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CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 24, 2002

Spotlight on Sri Lanka

PROFILING SRI LANKAN CINEMA, by Wimal Dissanayake and Ashley Ratnavibhushana. Sri Lanka: Asian Film Center, 2000, 46 monochrome photos, 152 pp., $25 (paper) In this comprehensive history of Sri Lankan film, the authors suggest four levels through which a national cinema might be understood. First, it...
CULTURE / Film
Oct 24, 2001

TIFF take 14

Japan has one of the largest film markets in the world. Accordingly, every year the Tokyo International Film Festival serves up world cinema on a grand scale, screening more than 140 films over the course of a week.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 25, 2008

Pakistan set to lift its ban on Bollywood

MADRAS, India — Cinema is a powerful weapon, though it is often called soft power. Men like Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Germany's Adolf Hitler understood the awesome might of movies.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / INDUSTRY TRENDS
Apr 17, 2003

Big screens on grand scale win back new generation of film fans

The magic of Harry Potter and "The Lord of the Rings" may not be the only reason that people are returning to movie theaters.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 16, 2011

Iran's Naderi explains why he shot 'Cut' in Japan

A founding member of Iranian cinema's 1970s New Wave, Amir Naderi made his directorial debut with his 1971 film "Goodbye Friend." Since the 1980s he has been screening his film at festivals around the world, including Venice, Cannes and Sundance.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 16, 2007

Quentin Tarantino: a B-movie badass

The Japanophile U.S. director talks about his love of trashy '70s cinema and why his latest film looks like it was put through a blender
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 17, 2002

Donald Richie rewinds a century of film

Donald Richie has always struck me as the ideal role model for the aspiring writer. More the distiller than the brewer, the cordon-bleu chef than the bone-cook, there is much to be learned from Richie's refinements.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 10, 2009

A seaside picture of contentment

Sayonara Kawagoe Kinema. Hello Cinema Amigo.
COMMUNITY
Oct 10, 2009

A seaside picture of contentment

Sayonara Kawagoe Kinema. Hello Cinema Amigo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 4, 2008

Pink thrills: Japanese sex movies go global

As the last wave of vengeful female ghosts inspired by "Ring' "s Sadako fade from cinema screens worldwide, either in their original J-horror manifestations or the obligatory Hollywood remakes, more adventurous foreign-film fans have begun turning their heads Eastward in search of a new frisson. Their...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 13, 2005

Japan makes great genres, but . . .

THE MIDNIGHT EYE GUIDE TO NEW JAPANESE FILM, by Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp, foreword by Hideo Nakata. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. 366 pp., 151 b/w photos, $22.95 (paper). The authors of this very interesting new compendium on recent Japanese cinema would agree, I think, that the "new" in their title...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 9, 2011

Adoor: India's master storyteller of the silver screen

ADOOR GOPALAKRISHNAN: A Life in Cinema. The Authorized Biography, by Gautaman Bhaskaran. Penguin, 2010, 281 pp. (hardcover) Celebrating the centenary of Akira Kurosawa last year, Donald Richie, the noted writer on Japanese films, observed that Kurosawa believed that he existed only through his films....
JAPAN / Media
May 31, 2009

Pigs, pimps, prostitutes and other things — Japan's New Age

Fifty years is a long time, especially in film history. The iconoclastic Japanese New Wave, born with the release in 1959 of Nagisa Oshima's debut feature, "A Town of Love and Hope," is now an established part of Japan's cinematic canon. And in contrast to the French Nouvelle Vague, several of whose...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 16, 2007

'Sundome'

Straight-to-video films, locally called "V Cinema," launched the careers of some of the most important directors of the New Wave of the 1990s, including Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Rokuro Mochizuki.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 25, 2006

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki: new realities from screen fiction

SHADOWS ON THE SCREEN: Tanizaki Jun'ichiro on Cinema and "Oriental" Aesthetics, translated and edited by Thomas LaMarre. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2005. 410 pp., photos XIX, $25 (paper). The eminent novelist Jun'ichiro Tanizaki was celebrated for his ambivalence...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 11, 2019

Hirokazu Kore-eda talks politics as Japan flexes its movie muscle in Busan

Japan once again shows a strong presence at the Busan International Film Festival, with director Hirokazu Kore-eda taking the award for Asian filmmaker of the year
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 7, 2016

'Smoke': the movie that blazed a trail for indies

Just in time for Christmas, Yebisu Garden Cinema is reviving a film that was one of the cinema's biggest hits in the 1990s, director Wayne Wang's "Smoke," in a crisp new digital remastered version. Watching it again after all these years, it's hard not to feel a little pang, for in many ways it recalls...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 4, 2005

