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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 29, 2014

Son of a Gun: 'Gritty prison realism replaced with impossibly glamorous molls and heavy-firepower heists'

'Son of a Gun" begins in a prison in Perth, Australia, with 19-year-old JR (Brenton Thwaites) facing his first incarceration for a minor crime. He realizes, from the sight of a terrorized and sodomized cellmate, that things are going to get ugly pretty quickly. He cuts his pretty-boy hair and keeps his...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Sep 27, 2014

The tricky path abroad for Japanese games

On the website Change.org, there is a petition addressed to Bandai Namco Games signed by 711 people, as of Sept. 25, that reads simply, "Bring 'God Eater 2' to North America and EU."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 27, 2014

Bunraku meets the Bard in new 'Sir Falstaff'

The type of Japanese puppetry known as ningyō-jōruri (aka bunraku) has its roots in 17th-century Osaka. Since then, though, there will rarely if ever have been a bunraku play drawn from stories written a little earlier on the other side of the world — yet that's what awaits Tokyo audiences next month...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 9, 2014

'Fading Gigolo'

John Turturro is a fine actor, and can certainly do comedy when he wants to — he stole the show with the briefest of cameos in "The Big Lebowski" (1998) — so it's hard to figure out what went wrong with "Fading Gigolo," which he also directed.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jun 14, 2014

Happy endings: foreigners working in Japan's film industry

Film is supposed to be a universal language, but the film business in any given country is usually run by the locals for the locals. The one great exception is Hollywood, which has been making films for the world since the silent days and is open to talent, preferably English speaking, from around the...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 1, 2014

The cost of corporate kowtowing to Beijing

American general interest family magazine, Reader's Digest, is alleged to have censored stories for its worldwide English edition to maintain a cheap printing deal in China.
Japan Times
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Feb 27, 2014

'Walking Dead' explores a world of gore and order

When it comes to crack TV, AMC's massively addictive series "The Walking Dead" reigns supreme. The shorthand description would be "zombie-apocalypse survival thriller," and that's true enough, but it goes deeper too. If you take away law, religion and society — what's left? Can such things as compassion...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 9, 2014

'Kagi Dorobo no Method (Key of Life)'

Director: Kenji Uchida
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 18, 2013

Miura's sex 'Whirlpool' wows a bashful Paris

Looking around before "Ai no Uzu" began, there was an almost palpable anticipation ahead of our plunge into the realm of young Japanese people's sex lives. What to talk about while waiting for the orgy to begin?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 12, 2013

Patience pays off for Bullock with 'Gravity'

Sandra Bullock is the first to admit she's no psychic.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 12, 2013

Young, dead and dealing with the consequences

A veteran director of feature episodes in the classic "Ultraman" tokusatsu (special effects) series, Kazuya Konaka may not be the most obvious choice for a drama about teen suicide, but a look at his filmography, including 1998's "Nazo no Tenkosei (The Dimension Travelers)" and 2008's "Tokyo Shojo...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 12, 2013

'Seki Seki Ren Ren (Deep Red Love)'

Japan's suicide rate is nearly twice that of the U.S. and three times that of the U.K., with the number of people taking their own lives each year only recently dipping below 30,000. It is also the leading cause of death among Japanese in their teens and 20s. Why this should be so in a society so orderly,...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 19, 2013

How Beijing shapes outside perception of China

Beijing uses visa denials and censorship to pressure foreign media and academics to portray China in a favorable light.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 31, 2013

'Kiyosu Kaigi (The Kiyosu Conference)'

Koki Mitani is one of those very Japanese conundrums: Considered a master of comedy and a box-office king at home, he remains little known abroad — despite a career that spans three decades and includes work as a playwright and scriptwriter, as well as his six films to date as director.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Aug 21, 2013

Influential crime novelist Leonard dies at 87

Elmore Leonard, a masterful crime novelist whose razor-sharp dialogue and indelibly realized lowlifes earned him an unusual mix of mass-market appeal and highbrow acclaim, dies at his home in Michigan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2013

