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Mamiko Kawamoto
For Mamiko Kawamoto's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
CULTURE / Film
Jul 14, 2004
A 'Steamboy' timeline
1995 After enjoying international success with his debut feature "Akira" (1988), Katsuhiro Otomo comes up with the idea for his second feature, "Steamboy," from an animated short, "Cannon Fodder." One of three segments in his 1995 animation omnibus "Memories," "Cannon Fodder" tells an Orwellian tale, set in what looks to be early 20th-century Europe, of a city fighting a perpetual war with giant cannons. Fascinated by the film's images of early industrialization, Otomo decides to expand on this in "Steamboy." Otomo successfully pitches the story to a Japanese backer in July and pre-production begins.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 28, 2004
Fashionable marriage
Best known in Japan as a fashion photographer and music-video director, Kazuaki Kiriya has made his feature-film debut with "Casshern," the Japanese film industry's most extravagant marriage yet between live action and 3-D animation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 21, 2004
Fiction made real
I met with Kazuo Kuroki following the premiere of "Utsukushii Natsu Kirishima (Kirishima 1945)" at the Fukuoka International Film Festival in 2002. A native of Ebino, Miyazaki Prefecture, where the film was shot, Kuroki looked content with the warm response he had received from the Kyushu audience. Smartly dressed in a black suit and his trademark black-knit cap, he was cautious yet sincere with his words.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 3, 2001
Epiphany in a puddle
Mamiko Kawamoto and I interviewed Katsuyoshi Kumakiri and his two stars, Susuma Terajima and Yuriko Kikuchi, at the press suite of the Focus on Asia -- Fukuoka Film Festival, where "Sora no Ana" was screened to a full-house crowd. Kumakiri was agreeably sincere and Kikuchi becomingly modest, while Terajima had the kind of electric presence that made me want to hang on every word.

Longform

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