Tag - film

 
 

FILM

Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Jun 3, 2015
Festival of off-center European films comes to Tokyo and Kyoto
One of the main goals of a film festival is to show movies that audiences won't get to see otherwise. For the festival operators there's another objective: testing reactions to films and stories, and using that information for marketing purposes. And with the number of film festivals being held in Japan...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jun 3, 2015
Eddie Redmayne to star in 'Harry Potter' spinoff
Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne will enter the world of magic in Warner Bros.' anticipated "Harry Potter" spinoff movie "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," the studio said.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
May 27, 2015
Could Kiyoshi Kurosawa's win at Cannes change Japan's luck?
Kiyoshi Kurosawa won the best director prize in the Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section on Sunday, but he also deserves a prize from the Japanese film industry for single-handedly turning its presence at the world's most prestigious film festival from a vague embarrassment to a cause for...
CULTURE / Film
May 21, 2015
The must-see list is long at Short Shorts film fest
When it comes to getting a movie fix these days, more people opt for their computer screens than venturing outside to a theater. Hollywood has countered this trend with a slew of 3-D blockbusters and cinematic largesse, but how does the short film fare?
CULTURE / Film
May 21, 2015
Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia searches for that 1-in-5,000 movie
Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia director Seigo Tono has been with the event since its second edition in 2000, when it was called the American Short Shorts Film Festival and showed only U.S. films. Since then it has evolved into what Tono describes as "a global event, featuring cutting-edge shorts from...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
May 17, 2015
Black filmmakers 'find their edge' in Japan
This month's green-tinged Black Eye focuses on black filmmakers in Tokyo — a group of brothers forging their dreams into reality, getting it done here in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 13, 2015
'Ao no Ran' is a riproaring rhapsody in blue
"Ao no Ran" is the latest in the popular Geki×Cine series. To cut a long story short, Geki×Cine is a filmed stage production, but one done so meticulously that not a single moment of relevance or emotion is lost in the translating process.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
May 13, 2015
Sign of the times as yakuza classic gets kudos at Cannes
In the early 2000s, when I was writing a book about yakuza movies, veterans of the genre's 1960s and '70s heyday I met had a fierce pride in their work but no illusions about its low ranking in the film-world hierarchy. In particular, the Toei studio's films about sword-swinging or gun-toting gangsters...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
May 13, 2015
Filmmakers Ash and Kamanaka discuss radiation, secrets and lives
Two filmmakers who have tackled the Fukushima issue — American and Japanese, storyteller and activist — discuss their work and their films, and consider the notion of 'being a 'foreign' filmmaker.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 22, 2015
Surviving the night of the long tentacular knives in 'Parasyte: Part 2'
When we left Shinichi (Shota Sometani) and his inseparable parasite companion Migi at the end of Takashi Yamazaki's 2014 sci-fi/horror hit "Kiseiju" ("Parasyte: Part 1"), the space-alien organisms who had found human hosts in the city of Higashi Fukuyama were not only slaughtering humans for food —...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Apr 22, 2015
The Zushi Beach Film Festival resists the ban on loud music and tattoos
Zushi Beach — a popular getaway for people seeking to escape Tokyo's stifling summer heat — may have banned "loud" music, tattoos and barbecues, but hey, at least it still has a film festival.
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Apr 12, 2015
Expats can find their creative mojo in Japan's inspiration and isolation
The inflated sense of being special that Japan fosters among non-natives can be dangerous, but that same emotion can also lead you to do things that might otherwise feel like symptoms of a mid-life crisis.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 2, 2015
'April Fools' gets the wrong end of the practical-joke schtick
The Japanese film industry has themed many movies around that imported holiday, Christmas, or, more specifically, Christmas Eve, which has become Japan's date night of date nights. Even those outside the local film industry now celebrate special days that originated elsewhere, including Halloween, Valentine's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 26, 2015
Early photographers painted quite a pretty picture
One of the biggest problems with modern and contemporary art, for many people, is the seeming lack of skill or workmanship. The criticism is that contemporary art is a scam, in which the usual suspects are talentless fame-hungry artists, unscrupulous gallery owners and self-important "artspeak" critics....
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 23, 2015
Poll finds fictional TV presidents are more popular than Obama
Whether it's the earnest Josiah Bartlet from "The West Wing" or the manipulative Frank Underwood in "House of Cards," Americans prefer television presidents to their real-life POTUS, President Barack "No Drama" Obama.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 18, 2015
Is Asian cinema caught in a festival feeding frenzy?
On March 5, tickets went on sale for Joe Hisaishi's concert at a 1,200-seat theater in Udine, Italy — and they were sold out in less than a week. In Japan, where Hisaishi is well known as a composer for his soundtracks to films by Hayao Miyazaki, Takeshi Kitano and many others, this rush for tickets...
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 18, 2015
North Korea Web outage was reprisal for Sony hack, U.S. lawmaker says
A December blackout of North Korea's Internet was retaliation for that nation's hacking of computers at Sony Corp.'s Hollywood studio, a top U.S. lawmaker on cybersecurity issues said without identifying who was responsible.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Mar 17, 2015
Bathroom confession critical in Durst case, legal experts say
New York real estate scion and accused murderer Robert Durst's bathroom muttering that he "killed them all" would likely be admissible evidence in a murder trial, legal experts said on Monday.

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