Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 11, 2008

'Giniro no Season'

Japan tries to sell itself as the land of cherry blossoms and Mount Fuji, but some of its best natural highs can be found on its ski slopes, as the world discovered at the 1972 Hokkaido and 1996 Nagano Winter Olympics.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 4, 2008

'Hokushin Naname ni Sasu Tokoro'

The old school tie is strong for many Japanese, especially members of the dwindling prewar generation.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 21, 2007

'Kazoku no Hiketsu'

The Kansai region, which includes the cities of Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, is Japan's comedy center. The biggest comedy talent agency, Yoshimoto Kogyo, is based in Osaka and its comics mostly deliver their quips in the Kansai dialect.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 14, 2007

What is the hottest genre right now in Japanese film? J-Horror is pretty much dead, though horror as a genre is about as likely to die as Dracula. Anime is still mostly for kiddies and otaku (obsessives), with the massive exception of Studio Ghibli offerings. Blurring the line between animation and live...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 7, 2007

'Tsubaki Sanjuro'

The films of Akira Kurosawa have generated far more remakes than those of any other Japanese director, beginning with the John Sturges 1960 Western "The Magnificent Seven," a reworking of Kurosawa's "Shichinin no Samurai (Seven Samurai)."

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 30, 2007

'Hannari — Geisha Modern'

Over the years, many people have asked me why I bother to review Japanese films, when so few non-Japanese-speaking foreigners can fully appreciate them.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 23, 2007

'Midnight Eagle'

Why do national cinemas excel in some genres but not in others? Whatever its many sins, Hollywood makes thrillers that for sheer visceral kicks — car chases! explosions! Matt Damon leaping across a chasm through a tiny open window! — are the global standard.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 16, 2007

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.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 9, 2007

Some directors are like fashion brands, churning out immediately identifiable product the same way again and again. Others are more like a hot stock: a spectacular rise, followed by an equally spectacular fall. There are also those who are like an underperforming athlete who suddenly changes into a worldbeater....

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 2, 2007

'Always Zoku 3-chome no Yuhi'

Are the Japanese more nostalgic than the rest of us? It's hard to say, but here cinematic look-backs tend to be more bittersweet than in the West, especially films set in Tokyo, which was obliterated in World War II and has undergone several reincarnations in the six decades since.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 1, 2007

Eyes on Japan's crazed radicalism, twisted psychology

This year's Tokyo International Film Festival was a bit different for me. For the first time since 2003 I was not on the jury for Japanese Eyes, a section spotlighting Japanese movies that might otherwise get lost in the glare of big commercial releases. This gave me more leeway to pick and choose what...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 26, 2007

'Quiet Room ni Yokoso'

I once did a story on a psychiatric hospital in a Tokyo suburb, in what now seems like a previous life. After an interview with the hospital director, I toured the wards and chatted with the patients. One, a middle-age housewife type, told me frankly that she was there for alcoholism. She struck me as...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 19, 2007

'Appleseed: Ex-Machina'

"Appleseed," Shinji Aramaki's sci-fi animation based on a Shirow Masamune comic, was hailed as ground-breaking when it opened in 2004. Not so much for its story, which recycled tired dystopian, man-as-machine tropes from many sources, including Masamune's better-known manga "Kokaku Kidotai (Ghost In...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 12, 2007

'0093 Jo Heika no Kusakari Masao'

The Japanese film industry makes many comedies, but few parodies of the "Airplane," "Naked Gun" or "Austin Powers" variety. This is puzzling, since Japanese comedy directors have been borrowing freely from Hollywood for generations, including Koki Mitani ("Uchoten Hotel"), who worships at the altar of...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 5, 2007

"Family Game," Yoshimitsu Morita's 1983 black comedy about a sardonic, sadistic home tutor — played by Yusaku Matsuda — who ruthlessly exposes the dysfunctions of a "normal" middle-class family, made Morita, temporarily, the Takeshi Kitano of his era.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 28, 2007

"Bridget Jones's Diary" was yet another variation on the Cinderella story, but instead of becoming the belle of the ball, Renee Zellwegger's Bridget stayed pretty much the same pumpkin throughout, but got her prince anyway.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 21, 2007

Last year Naoko Ogigami had a surprise hit with "Kamome Shokudo (Seagull Diner)," a film about three Japanese women who end up running a restaurant together in Helsinki. It was a surprise because stars Satomi Kobayashi and Masako Motai were hardly marquee names, while the plot offered little in the way...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 14, 2007

'Sukiyaki Western Django'

In the late 1950s and early '60s, the Japanese studio Nikkatsu had great success with its "borderless action (mukokuseki action)" films. The best known was the nine-part "Wataridori (Birds of Passage)" series (1959-62) starring Akira Kobayashi as a drifter who has most of the accouterments of a Western...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 7, 2007

Shinji Aoyama makes films about extreme emotional dysfunction and dislocation, whose central characters include victims and perpetrators of desperate acts and terrible crimes — sometimes within the same person.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 7, 2007

The king of Kita Kyushu

Shinji Aoyama was in an up mood when The Japan Times met him at the office of his distributor, Style Jam. His new film, "Sad Vacation," opened the Horizons section at the Venice Film Festival last week, and though, when we met, he confessed himself nervous at the prospect of facing a foreign audience,...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.

What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji

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