Film « GaijinPot Blog Network: Japan’s best blogs

Film

The Art and the Science of Action Directing: Interview with Yuji Shimomura: July 27th, 2009By Chuck Johnson; What is an action director? There’s a lot of different titles for people who are responsible for creating a fight scene; the action director, the stunt coordinator, the fight coordinator, etc, so it’s easy to get confused. An action director is like the overseer. They are the ones who have to think about the drama » Continue Reading; CommentsComments

Shiki-Jitsu (Ritual Day): July 15th, 2009By The Kritic; Shiki-Jitsu, (Ritual Day) is a film of intrest for a number reasons, that not only is it the only film that Shunji Iwai has acted in, (surprisingly enough he plays a film director),but also that it is directed by Hideaki Anno, who is best known for his anime ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion: » Continue Reading; CommentsComments

Ringu 0 Review: June 28th, 2009By Bren Inou; I know I write about video games and such. But for this week only I play the role of movie critic. After I just got done writing about the Ringu movies I decided to review one in greater detail. Ringu 0 stars Nakama Yukie as the pretty and pretty shy Yamamura » Continue Reading; CommentsComments

Masahiro Shinoda: June 11th, 2009By The Kritic; Masahiro Shinoda is probably best known for his 1969 black and white film ‘Shinju: Ten no amijima’ , – ‘Double Suicide’,rightly considered a classic, based on a play by Chikamatsu, the 17th century playwrite,who is sometimes referred to as the Japanese Shakespeare. The film includes ‘Kuroko’ stage hands dressed entirely » Continue Reading; CommentsComments

The Edge of the World: May 27th, 2009By mifune; At the top of a mountain, at the end of a tunnel, lies the small rural village of Toga Mura, one of the Nanto cities in the Prefecture of Toyama. With an estimated population of 999 people, one might wonder why go there? There are so many reasons indeed, that the real question is “why haven’t I » Continue Reading; CommentsComments

Kabei – Our Mother: May 1st, 2009By The Kritic; Kabei is directed by Yoji Yamada, who is well known for his trilogy of samurai films, ‘Hidden Blade’, ‘Love and Honour’ and ‘Twilight Samurai’. Kabei tho’ is set in early 1940’s pre-war Japan,and is centered around the Nogumi family, the film touches on many themes.It starts with the arrest of the » Continue Reading; CommentsComments

All Around Us – (Gururi no Koto): April 9th, 2009By The Kritic; I’ll admit it, I was a bit daunted when I saw the length of this film as I put it into the player, 140 minutes, ‘that’s 2 hrs 20 minutes’ I thought. By the time the credits rolled at the end of this film I was tempted to go back and press play again. » Continue Reading; CommentsComments

What is Avalon?: April 6th, 2009By Kitsune; First, Avalon is an island in the Celtic mythology, said to have beautiful apples and where King Arthur was taken to recover from its wound after the battle at Camlann. But Avalon is also a Japanese/Polish movie directed by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Innocence) in 2001 and entirely in » Continue Reading; CommentsComments

Scorsese and the Samurai Part 2: April 3rd, 2009By Raglan; photo credit: Frenkieb So, your back. Cheers. Well, in Part One I voiced my general disregard for Hollywood’s attempts at reproducing historical Japanese settings. Still, I have great hope for Martin Scorsese’s upcoming picture Silence (still only in the earliest stages of pre-production). Why is this, aside from Scorsese’s phenomenal » Continue Reading; CommentsComments

Speaking silent films: March 4th, 2009By Raphaelle Lavielle.; Last time we talked about Matsunosuke Onoe, first superstar of Japanese film history, and mentioned that he was originally a Kabuki actor. The influence of Kabuki was primordial in early Japanese films. One of the most recurring debates on film is about its relation with theater, and so is, wherever you » Continue Reading; CommentsComments