Taiyo Matsumoto's original five volume manga Ping Pong was one of the most surprising and gripping experiences I've had this year. But a huge reason for that is the artwork: he packs more kinetic energy into a single drawing of a shoe skidding across a floor than any real shoe has ever had. So it was with some trepidation that I saw posters for this adaptation going up in stores around Japan. Fumihiko Masuri is a first time director (not that you'd know it), with a background in computer effects. He seems to have directed this mainly because he's a really big fan of the manga too. On the film's website, they've placed images from the manga next to photographs of the actors in the film, so you can see how obsessive compulsive they were in matching faces. Not only faces, but movements, playing styles, and shot composition is all straight from the book, as if they'd used the manga in lieu of storyboards. Even the occasional surreal touch; a boy growing butterfly wings, a dragonfly landing on the net, is right out of the page onto the screen. --
Midnight Eye review; subtitled movie in 12 parts:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12
posted by filthy light thief
on May 14, 2012 -
22 comments
Gauche the Cellist [Google video, 63 minutes] is based on a story [Japanese; English translation #1, #2] by Kenji Miyazawa, one of the most-loved poet/storytellers in Japan (Miyazaki and Takahata love his works, and have been influenced by him). The movie was made as an independent project by a Japanese animation studio, OH Production (wiki), and took 6 years to complete. It is rather difficult to make a Kenji story into a movie because there are many Japanese just waiting to rip you apart if you screw up, but Gauche has been highly acclaimed, and is considered one of the best Miyazawa movies (IMDb). The story is about a cellist, Gauche, who becomes a better cellist by interacting with animals who visit his home every night. *
posted by filthy light thief
on Oct 8, 2011 -
8 comments
Kamikuishiki was a village in the
Yamanashi Prefecture in Japan that gained unwanted international attention in 1995 as a key location for
Aum Shinrikyo, the religious cult behind a number of acts of violence, including the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. To change the nature of attention given to the picturesque village, a new attraction was built on the former site of the cult complex:
Gulliver's Kingdom,
a mixed up theme park with a Scandinavian town, a petting zoo, a French puppet theater to tell the story of Gulliver, and a
45 meter version of Gulliver himself, pinned to the ground. The park was opened in 1997, but Niigata Chuo Bank was facing
serious problems two years later, collapsing "under the weight of nonperforming loans." The theme park's owners were the largest borrowers from the bank, and
the park closed in 2001. The park was
finally purchased in 2002 in the 3rd auction attempt. In 2006,
Kamikuishiki disappeared, divided and the parts merged into neighboring municipalities. The next year,
Gulliver's Kingdom was demolished, leaving behind
photos (
new and old), and
memories.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 6, 2011 -
4 comments
September 13, 2010 marks
the 25th anniversary of the
original Japanese release of Super Mario Bros, featuring the return of
everyone's favorite sailor,
Popeye. That's not right, he's the
Italian carpenter, Mario. Wait, now
he's a plumber with a brother (named
Luigi Mario), and they're not normal, they're super! And they're fighting to save
Princess Peach Toadstool from
an angry ox king, who became the stubborn but cute turtle Bowser.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 13, 2010 -
58 comments
Less than a year after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States detonated
the fourth and fifth nuclear weapons under the name
Operation Crossroads in July 1946. Beyond testing the capabilities of nuclear bombs,
the Navy said it wanted the Bikini tests treated like "the story of the year, maybe of the decade, and possibly of a lifetime." Only two of the three bombs were detonated, and the project was shut down over the next months. To celebrate the efforts of Operation Crossroads,
a cake in the shape of a mushroom cloud was featured at a publicized event on November 5, 1946. In response to this display, Reverend Arthur Powell Davies, the minister of the Unitarian All Souls Church in Washington, D.C.,
gave a sermon on the "utterly loathsome picture" and the message it sent to other nations. That sermon
set off a flurry of replies and reactions, that extended around the world, including a connection formed between
Reverend Davies' All Souls Unitarian Church and school children in Hiroshima.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 8, 2010 -
62 comments
"In Japan, animation is not seen as the exclusive realm of children's and family films, but is often used for adult, science fiction and action stories, where it allows a kind of freedom impossible in real life. Some Hollywood films strain so desperately against the constraints of the possible that you wish they'd just caved in and gone with animation." --
Roger Ebert on anime, with this excerpt being related to
Tokyo Godfathers. Ebert has been a fan of anime for a while, especially the works of
Hayao Miyazaki. Ebert has reviewed 6 of the 18
Studio Ghibli films released to date, and
even interviewed Miyazaki with a bit of fanboy glee.
More reviews and videos inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 30, 2010 -
92 comments
Telephoneme: Even if your Alphabet Conspiracy succeeds and you destroy the books, machines have no minds of their own. They are easily confused by different voices and different accents. It is the brain of man that tells them what to do.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 20, 2010 -
10 comments
Seba Jun, aka
Nujabes, was a quiet and rather reclusive Japanese hip-hop DJ/producer/label head, as far as hip-hop personalities go. He didn't do many interviews, and his
two albums and
15 or so vinyl singles which were released on his own
Hydeout Productions label, all of which were only released in Japan. Regardless of the limited push, he gained renown world-wide for his relaxed, jazzy hip-hop, due in part to his music being featured on the anime series
Samurai Champloo. The musician's life was
cut short in late February, following a car accident. He was 36 years old.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 3, 2010 -
27 comments
Kōfuku-no-Kagaku (幸福の科学), also called Happy Science, is a relatively new religious and spiritual movement, founded in Japan in October 1986. The organization is gaining ground world-wide, with the international headquarter office in central Tokyo, 6 local temples located in London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seoul and Taiwan, and an additional 37 local offices around the world. The group's leader, Master Ryuho Okawa, has is not limiting the scope of the movement to politics, and in May 2009 the
Happiness Realization Party was formed, with
over 300 HRP candidates running for the coming general election. To provide background on the religion and political movement, here is
a little investigation of Happy Science by MeFi's own
shii [via
mefi projects]
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 28, 2009 -
32 comments
The
Graduate University for Advanced Studies, casually referred to as
Sōkendai (a contraction of Sōgō kenkyū daigakuin daigaku), was founded in 1988 as the 96th
national university in Japan. Amongst other things, it is home to the
Soken Taxa Web Server which in turn hosts
the first online Japanese Ant Color Image Database that currently lists 273 species of ant, the
Illustrated Guide of Marine Mammals and the
Marine Mammals Stranding DataBase, the
Mammalian Crania Photographic Archive that currently includes 704 specimens, the
Morning Glories Database that covers the many mutants of
Ipomoea nil, closely related species and interspecific hybrids, the
Makino Herbarium Database, which is named after the pioneering Japanese botanist,
Tomitaro Makino, and the
Japanese Bees Image Database.
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 20, 2009 -
5 comments
