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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 4, 2022

'Moonlight Shadow' director Edmund Yeo praises the Japanese work ethic and the dedication of producers

Though filmmaking is not a particularly popular career path in Malaysia, Edmund Yeo still managed to follow his dream of being a director.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 11, 2022

Oscars nod launches director Ryusuke Hamaguchi into the global spotlight

Ryusuke Hamaguchi landed four major Oscar nominations this week, a phenomenal achievement for a filmmaker who is still really just hitting his stride.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 25, 2021

Director Kentaro brings an auteur’s touch to a soulful road movie

The 'Under the Turquoise Sky' director mixes realism, fantasy and comedy in his visually stirring feature debut about a Japanese man who goes on a journey of self-discovery in Mongolia.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 24, 2019

Ang Lee: The filmmaker decades ahead of his time

Filmmaker Ang Lee has dedicated himself to filming in high-resolution and 3D, techniques that most cinemas are not yet equipped to handle
Japan Times
CULTURE
Oct 20, 2018

Japonismes 2018 seeks to break down cultural stereotypes

A stupendous full autumn moon, bright orange and fat, flashes intermittently between the nondescript high-rise flats and offices on the drive to Charles de Gaulle Airport. It's an apt and beautiful reminder of one of the events that we, a group of Tokyo-based editors and writers, were invited to see...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 18, 2018

Your guide to our Japanese film picks at this year's Tokyo International Film Festival

The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) offers fans a rare chance to see dozens of new and classic Japanese films with English subtitles on the big screen. Among my own picks for the event's 31st edition:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Apr 8, 2017

Shinsuke Fujimoto makes his mark in the Korean film industry

Shinsuke Fujimoto is a rarity in the booming South Korean film industry. Despite having no connections in the local movie scene, the Ishikawa Prefecture native flew to Seoul straight after graduating college and has managed to make a living working on various film sets for over a decade.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Mar 1, 2017

Binge on the best of the Italian neorealists

Even a casual film buff knows that "Bicycle Thieves," the 1948 black-and-white film by Vittorio De Sica, is regarded as one of The Great Films of All Time. It's the best-known film by far of Italian cinema's postwar neorealist movement, but those who wish to delve deeper into that rich vein can binge...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 20, 2017

'Your Name.' to be released with English subtitles

Makoto Shinkai's animated film "Your Name." continues to win over audiences in Asia, and now has its sights set on dominating North America, too.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 9, 2016

Japanese films dive deep at TIFF, but surface without major awards

The Japanese films at this year's Tokyo International Film Festival were a varied lot, from the multiplex fare in the Special Screenings and Japan Now sections to the indies in the Japanese Cinema Splash, Competition and Asian Future sections.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 28, 2016

Admiring the tarnished silver screen

Old chewing gum, cheap carpet sticky from spilled drinks, sagging seats pitted with cigarette burns: Satoshi Chuma's photographs of old cinemas on show at the National Film Center are fantastically evocative of the decline and fall of celluloid.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 23, 2015

Top 10 films of 2015: Like finding a needle in a haystack

Finding alternatives in 2015 to big-budget blockbusters and beard-stroking festival films wasn't easyIt has been a lean year. All too often, it felt like you had seen the movies of 2015 before — each new release seemed to be the shadow of a shadow of an original idea. You could see it popcorn flicks...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 7, 2015

Asia's most important film festival reasserts its independence

Celebrating its 20th year, the 2015 edition of the Busan International Film Festival, held in South Korea's southern port city from Oct. 1 to 10, has a lot to brag about, as it has definitely become the most important film festival in Asia in terms of the quality of its programming, the size and reach...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 8, 2014

iNumber Number: 'Reeks of blood, mud and sweat'

"iNumber Number" is the final film in the World Extreme Cinema (WEC) event at the Human Trust Cinema Shibuya, in Tokyo, and suffice to say, it takes the "hit me on a gut level" statement to a new dimension. WEC was designed to showcase raw talent from the world's indie scene — prepare to be shocked....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 2, 2014

Babylon still trembles at Jamaica's cult classic

Flashback: It's midnight at the Orson Welles Cinema, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980. Perry Henzell's breakthrough Jamaican film "The Harder They Come" has been playing here every weekend for nearly a decade now, but tonight it's still a full house. As the lights go down, the audience sparks up, and within...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 31, 2013

Bollywood bigwigs hope Japan fans are in it for keeps

In the 1990s, one of the most popular foreign movie stars in Japan was an Indian actor named Rajinikanth, who appeared in films made for India's Tamil-speaking southern region.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 28, 2012

