ryuganji: film news from japan

Don’t pay any attention to the Japan Academy Awards, whose selection process seems to have been modelled on an LDP leadership race: 2007’s best Japanese film “Mogari no Mori” (The Mourning Forest) will be released on DVD with English subtitles on April 25th, and Amazon Japan have it available for preorder now. Extras include a booklet and a making-of doco.

Regardless of the domestic snubbing it received from cinema owners prior to nabbing the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, this contemplative and emotionally powerful work deserves greater recognition in particular for NHK cameraman Nakano Hideyo’s deceptively understated cinematography and a startlingly convincing performance from Kawase’s friend Uda Shigeki, a non-thesp who by rights should have swept the best actor awards for his portrayal of a widower with senile dementia.

The same goes for Ono Machiko as his put-upon rookie caregiver, who also plays a feisty and engaging supporting role as a junior reporter in Harada Masato’s forthcoming “Climber’s High” (and I’m not just saying that because I sat across from her at a preview late last year). It’s the kind of old-school Hollywood-style drama that Harada is most at home with (he really wears his influences on his sleeve here, even going so far as having Tsutsumi Shinichi’s principled journo reference “Ace in the Hole”) and is worth watching for the exhilarating newsroom scenes alone. He even shot the epilogue in New Zealand, which he took a liking to after spending two months there acting in “The Last Samurai”. Keep an eye out for this one when it opens in July.

My other favorites from last year were “Paprika” (who needs hallucinogenics when you’ve got Kon Satoshi?), “Tenten” (Miki Satoshi’s most well-balanced effort so far and a big step closer to the classic I know he’s got in him), and “Sad Vacation” (I can’t for the life of me figure out why Ishida Eri went ignored for Best Supporting Actress honours), as well as “The Bogus Detective” (Nise Keiji) with a surprisingly endearing Katsu Shintaro from Tokyo FILMeX’s Yamamoto Satsuo retrospective. This year I’ll be making a conscious effort to see more of the major studios’ multiplex offerings, but it’s not easy to be objective and fair-minded when you’re paying for the privilege.