[contextly_auto_sidebar id="xAHGZG01AXb2m1exlG5WmI0Swyjbu2cn"] BESIDES Luddites and hipsters? (I'm borrowing here from the stage patter of the young folk duo the Milk Carton Kids.) Turns out, Japanese people still buy CDs. A country famous for loving technology and novelty are moving into the future by acting like it's the past. From a New York Times story: Japan may be one of the world’s … [Read more...]
Great Animated Short
TRAGEDIES like the Japanese-American internment during World War II can be hard to render artistically. So I'm especially surprised that a college student turned out a short animated film as powerful and understated as Yamashita. I met the student, Hayley Foster, recently to discuss her work as an animator and her ambitions to do more projects that look at issues of social justice. (She also spoke … [Read more...]
Ozu’s Films vs. Adrian Tomine
It's one of the best and most natural aesthetic marriages imaginable: The nuanced, meditative Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu and the nuanced, meditative comics Adrian Tomine, best known for the Optic Nerve series.Tomine has designed some covers for Ozu's lesser known films, The Only Son and There Was a Father. Here is more info on the films, which the Criterion Collection will release next week. … [Read more...]