Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

For Mark Schilling's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMUNITY

Jul 22, 2001

When we had heroes

They were voices in the silence, stars in the night they showed the way and they showed what was right

CULTURE / Film

Jul 18, 2001

Ms. Tokyo takes a trip to reality

Koko ni Iru Koto Rating: * * * 1/2 Director: Masahiko Nagasawa Running time: 115 minutes Language: JapaneseNow showing The TV trendy drama was a bubble-era phenomenon, with its stories about the love troubles of beautiful young singles working at glamorous "katakana jobs" (such as "event planner" and "coordinator," written in the katakana syllabary) and living in central city apartments that the average straphanger would have to mortgage his soul to afford.

COMMUNITY / THE PARENT TRIP

Jul 13, 2001

Whatever can go wrong . . .

Writers of how-to articles about traveling with kids usually talk about Baby's ears popping in airplanes and keeping little Junior and Sis amused on long drives so they don't refight the Macedonian War in the back seat. Older kids, these writers seem to assume, can take care of themselves, when they deign to travel with Mom and Dad at all.

CULTURE / Film

Jul 11, 2001

Screenwriting by remote control

Stereo Future Rating: * * Director: Hiroyuki Nakano Running time: 111 minutes Language: JapaneseNow showing Filmmaking is about putting images on the screen. It is also, if not always, about telling a story. Hollywood has long subordinated images to story, the classic ideal being the "seamless" style in which cuts and camera movements are all but invisible to the audience.

CULTURE / Film

Jul 4, 2001

Full-speed ahead into cinematic chaos

Rush Rating: * * Director: Takehisa Zeze Running time: 110 minutes Language: Japanese Now playing at Cine Amuse in Shibuya Takehisa Zeze's "Rush" is a reviewer's ultimate nightmare: a film whose plot is all but impossible to follow, let alone describe. Walking out of the theater, I laughed -- it was either that or bang my head against the door in despair.

CULTURE / Film

Jun 27, 2001

A blueprint for total disaster

Minna no Ie Rating: * * * 1/2 Director: Koki Mitani Running time: 115 minutes Language: JapaneseShowing at Shibutoh Cine Tower and other theaters A fatal hard-drive crash (signaled by the sound of the computer going whack-whack-whack instead of the usual varoom) is one of those complacency-shattering events that, like getting a tax-audit notice or bad biopsy report, causes one to reflect on the fragility of existence -- or collapse into a quivering heap of panic. In my case, it also forced me to see again a movie that I'd written about weeks ago -- usually the equivalent of going back to a party to retrieve a bag after already saying one's goodbyes.

CULTURE / Film

Jun 20, 2001

Lord, bless this cinematic mess

The Guys From Paradise Rating: * * * 1/2 Director: Takashi Miike Running time: 114 minutes Language: Japanese Now showing at Shibuya Cine Palace and other theaters Takashi Miike may end up as the Seijun Suzuki of his generation. In the 1960s, Suzuki was a toiler on the Nikkatsu B-movie assembly line, grinding out formula gang films. Bored with his repetitive labors, he began to inject puckish, surrealistic touches into his work.

CULTURE / Film

Jun 13, 2001

Somewhere over the DMZ

JSA Rating: * * * 1/2 Director: Park Chan Wook Running time: 110 minutes Language: Korean Now showing at Hibiya Scala-za and other theaters Two types of Korean movies used to be released in Japan. One was the art film, usually something dark, raw and intense. The other was the erotic film, usually something dark, raw and intense, but with more rapes and bared breasts. Neither did particularly well at the box office, though the latter had a small, devoted following.

CULTURE / Film

Jun 6, 2001

The toughest journey for Japan's toughest guy

Hotaru Rating: * * * 1/2 Director: Yasuo Furuhata Running time: 114 minutes Language: JapaneseNow showing at Toei Marunouchi and other theaters National cinemas from Hollywood to Bollywood have their icons -- veteran actors who have become box-office powerhouses less for their performances than their onscreen charisma and perfect embodiment of a cultural ideal. Critics sneered at Clint Eastwood's acting for decades, but audiences couldn't get enough of that thin-lipped sneer and whispery growl: Make my day, indeed. Though well past his tough-guy prime, Eastwood can still ring the box-office gong in projects that, like last year's "Space Cowboys," trade on his all-American appeal.

CULTURE / Film

May 30, 2001

Memories as microcosms

Directors, it's often said, keep making the same movie over and over, though the sameness is more evident with some than others. Akira Kurosawa was among the most eclectic directors of his generation, filming everything from Shakespearean drama ("Throne of Blood") to popcorn entertainment ("The Hidden Fortress"), but he kept returning to the problem of being a hero in an unheroic world.

CULTURE / Film

May 23, 2001

Director shoots close to home

Director Toshiaki Toyoda recently took time to talk to me about his "Unchain," his new film about four young boxers in Osaka.

CULTURE / Film

May 23, 2001

The fight of their lives

Unchain Rating: * * * * Director: Toshiaki Toyoda Running time: 98 minutes Language: JapaneseNow playing as the late show at Shinjuku Theatre Boxing movies have one advantage over action films with high body counts and world-shattering explosions: It's not written that the hero has to blast all the bad guys into oblivion and finish the third act in professional triumph. In fact, some of the best-remembered movie boxers never won their big fights, from Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy -- the patron saint of washed-up pugs everywhere -- to Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa, who went down in glorious defeat in his big comeback bout. (Robert De Niro's Jake La Motta in "Raging Bull" may have had his 15 minutes in the ring, but his was hardly a zero-to-hero story.)