For the love of Bollywood

BEHIND THE SCENES OF HINDI CINEMA. Edited by Johan Manschot and Marijke de Vos. With contributions by P.K. Nair, Deepa Gahlot, Gayatri Chatterjee et al. Foreword by Amitabh Bachchan, Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2005, 160 pp., profusely illustrated (cloth). The subtitle of this beautifully produced, lavishly...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 21, 2005

A new kind of film history

A NEW HISTORY OF JAPANESE FILM: A Century of Narrative Film, by Isolde Standish. New York/London: Continuum, 2005, 414 pp., 18 illustrations, $39.95 (cloth). Early in this account of Japanese film, the author says that prior histories have tended to follow one of two trajectories. One, which she calls...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 26, 2001

Showing, not telling: the birth of pure film

WRITING IN LIGHT: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement, by Joanne Bernardi. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001, 355 pp., 100 illustrations. $39.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paperback) Film evolved differently in different cultures. In the West the cinema was perceived as a new form...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 21, 2022

Busan International Film Festival benefits from the 'Parasite' bump

Japan had a strong showing with a new section focused on the country's cinema and the closing film at the 10-day event in South Korea.
Ziya Us Salam (left), an associate editor of The Hindu, an English-language newspaper, prays at home with Shan Mohammad, a hafiz who teaches the Quran to one of his daughters, in Noida, India, just outside Delhi, on Aug. 27, 2023.
WORLD / Society
May 20, 2024

Strangers in their own land: Being Muslim in Modi’s India

The premier's rise to national power in 2014 swept a decades-old Hindu nationalist movement from the margins of Indian politics firmly to the center.
Actor Zhu Jian, 69, rehearses with other actors on the set of a micro movie during a filming session at a banquet hall in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China, on July 16.
BUSINESS
Sep 23, 2024

Micro dramas shake up China's film industry, aim for Hollywood

The leader in the micro drama space is Kuaishou, an app that accounted for 60% of the top 50 Chinese micro dramas last year.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist,” released in Japanese theaters in April, sharply dramatizes the clash between rural and urban values. The film won five awards at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, including the second-place Silver Lion prize.
CULTURE / Film / 2024 in Review
Dec 20, 2024

A year of Oscar wins and a quiet push for diversity

International collaborations and indie risk-takers steered the film industry in a fresh direction in 2024.
A moviegoer walks past a poster of the film "The Kerala Story" at a movie theater in Mumbai on May 10.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 16, 2023

Indian movies vilifying Muslims spark fear ahead of polls

An anti-Muslim hit claims to depict "innocent girls trapped, transformed and trafficked for terror," declaring it was "inspired by many true stories."
Yoji Yamada cast familiar faces in his latest heartwarming family drama “Mom, Is That You?!” including veteran Sayuri Yoshinaga (right), who has appeared in three other Yamada films. Yoshinaga plays the mother of a stressed salaryman (Yo Oizumi, left) in the new film.
CULTURE / Film
Sep 15, 2023

Film veteran Yoji Yamada warms the soul with 'Mom, Is That You?!'

Even after 60 years in the industry, the director continues to make hits. His latest offers a hearty helping of deeply felt human truths.
After losing her eyesight in a car accident, a woman goes to the home of an eye doctor and his son to receive a miracle device to restore her sight in “My Mother’s Eyes.”
CULTURE / Film
Nov 23, 2023

‘My Mother’s Eyes’: Psychodrama pushes to mad extremes

Takeshi Kushida’s atmospheric horror film about toxic parent-child relationships unfolds in a fantasy world that strains credulity.
Godzilla is presented with a certificate after being selected for Hollywood's Walk of Fame during a news conference in Tokyo in October 2004.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 6, 2023

New 'Godzilla' flick deftly tackles postwar Japan in cinematic triumph

Godzilla strikes again: New 'Minus One' movie is a visual spectacle that challenges Hollywood's big budget norms.
A scarred war veteran (Kento Yamazaki, center) in early-20th century Hokkaido embarks on a quest to find buried Ainu treasure in “Golden Kamuy.”
CULTURE / Film
Jan 18, 2024

‘Golden Kamuy’: Big-budget adaptation glitters rather than dazzles

Shigeaki Kubo’s live-action version of Satoru Noda’s manga series has terrific visuals but doesn't quite stick the landing.

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.
Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?