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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 5, 2013

'Rust and Bone'

A boxer knows how to get back up when knocked down. So when life spins out for French bare-knuckle fighter Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), he spends his last euros on a train out of town, his 5-year-old son in tow. It's a responsibility this sullen brute of a man barely knows how to deal with, but he does...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 5, 2013

'Hitchcock'

A more suitable title to this would be: "Hitch and Alma: The love story." But as Alma — the wife of cinema giant Alfred Hitchcock — complains in this fictional and wildly entertaining account of Hitchcock's private life, no one pays her any attention because "all they can see is the great and glorious...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 30, 2013

A son of Lyon brings his native conviviality to the heart of Tokyo

When Lyon-born French chef Christophe Paucod arrived in Japan in 1998, he came on a one-way ticket with no job prospects and no idea of what he would do.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 23, 2013

Bizarre ideology of fringe Republican convention

Gene Wisdom, a 55-year-old conservative from Nashville, Tennessee, was no fan of Barack Obama. Clutching a book called "The Communist," he was waiting eagerly to meet the book's author, Paul Kengor, so that he could sign it. The book, which detailed the life of black American journalist and labor activist...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 22, 2013

The Master

I can recall how when "Apocalypse Now" first came out, viewers almost universally loathed the ending. After the forward motion of the first two hours, the film seemed to just run out of steam; Brando's shadowy rambling seemed an anticlimax, and reports that Francis Ford Coppola had agonized for months...
JAPAN / Media / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 17, 2013

Rhapsody in scrubs; Foreign hometowns; CM of the week: De Niro for BeeTV

The doctor shows just keep coming, but the two-part "Kyokuhoku Rhapsody" (NHK-G, Tues.-Wed., 10 p.m.) borrows a current issue from the headlines to make its dramatic point.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 15, 2013

Film festival focuses on Osaka

Of all the films the late actress Isuzu Yamada starred in, none of them better symbolized the vicissitudes of her real life than the 1936 "Naniwa Ereji (Naniwa Elegy)."
Japan Times
LIFE / CULTURE SMASH
Mar 13, 2013

The online anime revolution has finally ignited in Japan

The first question after a panel I once chaired at an anime convention in the United States sounded innocent enough. "So, what do you guys think about Crunchyroll?"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2013

'Amour'

You're old, sick and bedridden. You've just suffered a stroke and lost most of your motor skills. Who will tend to your basic needs, brush your hair and see to it that you hold on to at least a semblance of personal dignity? Increasingly in the modern world, the answer to that is a professional caregiver....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 28, 2013

'What We See' is not always what you get

Rendered as "What We See" in English, the title of this show should perhaps more accurately follow the Japanese one, which would be: "Dream, Reality, Illusion?"
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2013

Recommended reading

Donald Richie was a scrupulous writer who paid finite attention to language and content. The following are 10 outstanding choices — titles that should be on any discerning readers' bookshelf.
LIFE
Feb 24, 2013

The champion of Ozu's masterwork "Tokyo Story"

Nowadays, the name of the Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) is known throughout the world. But it wasn't always like this — and it might never have been, without the efforts of Donald Richie.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 21, 2013

Creative-content agency helps Korean music abroad

Regardless of whether you are a bigger-name draw or a smaller, emerging band, planning — and more importantly financing — international gigs is no easy task. But since last year, things have gotten a bit easier for Korean acts touring abroad.
JAPAN
Feb 20, 2013

Writer Donald Richie dies at 88

Long-term Japan resident, writer and critic Donald Richie, who through dozens of books and articles published from the late 1940s until the last decade helped introduce Japanese film and culture to the world, passed away in Tokyo on Tuesday, according to his long-term editor, Leza Lowitz. He was 88....
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Feb 17, 2013

Bringing the love of short films to a local audience

If there was a birthday cake for the Brillia Short Shorts Theater, it would probably be an elegant, minimalist affair — no excessive decorations, nothing too calorific and five slim candles giving off a modest orange glow. One of just four movie theaters in and around Tokyo dedicated to short films,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013

