'Every Day a Good Day': The wonder of tea with Kirin Kiki
I attended my first tea ceremony decades ago, as part of a company orientation. Kneeling on the floor, I sat in the formal seiza position, stumbled through the motions and sipped the thick green tea. Just as the pain in my legs was reaching ...
'And Then There Was Light': Moments of beauty engulfed in miserabilism
Tatsushi Omori's films have been pushing boundaries since his 2005 debut "The Whispering of the Gods," with its story of a young murderer's return to a Christian community presided over by the priest who abused him as a child. A similar fascination with the darker ...
Two men and a tot make a half-decent film
When indie directors take a more commercial turn, the usual explanation is the bigger paycheck, but it's not always so simple. Yuya Ishii's shift from the raucous films of his early career to the more genteel, mainstream 2013 film "Fune wo Amu (The Great ...
Mark Schilling's 2013 Top 10: Farewell to Ghibli's anime masters
Japanese films did quite well both commercially and critically in 2013, with Hayao Miyazaki's final feature animation, "Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)," thumping the Hollywood competition at the local box office. But the industry's over-reliance on sure-thing manga, TV shows and novels for source ...
"The Ravine of Goodbye," a Japanese film by director Tatsushi Omori, won the Special Jury Prize at the 35th Moscow International Film Festival that ended Saturday, while "The Particle," a drama by Turkish director and writer Erdem Tepegoz, won the best film prize. "The Particle" ...
