Tag: books

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 […]

February 24, 2023 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. Kenichi is a gamer suffering from that common modern malaise, a frustration with games that make life too easy for him. He’s just spent three years playing a prolonged online fantasy saga, secure in the knowledge that he can just fling money at loot boxes and power-ups if it ever gets too […]