Hoga News

Ken Watanabe's "Memories of Tomorrow" shown in the US

Oops, this news did not make it in time for NY showing, but anyway, I just picked up a Japanese community paper with Ken Watanabe's interview regarding his film "Memories of Tomorrow".  Ken plays the main role, a middle-aged businessman suffers from Alzeheimer desease, but more importantly, he is the executive producer and the man who actually started the project.

See page 9 of U.S. Frontline below:
U.S. Frontline May 4th week issue

The film was in NY from May 18-24, then will be shown in Los Angeles (Laemmle's Music Hall 3) June 8-14, then in San Francisco (location not decided) sometime in July.

Martin Scorsese's "Silence" - who would play the Japanese role?

As many of you may know, Martin Scorsese just announced in Cannes that he will work on a new film "Silence" based on a novel of Japanese author Shusaku Endo.  The story is about a priest who was persecuted in 17th century Japan, where Christianity was banned strictly.

There is an important Japanese peasant role in this film, and there seem to have been much discussion about who would play this role.  I have some opinion about it, but it is TOO personal (as it relates to some of my favorite actors), so I posted my opinion on my PRIVATE blog.  My first choice would be Teruyuki Kagawa.  See below for more details.

Michi's random private blog

By the way, congrats to Naomi Kawase, who won the Grand Prix at Cannes!  I haven't seen her film - and usually Cannes quality film is not totally comprehensive to a layman like me - but anyway, I am particularly happy that a Japanese female director was honored in such a prestigeous stage!!

"Paprika" and "Hula Girls" in the US

So I changed the gear and now starting my "slow personal blog" mode.  Sorry for not being able to have lots of update like before, but I will just go with the flow for now and write whenever/whatever I feel like.

Last week on SF Chronicle, there was a huge line-up of summer movies, and found out that two of my recent favorite Japanese flims, "Paprika" and "Hula Girls" will be shown in the U.S.  I don't remember exactly the opening date - maybe Paprika in June and Hula in July or something like that. 

I wrote a lot of thing about Hula Girls on "Hoga Central" main site, so please refer to it.  As for "Paprika", I watched it recently and am planning to write an article with an interview with Director Kon, so please stay tuned.  "Paprika" remided me a little bit of "Patlabor", one of the very few Japanese animation film that I like - with a unique mix of its sharp/cool graphics, mature humor with a bit of satire, clever use of modern technology in the story, and a huge robot destroying the town (the regular kind of fun that you expect from animation).  Beautiful, beautiful graphics!!

Good thing lately is that once it has a US distribution, I can rent it from Netflix eventually, even though I miss the theatrical showing.  Looking forward to it!!

Thank you for all your comments, and here is my thought

Hi, everyone.  I was so surprised to see SO MANY people left comments to my previous entry about the fate of this blog, and I would like to thank you all for the warm considerations.  Your comments made me re-think.

In fact, the biggest burden on me was to look for the news everyday and write about it everyday.  So I guess I will just stop that part, until I have that kind of time and energy again.  I definitely will keep this blog and the main site (Hoga Central) intact.  I will continue to write English articles on Keio newsletter from time to time.  Sometimes I get interview materials from my friend Izumi Hasegawa, and I may write articles with them from time to time.  I will post links to those materials on this blog, so at least I can keep it maintained from time to time.

And when I feel like writing, I will just come back here and write.  This blog won't be a news site anymore, but will go back to rather regular "blog" style.  In the meantime, Ryuganji (as you can see on the right pillar no this blog) has a great Japanese movie blog, and Jason Gray also writes great insight about Japanese films.  Please check them out! 

And I hope someday I will have that time and energy to re-start "Hoga News"...

Thank you again for all the encouragement!!  Arigato gozaimasu!!