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Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Oct 22, 2008

Apple lightens, brightens lineup

Pick an Apple: Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat, Apple Inc. always conjures up a buzz out of its product announcements. In its latest trick, the technology maestro has unveiled a much-anticipated lineup of new MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air notebook computers that are already triggering...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 16, 2008

Tokyo International Film Festival offers rough but ambitious lineup

Though it's eight years older than PIFF, the Tokyo International Film Festival, which runs Oct. 18 to 26, has always come across as the neglected little brother in terms of Asian film events. For years, TIFF had the reputation of being mainly a showcase for Japanese studios and distributors, who trot...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2008

'The Fall'

Director Tarsem Singh has been blessed with a successful career in commercials, but when it comes to the cinema, he's suffered the curse of bad timing. His debut feature, "The Cell" (2000), came out as the serial killer boom was starting to tank. His new film, "The Fall," is told through the eyes of...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 7, 2008

Multiple interpretations of a tale told in many forms

ENVISIONING "THE TALE OF GENJI": Media, Gender, and Cultural Production, edited by Haruo Shirane. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, 400 pp., 11 color plates, 66 b/w illustrations, $32.50 (paper) "The Tale of Genji," Murasaki Shikibu's long monogatari, upwards of a thousand pages in translation,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 29, 2008

'Youth Without Youth'

Ever since he first hit it big with "The Godfather" way back in 1972, Francis Ford Coppola has made noises about saying goodbye to Hollywood, taking the money and making small, uncompromising independent films. With the exception of "The Conversation" (1974), that never happened, with Coppola seemingly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2008

Grappling with Japan

They met in a cafe in Manhattan. She was working on a comic strip for her book, which was about a young artist and her quest for an apartment and a day job in Brooklyn. He was a successful French film director (although she didn't know this at the time) having coffee with his two small sons. The boys...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2008

'Tokyo!'

Like any other big city, Tokyo does things to you. The three directors in the omnibus movie "Tokyo!" however, inflict their penetrating stare upon the city and don't flinch when the city gazes right back — they all give as good as they get. They know that what happens here is both unique and ubiquitous...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Aug 22, 2008

Pampering at the Otani, curries at the Hyatt

Treat yourself to luxury, ladies Through Sept. 30, the Hotel New Otani in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, is offering "Ladies Selection" plans that combine a healthy lunch and a treatment at one of the hotel's four beauty salons.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 8, 2008

'The Dark Knight'

Like a plague of locusts, the superhero movies descend on us this summer. August brings us "Hancock," with Will Smith as an alcoholic, irresponsible and quite unfunny superhero; "The Incredible Hulk," which is practically a remake of 2003's "Hulk (presumably Ang Lee's version wasn't stupid enough); and...
CULTURE / Music
Aug 7, 2008

The Ventures: Still rocking after 50 years

The Ventures have just finished playing 33 songs in the space of two hours in front of some enthusiastic, though seated, middle-aged fans at the Hokutopia concert hall in Tokyo. Kazushi Kojima, who calls himself a "philosopher," is there with his son. He's been attending Ventures shows for 30 years....
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 1, 2008

Hit jihadists where it hurts

LUXEMBOURG — In just a few years, irresponsible acts by self-styled Islamic jihadists have reversed the good will developed over centuries between the world's major religions. With bombs going off from Istanbul and around India, it appears that the acts of a few have enormous negative effects on many...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 1, 2008

'City of Men'

"City Of God," from 2003, still stands up as one of the best films of the decade. Its story of two decades of gang history in a Rio de Janeiro favela (slum) was compelling enough, taking viewers into an underworld rarely glimpsed by outsiders. But as much as the story itself, the way in which it was...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 25, 2008

Jables steals the show

You could tell Jack Black was itching to act up. Sitting on the dais with four colleagues to promote their new animated film, "Kung Fu Panda," at a hotel in Shinjuku, the roly-poly actor looked — as he himself put it — like "the cat that ate the canary": face frozen in a self-satisfied grin except...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 17, 2008

Aoi Miyazaki: from TV princess to rescuer of trafficked children

Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Jul 16, 2008

Glasses make movies a personal experience

Eyes front: Video may have killed the radio star, as the song says, but television has only bruised the movie screen, despite 70 years of trying to offer an experience to rival the cinema experience. Now cell phones and other mobile devices are competing with television.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 27, 2008

'Aruitemo Aruitemo'

Family drama is the default setting of serious Japanese cinema. No matter what genre first brings Japanese directors fame or fortune, be it Sci Fi/fantasy, yakuza epics or horror, they often end up making a family drama, especially if they want to establish their auteurist credentials. The Western used...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 13, 2008

'Juno'

For a long time I was of the opinion I'd see anything with French actress Beatrice Dalle in it. My obsession dated back to 1986's "Betty Blue," which featured a performance by Dalle of such typhoon-like passion and intensity that nothing she's done since even comes close. Still, I indulged her, out of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 12, 2008

The space to act out in Shizuoka

Shizuoka Performing Arts Center is Japan's first so-called European-style public theater. Founded by the Shizuoka prefectural government in 1997, it has its own company (also called SPAC) and an artistic director in residence when the norm is for public theater companies to share venues and for artistic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 6, 2008

'Revolver'

Defying the laws of nature is rarely a good idea. Just look at genetically-modified food. Learned people assure us that it's perfectly safe, but consumers all around the globe refuse to buy. This is no mystery. On some deep, instinctive level, the idea of splicing, say, a fish gene into a plant, just...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2008

Torifune celebrate the birth of butoh's founder

Last month in his ongoing series Japanese Cinema Eclectics, author Donald Ritchie screened "Horrors of Malformed Men" (Toei, 1969). An "unsung classic" of Japanese film, "Horrors" features the only cinematic performance of Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of the butoh dance movement. Hijikata, who would...
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 29, 2008

Cannes: sobriety and great excess

Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 23, 2008

In pursuit of the authentic

Ethan Hawke makes no bones about his literary career: his well-received first novel, "The Hottest State," was written with the movie in mind.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 22, 2008

A screen as canvas

In 1965, pioneering video artist Nam June Paik made the bold statement that "just as the collage technic has replaced oil paint, the cathode ray tube will replace the canvas." Like any provocation, it has not aged well as the passage of time has whittled away at its importance.
CULTURE / Books
May 18, 2008

'Woman Warrior' to 'Passport Baby'

LONDON, SPECIAL TO THE J (AP) Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts" opens: " 'You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you.' " LONDON — Since this fictional memoir was published in 1975, the telling of Chinese women's lives has become...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 18, 2008

'Paranoid Park'/'You, the Living'

Spree killer, rock star, average teenage skater. Director Gus Van Sant sees all three in much the same light: emotionless, affectless, blank. Numb characters for a numb generation? Or is Van Sant's penchant for an aesthetic — an aloof, arty minimalism — blinding him to things like personality, expression,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 8, 2008

"Yasukuni" director Li on his tough-love letter to Japan

"Yasukuni" director Li Ying shares his thoughts with John Junkerman and David McNeill on the contentious Tokyo shrine, the motivation behind the movie, and his reaction to the furor in Japan over the documentary's release.

Longform

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