: John Williams Running time: 95 minutes Language: Japanese Now showing For decades, foreign directors have been going to Hollywood and making movies with American settings, stories and stars that American audiences have accepted as their own. Charlie...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 22, 2021

TIFF ambassador Ai Hashimoto wants a cinema comeback

The in-demand veteran actress will serve as ambassador at Tokyo International Film Festival's 34th iteration.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 23, 2021

Melvin Van Peebles, champion of new Black cinema, dies at 89

A fertile creative force, he wrote fiction and musicals but is best known for a breakthrough movie that heralded the genre known as blaxploitation.

Longform

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.
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