Food-themed festival serves up tasty films to chew on

Cinephile foodies, rejoice: The Tokyo Gohan Film Festival kicks off Oct. 6 and runs through Oct. 21. Now in its third year — and with a spinoff event in Osaka held Oct. 6-14 — it's a showcase of films all related to food. Not just one, lonesome movie such as "Dinner Rush" (though that's included...
EDITORIALS
Sep 5, 2012

Cinemas going digital

Japan's cinema world is now undergoing its greatest transformation since the introduction of "talkie" and color films. It has been learned recently that 10 major cinema complex firms, which cover some 70 percent of the roughly 3,300 movie screens in Japan, are expected to complete the introduction of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 13, 2012

'The Lady' / 'Betty Blue'

In cinema, as in music, micro-trends come and go: Will anyone remember "mumblecore" a decade from now? Yet the '80s French movement known as le cinema du look, based on three brash young French directors, has aged remarkably well. Jean-Jacques Beineix ("Diva"), Luc Besson ("Subway"), and Leos Carax ("Mauvais...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 3, 2012

Hush ye not! Here's a heckle of an idea to get rich — and save the world

You gotta hand it to the Americans. By god, they invented or at least morphed into profitability just about everything that's on my desk as I write this: my landline telephone; my iPad, which is open to my Facebook page; a DVD of the director's cut of "Edward Scissorhands"; even the plastic-lidded cup...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 16, 2011

'Cut'

A director who makes a film that loudly complains about the sad state of current cinema is setting himself up as a critics' punching bag ("You, sir, are part of the problem ..."). Also, if he inserts his list of 100 all-time best films into his climax he is asking for some impolite comments about his...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 29, 2010

Playing it for laughs the understated way

It is 3 p.m. in a quiet, residential neighborhood in Tokyo. A lady in a red dress stands by the side of a narrow street in front of a house, her hair held back and her face shielded from the sun by a woman holding a parasol.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 8, 2010

Brazil film fest to tour Japan

Brazil has been on a roll lately. The world's fifth largest country has been awarded the FIFA World Cup for 2014 and South America's first Olympics in 2016. Brazilians can't help but feel jubilant as the world's gaze turns south.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 16, 2010

Sexual empowerment with a large dose of Grey matter

Sasha Grey is not the sort of movie star you normally see discussed in these pages. With a resume that includes "Oral Supremacy" and "Sex Toy Teens," Grey has risen to become one of the top porn stars in the United States, appearing in more than 180 films in a three-year period starting when she was...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Dec 12, 2008

Film project delivers 'live' operas from U.K.

Performances by two acclaimed U.K. opera ensembles — Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Royal Opera House — will take place in movie theaters nationwide from Dec. 20 as the opening features of U.K. Opera @ Cinema, which is being presented by Sony Corp.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 17, 2007

'Rosso Come Il Cielo'

In many ways Mirco was a typical 10-year-old boy; skittish, puppyish and with a very short attention span. One second he'd be playing with a spinning top, and a nanosecond later he'd be running down the street in pursuit of the next fun thing. Mirco was the only child of adoring parents living in the...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 29, 2004

Tenuous but important movie links

THE CINEMA OF JAPAN AND KOREA, edited by Justin Bowyer, preface by Jinhee Choi. London: Wallflower Press, 2004, 258 pp., 24 b/w photos, £45.00 (cloth), £16.99 (paper). The linking of two national cinemas is, as the editor of this interesting collection of essays points out, problematic. Geographical...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 23, 2003

Artistic survivors of a cultural revolution

MEMOIRS FROM THE BEIJING FILM ACADEMY: The Genesis of China's Fifth Generation, by Ni Zhen, translated by Chris Berry. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002, 234 pp., £14.94 (paper). Ni Zhen taught film theory at the Beijing Film Academy where in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000 he instructed...
CULTURE / Film
Nov 21, 2001

Firmly on the map

The Sixth Pusan International Film Festival proved to the rest of the film world that it means business, both figuratively and literally. Attendance was down by about 40,000 from last year, but PIFF still managed to fill 143,103 seats over nine days (Nov. 9-17), during which 201 films from 60 countries...
CULTURE / Film
May 2, 2001

Artcore

There's a scene in "Boogie Nights" in which porno director Jack Horner, played by Burt Reynolds, spells out his life dream: to make a "real movie" with hardcore action, something with a story that would make people want to stay beyond the money shot to find out how it ends.

Longform

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