TOKYOMANGO

Get your hand-printed limited edition TokyoMango t-shirt now (2 weeks only)

My friend Ben and I made a test run of TokyoMango t-shirts on Saturday. They're really nice, do you want one? If so, you can buy one here. Below are the details:

- All shirts are 100% cotton.
- Each t-shirt will be hand-silk screened by me and Ben on his Yudu machine. The shirt logo was custom-designed by Ben. Mango design courtesy of my web designer James.
- The Women's tees come in a t-shirt style (pistacio and white) and a spaghetti strap ribbed tank (yellow).
- The Men's tees come in orange and white. In the pic above, Ben is actually accidentally wearing a girl's tee, but you get the idea... the sleeves will be more manly on the one you get.
- You can choose a custom colored tee for $25. Just shoot me an email with your preference after you place the order.
- The sizes tend to run a little big (except for the tanktops). They might shrink in the wash.
- Some of you will receive a free surprise Japanese toy or gadget with your t-shirt! I'm just gonna randomly stick them into bags, so keep an eye out.
- We're taking orders over the next two weeks only, at least for this first printing. They'll ship at the end of those two weeks, when Ben & I will silkscreen them by hand.
- Last day to order is Monday, October 5th.

UPDATE: T-shirts are no longer for sale. Maybe we'll do another round sometime!

The Taste of Tea, a cute-beautiful movie about a quirky family

I just watched a movie called The Taste of Tea. The director is Katsuhito Ishii, and starring actors include Tadanobu Asano from Ichi the Killer and Rinko Kikuchi from Babel. It's about a quirky family living in rural Tochigi and their little obsessions — the dad with his hypnotherapy, the grandpa with his dance moves, the son with his teenager hormones and the adorable little daughter who is convinced that she'll be able to rid her life of a giant spirit of herself that follows her around everywhere if she can perfect a backflip.

The Taste of Tea is full of charming little anecdotes — my favorite was the one in which an uncle recalls the story of how he pooped on a giant egg while wandering around in a haunted forest. Such a great story within a story. The film is several years old, but it got high acclaim at film fests and I recommend it as part of your Japanese movie collection.

Get The Taste of Tea on Amazon

New documentary about wacky inventor Dr. NakaMats

Dr. NakaMats, the kooky inventor whom I wrote about in my io9 column, MangoBot, in Jan 08, is the subject of a new documentary. It's an in-depth look into the life of a guy who claims to have more patents than Edison, a recipe for Super Viagra, a lifespan of 144 years, and who has run for political office several times.

Related stories:
Japan's wackiest inventor saves the world with super viagra
I met Dr. NakaMats in Shibuya
Dr. NakaMats' male model debut
Crazy inventor running for mayor

Koizumi makes voice actor debut with Ultraman flick

Schwarzenegger stumbled into politics after his Hollywood career peaked, but former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi is just getting his debut in acting — he'll be voicing the part of a minor superhero in an upcoming Ultraman flick called MegaMonster Battle Ultra Galaxy.

Politician's porn past raises questions of aptitude

This is a clip from a porn horror film called Blind Beast v. Killer Dwarf, based on a novel by Edogawa Ranpo (he's kinda like the Japanese version of Edgar Allan Poe). It stars Mieko Kikuchi, aka Mieko Tanaka, a Democratic Party of Japan member. I don't think there's anything wrong with politicians having a porn past, but an article in the Global Post raises an interesting question of whether the contingency of female politicians in the DPJ are truly qualified to hold official positions, or if it's just a PR stunt.

Link (via Hiroko Tabuchi's Twitter)

White on Rice, a funny movie about an annoying uncle, is in theaters now

This morning in San Francisco, I interviewed Dave Boyle, the director of a new-ish movie called White on Rice. With him was actor Hiroshi Watanabe; he plays the part of Jimmy, a super-immature 40-year old who moves in with his sister's family in Utah after getting a divorce in Japan. We mostly talked about how a Mormon missionary ended up making movies about Japanese culture. The interview will air on NPR sometime soon; in the meantime, you should go check out White on Rice at the movie theater. If you're in SF, it's playing at the Metreon now.

I thought the same when I saw Boyle's first film, Big Dreams Little Tokyo, but Boyle always does an excellent job of depicting aspects of Japanese culture without being offensive or compromising his sense of humor.

Btw, this is a pic I took of Boyle, Watanabe, and Ruby.

White on Rice main page
My review of Big Dreams Little Tokyo

I Love Me, a film about famous OCD artist Yayoi Kusama

I just came back from watching a documentary about celebrated avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama. I have always been fascinated with this woman — she's 80 years old, but ever since she was a teenager she has been unapologetically paranoid and OCD and has driven all her obsessions into her artwork, which largely consists of dots and lines and eyeballs. The documentary follows her through the process of making a series of 50 giant black-and-white permanent marker drawings for a traveling exhibition; the film starts off a bit slow with some pretty shoddy footage but improves later as it dives into some interesting detail about a childhood full of manipulation and depression, and her middle years as an active, radical member of the NY art community. There's a lot of great footage of her actually drawing, which is fascinating to watch, and it becomes evident through her frequent self-praise that she's really into herself. I wouldn't call her egocentric, exactly. It's almost as if she isn't able to see outside of herself and her obsessions; it's not a choice, it's a condition she lives with, and copes with through her art, which is indeed brilliant and original.