'My film remixes "The Tempest" '

A Welshman who moved to Nagoya in 1988 and has been based in Japan ever since, John Williams is the rare foreigner who has worked in the Japanese film industry in not only the usual facilitator roles, as line producer and translator, but has also directed his own well-regarded films here. His first...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013

Bigelow, Chastain get real in 'Zero Dark Thirty'

Oscar can be fickle. At a ceremony in 2010, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to take home the Academy Award for Best Director, for 2008's "The Hurt Locker." However, she was not nominated for the prize for this year's Oscars, which will be handed out next week in California.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 8, 2013

The movie exposing the lies at the heart of U.S. capitalism

In one sense, "Inequality for All" is absolutely the film of the moment. We are living through tumultuous times. The economy has tanked. Austerity has cut a swath through our lives.
CULTURE / Music
Feb 7, 2013

Dirty Beaches draws from Serbian film on new album

Alex Zhang Hungtai is constantly in motion. The Taiwanese-born artist, who performs under the name Dirty Beaches, has said in interviews the idea of "home" doesn't mean much to him. He's lived in Taipei, Honolulu, Shanghai and Montreal, and is an avid traveler on top of that. This feeling of always being...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Jan 27, 2013

You read about them here first

Ever since 1897 The Japan Times has reported daily in English on people, places and goings-on in and beyond this country. During those 116 years, our articles have often included information that never made it into the Japanese-language press — as in 1934, when the Society Page carried an interview...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 23, 2013

“Mr. Children 2005-2010

My Japan Times colleague Ian Martin nailed the state of Japanese pop music when he wrote that it was "clinging on to the hoary old remains of the past." The Oricon Chart's top albums of 2012 list was dominated by "Best Of" compilations, with the top two spots going to a pair released by rock band Mr....
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2013

Woman's tragedy speaks to Indian aspirations

It's common these days for people to compare India with China and conclude that maybe democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 17, 2013

'Armadillo' / 'Cockfighter'

If you go to see "Armadillo", you will be in a cinema watching a war movie. A documentary, yes, but one that's safely on the screen as you sit back and watch Danish soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. You will watch those same soldiers try to relieve the boredom of life on a forward operating base by playing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 17, 2013

Nagisa Oshima: a leading force in film

Film director Nagisa Oshima, who died in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, of pneumonia on Tuesday at age 80, was a leader of Japan's postwar New Wave movement.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 17, 2013

Donald Richie on 'Koshikei (Death by Hanging)'

This review as originally published on Sunday, Jan. 28, 1968.
LIFE
Jan 13, 2013

What Japan needs to do

With its economy spluttering, large parts of its northeastern region still devastated by the effects of the mammoth Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 — and releases of radioactive materials that followed — its population shrinking and aging at unprecedented rates and its citizens despairing of...
CULTURE
Dec 28, 2012

Endure New Year's on TV with the rest of Japan

Last year, NHK's annual New Year's Eve song contest, "Kohaku Uta Gassen" (7:15-11:45 p.m.), enjoyed its first ratings boost in more than a decade. As the most hallowed tradition in Japanese broadcasting, the program offered some needed end-of-year holiday solace for a nation still recovering emotionally...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Dec 21, 2012

Stately pleasure dome rises in China's Chengdu

by Sebastien Blanc CHENGDU CHN AFP
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 21, 2012

'Side By Side'

Technological progress comes at us so fast and furious, its claims so inflated, its cautions so ignored, that it's easy to be swept away by the sort of Wired-magazine techno-utopianism in which every leap forward is ipso facto a good thing. But the more mundane reality is simply that if something becomes...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 14, 2012

Jackson bids for more magic with 'The Hobbit'

When asked what "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" offers that "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy didn't, actor Sir Ian McKellan pauses before answering.

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