Category Archives: Uncategorized

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about the ignominious end of the petition drive to recall Aichi Prefecture Governor Hideaki Omura. Though I purposely played down the ideological forces at play in this drama, it mostly came down to what one … Continue reading →

First-time director Shannon Murphy is obviously the type of storyteller who, when confronted with a decision that proffers two extremes, will go with the cheekier option. Though this tale of a teenage cancer patient who has mostly given up on … Continue reading →

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about the government’s extension of a tax break for home buyers. Due to end-of-year deadlines, the column was written at the end of 2020, about two weeks before the current state of emergency was declared, … Continue reading →

This year, the Asian Film Awards were presented at BIFF for the first time. Of course, the organizers hoped to have a real ceremony with a real audience, so transferring the awards to Asia’s biggest film festival made sense, since … Continue reading →

I haven’t seen that many Vietnamese movies, but all the ones I’ve seen I’ve seen at BIFF, and I’m pretty sure all of them were about people of limited means, which I interpreted to represent the bulk of the population. … Continue reading →

Debut features, especially by university trained directors, are a crap shoot, since they often replicate graduation projects. That isn’t usually the case, however, in South Korea, where film students with real ambition and talent are put through the ringer, and … Continue reading →

I spent all day on Kazuo Hara’s latest epic, Minamata Mandala, which is six hours and 12 minutes, thus making it almost twice as long as his last epic, Sennan Asbestos Disaster. The two documentaries are very similar in both … Continue reading →

This is the first time in recent memory that there hasn’t been an Iranian film directed by someone I’m familiar with; or maybe I should say it’s the first time there hasn’t been an available Iranian film directed by someone … Continue reading →

Though I’m not writing for a paying media outlet this year, I was still hoping to “attend” a few press conferences. There aren’t that many except for the Opening and Closing films and the features in the Gala Section. Last … Continue reading →