Related stories:
Amazing handsets designed by Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama, avant-garde genius
Yayoi Deki is the new Yayoi Kusama

Taiji dolphins freed due to pressure from The Cove

I just got this information from the Oceanic Preservation Society, the organization behind the documentary The Cove about the dolphin killings in Taiji:

Fishermen in Taiji, Japan will be releasing captured dolphins this week in response to international outcry following the award-winning film “The Cove.” Some of the dolphins captured during the annual round up will be sold to aquariums, and while the rest are typically slaughtered in secret, the fishermen will be releasing them because of recent criticism.

...An anonymous Taiji fisheries official said that it’s not clear whether the town will stop killing dolphins permanently. Taiji residents see the dolphin hunt as a tradition that is no different than killing other animals for food. However, the dolphins that are killed and sold as food, often as mislabeled whale meat, contain toxic levels of mercury and are potentially poisoning Japanese consumers.

...The fishermen in Taiji captured about 100 bottlenose dolphins and 50 pilot whales on Wednesday, with plans to sell some of their catch to aquariums for up to $150,000 per animal.

The Taiji government hasn't confirmed yet whether the killings will be halted permanently, but the fact that they're on hold means that they're listening.

Related stories:
The Cove, an upcoming documentary about dolphins in Taiji
Dolphin slaughter: horrible injustice, or just another meal?

Video: She and Her Cat, a lovely short animated film

She and Her Cat is a quiet, beautifully poetic short animated short told from the point of view of a very loyal and contemplative cat. It is directed by a well-known animator and voice actor named Makoto Shinkai and won several awards back when it was made in 1999.

Big Man Japan, a movie about a giant ex-superhero

Big Man Japan is a new-ish movie about an unappreciated, outdated superhero &mdash a giant Japanese man who used to be part of a tribe of protectors but is now just seen as a menace to society. If you like Japan and men in diapers and mutant alien creatures destroying cities, you should definitely check it out. I just put it on my Netflix queue.

(Thanks, Vagrant!)

The Cove, an upcoming documentary about dolphins in Taiji

The Cove, a new documentary on dolphin killings in the Japanese town of Taiji, comes out at the end of August. I personally love dolphins, and I used to enjoy watching them swim at hotels and aquariums in Hawaii when I was a kid. Then again, if I knew the story behind their capture back then, maybe I would have become a dolphin activist too. Some people are opposed to the eating of dolphins. I would never eat a dolphin, but I eat other meat and think that's fine, so I'm not conceptually opposed to people eating stuff they want to eat. I'm not sure how I'll feel after seeing this documentary, but I'll let you guys know.

Interestingly, dolphins were not considered worthy of captivity by humans until the 1960s &mdash that's when the American TV show Flipper came out.

Related story:
Dolphin slaughter: horrible injustice, or just another meal?

(Thanks, Ken!)

Children Full of Life, a moving documentary about kids sharing emotions in school

My friend Alyssa sent me a link to a 2003 documentary called Children Full of Life, now viewable in its entirety on YouTube (also embedded in this post). The film features a very unique 4th grade class in Kanazawa, where the teacher encourages students to keep journals, read them out loud in class, and then share deep, ordinarily inaccessible emotions with the rest of the students. For example, in the first section, they talk about death. Most teachers would shy away from talking about such subjects in class &mdash they might deem it inappropriate, or opt to spend the time doing other stuff, or maybe it's just not customary to talk openly about such deep emotions in school. I certainly don't know that many classrooms, even in the US, where this is actively encouraged. But this teacher, one Mr. Kanamori, tells the children that their primary goal is to be happy, and that sharing feelings is part of the path to happiness.

Harry Potter fangirl's hilarious interviews with Ron and Harry

A popular variety TV show called Sanma no Karakuri TV had a contest where 10,000 Japanese Harry Potter fans competed for a chance to fly to the UK, visit the set of the HP movies, and interview Ron and Harry. The winner was a high school girl named Kana Matsuda. Here's a hilarious clip of her interviewing Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley. Watch it! It has subtitles. I'm personally a bigger fan of Ron than Harry, but if you want to watch the video of her interviewing Daniel Radcliffe, it's here.

I just watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at the theater on Friday, btw. It was fun!

via Japan Probe

Hula Girls, a wonderful movie about Hawaiian dance in a 60s coal mining town

Last night, I finally watched Hula Girls, the 2006 film about a coal mining town in northern Japan that won a bunch of awards and was a big hit in film festival circuits a couple years ago. It's about a coal mining town in northern Japan where nothing ever changes &mdash until one day, the owner of the mine announces that he has to fire 2000 people because people are starting to rely on oil, not coal. Instead, the town has decided to open a Hawaiian-themed entertainment resort, and as part of that effort, the project manager recruits a hula teacher from Tokyo to teach some of the coal miners' daughters how to wear bikinis and shake their hips and dance. A lot of interesting issues are addressed in the film, which is based in 1960s &mdash old Japan vs new, changing views of women and work, stigmas about sexiness, etc. But it's a fun, feel-good movie (like Honey and Clover and Tampopo).

