On our latest podcast dispatch, we discuss Paul Greengrass’ white-knuckle hijacking thriller, Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks, the enigmatic documentary The Institute, and Fernando takes us through his favourite discoveries at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Read more »
The 26th Tokyo International Film Festival has come to an end with the announcement of the various prize winners. It’s been a fabulous event, with an astonishingly good selection of films on offer. A total of 35,139 people saw 97 films across 303 screenings. The winners, in their various categories are as follows, Tokyo Sakura […] Read more »
When we hear the word pirate, the image most of us bring to mind is someone in a billowing white shirt, maybe with a peg leg, or patch over one eye, and almost certainly a sword or cutlass. Maybe we imagine Errol Flynn’s Captain Blood or Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow. Pirates in popular culture […] Read more »
Much has been written about Steven Soderbergh’s decision to quit directing films after a career spanning 26 features, including Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Erin Brockovich, The Informant and Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen. Soderbergh has lamented the state of contemporary cinema, while maintaing that he will direct plays and perhaps TV as well, in the […] Read more »
Ours is a caustic era, obsessed with celebrities and the so-called lifestyles they enjoy. We image they exist in a perpetual flow of brand-name exuberance, gliding seamlessly from one A-list party to the next. We enjoy their every move vicariously via the endless stream of paparazzi images that feed our collective bloodstream through the poisoned, […] Read more »
Ayako is young, mid-20s woman who works in a grey, flat and rather dull Tokyo office. She has enough authority to add some level of significance to her work, but not enough to give her real control over the direction of her life. Ayako lives at home with emotionally reserved father (Ken Mitsuishi), a TV/Film […] Read more »
It’s well known that China’s spectacular transformation, from economic stagnation to explosive capitalistic prosperity has brought with it a fair degree of corruption and social tension. In many places government officials and the police have come to be known as corrupt; sometimes on a spectacular scale. This recent history comes to life while watching To […] Read more »
Parkland is the Dallas hospital where President John F. Kennedy was treated and ultimately died after being shot in 1963. It is also, by a cruel twist of fate, the same hospital where his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald was taken one day later. “What a shitty place to die,” exclaims one of the President’s secret […] Read more »
Sakuko is an 18 year old student, who travels with her aunt to Mikie from Tokyo to a seaside town where they plan to housesit for the summer. Mikie is working on an academic project and Sakuko is preparing for her university entrance exams. But the summer days move slowly and Sakuko soon makes a […] Read more »
One way of understanding the appeal of cinema lies in the ability of films to take us somewhere new and surprising. The experience of seeing how people live in place vastly different from our own can entertain us and perhaps even help us realise how comfortable or naive we are in our fixed view of […] Read more »
Joe Swanberg is one of the most prominent figures to rise out of the recent “mumblecore” film scene in the US. Working fast, with tiny budgets and making largely improvised, personal and challenging films he established a solid following for his work. For Drinking Buddies, Swanberg steps up to a new level, working with a […] Read more »
Sebastián (Kristyan Ferrer) is seventeen years old and as a favour to his sick uncle, takes over the day to day running of a “love” motel on the windswept coast of Veracruz, in Mexico. Sebastián is hard working, but apart from making the rooms after the hotel’s short staying guests leave, there isn’t much to […] Read more »
Bending The Rules, written and directed by Behnam Behzadi, traces the tense, final preparations of a young, mostly university age theatre group in Iran, as they prepare to travel and present one of their plays at an overseas festival. Most of the group have either lied to their parents about their plans, sometimes concocting elaborate […] Read more »
Rigor Mortis is Juno Mak’s debut as a feature film director. Mak, known for acting in and co-writing Revenge: A Love Story (2010) has chosen to make a homage to the 80s Chinese “geung see” (Mr Vampire) films. Mak also wrote the film and co-produced it alongside Takashi Shimizu, director of Ju-on and it’s English […] Read more »
Takehinko Shinjo has, over the course of his directorial career, acquired the title “master of romance movies.” Here, in his beautifully composed fifth feature film, Beyond The Memories, the romance is constantly shadowed by tragedy and feelings of regret. Adapted from a manga comic that has sold over 2.95 million copies, Beyond The Memories starts […] Read more »
On this week’s podcast, our 40th in fact, we discuss R100, the new, slightly out there comedy from Japanese director Hitoshi Matsumoto. We then take some time to review Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 classic, To Be Or Not To Be. Finally, we cast our eyes forward to the upcoming Tokyo International Film Festival. Podcast: Play in […] Read more »
The full programme for this year's Tokyo International Film Festival was unveiled today in a well attended press conference in Roppongi Hills. The organisers had already announced the opening and closing films and today we were introduced to the other sections of the festival, including the main competition choices and the up and coming directors chosen for Asian Futures programme. Read more »