Tag: books

February 13, 2019 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Reading the contributor biographies for the collection Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime-Fighting Robots to Duelling Pocket Monsters, one gets the sense that this book was put together by a bunch of young, ardent scholars determined to have some fun. I see a lot of PhD candidacies and associate […]

January 20, 2019 · 2 comments

By Jasper Sharp. People often assume that the animated muse in Satoshi Kon’s celebration of Japan’s cinematic heritage, Millennium Actress (2001), was based on Setsuko Hara, the film star who anchored Yasujiro Ozu classics like Tokyo Story, and who retired from the screen for fifty years of self-imposed exile. There is, however, at least one […]

January 14, 2019 · 0 comments

By Motoko Tamamuro. Yasuko Shibaguchi’s book, The Colour Artisan of Animation, is one of the (currently) untranslated gems of anime history, an account of the career of Michiyo Yasuda (1939-2016), described by Hayao Miyazaki as “three times sharper and more particular than me,” and a mainstay of Studio Ghibli. This biography throws light on the […]

January 11, 2019 · 0 comments

By Jasper Sharp. Home viewers have become the most substantial market for the Hollywood majors. At the turn of the millennium, revenues from VHS sales and rentals amounted to three times those of box-office receipts, while Stephen Sommers’ CG-slathered The Mummy (1999) earned more for Universal in the US on its first week on home […]

December 30, 2018 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Concert bands were a special place. The ratio of girls to boys was usually around nine to one, but strictly speaking, it was often even more lopsided than that. So it was not uncommon for girls to end up idolizing someone of their own gender. The objects of such infatuated gazes – […]