Did I tell you it's based on a true story? The Hawaiian resort really exists in Iwaki City, and has since 1966. It's released in the US by Viz Pictures with subtitles. Highly recommended!

Hula Girls on Amazon

Trailer: The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (NSFW)

A couple of years ago at a film festival in San Francisco, I watched this movie, The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai, a soft porn film about a girl who gets superpowers after being shot in the head. The film is set against the backdrop of the second Iraq war, and there's a scene in the film where the girl has sex with George W. Bush's finger on a rooftop. You get a glimpse of it here in this trailer, though really, you should watch the entire movie just because that scene is just remarkable in that so-bad-it's-good Japanese b-movie way.

Buy The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai on Amazon

Silence of the Sushi Rolls, an "art porn" film about busting perverts

Last week, I watched a movie called Silence of the Sushi Rolls at the Another Hole in the Head film festival. (The real international title is Sexy SWAT Team 4.) It's a pinku eiga, a genre of soft porn that entails cheesy raunchy plots and a hilariously shameless sense of humor. The director, Mototsugu Watanabe, has done other similar films with titles like Sexy Battle Girls and Amorous Ninja. In Sushi Rolls, he tells the story of a mysterious gadget that makes women orgasm. A female detective who specializes in perverts tries to hunt down the guy who made it, and in the process encounters a weird mad professor type of dude named Dr. Honeybar Nectar who tries to help her with his kinky voodoo and wacked out ideas. Pinku eiga are typically only 60 minutes long and have lots of random sex scenes, so even people with a short attention span or little patience for bad movies can enjoy it. This was one of those really good bad movies, though, like Snakes on a Plane.

In the Realm of the Senses, a film based on a true story about sexual obsession

In the Realm of the Senses is a 1976 movie directed by acclaimed director Nagisa Oshima about sexual obsession gone awry. I watched it on Friday night, and can safely say that I have never seen anything like it. 90% of the footage is sex scenes, but it looks more like Edo period erotica art than porn &mdash beautiful, fleshy scenes of a man and a woman (and sometimes, a man and women) exploring their sexuality on tatami mat floors with their kimonos strewn all over the room. It's set in the 1930s, when prostitution was legal and geishas were commonplace. Sada, the female protagonist, is a prostitute-turned-maid who she gets involved in a lusty affair with the charismatic master of the hotel she works at. They have sex all day and all night, and Sada quickly develops a serious obsession with Kichi's penis. Sounds like campy porn, but the actual film is nothing of the sort &mdash it's a true story told in a really beautiful artsy sexy way. Oshima takes us on a journey through their affair that is so provocative that the film had to be produced in France, was once banned from the NY Film Festival, and to this day is censored in Japan*. The Criterion Collection just released a fully uncensored version of the film with extras, though, and that's available all over the Internet. (Warning: Spoilers ahead! If you want to stop reading now and just watch the movie, you can get the Criterion collection DVD on Amazon.)

Big Dreams Little Tokyo: a quirky movie about Japanophiles

I just watched a pretty hilarious indie movie called Big Dreams Little Tokyo, directed by David Boyle. It's about this white guy, Boyd (played by Boyle) who is obsessed with Japanese culture. Like, really obsessed. He has a sign outside his apartment door that says: "Japanese only" and all the furniture in it is labeled in hiragana. He traipses around town handing out business cards the proper Japanese way, telling people &mdash only Japanese or Japanese-looking people &mdash that he is a businessman. His roommate is a Japanese-American wannabe sumo wrestler Jerome (played by Jayson Watabe, who went to my high school) who sits in a fundoshi and eats all day.

Boyd's having no luck selling his silly language book and lessons, but things start to turn around when Jerome overeats at a local sushi restaurant and the duo take on two new friends &mdash the Mexican-American sushi chef and a pretty Japanese nurse at the hospital.

Boyle made this movie with pretty much no directing experience, and Watabe is his best friend, not necessarily an actor. But I feel like that almost worked to their advantage. The result is a very natural, slightly Rushmore-esque film that resonates with anyone who lives in between two cultures, whether it's real or just in their minds.

Buy Big Dreams, Little Tokyo on Amazon

Tetsuwan Atomu is making his Hollywood debut

The Hollywood version of Astro Boy comes out this October. My guess is that it will be highly entertaining but that a lot of the charm of the old Tezuka series will be lost. I posted the Hollywood trailer on BBG. See it here.

