Tag: books

May 23, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. “The history of manga,” notes the back-cover blurb for Matthieu Pinon and Laurent Lefebvre’s new book, “is inextricably tied to Japan’s social, economic, political, and cultural evolution.” But the authors neglect to mention the real selling point, which is that their History of Modern Manga actually bothers to point out where those […]

May 20, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Tom Mes’s new book begins in 2022 with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car winning an Oscar, followed by a flood of gushing articles about how it was going to “change Japanese cinema.” He notes that this relatively minor art-house film was never going to rock any boats in its native Japan, and […]

May 14, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. The sub-versus-dub debate was first truly ignited in August 1960, when Bosley Crowther in the New York Times issued a broadside against having to read a film. “It is foolish,” he wrote, “to hobble expression with an old device that was mainly contrived as a convenience to save the cost of dubbing […]

March 18, 2023 · 1 comment

By Shelley Pallis. He was the greatest swordsman in the world. He advanced through every stage, mastered every trick, and learned every technique. He reached the highest possible levels of achievement, able to defeat elite soldiers without a sword, since he was just as handy with a bit of wood. He achieved a Zen nirvana […]

February 26, 2023 · 2 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Producer Toshio Suzuki was entertainingly underwhelmed when he was approached by agents for the pop stars Chage and Aska, who asked if Studio Ghibli would do the video for their new single “On Your Mark.” Fact is, he said, he’d never heard of them. Later versions of the story have tried to […]