Punk Samurai Slash Down, The Name, Modern Love, The Trial, The Negotiator: Behind the Reversion of Okinawa, Let’s go! Anpanman: Shine! Kurun and the Star of Life, Uchu Sentai Kyuranger vs. Space Squad, MANDALAY STAR My Journey to Myanmar Folk Music, Bridge to Tomorrow Memories of 1989, Girls’ Encounter, The Second Security Unit Japanese Film Trailers

Happy weekend, everyone!

I hope everyone is feeling great!

I’ve had a good week watching some fantastic films and enjoying the good weather the UK is experiencing. I also got a lot festival press work done months in advance of an event with a press release, synopses, and contacts ready to go out.

The New York Asian Film Festival kicked off yesterday and two of my reviews have gone live on V-Cinema: The Hungry Lion and Dynamite Graffiti and there are a couple more waiting to be published. Over here on this blog I published a review for TOURISM and an interview with the director of TOURISM, Daisuke Miyazaki.

What is released this weekend in Japan?

An Interview with Daisuke Miyazaki, director of “TOURISM”, at the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2018

Daisuke Miyazaki was born in 1980 in Yokohama, Kanagawa. A passion for analysing films turned into a career when he started making them while studying at Waseda University. In 2004, he participated in New York University’s summer school that took place in Japan. His thesis The 10th Room won the Christine Choi Award, which is the grand prix at the KUT Film Festival held by the NYU. His following film Love Will Tear Us Apart was invited to be a special screening at the Image Forum Film Festival 2006, which is the largest experimental film festival in Japan.

The next stage in his career was to work his way up through the film world from lighting assistant to acting as an assistant director for Kiyoshi Kurosawa on Tokyo Sonata(2008). Miyazaki’s first feature film, End of the Night (2011), was exhibited at the Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema International Film Festival, and received a special award at the Toronto Shinsedai Film Festival. His work on the omnibus film 5TO9 was screened at the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2016 (OAFF) and his second feature Yamato (California) was screened at OAFF 2017.

He returned to OAFF in 2018 with his latest feature film, Tourism, an amusingly hip youth movie following two Japanese girls named Nina (Nina Endo) and Su (SUMIRE) who get lost in Singapore, which was shot in the space of five days. This is the first of a planned five film run which could take Miyazaki around the world.

Miyazaki kindly took part in an interview at the ABC Hall in Osaka midway through the festival where he went into detail about the shoot and his background.

Tourism Dir: Daisuke Miyazaki (2018) Osaka Asian Film Festival 2018

Tourism    

Running Time: 77 mins.

Release Date: 2018

Director: Daisuke Miyazaki

Writer: Daisuke Miyazaki (Screenplay),

Starring: Nina Endo, Sumire, Takayuki Yanagi,

IMDB

Daisuke Miyazaki is fast becoming a director to watch., quickly following up his last film Yamato (California) (2017) with Tourism, the second of a two-part video installation commissioned by the ArtScience Museum in Singapore and Singapore International Film Festival for an exhibition called “Specters and Tourists”. The project aimed to explore the nature of contemporary life and an under-seen side of Singapore. Nina Endo, one of the stars of “Yamato (California)”, takes the lead role here (as well as acting as stylist and co-producer) and is paired up with SUMIRE, a popular fashion model and daughter of Tadanobu Asano, to make a cute double-act that Miyazaki sends to Singapore on a journey off the beaten track.

“This story happened a while ago, in two countries on a certain planet.”

Gyoza You Can Kiss, Yakiniku Dragon, Uta Monogatari CINEMA FIGHTERS project, Missions of Love, Neko wa Daku Mono, One Cut of the Dead, The World’s Longest Photograph, Under the Dog Jumbled, Kawaii Akuma, Shoujo Picaresque Japanese Film Trailers

Happy weekend, people!!!

We made it to another one.

There was an earthquake in the Kansai region last Monday which resulted in some tragic news. I hope everyone who has been affected is coping or has recovered.

I’ve entered a new work period which is a little less intense so I’ve had time to watch films for pleasure. I’ve seen six since last weekend and I watched some of those twice. Two are by the same director. Reviews will materialise at some point. Other than that, business as usual. The weather has been good and I’ve been practising Japanese. My favourite discovery of the week is ほんまに which is 関西弁 apparently. I’m trying to remember times when people have said it around me. Fluency when speaking a language is partly about confidence and I’m speaking Japanese a lot so having fun ways to start sentences is great. I’m trying to arrange a get-together with friends I haven’t hung out with for a while and trying to get a handle on festival work I’ve put off for a while because of work elsewhere. 

I posted a news article about the New York Asian Film Festival and an interview with the guys behind Bad Poetry Tokyo.

What is released this weekend in Japan?

An Interview with Anshul Chauhan, Orson Mochizuki, and Takaeshi Kawaguchi Director and Actors of “Bad Poetry Tokyo” at the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2018

Bad Poetry Tokyo (BPT) is the debut feature film from Anshul Chauhan, an animator turned indie film director. Born in India in 1986, Anshul’s main job is working as an animator in Japan. His career stretches back to 2006 with work in both TV and film and it has progressed to include some recently released major titles such as Final fantasy XV: Kingsglaive and Gantz: O. Life as a live-action director began with short films which is how he met his lead actors for BPT. With his actors lined up and having gained some experience, he finally made the leap into features with this BPT, a dark drama built around an acting tour de force from a trio of talented actors, Shuna Iijima and her co-stars, Orson Mochizuki and Takashi Kawaguchi

Japanese Films at the New York Asian Film Festival (June 29 – July 15)

The 17th edition of the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) will run from June 29 – July 15, 2018 and there are 14 Japanese films programmed for the event. There are many guests arriving in New York and a real variety of films which makes the Japanese content really exciting to see.