Departures, best foreign film of the year, really is that good

Yojiro Takita's Departures (Japanese title is Okuribito) won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film this year, and if you watch the movie you'll instantly know why. It is a stunningly raw exploration of death—I went to a screening of it this afternoon, and was blown away by it. It's about a cello player who loses his job, moves back to his hometown, and gets a highly unusual new gig as a corpse dresser-upper.

This movie will make you think about death. It's something many of us are uncomfortable talking about. I volunteer at an AIDS hospice once a week, and the experiences I have there are constantly reshaping my perspective on it, and the way I cope. I think Takita is brave to address death so directly in a movie and also to bring dignity back to the controversial Japanese funeral system.

Masahiro Motoki (aka Mokkun), the now-45 year old former boy band star, does an amazing job in the lead, and Ryoko Hirosue is charming in her role as his wife.

Here's a video of the director and cast members receiving the Oscar, plus a clip of Takita saying, roughly, that the Japanese tend to want to avoid talking about death and that's why he wanted to see how that would play out in a movie. He also gives a special shout out to Mokkun for playing a huge role in bringing the crew together and says, half of this award belongs to him:

Departures opens in the Bay area on May 29. Be sure to buy tickets and go with someone you don't mind bawling next to. (read: Not great for a first date.)

Michel Gondry's Tôkyô! was awesome

I was lucky to see Tôkyô!, Michel Gondry's newest film, last week at SFIAAFF. It's a triptych, a series of three vignettes that take place in my hometown, each part made by a reputed director--Gondry, French tortured-love expert Leos Carax, and Korea's Joon-ho Bong. I posted the preview several months ago, and it's finally coming out in theaters in the US this spring. A quick no-spoiler synopsis:

Gondry's film, titled Interior Design, is about a couple who moves to Tokyo. The lead actress, Ayako Kamitani, is the hapa daughter of Steven Seagal. She's pretty awesome in it, as is her co-star, Ryo Kase. They're trying to find an apartment and a job and their car gets towed and it's just a lovely, lovely story. Kooky, Gondry fun. I could watch it over and over.

Movie about Jack Soo, the first Japanese-American comedian

Yesterday at SFIAAFF, I saw a documentary about Jack Soo, a comedian/singer who was famous in the 60s and 70s. Jack Soo is actually Goro Suzuki, a second-generation Japanese-American who grew up in an internment camp and changed his name to sound Chinese to avoid being sent back to camp after he wiggled his way out. He did stand-up in San Francisco and Chicago, and was in a bunch of TV shows. It was really good—I didn't know anything about the guy before, but I learned that:

- He was the first Asian American actor who refused to play stereotypical, derogatory roles. He also spoke English with no accent. Opened doors for lots of other Asian actors.
- He married an Eastern European model and has three kids, and a granddaughter who lives in San Francisco.
- He was an awesome singer. One of his co-stars of Valentine's Day equated his skillz to Frank Sinatra. In fact, he was recording some super famous songs but ultimately they gave the gigs to people like Stevie Wonder, possibly because that was more marketable.
- He died at the height of his career of cancer.

In the Q&A following the screening, director Jeff Adachi noted that there was very little information about Soo out there--but he managed to find a good number of old friends and family and put together an insightful tribute to the guy.

You Don't Know Jack: The Jack Soo Story

Tokyo Sonata, a great, depressing film about Japanese family life

I just came back from a screening of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's new movie, Tokyo Sonata. It's a two-hour drama about a middle-class Japanese family of four. Their stories unravel after the father loses his job and doesn't tell anyone. Kurosawa is most famous as a horror film director (Pulse, Cure) but he said when introducing Tokyo Sonata at the SFIAAFF screening today that this look at some harsh realities of Japanese family life might just be scarier. I have to agree with him. The awkwardness between husband and wife, mother and son; the inability to speak out against an unreasonable, abusive father; the shame that prevents family members from telling each other the truth; these things ARE really frightening. And Kurosawa uses horror film-like cuts and lighting in several scenes that make it feel even scarier. It works. The movie is great, and will be showing in SF area theaters starting later this month. It's also showing tomorrow night @ 6PM at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive.

SF film festival starts today—Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Michel Gondry, etc.

The SF Int'l Asian American Film Festival starts today, and that means we in the Bay area get a full week and a half of awesome Japanese and other Asian movies at the lovely Kabuki theater. This year they're having an entire Kiyoshi Kurosawa weekend—in case you don't know him, he's the man behind some of the first and most famous J-Horror movies. They're also showing Tokyo! by Michel Gondry et al, which I'm super excited about.

Tonight's the opening night party. I'm actually lounging on the couch with my dogs, watching the box set of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. But starting this weekend, I will get off my ass, hit the theaters, and update you guys on what I saw.

27th SF Int'l Asian American Film Fest home page

Lynchian rabbits posing in front of a gal store in Harajuku

I saw these rabbit-headed mannequins on display at a storefront on Takeshita-dori in Harajuku, and it made the store look and feel like being in a David Lynch movie. These are not cute bunny-ear bunnies. These are serious bunnies that will sit in your living room and talk about really serious things that are beyond your level of comprehension.

