Pinero

Rating: * * (out of 5)
Director: Leon Ichaso
Running time: 103 minutes
Language: English
Opens Jan. 31
[See Japan Times movie listings]

One pitfall of artist biopics is the genre's tendency to select those artists whose lives were of the wrecked and splashy variety. It's extremely rare to find films about stable, even-tempered, family-loving citizens who also happened to be artists. The norm is that artists are talented but self-destructive and arrogant problem-people, hell on friends and family but deserving of adoration for exactly those traits that set them apart from the humdrum bourgeois.

While it's fine to go along with this to some extent, it's problematic when the personality overrides and obscures the art. As novelist Nelson Algren once remarked, artists should be judged for their work and not for sleeping around or taking drugs.

The best artist biopics blur the distinction between the artist's life and their output ("Frida," "Amadeus"), reminding us of how intertwined the two are, and of the process by which the artist alchemizes the pain and disaster of his or her life.

Our Planet

The Gas Pavilion had welcomed around 500,000 visitors by the end of August, making it one of the most popular exhibits at the Osaka Expo.
At Osaka Expo, gas giants promote a greener future. But is it a lot of hot air?

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building