Tokyo Sonata is a horror film of sorts, but one without the ghosts and serial killers that have populated Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s earlier work. There aren’t even any killer trees, as in Charisma, or poisonous jellyfish, as in Bright Future. Kurosawa’s films have always offered social commentary, but on their own eccentric terms. Cure responded obliquely to the Aum Shrinyiko subway gas attacks, while Pulse confronted a generation of lonely, Internet-obsessed otaku. Even Kurosawa films with no genre elements, like Bright Future and License To Live, have been pretty off-kilter. Tokyo Sonata’s first two-thirds are startlingly straightforward, commenting directly on Japan’s recession. After the disappointing Retribution, which recycled images and plotlines from Cure and Pulse, Tokyo Sonata marks a real comeback for Kurosawa - his best film since Pulse, made eight years ago - and a new direction.
The producers of Tokyo!, three short films by two Frenchmen and a South Korean, aim to do for Japan’s metropolis what New York Stories did for the Big Apple or Paris Je T’Aime for the City of Lights. That the two Frenchmen are indie darling Michel Gondry and former film critic/Pola X director Leos Carax, and the South Korean Bong Joon-Ho, who made an international splash with The Host, would seem to lend these three very different takes on a single subject some serious cache. Unfortunately, only two directors rise to the occasion, leaving a gaping hole in an otherwise thoughtful trilogy.
The Carpetbagger has posted the nine semi-finalists for the Best Foreign Film Oscar Nomination. Comparing this list to the list of 67 films submitted for consideration by their countries of origin, the only real notable omission I can spot is Italy’s Gomorrah; I’ve sen some bloggy chatter already lamenting the exclusion of Let the Right One In, but that film was passed over for submission by its home country of Sweden in favor of Everlasting Moments (which did make the shortlist). The full list, with links to the films we’ve covered (as you’ll see, we have a lot of catching up to do), after the jump.
Ramen is a tricky subject to most Americans. On one hand, it means “Cup Noodle,” 24 packages for $2 and ingesting more sodium than once thought humanly possible. On the other, it’s downright delicious when served properly and with things aside from the dried peas or “flavor packets” that come with the cheap versions. (If you’re around New York, we recommend the Ippudo chain or Minca.)
That said, there has only been one great film about ramen: Tampopo. A heart-warming tale of a truck driver helping a widow turn her ramen shop around, it is a regarded whimsical “noodle western” that proves even hobos can be culinary masters. And now, to round out the spectrum, there is officially the Worst Ramen Film: The Ramen Girl.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) has mostly been known for Japanese horror films Cure, Pulse, and Doppelganger, but with his last few movies he’s been moving more into the dramatic. Tokyo Sonata explores a Japanese household, led by a father who is laid off from his job and is too embarrassed to tell his family. He leaves home every day, but instead of going to work he visits parks and libraries until it is time to return. Meanwhile, his rebellious older son wants to leave Japan and go to the United States to join the military, and his youngest son is secretly taking piano lessons, which he has been forbidden to do. It’s a stark look inside the family culture in Japan, and the rift between generations. We sat down to ask Kurosawa about the film, and learned that he’s pretty definitively left the genre with which he’s most associated behind. More after the jump.
“The opening 20 minutes of Dai Nipponjin are the most boring 20 minutes in the history of cinema.” That’s Grady Hendrix, selling one of the films he’s selected for the New York Asian Film Festival (the final lineup was just released today), on this podcast at The House Next Door. If that doesn’t have you marking your calendars, allow Grady to continue:
The first 20 minutes are like, him shopping, him complaining about how his wife divorced him and how he hates his job and his government salary isn’t very good, and he’s just this idiot…and then they pump 50,000 amps through his nipples and he turns into this giant super hero in purple underwear and beats up monsters…This is like the porno version of Cloverfield. You find out what happens when giant monsters go into heat. Which isn’t pretty.
Uh-oh! Brian Singer’s Tom Cruise-tries-to-kill-Hitler-with-an-eye patch drama Valkyrie has been pushed from prestige season to dumping season. The already much-mocked film was previously pushed down the pipe from July to October 2008; with re-shoots still looming, it’ll now open in February 2009.
Benderspink, the agency that packaged Juno, has a new gambit for luring teen girls to the multiplex: they’re producing “a hip-hop musical reimagining” of Jane Austen’s Emma.
Cloverfield is a huge hit in Japan. This is the surest sign I can think of that global-political cycle of the 20th century is complete.
Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing has a fascinating entry on a documentary called The Great Happiness Space: Tales of an Osaka Love Thief. I don’t know how I managed to make it this long completely unaware of this film, as it played about 100 festivals last year and was even nominated for a Gotham Award for Best Undistributed Film (it lost to Steve Barron’s Choking Man). Regardless: the film is about Japanese “host clubs”, which, as Xeni puts it, are home to “sharp-dressed, good-looking 20something guys who are paid to make women feel loved. No, not to perform sex acts, but to feel cared for.”
The fact that there’s a need for this kind of thing in contemporary Japan seems to be in line with a lot of issues explored in a documentary that I *have* seen, Mike Mills’ Does Your Soul Have a Cold? That film, which explores the relatively recent explosion of anti-depressant use in Japan, is essentially a verite examination of loneliness and sadness. Great Happiness seems to take a more stylized approach to describing similar problems.
As far as I can tell, Great Happiness is still without a distributor, but the entire film is available for viewing on Google Video. I’ve also embedded the trailer above.
***Apparently resigned to the idea that Evan Almighty can never recoup its costs and is basically the biggest tax write-off ever, Universal has scrapped plans to release the picture in Japan. The studio declined to state a specific reason, but Variety speculates that Steve Carell’s lack of international star power might be part of the problem. Oh, and the fact that Americans didn’t want to see it either.
***Consumer home video spending is down almost five percent, and studios are blaming themselves for releasing so much crap during the first half of the year.
***Sony, which bought online video portal Grouper last year, has changed the site’s name to Crackle as part of an effort to re-brand the property as a vehicle for Sony-produced content, as well as a launching pad for new video stars. Contests in place at launch tempt user participation by offering pitch meetings with Sony execs as a grand prize–as if kids who are getting millions of page views on YouTube would give it all up for a conference call.
For certain political offices in Japan, candidates have exactly nine days to campaign. No time to debate issues, Kazuhiro Soda’s documentary, Campaign (2006), covers the whirlwind of Japanese politics and the campaign of a professional stamp collector (read bohemian) turned politician.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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The Carpetbagger