Movie trailer features schoolgirl who can kick you in the face

A great, simple trailer for a movie aptly named High Kick Girl. I wish I was like her in high school.

via Jean Snow

A Last Note, a beautiful, fun movie about aging

I just came back from watching One Last Note, a film by director Kaneto Shindo. It's part of a Japanese film festival at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive.

Shindo literally wrote and directed hundreds of movies in his career. His heyday was in the 1940s; One Last Note was his final movie, created in 1995 when he was 82 years old. I went to see it with my great aunt and uncle, who are both in their 80s, which made the watching experience a little more meaningful.

I expected it to be a slow burn, a contemplative look at old people, but it was actually pretty upbeat. The protagonist, Yoko Morimoto, is an older woman, a theater actor who likes to spend her summers at her mountain house near Karuizawa. She has great character—she's confident, funny, driven, and kind. She hangs out with her housekeeper, a softer, more soft-spoken lady who ends up to have a much more complicated relationship to her boss than we initially expect. The two are visited by an old friend, a former actress who often shared roles with Morimoto—she's going senile, though, and her husband has to walk her through every step of everything. Nonetheless, the four friends have a really fun time together for three days—they sing, they dance, they fight an armed robber, and they win an award from the local police department. I won't say any more. I'm not exactly sure where you can catch this film next, but it's definitely worth watching.

Richard Gere's new movie about Hachiko

Ever wonder what Richard Gere has been up to? I don't, but I am looking forward to seeing his newest film. It's about Hachiko, the famous Akita dog whose spirit resides in Shibuya Station since the 1930s. He was a smart, loyal doggie who lost his owner at the age of 2. The owner died of a heart attack while he was at work, so the dog never knew of his death. So every day for the rest of his life, he sat in front of Shibuya Station in the late afternoon to early evening, waiting for the owner's return. Other commuters soon caught on to what was happening and started feeding the dog and paying him lots of attention.

Hachiko died of heartworm at the age 11 and the ward erected a statue in his honor. Now it's the most popular meeting spot in Tokyo.

After Hachiko died, they found a whole bunch of yakitori sticks inside his tummy. His stuffed body is now on display at a museum in Ueno.

Boys Over Flowers, the movie made from my favorite manga

One of my favorite manga growing up was Hana Yori Dango, or Boys Over Flowers. It's an unconventional shojo series by Yoko Kamio. The heroine is a girl named Tsukushi Makino—she's neither rich nor pretty, but her parents decide to dig into their savings and send her to a snobby private school. There, Tsukushi has multiple run-ins with the Flower 4—four handsome, wealthy, extremely cocky guys who dominate the school's social life. My girl friends and I loved the story so much that four of us called ourselves the Flower 4 all throughout high school. Stupid, I know.

In the movie—which came out in theaters last month—Tsukushi and the leader of the F4, Tsukasa Domyoji, are about to get married but get sent on a transnational adventure in search of a missing tiara. I watched it on the airplane over to Tokyo (like JAL, ANA has great food and a highly maneuvrable entertainment system). I missed the entire TV series so was super curious to see how they portrayed my favorite manga with real humans. The verdict? It was okay. I was slightly disappointed by the random plot and the nonsensical turns it took (if they're in a rush to get to Vegas, why are they driving idly through the desert and not flying into Las Vegas airport??), but still, I was entertained and I didn't fall asleep. That says a lot, because I usually fall asleep during movies.

Short film: Tokyo seen through a kaleidescope

This neat video by Kosai Sekine, the guy behind that wonderful obsessive-compulsive combini man short that I posted last February, looks at the Tokyo cityscape through a giant kaleidescope. Quite mesmerizing.

via Pink Tentacle

Children of the Dark, a controversial movie about child trafficking

Children of the Dark is a controversial film by director Junji Sakamoto that brings light to the problem of child trafficking and prostitution in Thailand. Too bad neither country is keen about the movie—some Japanese think it's biased against their own country, laying all the blame on the demand side, while the Thai pulled it from the lineup of films shown at this year's Bangkok International Film Festival in late September.

I think both countries should just show it. Human trafficking is a real issue, and just because you don't watch the movie doesn't mean it will disappear.

Why Miyazaki does all his drawings by hand

In the era of stop motion and CGI and Pixar, Japan's favorite anime director Hayao Miyazaki refuses to use the aid of a computer to make his world-famous movies. When interviewed recently for his newest film, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, Miyazaki offered this explanation as to why:

I think animation is something that needs the pencil, needs man's drawing hand, and that is why I decided to do this work in this way. Currently computer graphics are of course used a great deal and, as I've said before, this use can at times be excessive. I will continue to use my pencil as long as I can.

Not the most fascinating explanation, but it's interesting to know that the guy who created the first Oscar-winning animated film ever is so old school.

Sukiyaki Western Django Looks Awesome

Takashi Miike's new movie, Sukiyaki Western Django, looks awesome. The NY Times calls it "a loving and lurid pastiche of the spaghetti westerns that were themselves lurid pastiches of classic Hollywood cowboy pictures."

