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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2016

'Brooklyn': Romance is not dead, it's just dull

Given its title, you'd be forgiven for thinking that "Brooklyn" was a movie about lumbersexual hipsters, all named Zach, opening a single-origin, gluten-free artisanal mac-and-cheese shop in Fort Point, and the zany complications that arise when they realize two bathrooms are inadequate to serve the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 29, 2016

'Alice Through the Looking Glass': Growing up is a complicated thing

Nothing is sacred anymore, but there really should be limits — even for Disney. "Alice Through the Looking Glass" is the sequel to Tim Burton's somewhat disastrous "Alice in Wonderland" (2010), which is where they really should have drawn the line. I regret to report that things in Wonderland have...
Jun 25, 2016

XXX Kiss Kiss Kiss / Cinema Novecento / 2016-06-25 to 2016-07-01

until June 30 no screenings / July 1 19:00
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2016

Keeping it real: Naomi Kawase on filmmaking

Naomi Kawase has always been an outlier in the Japanese film world, if a very successful one. Born and raised in Nara Prefecture, the site of Japan's ancient capital, she started making documentaries while a student at the Osaka School of Photography in the late 1980s, taking as subjects her natural...
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jun 18, 2016

Drawing on the past of Osamu Tezuka

In 1977, American author and translator Frederik L. Schodt and three friends formed a manga-translation group in Tokyo, with the then-quixotic dream of introducing Japanese comics to a global readership. Schodt had arrived in Japan in 1965, courtesy of a father in the United States Foreign Service. He...
Jun 17, 2016

He Named Me Malala / Pal Cinema / 2016-06-18 to 2016-06-24

13:05, 17:30
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 15, 2016

The 'Silvered Water' of 'Syria Mon Amour'

"Syria Mon Amour," the Japan title of "Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait," is a direct homage to Alan Resnais' 1959 classic antiwar movie "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and reflects a desire on the part of the two-person distribution team to put the film in a Japanese context. The original title, however, is...
Jun 10, 2016

Sabuibo Mask / Namba Parks Cinema / 2016-06-11 to 2016-06-17

9:15, 12:20, 17:25, 20:00
Jun 10, 2016

Sekai Kara Neko ga Kieta Nara / Aeon Cinema Minatomirai / 2016-06-11 to 2016-06-17

Jun 10, 2016

Meitantei Conan: Junkoku no Naitomea / Aeon Cinema Minatomirai / 2016-06-11 to 2016-06-17

Jun 10, 2016

Eiga: Kureyon Shin-chan — Bakusui! Yumemi Warudo Daitotsugeki / Aeon Cinema Minatomirai / 2016-06-11 to 2016-06-17

Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 2, 2016

Lawson looking to buy U.S. convenience chains in overseas push

Lawson Inc., the nation's second-biggest convenience store operator, is looking to buy chains in the U.S. as it speeds up overseas expansion with the aim of boosting its number of overseas outlets by about a quarter within a year.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 21, 2016

Reading kimono: the lexicon of dress

How Karun Thakar, a passionate collector of textiles, acquired his assortment of kimono is a story in itself. Exposed to fabric techniques in his mother's couture shop in Delhi, Thakar's growing curiosity repeatedly took him to Istanbul and Peshawar as he amassed of a seminal collection of Gujarati silk...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 16, 2016

In Japanese, the past tense is present where and when you least expect it

The Japanese past tense looks pretty easy to handle, but it can turn up in sentences about the here and now, as well as in adjectives and imperatives.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 11, 2016

'After the Storm': Koreeda's tempestuous family affairs

Hirokazu Koreeda has a reputation abroad as the one director of his generation carrying on the humanist tradition of Japanese cinema's 1950s and '60s Golden Age. This is not totally off the mark — he often returns to that favorite Golden Age theme, family dissolution, but his take on it is quite different...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Apr 27, 2016

