Tag - takashi-miike

 
 

TAKASHI MIIKE

Takashi Miike (front left) is among the big-name directors slated to work with K2 Pictures, a new film production startup that aims to disrupt the Japanese film industry.
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
May 25, 2024
Can K2's goal of creating a better film industry in Japan win over skeptics?
While established auteurs such as Takashi Miike, Miwa Nishikawa and Hirokazu Kore-eda are slated to work with the startup, it still faces an uphill struggle.
A psychopathic lawyer (Kazuya Kamenashi) finds himself targeted by a serial killer — and decides to fight back — in Takashi Miike’s “Lumberjack the Monster.”
CULTURE / Film
Nov 30, 2023
‘Lumberjack the Monster’ will talk you to death
Takashi Miike’s film about a psychopath battling a serial killer fails to deliver on its schlocky potential.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 27, 2020
'First Love': A heartfelt throwback to the golden age of yakuza flicks
Masataka Kubota plays a doomed boxer who takes on the yazuka in Takashi Miike's newest film.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Dec 20, 2019
Takashi Miike shows his softer side at Macao film festival
Japan's master of the ultra-violent, darkly comedic and low-budge yakuza flick, Takashi Miike, discusses the ideas of love and boxing which are prevelant in his latest film, 'First Love.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
May 23, 2019
Japan takes a backseat at Cannes
The Cannes Film Festival, the world's premier film event, has long been a holy grail for Japanese filmmakers. Selection for the main competition is the ultimate goal for many, though screenings in other sections convey prestige at home that other festivals, in Japan and elsewhere, can't match.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 26, 2017
'Blade of the Immortal': Film version of manga hit goes overboard in its execution
Based on Hiroaki Samura's long-running (1993-2012) manga, the samurai swashbuckler "Blade of the Immortal" promises the sort of fun, over-the-top action that has long been a trademark of its director, Takashi Miike.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 14, 2016
'The Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio': Digging deep into the yakuza
Since his start as a director in 1991, Takashi Miike has accumulated nearly 100 credits, including his output for television broadcast and straight-to-video release. Far from being the faceless journeyman this number suggests, Miike is a genre auteur who has put his individual stamp on his films, with...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Dec 7, 2016
'Crazy Thunder Road' is still a mad, but great film
Sogo Ishii — or Gakuryu Ishii, as he now prefers to be known — was just 23 when he released "Crazy Thunder Road," perhaps one of the greatest films to emerge from Japan's punk era (an honor it shares with the director's 1982 follow-up, "Burst City"). A nihilistic tale of warring biker gangs and ultra-nationalist...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 27, 2016
'Terraformars': Miike's life on Mars has its bugs
Now that voyages to Mars seem likely in the next generation or so, films about the red planet are moving beyond the "John Carter" (2012) space-opera stage. But for every reality-based "The Martian," there is still a "Terraformars," Takashi Miike's latest extreme entertainment.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 20, 2015
Aikawa's brainless fun in 'Deadman Inferno'
Sho Aikawa was once the tough-guy muse of Takashi Miike, appearing in films such as "Gokudo Kuroshakai" ("Rainy Dog"), "Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha" ("Dead or Alive") and "Gokudo Kyofu Dai-gekijo: Gozu" ("Gozu") that made the director the international "King of Cult." The sandpapery voice, the sideways...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 28, 2015
Roppongi Kabuki cites sci-fi, punk
Known for its nightlife, its fleets of Ferraris and condos with sky-high prices, the affluent central Tokyo district of Roppongi will soon go where even that multinational neighborhood has never gone before — when the launch of a program named Roppongi Kabuki will see that ancient form of traditional...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 1, 2015
Curtains up on 2015
Innovation adds sparkle to traditional forms
CULTURE / Books
Aug 17, 2013
Revisiting the works of director Takashi Miike
Takashi Miike is one of the few Japanese filmmakers now working, Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki being two others, who enjoy a measure of recognition outside Japan's insular film world. Though hardly a household name in Kansas, Miike has long been a favorite with the international Asian Extreme Cinema...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 7, 2013
Screen violence is in the eye of the beholder
Some people avoid violent films, while others watch little else. Professional movie reviewers, who may see hundreds of films annually, cannot afford to be so picky. If you are covering the Cannes Film Festival competition, as I did one year for the Screen International daily critics' poll, you cannot...

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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?