Quentin Tarantino supposedly makes some cameo appearances in it, disemboweling a snake in the opening scene.

(Thanks, Ryan!)

Sneak Preview of Michel Gondry's Tôkyô!

Tôkyô!, the artsy triptych movie directed by Joon-ho Bong, Leos Carax, and Michel Gondry, is just out in theaters across the city it's named after. Here's a teaser segment from Carax's segment, which is called Merde. Looks awesome, right? It doesn't debut in the US til next month (in Austin), but it's definitely worth saving on your Netflix queue.

Glimpses of Elderly Porn Master, Courtesy of CNN

Last week, I blogged about Shigeo Tokuda, currently the most popular porn star in Japan. Here you can see glimpses of his magic. Um, yeah. He's 74. So what?

Oh, and this video also provides the quote of the day: "Ruby specializes in elderly porn!"
If you've followed this blog long enough, you know that my dog is named Ruby, and that she likes elderly porn. Really.

 

Kamikaze Girls: A Colorful Film about Girls who Don't Fit In

Last night I watched Kamikaze Girls, a movie based on a light novel about two girl friends, Ichigo and Momoko—one who belongs to a motorcycle gang, and one whose mind is in the Versailles-era Rococo-style gutter. It's a couple years old and has been around the film festival circuit quite a bit, but this was actually my first viewing, and here are my first impressions:

- Model Anna Tsuchiya makes a pretty good yanki.
- I have never worn lace before, but Kyoko Fukada looks good in it, and by the end of the movie I understood her taste in frills and florals.
- Director Tetsuya Nakashima has really fun, quirky storytelling skills. I enjoyed the sequence of events and the scenes-within-scenes.

Love My Life: Film Shows What It's Like to be a Lesbian in Tokyo

I just watched a movie called Love My Life. Like many great contemporary Japanese movies, it's based on a manga. This one explores the issues surrounding gays and lesbians in Japan. The main character is a young woman named Ichiko. She has a female lover, and decides one day that she'll come out to her widower dad. He's pleasantly surprised—you truly are a child of me and mom, he says happily. I'm gay, and so was your mom! Ichiko's best friend at school is gay; so is the mysterious girl with the mohawk who frequents her record store.

It's a lot harder to come out in Tokyo than it is in San Francisco. While the characters toy with the idea of coming out, in most instances  it's never really a real option. But the film, directed by Koji Kawano, is full of interesting observations of life in general, about how often the most meaningful things in life come out of the worst experiences, how family influences the person you become as an adult, and why love sometimes has to wait. All themes that are more interesting when explored via an intimate relationship between two pretty girls. And yes, they get naked at the end.

Japan Japan: A Movie about a Gay Israeli Japanophile

Despite its seemingly patriotic title, Japan Japan is not really about Japan at all—it's the first feature length film by Israeli film director Lior Shamriz, and it's about a soul-searching 19 year old boy in Tel Aviv. ("More than a Middle-Eastern movie about Japan, this movie (is) a film from the middle east that would have preferred to have been Japanese," he writes.)

Imri, the protagonist, longs to go to Japan. His mom thinks he's crazy and his friends keep asking him when he's going as he daydreams about shrines and masturbates to Japanese mass orgies. It's a fun film with snapshot scenes of urban youth life in Israel and nostalgic Japanese music that'll make you wish you were watching kohaku in the 70s.

This film was screened at San Francisco's Frameline LGBT Film Festival last month. I drove by the Castro Theater right before showtime, and the line went all the way down the block. 

 

Nana, a Film About Two Unlikely Best Girl Friends

I  just watched a movie called Nana. Based on a best-selling shojo manga that sold over 22 million copies in Japan, it's a cute story about two girls who are total opposites that become best friends. One is a super girly girl who wears lots of pink and will give anything to be with her boyfriend; the other is punk rocker who sacrificed the love of her life for her music career. The two meet fatefully on a train ride to Tokyo, and when they meet again at an apartment for rent, they become roommates. They're both named Nana.

At first, I thought the story sounded really cheesy, but I found myself really enjoying the movie. Both characters are extremely likable despite their shortcomings—Nana the girly girl can be really annoying, and Nana the punk rocker has a bad temper and an attitude but the're both genuine and endearing. You end up falling in love with both by the end of the movie.

Movie: Children of Huang Shi

I just watched a movie called Children of Huang Shi. It's about a British journalist, George Hogg, and his experience in China during the Sino-Japanese War. Pretty early on in the movie, you have this incredible scene where Hogg inadvertently ends up photographing a massacre in Nanking, and then almost loses his head when the Japanese find his film. Shortly thereafter, he gets recruited to go to a town called Huang Shi, which has turned into a giant orphanage for kids who lost their families in the war. Hogg thinks, I don't want to spend my time in China with a bunch of kids! I want to see the real war. And this pretty white lady who works as a nurse there tells him, don't be silly. You want to see the real war? These kids and their predicament are the unfortunate side effects of it. So he sticks around, earns their trust, and ends up being more emotionally invested in saving them than he could have ever imagined. It's a good movie—George Hogg was a real guy, and this was a real war, and the ending is appropriately moving. It's directed by Roger Spottiswoode (Turner & Hooch, Tomorrow Never Dies) and stars hotties Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Michelle Yeoh, and Chow Yun Fat. 