Image Forum Festival offers some weirdness for Golden Week

Golden Week is traditionally a time for movie studios to roll out the blockbusters, but if popcorn fodder like "Chihayafuru" and "Captain America: Civil War" don't appeal, there are more esoteric options.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 21, 2016

Pain pays off for Leonardo DiCaprio and Alejandro G. Inarritu in 'The Revenant'

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch once said, "Art comes from joy and pain ... but mostly from pain." It's a sentiment that Leonardo DiCaprio knows well.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 20, 2016

'The Revenant': Revenge is less sweet than bloody

With last year's "Birdman," it became clear that director Alejandro G. Inarritu no longer just wanted to make good films, he aimed to make great ones. Every scene, every shot in that film seemed designed to surpass the conventional.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Apr 20, 2016

'Here's Harold' sends Ikea flat-packing

Call me a crank, but I'm not a fan of Ikea — not even of its famed cafeteria. So when I heard "Here is Harold" was a "Down-with-Ikea!" movie, I wanted to fly straight to Norway and shake the director Gunnar Vikene's hand. Vikene is part of a growing movement of Scandinavian filmmakers who like to combine...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 13, 2016

‘Spotlight’: a beacon for investigative journalism

In 1976 the film "All the President's Men" portrayed the true story of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford) uncovering the Watergate Scandal. It wasn't the first time in cinema that journalists took center stage, but it was one of few films that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 13, 2016

'Youth': Sorrentino gets extra sentimental

"I don't want to read any more of it, write any more of it, I don't even want to talk about it anymore," said the novelist Philip Roth in 2012, as he announced his retirement from literature. "I'm tired of all that work. I'm in a different stage of my life."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Apr 13, 2016

Apocalypse Now: tighter, cleaner and just as disturbing

Perhaps it's no surprise that as Donald Trump incites campaign rallies with his promise to torture more bad guys, along comes Col. Kurtz to remind us of "the horror, the horror" — his radical notion that the only way to defeat savagery is by becoming a savage.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Apr 4, 2016

Film depicting China's shadow over Hong Kong wins top Asian movie award

A Hong Kong film portraying a dystopian future under Chinese Communist Party rule won one of Asia's top film awards Sunday at a time when Beijing's attempts to rein in the city's democratic development have stoked growing political tensions.
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 21, 2016

China punishes film distributor for inflating 'Ip Man 3' box office figures

China's film regulator has suspended the distribution license of a company accused of fraudulently boosting box office figures for the martial arts movie "Ip Man 3" by millions of dollars, the state Xinhua News Agency reported.
Mar 19, 2016

“Love Live!” Film Live in Theater / Apollo Cinema 8 / 2016-03-19 to 2016-03-25

Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 9, 2016

'Love is Strange' when you're an aging couple in a big city

These days, love and real estate seem to go hand in hand when it comes to U.S. cinema. Throw in encroaching old age and you have a winning film: an adult love story that many aged city dwellers can truly relate to. Considering that one in four Tokyo residents are older than 65, it's no wonder older people...
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Feb 29, 2016

Chris Rock pulls no punches as host of one of the most socially conscious Academy Awards shows

Comedian Chris Rock launched his return stint as Oscar host on Sunday by immediately and unabashedly confronting the racially charged elephant in the room — the furor over the all-white field of performers nominated for Hollywood's highest honors.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2016

Tarantino has a lot to say about nothing in 'The Hateful Eight'

Stranded by a blizzard in the wilds of post-Civil War Wyoming, a posse of Quentin Tarantino alumni convenes at a remote cabin for a murderous reunion party. They're an impressive bunch — weathered, whiskered and heavily armed — but their master's wit seems to have abandoned them to their fates, like...
Feb 19, 2016

The Martian / Aeon Cinema Kyoto Katsuragawa / 2016-02-20 to 2016-02-26

Feb 19, 2016

It Follows / Cinema Rosa / 2016-02-20 to 2016-02-26

18:00

Longform

A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake