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Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 13, 2015

South Korea's tallest skyscraper rises in cloud of fear

At 92, the man who built South Korea's biggest retail empire is finally making his mark in the Seoul skyline as the country's tallest tower takes shape — just as public faith in corporate giants crumbles into safety fears and mistrust.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 4, 2015

Growing younger in a super-aged society

Old age. It used to be a subject people tried to avoid, but now, as Japan hurtles toward a super-aged society where almost 15 percent of the populace is over 75 years old, the general feeling is that we had better deal with it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 15, 2015

Documentary festival delivers an encore to Tokyo audiences

Last November, Japan Times film critic Kaori Shoji predicted that the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival's (YIDFF) program of screenings would slant toward sociopolitical analysis, focusing on substance over style. Audiences must have welcomed this weighty exposition of the documentary...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 7, 2015

Passion and prejudice in 1930s Ireland

"Jimmy's Hall" is a glimpse into Ireland in 1932 when the country was in a relative lull between wars, turmoil and strife. Director Ken Loach has consistently worked to bring the lives of the United Kingdom's working class to cinema screens. "Jimmy's Hall" is his second foray into Ireland following "The...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 26, 2014

Yokudo: Lingering but confused gaze of indie director

Major film festivals, with their hurry-hurry schedules, are places to polish your sound bites, not launch into nuanced disquisitions. People want your opinion in 25 words or less. When someone asked me what I thought of Kiki Sugino's "Yokudo (Taksu)" after a screening at last month's Busan International...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 19, 2014

Filmex brings art and brutality to Tokyo cinemas

Now in its 15th edition, Tokyo Filmex is Japan's leading art-over-commerce festival, offering a lineup packed with films screened earlier this year at major festivals around the world, while disdaining the glitz and glamour of the recently ended Tokyo International Film Festival. The Filmex guest list,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 13, 2014

Singing to quite a different tune

In the sense that "The Sound of Music" is not considered a reliable source for lessons about Nazism or that "My Fair Lady" is a profound analysis of class struggle, musicals do not generally spring to mind when considering the great achievements of French cinema. However, the National Film Center exhibition...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 2, 2014

The Inland Sea

In his lifetime, Donald Richie was best known as a pioneering expert on Japanese cinema; he famously first brought the films of Yasujiro Ozu to the attention of the West, as well as writing the trailblazing "The Japanese Film: Art and Industry" with fellow cinema scholar Joseph L. Anderson. But among...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 15, 2014

Time to get over the 'shock' of aging actresses

"Americans can be strange about aging," said French actress Jeanne Moreau, in a brief interview she gave me back in 2005. She was then at the tail end of her 70s and had just co-starred with French heartthrob Melvil Poupaud in "Le Temps Qui Reste," as his sympathetic but alluring grandmother. As the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 15, 2014

'After the Dark'

Rather than a gem, John Huddles' "After the Dark" (original titled "The Philosophers") is a diamond in the rough — but there's more rough here than diamond. Still, the premise is intriguing, and so is the setting: an international school in Jakarta on the final day of class.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 10, 2014

'The Act of Killing'

Movies arrive so late here in Japan that they often come burdened with the weight of expectation. In the case of "The Act of Killing," it comes in the wake of near universal critical acclaim, including a No. 1 spot on Sight & Sound magazine's critics poll and an Academy Award nomination for best...
CULTURE / Film
Apr 10, 2014

Finding a heap of treasure in 'Zipang Punk'

It's the late 16th century, when Japan was in the vicelike grip of rich and ruthless warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Things were good at the top, but the rest of Zipang (Japan) was poor, hungry and repressed. Welcome to "Zipang Punk — Goemon Rock III."
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 26, 2014

Children's film festival to launch in Okinawa

Kinder International Film Festival in Okinawa celebrates it's first event.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 30, 2014

Film provides some food for thought

New documentary 'Drops of Heaven' focuses on Yoshiko Tasumi, the woman whose 'soup of life' made her culinary efforts famous.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 23, 2014

Actress Nikaido sets her own agenda

Many young Japanese film actors start as models or pop stars and then, as they accumulate magazine covers or CD sales, move into TV and films. Many also play versions of themselves again and again on screen, which may suit their fans just fine, but makes for repetitive viewing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 23, 2014

'Meanwhile'

