‘Kanasando': Heartwarming homecoming inspires a change of heart
Still, seeing the 51-year-old Tadanobu Asano as the dementia-afflicted dad of an adult daughter in Toshiyuki Teruya's heartwarming 'Kanasando' was a shock. Asano rose to international stardom about two decades ago playing volatile, dangerous characters, a prime example being his psychotic gangster in Takashi Miike's 2001 horror 'Ichi the Killer.' His scheming samurai warlord in the hit FX series 'Shogun' also fits this mold.
In his latest feature, Teruya (whose stage name as a comedian and actor is Gori), is only acknowledging the sad fact that dementia can strike even vital types like Asano's character. A former construction company boss living on Iejima island in Okinawa Prefecture, Satoru (Asano) was once a heavy drinker, serial philanderer and possessor of a full head of hair. But when his estranged daughter Mika (Ruka Matsuda) sees him after a gap of seven years, he is in a hospital bed on palliative care and mistakes her for his now dead wife Machiko (Keiko Horiuchi).
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Japan Times
23-07-2025
- Japan Times
‘Rainy Blue': Behind-the-scenes drama tarnishes an intriguing debut
'You never know when it will end,' says 17-year-old Aoi (Asuna Yanagi), as she explains to her homeroom teacher why she's been skipping class to stream classic films at home. 'What's going to end?' her interlocutor asks. 'The streaming period,' she replies, 'and my life.' There's a similar sense of urgency driving 'Rainy Blue' — which, in addition to starring in, Yanagi also wrote, edited and directed. In the production notes, she recalls her determination to make a movie while she was still a teenager. The end result is a rare thing: an adolescent coming-of-age tale whose creator, a high-school student at the time it was filmed, is part of the cohort being depicted. This semi-autobiographical story of cinematic obsession was partially shot at Yanagi's own school in Kumamoto Prefecture. It's also the alma mater of Chishu Ryu, the famed actor best remembered for his work with Yasujiro Ozu. Aoi first encounters the pair's films unwillingly, when she gets ordered to attend a screening at a local cinema as punishment for a transgression at school. Pretty soon she's hooked, becoming a regular moviegoer and the most avid (and only) member of her school's film club. While rummaging through the club room, she finds a battered script titled 'Rainy Blue,' which inspires her to start writing a screenplay of her own. It's certainly more appealing than having to think about life after graduation — a topic that's repeatedly foisted on her by the aforementioned teacher (Ami Chong) and her father (Kenzo Ryu, Chishu's grandson). Cinema offers an escape, as does Aoi's overactive imagination. She starts stalking her classmates in search of creative inspiration, gets a job cleaning the temple where Chishu Ryu was born and befriends an improbably mature student who dresses like he just stepped out of an Ozu film (played by indie filmmaker Hirobumi Watanabe). As Aoi totes her laptop to an assortment of scenic locations, often dressed as a fortune teller (don't ask), it becomes increasingly clear that what we're watching shouldn't be taken at face value. However, it's hard to say how much of it is really taking place inside her head, or how it overlaps with the mysterious script she found at school. The film's (admittedly lovely) denouement leaves a lot of threads dangling. 'Rainy Blue' is an enjoyably scrappy debut, but its release has been overshadowed by a public spat between the film's production committee and some key staff, including Watanabe (who also played a significant behind-the-scenes role). The details of the dispute — which involves claims of copyright infringement and defamation on one side, and allegations of harassment against Watanabe on the other — are too complicated to go into here, though they leave a sour aftertaste. A sequence in which Watanabe plays a cantankerous movie director lands differently, knowing that Yanagi has accused her collaborator of being a bully. The revelation that Watanabe had edited a much longer, 150-minute cut of 'Rainy Blue,' which he claims was crudely reassembled for the theatrical release, also left me wondering about what got chopped. Maybe there's a version of the film that unites its cinephile fantasies, comic digressions and adolescent yearning into a more cohesive whole. The puckish energy and heartfelt emotions of 'Rainy Blue' only get it so far. I just hope that Yanagi's evident love of movies has survived her experience of making one.
The Mainichi
13-07-2025
- The Mainichi
Edging Toward Japan: Mystified by the success of 'Shogun'
One of the international hit series of last year was the reboot of "Shogun", which garnered widespread praise as well as a record-breaking number of Emmys. I didn't watch the series at the time it came out, but I observed various scholarly friends nodding approvingly that the new version presented the story more from a Japanese perspective, and from a woman's perspective, than the original 1980 version starring the late Richard Chamberlain. When all the fuss had died down, and after I had briefly taken out a Disney Plus subscription to watch something else, I thought I might as well give "Shogun" a go. I found it pretty underwhelming - I watched about three episodes and then forgot to watch the rest. Then came back to it weeks later and watched another couple of episodes and then wandered away from it again. It's not terrible, it's OKish. But it's very hard to understand how a series like this - which can be best described as "hokum" - gained such glowing praise and enthusiasm. As far as I can work out the series seems to have ticked various boxes, while also having a fair share of action and sexiness, and that seems to guarantee success in the US. The fact that it is a ridiculous historical mash up of the true story of William Adams, the first Englishman to travel to Japan, doesn't seem to worry any of the people who get very agitated about so-called "orientalism" in other regards. I find it all very odd. I'm just about old enough to remember the original TV series of "Shogun" and although it didn't have a transformational impact on me, as a child in England it did pique a certain interest in Japan. Going back 45 years, most people in Britain and America knew virtually nothing about Japan. Visitors to Japan at the time were very few and only a tiny number of Japan specialists had any understanding of medieval Japanese history. At such a time, it was entirely understandable that a popular historical novel like "Shogun" by James Clavell should play fast and loose with Japanese history, freely transforming real life historical personalities like Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu into fictional characters and inventing various intrigues and adventures around them. You only have to pick up a guide book to Japan in the late 1970s to marvel about the general ignorance about Japan at the time. I recall once seeing a shoestring budget guide to Japan from the 1970s written by someone who had also done the guides to various other countries in the world, spoke no Japanese and who did their best to create a hand-drawn map of downtown Osaka, a city of 9 million people. In a world in which knowledge of Japan was a vast blank canvas, Clavell's "Shogun" strolled in and filled the empty void with colour and spectacle with a smattering of historical facts, creating worldwide interest where none had existed before. But things move on. Today the guide books to Japan are incredibly detailed and worked on by multiple local specialists. Visitors arrive in their millions and Japanese pop culture boasts fans in the tens and hundreds of millions throughout the world. You can watch lively documentary series on the 16th century warlords Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu on Netflix presided over by a slew of International and home grown academics. Yet somehow or other the complete historical bunkum of "Shogun" trundles along just as it always did, occupying a weird alternative universe that might imagine completely different historical characters and events at the time of the American Revolution or American Civil War. I'm not some great stickler for historical accuracy: I realize that you can play around with things for dramatic effect. But at a certain point it all becomes absurd and ridiculous. I must confess (and I am aware that I might be in a minority) that Ridley Scott's much praised sword-and-sandle "Gladiator" - a mash up of characters from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD - falls into the "ridiculously unwatchable" category for me and so, it seems, does the latest "Shogun". While intermittently watching episodes of the new "Shogun", I happened to be also reading with one of my children "Gulliver's Travels" - that fantastical tale of an English sailor washed up in various mysterious strange lands of giants, little people, a floating occurred to me how similar "Shogun" was in some regards to the plot to "Gulliver's Travels". An English sailor, having arrived in a strange, distant land is taken to court, gives various accounts of his own country and their technologies, then becomes embroiled in factional rivalries. "Gulliver's Travels" is of course a knowing, tongue-in-cheek satire poking fun amongst other things at outlandish stories of adventures in distant lands. I began to imagine the great mirth Jonathan Swift would have derived from watching the series of "Shogun" so celebrated at the Emmys. I can imagine sitting down with him to watch it and him turning to me and saying, "Yes, it's great, dramatic and realistic in every way. They just need to add the yahoos and the talking horses to make the whole thing complete." @DamianFlanagan (This is Part 65 of a series) In this column, Damian Flanagan, a researcher in Japanese literature, ponders about Japanese culture as he travels back and forth between Japan and Britain. Profile: Damian Flanagan is an author and critic born in Britain in 1969. He studied in Tokyo and Kyoto between 1989 and 1990 while a student at Cambridge University. He was engaged in research activities at Kobe University from 1993 through 1999. After taking the master's and doctoral courses in Japanese literature, he earned a Ph.D. in 2000. He is now based in both Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, and Manchester. He is the author of "Natsume Soseki: Superstar of World Literature" (Sekai Bungaku no superstar Natsume Soseki).
