Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

CULTURE / Film

May 1, 2009

Big, original, visionary films are rare in today's Japanese film industry, which overwhelmingly prefers sure bets developed from hit manga, anime, TV dramas, novels and other media properties.

CULTURE / Film

Apr 24, 2009

'Rain Fall — Ame no Kiba'

Japanese film folks used to regularly complain that they could never compete with Hollywood because the budget gap was simply too great. A guy in a rubber Godzilla suit didn't have the same impact as the gee-whiz effects that Lucas, Spielberg and company could command and that cash-strapped Japanese...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 17, 2009

Counterfeiting is one of those movie crimes that, by the laws of script writing, is doomed to fail, like the overelaborate heists that end with the thieves either dead or captured and their loot billowing up in clouds of green from an open briefcase.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 10, 2009

'Crows Zero II'

Japan has its share of teenage punks, but compared with their scarier counterparts in the United States, they are rather tame. Instead of spraying enemies and strangers with automatic weapons, they settle their disputes with methods usually far less lethal, from fists to head butts.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 3, 2009

'Hatsukoi — Natsu no Kioku'

First love, or hatsukoi, is a perennial, popular theme for seishun eiga ("youth films"), ranking right up there with tragic early death.

CULTURE / Film

Mar 27, 2009

Film critics like to be surprised, which comes from being unsurprised too many times. This critic, however, has become tired of "The Sixth Sense" school of script writing, enamored as it is of that 1999 hit's sleight-of-hand ending. But while a good magician can fool the eye in dozens of ways, a scriptwriter...

CULTURE / Film

Mar 27, 2009

Masterpiece maker

The Japan Times interviewed Yoshihiro Nakamura at the Ebisu headquarters of the Amuse talent agency, where Nakamura was holding forth all day for the press. Despite the PR grind, he was relaxed, with a ready laugh, and spoke in a distinctive low, rumbling voice.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 20, 2009

Punks, in their various post-Elvis incarnations, have been a feature of Japanese society — and films — for almost half a century. More recent, though, is the vogue for what might be called punks-brawl-for-fun films, which celebrate the joy and glory of smashing heads together with your four or 40...

CULTURE / Film

Mar 20, 2009

Punks, in their various post-Elvis incarnations, have been a feature of Japanese society — and films — for almost half a century. More recent, though, is the vogue for what might be called punks-brawl-for-fun films, which celebrate the joy and glory of smashing heads together with your four or 40...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 13, 2009

'Baobab no Kioku'

Seiichi Motohashi's documentaries often take environmental destruction as their theme, starting with his first, "Nadja no Mura" ("Nadja's Village"), in 1998 and continuing with "Alexei to Izumi" ("Alexei's Spring," 2002) and his new film "Baobab no Kioku" ("A Thousand Year Song of Baobab").

CULTURE / Books

Mar 8, 2009

Japanese directors in detail

Reviewed by Mark Schilling What used to be an obscure publishing niche — filmographies in English of Japanese filmmakers — is now a task to which a small army — OK, platoon — of volunteers is now dedicated on Wikipedia, the Internet Movie Database and elsewhere on the Web.

CULTURE / Film

Mar 6, 2009

Hollywood superhero movies are often not only thrill rides with flights and fights designed to elicit a collective "wow" but comments on the rotten state of society, metaphors for the fallen nature of humankind, and so on. Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker as a psychotic in "The Dark Knight" won...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 27, 2009

'Tsumi toka Batsu toka'

Contemporary Japanese comedies generally come in two varieties: wacky and noisy (most films written or directed by Kankuro Kudo), or quirky and dry (Satoshi Miki's "Ten Ten" ["Adrift in Tokyo"] and Yosuke Fujita's "Zen Zen Daijobu" ["Fine, Totally, Fine"]).

CULTURE / Film

Feb 20, 2009

"Halfway" ("Harufuwei") has one of those katakana titles that is supposed to sound vaguely exotic and mysterious to its intended audience — Japanese of about the same age as its teenage protagonists — but may strike native speakers as prosaic, even boring.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 20, 2009

Funereal flick out to reap Japan an Oscar

The Japanese film industry now turns out about 400 titles annually, but in a given decade only a few Japanese filmmakers win major international awards — including the biggest of all: the Oscars.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 13, 2009

'Heaven's Door'/'Lost Girl'

Youth, illness and love are the basic ingredients of many a movie, especially in Japan, where romantic dramas about dying teenagers are about as common as convenience stores.

CULTURE / Books

Feb 8, 2009

Revealing artistic shades of pink in Japanese cinema

Porno gets little respect as a film genre in the West, with its makers relegated to a ghetto that few escape. How many A-list directors in Hollywood, past or present, started by making even the milder sort of sex stuff seen on cable?

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 6, 2009

Telling a lengthy tale of lust and religion

Films that are extremely long (say, three hours plus) tend to be extreme in other ways as well — including the megalomania of their director.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 6, 2009

'20-seiki Shonen Dai-2-sho: Saigo no Kibo'

Movies based on popular long-running manga commonly cram in too much, from story lines to characters. This confuses nonfans, while often failing to satisfy fans, who complain about omissions — though the original comic may have run for thousands of pages in dozens of volumes.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 30, 2009

'Dare mo Mamotte Kurenai'

The popular media maw, from the Brit tabloids to the Hollywood paparazzi, chews up its subjects, from celebs to criminals, everywhere, anytime. If you're at the receiving end, it's probably an awful experience. Nonetheless, there's something special about the voracity of the Japanese media, with its...

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