The Hollywood Reporter interviews director Takashi Miike about his new film, Shield of Straw: ” In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat and the lights went down, there was a [...]
At Babbler Dabbler, Briana discusses female cyborgs in Ghost In The Shell and in Alien: Resurrection.
“1987 was a remarkable year for manga adaptations. Not remarkable in volume—manga adaptations were nothing special in themselves—but for the commonalities that emerged. This year, we would find anime reaching for a measure of subtlety.” More at The Golden Ani-Versary of Anime.
[In April, the Guttersnipes like to mix it up a little. This month, Romance editor Chris Szego writes about anime] Only those with excellent social standing and those from filthy rich families are lucky enough to spend their time here in the elite private school, Ouran Academy. The Ouran Host Club is where the school’s [...]
This week Trailers from Hell celebrates the films of Akira Kurosawa. First up, director Brian Trenchard-Smith discusses Rashomon (1950) in just over the time it takes to play the trailer.
A documentary on the making of Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well.
Vintage Ninja offers, “A 1962 Point of View” on “ninjutsu”–including covers and pages from an out of print copy of Jay Gluck’s Zen Combat. My favorite line, “The ninja never swaggered.”
Writer Donald Richie has died. Richie is best known for his writing on Japanese culture and film. The Japan Times and The New York Times have obituaries. Fora.tv has a conversation with Donald Richie in 2009, “Life in Japanese Film: Donald Richie.”
Director Nagisa Oshima has died. Oshima directed numerous films exploring sexuality, death and power of all kinds, including: In The Realm ff the Senses, The Empire of Passion, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide , Cruel Story of Youth and Taboo (starring a young Tadanobu Asano). He was also a pioneer of television, directing many documentaries for [...]
At Wildgrounds, Kevin Ma shares his most enjoyable “bad” film and most enjoyable “good” film of 2012.
Nefertiti the astronaut spider has died. She had lived aboard the International Space Station for three months. PBS has an obituary. (Thanks, Andrew!)
At Pulp Curry, novelist and journalist Andrew Nette muses on crime fiction set in Asia, in particular China and Cambodia. “What does it mean for the story and characters when your crime fiction is set in a country where corruption and extreme violence are regular features of everyday life and the term ‘criminal’ is often [...]
The Japan Times reports on an unpublished manga created by Osamu Tezuka in his teens.
Racebending and Hyperallergic discuss the racism and lack of critical response to racism in Cloud Atlas‘ use of “colorblind casting.” Mike Le responds to the trailer: Ultimately…my belief is that Cloud Atlas will eventually be viewed through the same lens as films like The Good Earth, Birth of a Nation, or even Dumbo. These are films [...]
Director and producer Koji Wakamatsu has died. Wakamatsu had just been named filmmaker of the year at the 2012 Busan Film Festival. Wildgrounds has an interview, which Kimberly Lindbergs of Cinebeats helped translate, Keyframe has an obituary and Subway Cinema had a brief overview of Wakamatsu’s career paralleling a 2008 retrospective in Los Angeles. “Divisive, exploitative, [...]
Character actor Hideji Otaki has died. Otaki worked with directors including Akira Kurosawa, Juzo Itami, Masahiro Shinoda and Koreyoshi Kurahara in films such as Kagemusha; Minbo: The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion; A Taxing Woman; Gonza the Spearman and Black Sun. The Japan Times and The Kyodo News have brief English-language obituaries.
“These days, being a yakuza boss isn’t what it once was. In exchange for supreme status you get blamed for everything. In August of 2008, three months after the countermeasures laws went into effect, the Yamaguchi-gumi boss found himself dealing with one of his low-ranking underling’s unpaid McDonald’s tab. That’s because Japan’s approach to its [...]
” Is it not strange that after all this time we have not spoken about those incidents that haunt our memories?” Noir Nation is reprinting Edogawa Rampo’s story, “The Precipice” in excerpts.
Anime News Network‘s Rebecca Silverman interviews mangaka/comics creator, Naoki Urasawa. “[A]fter last year’s earthquake and tsunami I went to visit the afflicted areas. People I met, victims of the disaster, told me how much they had always liked Master Keaton as a character. I wanted to do something for them, to cheer them up, so [...]
Movie Morlocks‘ Kimberly Lindbergs explores Toshiro Mifune’s influence on Westerns, Westerns’ influence on Akira Kurosawa, and Red Sun, a Western directed by Terence Young and starring Toshiro Mifune, Charles Bronson, Alain Delon and Ursula Andress.
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