Indeed, the Opening Night film is the North American premiere of Tominaga Masanori’s Dynamite Graffiti, an earthy dramedy about the life of Suei Akira, who is described as “Japanese porn mag king”.

Dynamite Graffiti 素敵なダイナマイトスキャンダル Dir: Masanori Tominaga (2018)

Dynamite Graffiti   

素敵なダイナマイトスキャンダル 「Suteki na Dainamaito Sukyandaru」

Running Time: 138 mins.

Release Date: March 17th, 2018

Director: Masanori Tominaga

Writer: Masanori Tominaga (Screenplay), Akira Suei (Autobiographical Essay)

Starring: Tasuku Emoto, Atsuko Maeda, Toko Miura, Machiko Ono, Kazunobu Mineta, Yutaka Matsushige, 

Website IMDB

Adult magazines are big business worldwide, including in Japan where it is still possible to walk into some convenience stores and see them on open display although in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics, this is getting cleaned up. Masanori Tominaga’s biopic Dynamite Graffiti tells the history of raunchy magazine mogul Akira Suei, starting from childhood to the peak of his infamy in the 1980s when his publications had a circulation of over 300,000 copies a month and he publicly challenged censors with his magazine’s content.

Tominaga aims big and scores some smiles with behind-the-scenes looks at the smut trade but the scale of his script’s ambitions in trying to capture changing times delivers a cast of characters who are little more than cyphers while Suei remains a joker.

Kairai / Marionettes, Yuzuriha, Recall, East of Jefferson, Batman Ninja, B’z 30th Year Exhibition “SCENES” 1988-2018 Gekijouban, Dolmen X Japanese Film Trailers

Happy Weekend, people!

I hope everyone is well.

It’s a bit of a gloomy day today and I’m feeling under the weather because I caught a cold last week. It’s on its way out, thankfully, and it couldn’t come sooner because I am taking a friend out to a pub tonight so we can have a good time together. Earlier this week, I attended the opening of a gallery with the same friend and the Japanese ambassador was there. Other than that, business as usual with films and work at my day job. I saw two great titles last Sunday, a Sono film and a Junji Sakamoto one that both had me tearful and laughing. In terms of my writing, I published an old review of Bad Poetry Tokyo and a preview of Japan Cuts 2018 which has many excellent titles. Japan Cuts always programmes great films and this year looks stellar with titles like Night is Short, Walk on Girl, Kushina, Nagisa, Passage of Life, Dear Etranger, and TOURISM, being ones I have already seen and rated highly. Hanagatami, Thicker than Water, and Amiko are ones I am desperate to watch. Violence Voyager, the Geki-animation by Ujicha looks like a barrel of laughs!

What is released in Japan this weekend?

A Preview of Japan Cuts 2018 (JULY 19–29)

Japan Cuts 2018 is due to kick off in New York soon! This is the 12th edition of the festival which screens the largest collection of contemporary Japanese films in North America. It runs from JULY 19–29 and there is everything from indies to blockbusters, anime to documentaries and short films, and lots of off-screen action like parties, live music and more over a 10-day festival.

Trailer!

The full list of films can be found here and some features are preceded by short films. There is an impressive list of films covering a variety of topics from refugee-life to the fight for equality by people facing discrimination due to sexual orientation, the desire to create new worlds by travelling to places mainstream films never go, to a much-anticipated adaptation of a popular manga/anime. These films are made by people from different backgrounds and the guests at the festival include a lot of female filmmakers, proving that Japan is a hotbed of talent from all sorts of places.

There will be many guests including legendary screen veteran Kirin Kiki who will receive the 2018 CUT ABOVE Award for Outstanding Performance in Film.

Here is what has been programmed!

Bad Poetry Tokyo 東京不穏詩 Dir: Anshul Chauhan (2017) Osaka Asian Film Festival 2018

Bad Poetry Tokyo    

東京不穏詩 「Tōkyō fuon uta」

Running Time: 114 mins.

Release Date: 2018

Director: Anshul Chauhan

Writer: Anshul Chauhan, Rand Colter (Screenplay), Anshul Chauhan (Original Story)

Starring: Shuna Iijima, Orson Mochizuki, Takashi Kawaguchi, Nana Blank, Kohei Mashiba, Kento Furukoshi,

Website    IMDB

Fake it till you make it. It’s a useful mantra to live by. Appear confident and people will accept it. We all do it, but every once in a while the mask will slip. What happens when you simply run out of energy to hold that mask up?

Jun Fujita (Shuna Iijima) is 30 years old. She majored in English at Tokyo University and dreams of appearing in Hollywood movies. For the time being, though, she works as a hostess at a shady club where her boyfriend Taka (Orson Mochizuki) is employed as a barman. Some of that is true, some of that is false. Life hasn’t turned out the way Jun imagined when she fled her home in Nagano Prefecture five years ago. Still, she yearns to be an actress and is about to make it when betrayed by her lover. Broken and made savage by the experience, she heads back to her sleepy countryside hometown to lick her wounds. As far as she can tell, things seemingly haven’t changed much when she first arrives and is reunited with her father and her old lover Yuki (Takashi Kawaguchi), which is a problem because there are ugly secrets about her past that made her flee in the first place.

The drama of Bad Poetry Tokyo opens with a sequence showing Jun perpetrating a violent attack while her narration tells us some of what has driven her to this point. It then cuts back to an earlier period of time so viewers can trace the sequence of events that has to the moment that the weight of the world has become too heavy for Jun to bear.