Japan Today
28-06-2025
- Japan Today
With ‘F1,' rising star Damson Idris enters Hollywood's fast lane
By LINDSEY BAHR Damson Idris was trying to tune out the noise, but that's a little difficult at a Formula One race. The British-Nigerian actor was in the zone, in character, filming the high-octane summer movie 'F1' with Brad Pitt at some of the world's most famous racetracks. While Idris' profile has been rising in recent years, after six seasons starring in the FX series 'Snowfall,' there's nothing like being next to globally famous Formula One drivers and a Hollywood megastar to put things into perspective. He was pretty sure he was going to coast under the radar. Then he started hearing not just his own name from fans in the crowd but 'Franklin Saint,' too, the name of his drug kingpin character on 'Snowfall.' 'It's funny, because I see myself as a young actor who nobody knows,' Idris, 33, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. Anonymity may already be a thing of the past for Idris, though. In May, he made a splash at the Met Gala, arriving in a full racing suit (branded with 'F1's' fictional team name APXGP) and a Swarovski crystal-studded helmet that he and two ushers removed to reveal a second look underneath. The boldness and theatricality of the stunt made it one of the most talked about moments at an event where everyone is trying to stand out. And things are poised to rev up even more when 'F1' which opened globally on Friday. Speeding into theaters on a wave of great reviews and the promise of a 'Top Gun: Maverick'-style spectacle, filmmaker Joseph Kosinski is pretty sure Idris is going to start hearing people shout 'Joshua Pearce' at him too. That's the name of Idris' character, the hotshot rookie driver of the worst team on the circuit who's desperate to prove himself and hang on to one of the coveted seats. 'I'm very excited for people to see him own this character and go toe to toe with a giant movie star,' Kosinski said. 'I think he can do anything. He's just super talented, and I feel like I'm lucky to see him at the beginning of what's going to be a pretty stratospheric launch.' Idris tries to seek out projects that challenge him and characters who are as different as possible — from each other and, especially, from him. Joshua Pearce fit the bill in a moment when he was preparing to say goodbye to Franklin Saint. After he read the 'F1' script, the character even infiltrated his dreams. 'I said to myself, 'Man, no one's going to be able to play this part like I will.' I remember writing Joe (Kosinski) a letter and telling him that,' Idris said. 'When we finally jumped in the cars for the first time, I was hooked. I was like, 'Yep this movie's mine. It's no one else's and I can't wait to give my all to it.' And that's exactly what I did.' 'F1' wouldn't just require playing a part. Both he and Pitt had to learn how to drive the cars at speeds of up to 180 mph. It took months of training behind the wheel, the supervision of stunt drivers Luciano Bacheta and Craig Dolby, as well as physical training to adapt to the G-forces they'd feel in the car. When it came time to film, which they did with special cameras attached to the cars, sometimes they were driving during breaks at real races with hundreds of thousands of spectators around. Every time you see Idris' or Pitt's face in the car, Kosinski said, they're really driving that car. 'It's so insane. It's actually quicker in real life and it looks really fast on the screen,' Idris said. 'In a split second, a decision could be really detrimental. But I couldn't imagine doing this movie any other way. If it was on green screen, you'd be able to tell.' There's a bit of art-meets-life symmetry wrapped up in 'F1,' in which an up-and-comer teams up with a veteran. In the film, it's a reluctant pairing of two alphas. The mentorship is fraught, the lessons are hard-earned and the competition is not exactly friendly. Unlike Joshua, Idris is more than willing to get advice from those around him, whether it's producers like Jerry Bruckheimer and Jeremy Kleiner, his director Kosinski, or his co-stars, from Pitt to Javier Bardem. 'I speak to them every day and I ask for advice,' he said. 'The main focus is on stories, playing characters that I can be proud of and range. That's everything I'm setting out to do in this career.' Acting was not always the goal for Idris. Like many kids in South London, he once dreamed of being a soccer player. Sure, the idea of being a renowned athlete held some appeal, but he also loved the sheer discipline it required. Then, at age 18, he realized he'd never be as great as Lionel Messi. 'When I see him one day, hopefully I'm blessed to meet him, I'm going to tell him that he's the reason why I quit football, because he was so good,' he said. 'Wonderfully, acting is a subjective industry, so I can at least cheat my way into working with Brad Pitt.' Cheating is, of course, a bit of cheeky hyperbole for an actor who studied drama at university and continued training at London's Identity School of Acting afterward. Since he made his stage debut in Ade Solanke's 'Pandora's Box' over 10 years ago, Idris has been hitting the pavement like the rest of his peers. And he's just getting started. Idris recently wrapped filming the Tomi Adeyemi adaptation 'Children of Bone and Blood' in Cape Town, South Africa. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, Idris plays Prince Inan in the African fantasy that co-stars Viola Davis, Cynthia Erivo, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Idris' idol and real-life mentor Idris Elba. 'It's not just a namesake,' Idris said. 'I feel so blessed to be able to say that I'm like his little brother and I can call him and get advice.' Next up, Idris will prepare to portray Miles Davis in Bill Pohlad's 'Miles & Juliette,' about the jazz legend's romance with French singer Juliette Gréco. He's also founded a fine jewelry line, named Didris, inspired by his mother, and is getting into producing as well — his production company has a deal with FX Networks and wants to make opportunities for emerging talents. And like his character in 'F1,' Idris is learning to block out the noise. He knows that a film career is a long journey and there will be ups and downs. 'It's a huge moment, but I'm fortunate to have so many people in my life that keep me grounded,' Idris said. 'I've soaked in information from people I admire who say the same thing during these higher moments: Pinch yourself, stay grounded, remember where you came from. 'That's exactly how I'm walking through this portal and into these next couple of years. I'm excited, I'm humbled, I am blessed and I can't wait to see what the future brings.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
