Tag Archive for 'japan'

The Most Beautiful Night in the World (Sekai de Ichiban Utsukushii Yoru)

Published
by
James McNally
on July 2, 2008
in Film Festivals and Travel
. 0 Comments

The Most Beautiful Night in the World (Sekai de Ichiban Utsukushii Yoru)

The Most Beautiful Night in the World (Sekai de Ichiban Utsukushii Yoru) (2008, Director: Daisuke Tengan): Thanks to the good folks at the J-Films Powwow blog, I wound up with a free ticket to this film, screening as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. It was the perfect end to a four-day trip to the city, and a great way to spend three hours inside on another sweltering hot day. Daisuke Tengan is the son of legendary director Shohei Imamura and is well-known as the writer of such classic films as Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999), as well as his father’s films Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001) and The Eel (1997). This film just opened in Japan in late May, and this screening was the second at NYAFF, where it was making its international premiere.

Starting with an animated prologue, the film quickly takes this sense of whimsy and adds layers and layers of mystery, creepiness, humour and sex until it climaxes (sorry!) in a huge orgy scene that scandalized the Japanese press. The mystery involves a small village with the highest birth rate in Japan. Our 14-year old narrator takes us back to a time before her birth when a journalist from Tokyo was exiled to work at the village newspaper as the result of a sex scandal. Since there’s no real news, he digs around trying to find out as much about the town’s eccentric inhabitants. He uncovers what he thinks is a murder conspiracy. The proprietress of the local bar is a mysterious and sexy woman whose fiancé and then husband both died under mysterious circumstances. Thinking he has an insurance scam artist in his sights, he pursues the story further but it’s nothing at all like he thought. Instead, by the end of the film, a sexual revolution has been launched by the eccentric inhabitants of this mysterious village.

Director Tengan, even in this entertaining film, makes a political statement. Sex, he says, takes us back to our more primitive state, and destroys culture and civilization. But in light of what civilization and its representatives (politicians, clergy) have done to us, maybe that’s not such a bad thing at all. Railing at all political and religious creeds, he assures us “there is no promised future,” only the one we make for ourselves. Though orgies and wild sex might not seem politically subversive, consider, one character says, what would happen if everyone stopped what they were doing and just had sex for one night. We would have no war, no politics, no religion. Just love and passion and pleasure. It would be “the most beautiful night in the world.”

Yes, the sentiment is shallow and, as portrayed on screen, a little silly, but it’s heartfelt and actually kind of sexy and moving at the same time. And despite its running time (161 minutes), the film is never less than entertaining. Don’t make me come up with some lame joke about length here. Just see it, if you can.

Official site of the film (Japanese) including the trailer

9/10(9/10)

A Gentle Breeze in the Village (Tennen kokekkô)

Published
by
James McNally
on September 14, 2007
in Film Festivals and TIFF
. 1 Comment

A Gentle Breeze in the Village (Tennen kokekkô)

A Gentle Breeze in the Village (Tennen kokekkô) (Director: Nobuhiro Yamashita): Director Nobuhiro Yamashita clearly loved school. His last film, Linda Linda Linda, was set in a high school, and this film is his ode to the rural schools, where primary and middle school students share the same building. Beautiful and sensitive Soyo is the only student in Grade 8 at her school in the idyllic countryside, and there are only six students in all. That is, until the arrival of Osawa, a cool boy from Tokyo. She’s immediately smitten with him, and although first love is thrilling for her, it also causes turmoil in her settled life. But Osawa soon fits in and is embraced by this remarkably close-knit group of students. The film covers a period of about 18 months, and all the time, Soyo can feel her childhood slipping away. This wonderful secure bubble will burst one day, but not just yet.

Yamashita has a wonderful way of portraying a sense of nostalgia, even while events are happening. It’s clearly an adult perspective, and it sometimes seems odd to see it being felt by teenagers, but it had me longing for the days when all I had to worry about was my school uniform. Adult problems hover in the distance. Osawa’s mother has some potentially major health issues in a town without a doctor. As well, she has moved back to town with him after her husband has left, and there’s a hint that Soyo’s father may be carrying on an affair with her. But in general, Soyo keeps all these worries at arm’s length. In her incredibly safe and love-filled world, she’s free to explore these new feelings for Osawa, all the while knowing that this means leaving behind her childhood for good. In one incredibly poignant scene, after a failed kiss with Osawa, she gently kisses the school’s blackboard. It’s a rehearsal for things to come, but also a farewell to something she loves deeply. Among all the gorgeous imagery that the film floats in front of us, that scene speaks loudest and truest.

Here is the Q&A with director Nobuhiro Yamashita from after the screening (the long pauses are when the translator is whispering the questions into his ear):


Duration: 15:04

Trailer
Official Site

8/10(8/10)

Akira

Published
by
James McNally
on June 20, 2007
in DVD
. Closed

Akira

Akira (Director: Katsuhiro Ôtomo, Japan, 1988): Ok, I know I’m not going to be able to do this film justice. It’s tough when you put something into the DVD player at 10:00pm. Sometimes a long movie just feels longer when it’s after midnight and you’re lying horizontally on the couch. Like many Japanese anime, Akira was based on a longer manga series, which may explain why there seemed to be a lot of plot jumps that force you to fill things in on your own. When the film was released in 1988, the animation was considered cutting-edge, and although there has been a lot of innovation in the almost twenty years since, the film’s visuals still have the ability to amaze.