'Medieval Japanese Art'

In medieval Japan — the Kamakura Period to the Muromachi Period (1193-1573) — power shifted from the nobility to the warrior class. Revealing the influence of this political disruption, this exhibition focuses on artwork produced at that time, much of which referenced Chinese Zen culture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 7, 2013

Koki Mitani adds comedy to bunraku

Koki Mitani is Japan's top comedy writer, having written a number of stage plays, TV dramas and films. He also loves working with puppets, and has put together a serialized puppet drama for public broadcaster NHK. Despite a love of puppets, however, it was only about 10 years ago when he first saw a...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 15, 2013

Soul singer has handle on the ups, considerable downs of creative life

When vocalist Herb Kendrick, better known simply by his nickname "Q," takes the stage next week in Tokyo, he will be appearing onstage for the first time in nearly a year. The gig at What the Dickens in Ebisu is being billed as the singer's comeback. Not only is it a comeback, it's nothing short of a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 14, 2013

Unflinching survival epic recounts tsunami horror

Director Juan Antonio Bayona came out of nowhere — well, Barcelona and the world of music videos, actually — to drop "The Orphanage" on an unsuspecting world in 2007. This chilling and intelligent reinvention of the haunted-house genre went on to become No. 1 at the Spanish box office and also did...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 16, 2013

The comedy and drama of Takashi Fujii

At age 41, Takashi Fujii has quite the resume. In 2000 and 2001, he appeared on national broadcaster NHK's annual top-rated New Year's variety show, "Kohaku Utagassen" ("Red and White Song Battle"); he toured abroad as a pop singer in 2004, including shows in Los Angeles and Shanghai; and in 2009 he...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 29, 2013

Bilingual beauty, straight and permed

Beauty must be a bilingual thing. At least that's the impression one gets from looking at signs outside hairdressers, beauty parlors and similar types of businesses in Japan.
CULTURE / Music / MONEY AND MUSIC
Apr 4, 2013

Barakan wants InterFM to dial down the talk

While station-surfing on my car radio several years back, I chanced upon a program about Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page. The disc jockey said Page's solo in "Stairway to Heaven" was among his best.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013

'A Good Day to Die Hard'

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that if you had to see yet another 20th-century action star, alive and well and kicking ass for the benefit of the over-40s crowd — and that star is Bruce Willis, whom you can remember as having a full head of hair (brunette) and a terrible taste in suits...
Japan Times
Events / Events In Tokyo
Jan 24, 2013

A monk's teenage angst can be monstrous

Monsters and runaways aren't usually the kinds of problems teenagers face, but a Tokyo-based theater troupe thinks these are the kinds of conundrums that await teenage monks.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jan 19, 2013

Theater's collection of historical documents endangered

The Misonoza theater, long a fixture in Naka Ward, Nagoya, will be closed down at the end of March. Highly regarded as a symbol of the art world in Nagoya, its basement houses the only library for live theater in the Chubu region.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / BEST OF 2012
Dec 28, 2012

Japan's female directors make a strong showing

Female Japanese directors were once like those rare species periodically discovered in Asian jungles and immediately labeled endangered. This year, however, in their highly individual ways, they made some of Japan's strongest, most ambitious films. By now the only thing endangered is local industry prejudice...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 15, 2012

A fine line separates calligraphy and what's called 'art'

The late 19th and 20th centuries witnessed a series of flip-flops among scholars as to whether calligraphy could be considered a fine art. Compared to painting and sculpture, wrote painter Koyama Shotaro in 1882, calligraphy did not attain the level of an art based on the Western models that were taking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 14, 2012

'This is Not a Film'

I met Iranian director Jafar Panahi back in 1996, shortly before his debut feature film "The White Balloon" picked up the Gold Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival — one of many prizes that film garnered. My interview has been lost to the sands of time (hard to believe, but there was a...

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone. 
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan