Tag: Jonathan Clements

April 18, 2021 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. Copper is an unremarkable little boy, short in stature, high in grades, with a family in genteel poverty after the death of his father has caused a little bit of downsizing to the lower middle class. But he has a vivid imagination and a kind heart (unless you are one of the […]

April 6, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Long overdue for inclusion in the BFI’s Film Classics series, Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies finally gets the critical treatment, courtesy of Alex Dudok de Wit. In 100 closely argued pages, he takes the reader through the film’s genesis at Studio Ghibli, the peculiarities of its director, its major themes and […]

March 28, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. The accident-prone Masayoshi Yamazaki always seems to be able to fail upwards, starting with the moment in 1991 when the twenty-year-old musician showed up to the wrong audition. Not realising it was not the same company as Kitty Records, he took his guitar along to an open call for Kitty Films, marching […]

March 19, 2021 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. Almost everything that is written about fiction is either reception (what the reader thought of the book) or production (an occasional making-of about the author at work). David Karashima’s book Who We’re Reading When We’re Reading Murakami is dedicated to areas that hardly anybody ever talks about – the way that the […]

March 14, 2021 · 3 comments

It was the day of the big university oral examination, and the unnamed student was understandably flustered when the phone rang. When she picked up, there was a deep, sonorous voice at the other end, a woman she had never met but who still somehow sounded familiar. She introduced herself as Amy Howard Wilson, the […]