Set in 2019, more than thirty years after World War III has destroyed the old city of Tokyo, the film tells a complicated story of a secret government project designed to develop powerful psychic powers in children. When Tetsuo, a young member of a biker gang, stumbles across one of the escaped children, he is abducted by shadowy military forces and subjected to experiments which unleash his latent psychic powers. His friend Kaneda becomes involved when he tries to rescue Tetsuo and by the end of the film’s 124 minutes, there is a lot of carnage and general mayhem.

I’ll have to admit that I found the plot confusing, and the film overlong. In general, I’ve found anime’s plots fairly predictable (while at the same time maddeningly vague), and Akira may have set the standard. Having recently reviewed Paprika, though, I found that a few of Akira’s scenes were just as spectacular, and I suspect that most anime have borrowed from Akira in some way or another over the years. For a film that’s almost twenty years old, the animation still feels fresh and in a world of CGI and twenty years of copycat films, that’s quite an accomplishment.

I know this film has a lot of dedicated fans, so I’m hoping some of you will chime in with some insights in the comments.

8/10(8/10)

Death Note

Published
by
James McNally
on June 5, 2007
in DVD
. 4 Comments

Death Note (Desu nôto)

Death Note (Desu nôto) (Director: Shusuke Kaneko, Japan, 2006): Based upon a very popular manga, Death Note has since been made into an anime television series, but this live-action version, along with its sequel, Death Note: The Last Name, ruled the Japanese box-office last year. The concept seemed interesting: Light Yagami is a law student and son of a local police investigator, hoping to follow his father into a career involving the law. One night he finds an empty notebook that promises “The human whose name is written in this note shall die.” Pretty soon, criminals all over Japan are dropping like flies, and the police are trying to track down the vigilante responsible for these mysterious deaths. They call in the elusive “L” (described ludicrously as “the world’s top detective”) to help them crack the case. Later, we find out “L” is just a sullen teenager with a sweet tooth, but that makes about as much as sense as the rest of the movie.

I’ve previously mentioned my interest in Japanese anime, but I’ve never really gotten into manga in a big way, mostly because this type of fiction generally sacrifices character and believable plots in the interest of keeping the action going and appealing to their chosen demographic. All these flaws are present in this film adaptation of the manga. The very fact that both protagonists are teenaged boys living in Japan seemed funny, but that was nothing compared to some of the plot holes and stunning coincidences necessary to move this story along to its conclusion. Death Note makes Japan look like a nation bursting at the seams with violent and unremorseful psychopaths, when in reality the crime rate is quite low. And there are really no sympathetic characters at all, since Light, who started by trying to rid the world of crime, ends up killing anyone who gets too close to finding out who he is.

The film is slickly made, for the most part (well, except that the “Reaper” who originally dropped the notebook for Light to find looks like a giant grinning marionette). But it’s unbearably silly. Death Note is obviously entertaining for many people, judging by its commercial success; just not people like me, I guess.

Official site for the film

5/10(5/10)

Paprika

Published
by
James McNally
on June 4, 2007
in Theatrical Release
. 5 Comments

Paprika

Paprika (Director: Satoshi Kon, Japan, 2006): I’m not really a genuine otaku nor do I aspire to be, but I do have a little bit of experience with Japanese anime, including the films of Hiyao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro) and the excellent sci-fi series Ergo Proxy. So I don’t claim to know or understand all of the conventions of Japanese animation. With that disclaimer out of the way, I can honestly say that Paprika (or “Papurika” which is the Japanese title) is quite a trip. Like many anime, the plot is tricky, but the visuals are absolutely eye-popping. The fact that the film is based on a well-known and popular novel by Japanese sci-fi master Yasutaka Tsutsui led to high expectations among Japanese audiences, who have received the film enthusiastically.

Paprika

The press kit synopsis: “Dr. Atsuko Chiba is a genius scientist by day, and a kick-ass dream warrior named PAPRIKA by night. In this psychedelic sci-fi adventure, it will take the skills of both women to save the world. In the near future, a revolutionary new psychotherapy treatment called PT has been invented. Through a device called the “DC Mini” it is able to act as a “dream detective” to enter into people’s dreams and explore their unconscious thoughts. Before the government can pass a bill authorizing the use of such advanced psychiatric technology, one of the prototypes is stolen, sending the research facility into an uproar. In the wrong hands, the potential misuse of the device could be devastating, allowing the user to completely annihilate a dreamer’s personality while they are asleep. Renowned scientist, Dr. Atsuko Chiba, enters the dream world under her exotic alter-ego, code name “PAPRIKA,” in an attempt to discover who is behind the plot to undermine the new invention.”

Paprika is like Dr. Chiba’s subconscious self, or her id, flirty and pixieish, but she is able to do things the uptight Dr. Chiba can’t do. It’s funny that later in the film, Paprika refers to herself as “the missing spice.” With the help of police detective Konakawa and the device’s inventor, the food-loving Dr. Tokita, this Spice Girl will make the world safe again.

Though the plot is almost ridiculously complex, it’s a very fun ride, just to see what the animators can come up with next. Some of the film’s most memorable images wouldn’t be out of place in the off-kilter world of videogame Katamari Damacy. Along with the visuals, the jaunty electronic score adds to the cool factor, making Paprika a sort of Spirited Away for grownups.

The film opens in limited release in Toronto on June 15th.

Official site for the film

8/10(8/10)