Tag - cinema

 
 

CINEMA

Straight-to-video films, locally called “V-Cinema,” were popular in the 1990s and into the 2000s, becoming a training ground and launchpad for Japanese directors and actors.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 8, 2024
Threatened with extinction, V-Cinema hopes for new saviors
Physical deterioration and copyright issues mar the influential film genre that once served as a launchpad for directors and actors in Japan.
Cinema at Sea film festival entry “God Is a Woman,” directed by Andres Peyrot, examines the complex feelings the Kuna, indigenous people living on Panama’s San Blas Islands, have about an unreleased documentary made about them in 1975.
CULTURE / Film
Dec 9, 2023
Cinema at Sea festival highlights diversity and unheard voices
The inaugural event for the film festival in Naha, Okinawa, boasted a strong lineup of features from places and peoples underrepresented in world cinema.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 26, 2023
‘Bad City’: A V-Cinema hero comes out swinging
“Bad City” boasts some bone-crunching action, but seems more interested in proving the awesomeness of producer-star Hitoshi Ozawa.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2020
‘Labyrinth of Cinema’: Nobuhiko Obayashi’s final film is a colorful antiwar fantasy
u201cLabyrinth of Cinemau201d bursts with energy, passion and dreamlike invention that immerses the audience in a world that is uniquely Obayashiu2019s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 22, 2020
Japanese movie distributors' survival plot takes online twist
Struggling to cope with the pandemic, some film distributors in Japan have been releasing material online. Cinema chains are not happy about the move.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 14, 2020
Kazuhiro Soda shows how streaming could help save cinema with online release of 'Zero'
With COVID-19 having hit Japan's independent film industry hard, filmmakers such as Kazuhiro Soda are looking for new ways to reach their audiences.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2020
'One Cut of the Dead' director Shinichiro Ueda brings teleworking to Japan's film industry
Shinichiro Ueda reunites the cast of his hit comedy "One Cut of the Dead" for an innovative teleworking sequel
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 14, 2020
For filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi, freedom was the most important thing of all
Director Nobuhiko Obayashi, who died on April 10 at the age of 82, was incredibly prolific during his six-decade career. A pioneering experimental filmmaker in the 1960s, he went on to direct 2,000 television commercials (by his own estimate; no exact count exists) and 43 theatrical features.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Nov 9, 2019
Georgian police arrest more than 25 in clashes at gay movie premiere
Police in Georgia said Saturday they had arrested more than 25 people after ultra-nationalist protesters attempting to derail the premiere of an award-winning movie about gay love clashed with security forces.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 31, 2019
Nobuhiko Obayashi: A life spent working among Japan's movie greats
As the Tokyo International Film Festival stages a retrospective of his work, filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi talks of a past working with movie greats, such as Akira Kurosawa
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Jul 11, 2019
Tomorrow's film legends descend on Saitama
Launched in 2004 to promote digital cinema, the Skip City International D-Cinema Festival (July 13-21) in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, has become a showcase for emerging filmmakers. Among the Skip City alumni who have gone on to thriving careers are Cannes Palme d'Or winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan ("Winter Sleep"), Kazuya Shiraishi ("The Blood of Wolves"), Ryota Nakano ("Her Love Boils Bathwater") and Shinichiro Ueda ("One Cut of the Dead").
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 10, 2019
'Five Million Dollar Life': Assessing the value of a single life
The weight of expectations — from family, friends, community — can be tough on any young person. Now imagine those people once paid $5 million to save your life.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 16, 2019
'The Nikaidos' Fall': What's in a name? Everything.
The weight of tradition threatens to crush a once-great family in "The Nikaidos' Fall," a contemporary drama about people with an unhealthy fixation on the past. Iranian director Ida Panahandeh's film starts in a cemetery and never really leaves the realm of the dead. Its characters are so haunted by a sense of obligation to their forebears, they're incapable of living for themselves.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 7, 2018
A cinema project expands to forge a bond between Japanese and Ugandan children
A project that began with a simple idea to deliver the magic of cinema to children in Africa has not only led to a cultural exchange but to an unlikely collaboration — the production of a music video by Japanese and Ugandan elementary school children.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Jul 27, 2017
It's a bit out of the way, but Skip City festival makes up for the distance with great films and rare access
The location for the Skip City International D-Cinema Festival doesn't make it particularly easy for casual fans to pop in. The Skip City complex — which hosts studios for audiovisual production, as well as educational and entertainment facilities — is a fairly lengthy bus ride from Kawaguchi Station in Saitama Prefecture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 25, 2017
Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia teams up with Exile's Hiro to create a contemporary fusion of vision and sound
From its debut in 1999 as the passion project of actor Tetsuya Bessho, Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia has grown into a big event on the local and regional film calendar. Size is one reason: The 19th edition, which unspools from June 1 to 25 at six venues in Tokyo and Yokohama, features nearly 250 films in a variety of genres.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Apr 25, 2017
Tokyo movie house caters to the visually impaired, and everyone else
Listening without watching — that is what Chihoko Hiratsuka describes as essential for understanding the concept of her tiny movie house in Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 22, 2017
Shinobu Yaguchi can make sparks fly, even off the grid
When I met Shinobu Yaguchi at a Chicago sushi restaurant on March 1, I made my usual mistake with well-known directors: mention that I had interviewed him before. He, understandably, blanked, since the interview was 20 years ago for his 1997 indie comedy "My Secret Cache" ("Himitsu no Hanazono")
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 7, 2016
'Hitchcock/Truffaut': An auteur meets his (movie) maker
The French got Alfred Hitchcock well before the Americans did. In the 1950s, when the tubby director's Hollywood overlords still regarded him as a producer of light entertainment — the Robert Zemeckis of his day, perhaps — the writers at France's Cahiers du Cinema magazine recognized his deeper genius. A pugnacious young critic named Francois Truffaut ranked Hitchcock alongside Jean Renoir and Ingmar Bergman as prime examples of his "auteur theory," which viewed films not as group endeavors but as conduits for their directors' creative visions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Nov 11, 2015
Mitaka Community Cinema relives the glory days of local theaters
Ah, for the days of real movie theaters. Just as a certain Seattle-based company has made the brick-and-mortar bookstore obsolete, the real-deal cinema house died a slow death — first maimed by the multiplex and then killed by the Internet.

Longform

A statue of "Dragon Ball" character Goku stands outside the offices of Bandai Namco in Tokyo. The figure is now as recognizable as such characters as Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man.
Akira Toriyama's gift to the world