Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 28, 2007

Feting Japan's finest animators

Omnibus films are hard sells to ticket buyers and critics; the former because they want a full cinematic meal, not a plate of hors d'oeuvres, the latter because they see a package of segments as a sort of horse race — and proclaim disappointment when all the horses/segments don't cross the finish line...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 22, 2007

'Mogari no Mori'

Naomi Kawase has spent much of her career fending off labels, be it "woman director," "New Wave young hope" or "maker of autobiographical documentaries" the latter a genre she did much to popularize, starting with her student work in the late 1980s.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 15, 2007

'Zukan ni Notte Nai Mushi'

We all need to escape, once in a while, from being serious people in the real world, trying to ace the big test, land the big contract, or earn an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. Rinko Kikuchi, who accomplished the last feat for her turn as a hearing-impaired high-school girl in "Babel,"...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 8, 2007

'Kantoku Banzai!'/'Dai Nipponjin'

It was a marketing gimmick of the first order to open Takeshi Kitano's "Kantoku Banzai!" and Hitoshi Matsumoto's "Dai Nipponjin" on the same weekend. This head-to-head duel between films by the two reigning kings of Japanese comedy can only boost the box office of both.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film / SHORT TAKES

Jun 8, 2007

Director: Kazuhiro Soda Language: Japanese with English subtitles in Tokyo

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 1, 2007

'Shaberedomo, Shaberedomo'

Japanese are often stereotyped (and tend to stereotype themselves) as bad communicators — or just plain silent. Men, especially, are praised for being miserly with words, though their wives may long for something more than the furo, meshi, neru (bath, food and sleep) that is said to be the sum total...

CULTURE / Film

May 31, 2007

Doing it her own way — Kawase's determined path to success

Naomi Kawase has been tagged as "Japan's leading woman director" since her first feature film, "Moe no Suzaku (Suzaku)," won the Camera d'Or prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 25, 2007

'Ore wa Kimi no Tame ni Koso Shini ni Iku'

Shintaro Ishihara has a lot in common with Michael Moore: Both were long outriders in their particular political cultures, both have been called, more or less rightly, self-promoting blowhards — and both have an outsize talent for show business that has enabled them to imprint their personalities and...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 18, 2007

Unafraid of rightist rage

Directors tend to be articulate types, especially when discussing (or rather spinning) their own films, but Kazuyuki Izutsu has few equals in the art of spoken communication, in or out of the director's chair. From snappy one-liners about dull movies to verbal bombshells aimed at local rightists, Izutsu...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 18, 2007

'Pacchigi! Love & Peace'

In 2004, Kazuyuki Izutsu made "Pacchigi! (Pacchigi! We Shall Overcome Someday)," a serio-comic Romeo and Juliet romance set in 1960s Kyoto. Starring Shun Shioya as a naive high school boy and Erika Sawajiri as the cute-but-tough zainichi (ethnic Korean living in Japan) girl whom he falls for, the film...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 11, 2007

'Ashita no Watashi no Tsukurikata'

Film genres are more or less universal. Even the Western, that quintessential American genre, has inspired filmmakers everywhere, from Italy to Japan, to make local versions. But some genres thrive particularly well in certain cultures, for reasons not always clear to outsiders. Why, for example, the...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

May 4, 2007

'Ahiru to Kamo no Coin Locker'

Many directors keep returning to the same themes and motifs again and again. Alfred Hitchcock liked to torture ice queens (Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren), while Luis Bunuel, the master surrealist, subverted everyday reality with bizarre and disturbing imagery, like a sleeper returning to a familiar...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 27, 2007

How do you portray genius on the screen, if all you have to work with are gifted, but ordinary, humans? If the genius is a real person -- a Mozart, Beethoven or John "A Beautiful Mind" Nash -- the job becomes fairly straightforward: Cast an actor who can suggest the original subject physically and emotionally....

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 20, 2007

'Tsukue no Nakami'

Kids often think their teachers live in a box outside classroom hours -- they are shocked when they see Miss Krabappel buying groceries or walking her dog. Guess what kids -- teachers also often have no clue what you do outside school, unless they are informed by parents, social workers or the police....

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 13, 2007

Okinawa and the other Ryukyu islands are to the rest of Japan somewhat like what Hawaii is to the mainland United States. Both are sun 'n' surf destinations for the multitudes, with local cultures that are perceived as exotically different, but not threateningly so. The natives speak your language, use...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 6, 2007

'Taitei no Ken'

Japanese action-fantasy pics have become big box office, thanks to CG effects sophisticated enough to lure not just the kiddies, but teens and adults. These films, beginning with Masahiro Shinoda's 1999 hit "Fukuro no Shiro (Owl's Castle)" and continuing to Akihito Shiota's recent smash "Dororo," use...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 30, 2007

'Byosoku 5 Centimeters'

As the boundaries between animated and live-action films blur and finally become meaningless (see the graphic-novel look of "300" for a recent example), perhaps a new category is needed -- call it live-mation. In any case, animators in Japan are breaking free of whatever limits on theme and treatment...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 23, 2007

Katsuhiro Otomo once had a reputation as a genius anime auteur -- a younger, hipper version of Hayao Miyazaki. His 1988 SF hit "Akira" was unlike anything coming out of the Hollywood animation industry in its dark vision of an atomic-blasted Neo-Tokyo, with its multilayered story of lawless young bikers...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 16, 2007

'Argentine Baba'

Movies about quirky, dysfunctional families are a thriving subgenre in Hollywood, "Little Miss Sunshine" being the most successful recent example. The Japanese make these films as well, but they tend to be more surreal -- or rather manga-esque, as seen in Katsuhito Ishii's "Cha no Aji (Taste of Tea),"...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 9, 2007

'Aoki Ookami'/'Ryu ga Gotoku'

Selling Japanese movies abroad has never been easy -- the industry makes about 1 percent of its box office overseas, but Haruki Kadokawa and Takashi Miike are both working hard to raise that number, if in radically different ways.

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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