CULTURE / Film

May 16, 2001

A true master in our midst

Tokyo Marigold Rating: * * * * * Director: Jun Ichikawa Running time: 97 minutes Language: JapaneseNow showing Film is art, commerce -- and fashion. Actors, directors and even national cinemas are in vogue one year, out the next. Not long ago the British were hot, now it's the turn of the Chinese. The forces that drive trends, including festival programmers, critics and buyers, are attracted by talent, energy and originality, but there is also a herd mentality at work. Yesterday the trendsetters sneered at Hong Kong martial-arts fantasies as silly cult stuff for fan boys; today everyone is looking for the next "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

CULTURE / Film

May 9, 2001

Crowd-pleasing in Udine

Given the media frenzy over "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," Western interest in Asian cinema may be news, but it's hardly new. Back in 1998, the organizers of Udine Incontri Cinema, a small film festival in a quiet Italian town near the Austrian and Slovenian border, shifted their focus to commercial films from Hong Kong -- Jackie Chan instead of Wong Kar-wai. The response was encouraging (turn-away crowds at many of the screenings), and the decision to specialize in Asia was easy. A year later, the festival moved into a civic auditorium used for staging operas and filled all three of its balconies by showing films from various parts of the region, in what it was now calling its Far East Film showcase.

CULTURE / Film

May 2, 2001

A war movie of guts, glory and heavy gloss

Merdeka Rating: * Director: Yukio Fuji Running time: 114 minutes Language: JapaneseNow showing War movies have a hard time telling the truth about one of humankind's most universal acts. Even when filmmakers loudly proclaim their intention to get it right, they nearly always make their films as Americans or Russians or Japanese, with the accompanying social, political and, needless to say, commercial filters. In "Saving Private Ryan," Steven Spielberg created some of the most gut-wrenching battle footage in the history of film, but he still waved the flag. Tom Hanks' character had the shakes, but he was still an All-American hero, performing mainly for a paying audience of his countrymen.

CULTURE / Film

Apr 25, 2001

Gambling with reality, double or nothing

Doubles Rating: * * * 1/2 Director: Satoru Isaka Running time: 90 minutes Language: JapaneseNow showing The title of Satoru Isaka's new film, "Doubles," is ironic, but appropriate. Its two heroes -- a middle-aged locksmith (Kenichi Hagiwara) and young computer nerd (Kazuma Suzuki) -- are unlikely partners in crime who take an immediate and loud dislike to each other. But while arguing over everything from their botched robbery to personal hygiene, they come to see that they are more alike than they could have ever imagined, or admitted, when they began the longest night of their lives.

CULTURE / Film

Apr 18, 2001

Journey to the center of the human volcano

HotaruStyle to Kill Rating: * * * Director: Naomi Kawase Running time: 164 min. Language: JapaneseEnds April 20 Rating: * * * * * Director: Seijun SuzukiLanguage: Japanese Now showing In 1997, a young documentary filmmaker named Naomi Kawase won the Camera d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her first feature film, "Moe no Suzaku." A drama about the disintegration of a family and community, set deep in the mountains of Kawase's native Nara Prefecture and shot almost entirely with amateur actors, "Moe no Suzaku" became an art-house hit and made Kawase a celebrity. Even the sports papers covered her marriage to her producer, Suncent Cinema Work President Takenori Sento.

COMMUNITY / THE PARENT TRIP

Apr 13, 2001

English as a father tongue

You are living in Japan in a bicultural, bilingual relationship (meaning that you can deal with the dry-cleaning guy in Japanese). Little Tomu or Tommy, your first, has gone from goos and gurgles to words and even sentences. How cute! Kawaii! You, who have struggled so hard to master Nihongo (or at least understand the dry-cleaning guy when he comes to collect), are amazed, pleased and more than a bit envious that this pint-sized wonder is picking up the language so quickly. You want to help him along (or fear that he is going to overtake you), so when he prattles in Japanese to you, you prattle back.

CULTURE / Film

Apr 11, 2001

Comical Sturm und Drang , all in the family

Rendan Rating: * * * * Director: Naoto Takenaka Running time: 104 minutes Language: JapaneseNow playing "What does woman want?" Freud famously asked -- a question that is just as famously unanswerable. At the dawn of the modern feminist era, however, many women seemed to want what Anais Nin, in a 1974 essay for Playgirl, dubbed "the Sensitive Man." This paragon, she wrote, was "the natural sincere man without stance or display, nonassertive, the one concerned with true values, not ambition, who hates war and greed, commercialism and political expediency." A guy, in other words, who would stay home with the kids and do the laundry while his significant other went out into the world to fulfill her inborn talents, express her inner self and pay the mortgage.

CULTURE / Film

Apr 4, 2001

The genius boy in a bubble

My mother used to say that she could read me like a book. A compliment? At the age of 15, I didn't think so -- I didn't want anyone "reading" me, let alone dear old Mom. Worshipping at the altar of cool, I wanted to be an inscrutable, unflappable James Bond, not a hapless innocent walking down the pitiless hallways of an American high school with his every thought and feeling on display.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.

Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Cultural properties:A Fujiya Hotel insider’s view

Cultural properties:A Fujiya Hotel insider’s view

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