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Mark Schilling

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 12, 2008

Lily Franky's first starring role plunges him into a 'dark place'

L ily Franky is a true multitalent, having found success as an illustrator, designer, essayist, lyricist, photographer, novelist and band vocalist. His 2005 autobiographical novel "Tokyo Tower: Okan to Boku to Tokidoki Oton (Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me and Sometimes Dad)," in which he described his relationship...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 6, 2008

'Johnen — Sada no Ai'

Rokuro Mochizuki was a leader of the Japanese New Wave of the 1990s, making films such as "Shin Kanashiki Hitman (Another Lonely Hitman)" and "Onibi (The Fire Within)" that redefined the yakuza genre. His tough guy heroes may have had a lonely nobility as they fought for their own vision of happiness,...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 30, 2008

'Bakemono Moyo'/'Mukidashi Nippon'

Still only 24, Yuya Ishii has not only made four feature films in a blazingly short time, but had them screened in his own section (hard to call it a retrospective) at the 2008 Rotterdam Film Festival. Also, at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, he received the first Edward Yang New Talent...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 23, 2008

In 2005, Kenji Uchida, then an unknown young director, won four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival for his second feature, "Unmei Ja Nai Hito (A Stranger of Mine)."

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 16, 2008

'Yama no Anata'

Film remakes are usually reinterpretations. Gore Verbinski's "The Ring" (2002) has not only a different location (Pacific Northwest) but a different story line and mythology from Hideo Nakata's original "Ring (Ringu)" (1998).

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 9, 2008

'Kakushi Toride no San Akunin'

Just as Hollywood loves to remake J-Horror and, now, anime ("Speed Racer" being the latest, but unlikely to be the last), the Japanese film industry has taken to remaking classics by Akira Kurosawa. Last year's "Tsubaki Sanjuro" was Yoshimitsu Morita's shot-by-shot recreation of the 1962 original, though...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 2, 2008

Japanese films based on manga (Japanese comics) are so common now that if I were a young Japanese writer ambitious for a big movie payday, I'd skip the scriptwriting classes and learn how to draw.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 25, 2008

'Park and Love Hotel'

A movie set in a love hotel, but without a single sex scene? A 59-year-old woman as the heroine? It's hard to imagine that particular pitch loosening purse strings at major Japanese media companies. A fatally ill teenager? That's more like it.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 18, 2008

Chihiro Kameyama, Japan's most successful film producer, is not a man to miss an opportunity. When Stephen Chow's comedy "Shaolin Soccer" became a smash in Japan in 2002, Kameyama had the idea of joining with Chow to make a Japanese spinoff. Now, six years later, we have "Shaolin Shojo (Shaolin Girl),"...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 11, 2008

Japanese live-action films about teenagers are many, but about children, few. This is largely a box-office calculation — teenagers pay higher ticket prices than children. Also, children usually go to the theater for a feature-length version of a cartoon they know from television, though there are hugely...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 4, 2008

The maxim from Ecclesiastes that "There is nothing new under the sun" applies especially to the movie business. "Swing Girls," a 2004 smash about a high-school girls swing band, begat "Hula Girls," a 2006 hit about a hula dance troupe in a 1960s mining town, which begat "Kanki no Uta (Ode to Joy)," a...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 28, 2008

A "kids movie" in the current Japanese film business almost always means anime. It wasn't always thus — kids were the biggest fans of the Godzilla series and dozens of other nonanimated homegrown monster movies now vanished from the screens. They've also flocked to the "Spy Kids" films and similar...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 21, 2008

Some directors put their own neuroses on the screen, with attitudes ranging from the dramatically self-lacerating (Ingmar Bergman) to the comically self-deprecating (Woody Allen). Where actor-turned-director Jiro Sato departs from the messed-up norm in "Memo," his first feature film, is in the rawness...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 20, 2008

The final days of revolutionary struggle in Japan

The West sees the turbulent era of the late 1960s and early '70s principally through the lens of its own protesters and radicals, with America's war in Vietnam the focal point of activist anger. If it thinks about East Asia in this period at all, it is usually the China of Mao and the Red Guards, who...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 14, 2008

'Yurei vs. Uchujin'

Even film directors need a break from the routine, don't they? Especially Takashi Shimizu, who has spent much of this decade making seven installments of his hit "Grudge (Ju-on)" J-Horror franchise, including two films for Hollywood, about vengeful ghosts who move from victim to victim like viruses....

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 7, 2008

Pro wrestling gets no respect, save from the fans who love watching it, and, as schoolboys, practice its moves. I was once one of those boys, trying out head butts (learned from Bobo Brazil) and karate chops (acquired from Rikidozan) on various victims, including my little brother.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 7, 2008

Lord of the ring Norihiro Koizumi

All of 27, Norihiro Koizumi began making films while in high school. On graduation from college in 2003, he joined the Robot production company in Tokyo and in 2006 directed his first theatrical feature, "Taiyo no Uta (Song of the Sun)" about a girl with a rare skin disease that makes exposure to the...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 29, 2008

'Doko ni Iku no'

Japanese indie directors who made their reputations in the 1970s and '80s often have big gaps in their feature-film resumes. Sogo Ishii didn't make a feature for 10 years following 1984's "Gyakufunsha Kazoku (Crazy Family),"a groundbreaking black comedy. Mitsuo Yanagimachi, who burst onto the scene in...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 29, 2008

Yoshihiko Matsui: The return of the underground king

Born in 1956, Yoshihiko Matsui worked with indie icon Sogo Ishii on his early films, including the seminal 1980 biker pic "Kuruizaki Thunder Road (Crazy Thunder Road)."

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 22, 2008

Ekiden — marathon relay races — may not be unique to Japan, but the sport has become uniquely popular here, with the biggest races, such as the Hakone Ekiden for university teams, garnering Olympic-like media attention and TV ratings.

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

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