If you were into American indie cinema in the 1990s, you were into Hal Hartley, the New York City auteur (Long Island, actually) whose deadpan cool rivaled Jim Jarmusch, but with a more quizzical style of dialogue and impeccable alt-rock soundtracks. Yet after 1997's "Henry Fool," Hartley seemed to drop...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jan 13, 2014

A hard day's grind for porn's professionals

A day on set with Akira Takatsuki, arguably Japan's most famous porn director in the subgenre revolving around well-endowed female talent, and AV stars Shiori Tsukada and Mumin reveals a world of work like any other — except for the sex stuff.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 5, 2013

'Blancanieves'

Pablo Berger brings a film buff's love for detail to this ode to 1920s silent cinema, an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "Snow White" set in '20s Andalusia. When a famous toreador (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) is gored in the ring, his pregnant wife goes into labor from the shock and dies after...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 17, 2013

TIFF's programming director explains the festival's direction

Since 2007, when he took over as programming director of the Tokyo International Film Festival's Competition section, Yoshihiko "Yoshi" Yatabe has been a point person in TIFF's drive to elevate its status in the region and the world. A former film distributor, publicist and producer, Yatabe joined the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2013

Busan is still Asia's film-fest gem, but its sparkle is fading

During the Q&A session after the screening of his new film "Stray Dogs" at the 18th Busan International Film Festival, which ran Oct. 3-12, Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang mentioned that not only was his previous film not distributed in South Korea, it wasn't even shown at BIFF. Tsai was one of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 12, 2013

Capturing Olivier in his contradictory essence

Laurence Olivier was the greatest British actor of his time, primus inter pares of the trio who dominated our theater from the early 1930s to the 1980s. His superiority to his chief rivals, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, resides in the role he played in the creation of the National Theatre and in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2013

Aoyama looks to the 1980s without nostalgia

Shinji Aoyama is the director as cinephile. That is, while winning awards for his own films, including two prizes at Cannes for his 2000 drama "Eureka," he has long been a serious student of films by others, beginning with his days at Rikkyo University as a disciple of eminent film scholar Shigehiko...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Sep 6, 2013

How Marvel's film magic made us true believers

Marvel Comics revolutionized the superhero genre in the 1960s with comic book characters such as Spider-Man, Thor, Iron-Man and The Hulk. Colorfully costumed adventurers who fought criminals and alien monsters primarily on the streets of New York City, and who, despite their incredible superpowers, struggled...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 5, 2013

'Side Effects'

Director Steven Soderbergh's retirement from cinema after a career of 30-plus years has been much ballyhooed, and is hopefully only temporary. But if "Side Effects" turns out to be his last movie, it's a shame, because this one shows him at the top of his game. Soderbergh is working again with screenwriter...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2013

The poster nation of unusual graphic design

Art often thrives as it wriggles out from under a big heavy rock. This can be said about creativity in Czechoslovakia from the 1960s to '80s. As the nation broke free of Stalinism, careered toward the Prague Spring and then finally celebrated the end of Communism in 1989, music, art and film began mixing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 10, 2013

Evocative novel bridges Japan and China, past and present

That the Western world has lost interest in Japan, and particularly in Japanese literature, and is turning its attention more and more to the colossus across the sea (China, not America) is a constant plaint on the part of Japan specialists and translators.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 8, 2013

The dead get their day as zombies go mainstream

My first zombie movie was "Night of the Living Dead," viewed at a midnight screening at the old Harvard Square Cinema, attended by a small coterie of late-night freaks and stoners. With its relentless dread and entrail-chomping ghouls, it was a film beyond the pale of normal, daytime moviegoers.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jul 29, 2013

Film, music and Moomins: events at Setouchi Triennale 2013

Though Setouchi is often referred to as an 'art festival,' there are plenty of other events taking place across the islands, including lectures, theater performances and concerts.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 11, 2013

Resort offers movie night under the stars

You don't need to be an outdoors-type person to enjoy lying down and gazing at the stars. And you don't have to be a indoors-type to enjoy a good movie.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 10, 2013

Jesse Ruins take cinematic inspiration for debut full-length

Although many Japanese indie bands find it a struggle breaking into overseas markets, Tokyo's Jesse Ruins have always seemed to strike a chord among both international and domestic listeners alike.

Longform

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