Cute Japanese Movie of the Month: Honey and Clover

On the plane ride home from Rio, I watched this really cute movie called Honey and Clover. It's the first live action adaptation of a popular manga about a group of art students training under a guy named Hanamoto. One day, Hanamoto introduces his cousin's daughter, Hagu, to the group. She's a super cute, talented artist and all the guys instantly fall in love with her. The story unfolds at a mellow but highly entertaining pace—it really does feel like you're flipping through the pages of a well-scripted manga. But it's not annoyingly girly or overly artsy at all—there's a certain innocence to it that even my gadget-loving boyfriend thoroughly enjoyed. (He won't admit it now, but I overheard him telling my dog that he discovered a new movie that he really liked called Honey and Clover.)

Honey and Clover is available on DVD and sometimes shows in theaters. Check out the web site for more deets.

Win Free Tickets to Death Note: The Movie

The live action film Death Note comes out in select theaters next week. It's a story based on a famous manga about a notebook that can kill people—just write a person's name in it, outline how he's going to die, and it will come true. Two young, strange, good-looking Japanese boys go head-to-head in the hunt for the guy who carries the evil notebook. I saw it a preview screening of it a couple of months ago—it's really good!

I'm giving away two tickets for the Death Note screenings on May 21st here on Tokyomango, courtesy of Viz Pictures. All you have to do is shoot me an email with your name, address, and a short statement on what you would do if the Death Note fell in your hands (remember—you can't just throw it in the bin, because someone else might pick it up and commit crimes with it).

Tix are for Bay Area screenings only. All entries must be in by Thursday at noon PST. Thanks!

War Documentary Causes Controversy, Angers Protagonist

Last month, I blogged about Yasukuni, a powerful documentary about war memory by Chinese director Li Ying. It's a heated, opinionated look at the controversy surrounding ex-prime minister Koizumi's visit to the shrine that holds the ashes of WW2 criminals. It caused a stir when several Japanese movie theaters refused to air it, and again made headlines when several other Japanese movie theaters agreed to air it. Now, one of the main subjects in the film is demanding that he be taken out of the footage completely.

90-year old Naoji Kariya, who makes multiple appearances in the film as a talented sword maker who made WW2 weapons, feels he was deceived by Li and misrepresented in the movie. Kariya told Mainichi:

I was told that the film was a documentary about sword making. I cannot trust director Li Ying any more. I want my scenes deleted from the film.

Li says:

I gained Kariya's approval. If I cut his scenes, the film will be undercut and cannot be screened.

The jury's still out as to whether Li really tricked Kariya into being interviewed, and whether the film will be edited or removed entirely from theaters. One thing's for sure though—all this controversy has put Li on the map.

Wings of Defeat: A Documentary About Living Kamikaze Pilots

We've all heard of kamikaze pilots. They're the infamous troop of martyr pilots involved in a last-ditch effort by Japan's Imperial Army to save face in World War 2. About 5,000 Tokkotai—their official name—died, but what's less known is the fact that some survived. In an excellent new documentary by Risa Morimoto, whose uncle was trained as a kamikaze pilot but never dispatched, explores the experience and psyche of these brave and controversial soldiers of a badly defeated nation.

This documentary was really, really good. It showed many perspectives—those of the pilots themselves, those of American soldiers who survived kamikaze attacks, and expert opinions from people like John Dower—an MIT historian who wrote an amazingly interesting account of post-war Japan in his book Embracing Defeat. Morimoto herself went out and did all the interviews, and she's in a lot of the footage, sitting next to interviewees as they share experiences with her. She manages to extract conflicting emotions from all sides—the kamikaze pilots share their fear and doubt, while American soldiers tell her that they would have done the same thing had they been on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Trailer and screening info after the jump.

Anti-Sex: A Fabulous Short Film About a Girl Who Runs a Love Hotel

One of my favorite short films ever is a 2006 30-minute flick called Anti-Sex, directed by Ryotaro Muramatsu. It's about a high school girl named Ai whose father's death left her in charge of a love hotel. It's always been a family business, and because she's been so over-exposed to sex since childhood, she's totally not interested in it. At all. This is a really cute, hip, fun comedy about love and sex and Japan.

It's playing tomorrow as part of a shorts series at the SF Int'l Asian American Film Festival.

Yasukuni: A Documentary Explores the Ethics of War Memory

War memory is a super touchy subject. When a country fights a war, and does things that are not very cool at all in the process, and then that country loses the war, do its people still have the right to worship the dead? A new documentary called Yasukuni explores this topic by documenting the extreme emotions that surround the controversial shrine in which ashes of Japan's war dead are kept. Some think it's okay to honor those who fought and died for the country; others think it's not cool at all to pay homage to those who caused suffering, shame, and death to countless civilians abroad.

The war in question is WW2. The ashes causing the controversy are those belonging to the higher-ups in the Imperial Army, including a couple who famously commanded the Nanking Massacre. The worshiper that brought the name Yasukuni to international fame was former prime minister Koizumi, who chose to make his annual visit to honor the dead despite cries of protest from pretty much everywhere in 2005.

New Documentary Explores the Origin of the Fortune Cookie

Did you know that the fortune cookie might actually be Japanese? A new documentary, directed and produced by Derek Shimoda, explores the origins of this staple dessert at Chinese restaurants across the world, and finds that there's a high possibility that Japanese immigrants closely tied to a rice cracker shop may have first made and distributed these cookies in San Francisco. (Incidentally, most people in China have no clue what a fortune cookies is.)

It's a fun documentary—really well put together, with some classic characters and some really interesting scenes from 20th century Asian American history—that premieres March 15th in San Francisco at the SF Int'l Asian American Film Festival.

Genghis Khan is Not Japanese.

The story of fearless Mongolian leader Genghis Khan has been told in many different ways over time, but one of the more recent adaptations was done in Japanese, with Japanese actors. My friend James Lee reviewed it for the SF Weekly:

The film shows the sensitive side of Genghis Khan, as he sheds more tears than blood. However, the horrible directing, diarrhea dialogue, and laughable acting makes the whole thing seem like a war reenactment made for TV. In one scene, a brave enemy asks Genghis (actually pronounced “Chingis,” and the one thing the movie gets right) that he wants an honorable death and doesn’t want any blood spilt, so the soldier requests to get strangled by Khan’s own hands, and I wanted to form a line behind him.

I have to agree, it really wasn't that good. I walked out about 3/4 of the way in. I just think that movies about a certain nationality/people should be represented to the extent possible by their own people. Same deal with some of the "Japanese" actors in Heroes.

In Fair NeoVerona, Where We Lay Our Scene

Peter Payne, the entrepeneur behind the import portal j-list.com, has done for Hello Kitty vibrators what Marco Polo did for noodles. He has a professional interest in keeping abreast of what's hot and cool in Japan, and he's clued us in on many new trends, from Haruhiism to Alibi Buddy. His latest tip-off involves the anime-ification of Shakespeare's most famous tearjerker.

"Romeo x Juliet" (that's a sort of yaoi thing there, the x meaning 'versus') is quite cool. It's basically a remix of the famous story, so you've got Juliet as part of a team of (sort of) sentai fighters who resist the Montagues who killed all the Capulets. It's fun for the English major geek in me, since they add in other Shakespere characters, like Hermione from A Winter's Tale (Romeo's fiancee), Shylock from The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, and so on.

No US version has been announced, but we're keeping our fingers crossed. Wired recently reported on a British publisher who're releasing a manga Hamlet. Is the Bard becoming an otaku icon? I can't wait for a giant mecha version of Measure for Measure. 

Movie: Last Life in the Universe

I just finished watching Last Life in the Universe, a 2003 film directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and starring Tadanobu Asano (of Ichi the Killer fame). OK, I admit. It was late at night, and I fell asleep for a few minutes in the middle. But I actually really liked the film. Here are a few reasons why:

- It's a neat collaborative effort by Ratanaruang, Asano, Christopher Doyle, and Takashi Miike (who directed Ichi the Killer). The four often ran into each other in the film festival circuit, and talked about doing a movie together frequently. Finally, they dug up an old script that Ratanaruang had written years ago, modified it, and the end result is Last Life. It wasn't meant to be a blockbuster—it was just four super-talented friends who wanted to work together.

- There are some phenomenal scenes of the most mundane objects. Stacks of Japanese dictionaries. A clutter of bottles. Shoes. Keys. Two dead bodies amidst a tatami mat floor. They're shot so beautifully that you're like, wow. Cool. It's artsy without being too pretentious.

- The sound F/X. Music or silence or suicide attempts are always interrupted by the ringing of a bell—either the door, or the phone, or the door, or the phone.

- The girl is pretty.

- You learn a lot of Thai and Japanese phrases.

- It plays non-offensively on some cultural stereotypes, like the Japanese man who wants to commit suicide and the Thai girl who works in the sex and entertainment industry.

 

Movie: Linda, Linda, Linda

In 1987, a rock band called The Blue Hearts recorded a song called Linda, Linda. I don't think there are that many Japanese people who don't know this song. It's been featured in video games, TV dramas, hundreds of karaoke rooms across the country, and, most recently, in a 2005 movie about an all-girls high school rock band called Linda, Linda, Linda.

I saw this movie this past spring, which is when it was released in the US. It combines high school drama, multiculturalism (the lead singer is a Korean foreign exchange student, played by popular Korean actress Bae Doona), and relentless work ethic as the 4 bandmates prepare for a performance at the annual school festival.

Most of the music from this cool film was composed by James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins.

This video is an excerpt from the movie.