Taylor made for Japan

Posted on November 21, 2010 by philipbrasor

Back so soon?

On my way up to the balcony of Studio Coast to join the other media people for the Tokyo release party of Taylor Swift’s new album, Speak Now, a fellow foreigner who I’d never met before asked my why I came. I didn’t know what answer to give but apparently he didn’t expect one.

“I’m here to see the fans,” he said.

Actually, I wanted to see Swift perform songs from the new record, which I like, but the guy had a point. I’m not sure how a nominal country singer-songwriter could become so popular in Japan. Much of Swift’s world-wide success is credited to her “crossover appeal,” and there are just as many pop and rock elements in her songs as there are country motifs. Still, judging by the fact that the vast majority of fans at the event were high school and college age girls, I would guess that Swift’s appeal is extra-musical. I read somewhere that Swift was told when she started out that in order to sell a million records she would have to personally meet a million people, and she seems to have taken that advice seriously. A year ago she was barely known in Japan, and this is at least her third trip here since February. Continue reading →

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Be my friend: Selling “The Social Network” to Japan

Posted on November 19, 2010 by philipbrasor

Sorkin & Eisenberg: One smiles, the other doesn't

When Aaron Sorkin and Jesse Eisenberg came to Japan earlier this month to attend the Tokyo International Film Festival, whose opening film was The Social Network, which Sorkin wrote and Eisenberg stars in, they hung around and did a press conference since Sony is opening the film here in January. Despite the huge press the movie has received in the U.S. and Europe and its respectable box office returns, the turnout for the press conference was light. Eisenberg is not a star in Japan, and if anyone in the media knows Sorkin’s name it’s probably because of The West Wing, which NHK broadcast some years back, but only up to the fourth season. Those with longer memories might recall A Few Good Men, but the only previous Sorkin work that came up during the p.c. was the short-lived series Sports Night, which Eisenberg praised and no one in the audience was familiar with. It was never aired here.

In terms of promotion, January is practically forever and while Japanese distibutors of foreign films prefer long lead times in order to build up a head of publicity steam they usually want the press conferences to take place as close to the opening as possible. It’s unlikely that broadcast and print media are going to sit on this material until after New Years, and if they put it out now it will only receive cursory attention. Maybe if the director, David Fincher, showed up more reporters would have shown up as well. (Sorkin said Fincher was in Sweden filming The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) After all, Fincher is tight with Brad Pitt. It would give them something to talk about.

Continue reading →

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Media Mix, Nov. 14, 2010

Posted on November 16, 2010 by philipbrasor

Here’s the link to this week’s Media Mix, which is a discussion of the Japanese government’s handling of two long-running territorial disputes, which coincidentally blew up at the same time, and the media’s general passive handling of related coverage.

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Media Mix, Nov. 7, 2010

Posted on November 7, 2010 by philipbrasor

Here’s today’s Media Mix in the Japan Times

The darker side of motherhood

In the first edition of the famous book of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, published in 1812, the story that has become known as “Snow White” had a different villain than the one we all know and hate. Snow White’s original nemesis was her biological mother. In later editions, the evil queen became the heroine’s stepmother in order to make the story less scary for children. It’s easy to assume that had the Grimms not made this change Walt Disney would have. Continue reading →

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TIFF, the interviews

Posted on November 7, 2010 by philipbrasor

The Tokyo International Film Festival ended a week ago, and the publicity department has finally posted all four of my interviews on their website. These were done specifically for the festival, which means they chose the subjects, not I. Except for Never Let Me Go I probably wouldn’t have seen any of these films had I not had to interview their directors. The other three were in the Natural TIFF section, tying in to the festival’s environmental sub-theme, which also includes the Green Carpet and a claim that “TIFF screens with green energy.” (I’m not sure what that means. Does TIFF have its own exclusive power source?)

Anyway, the links to the interviews are after the jump. Continue reading →

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Eskmo: the ghost of techno lingers

Posted on November 6, 2010 by philipbrasor

Real artists are always stuck in the lower right-hand corner

Like most concertgoers I pay little attention to opening acts, and the older and more jaded I get the more likely it is I’ll skip them altogether unless it’s someone I either know and like (rare) or don’t know but am curious about (even rarer). The latter sentiment made me truck out to Shibuya last night for no other reason than to see Eskmo, a San Francisco-based DJ who was part of Beat Records’ Twentieth anniversary showcase for Ninja Tune, which Beat distributes in Japan. I almost never go to techno and DJ shows any more unless they’re at the Red Marquee in the middle of the night at Fuji Rock, but yesterday morning I read one of Robert Christgau’s little miscellanies at the ARTicles blog site where he mentioned Eskmo, and though he didn’t commit himself one way or the other, just the fact that he went out of his way to write about Eskmo meant something. Christgau’s tastes in pop don’t always dovetail with mine, which is understandable considering how wide the field is; but since his taste in techno is necessarily narrower I usually find his picks in the genre more interesting than those of dedicated electronica heads. In any case, the name Eskmo rang a bell. I had just received an invitation to the Ninja Tune showcase and it was printed at the bottom of the lineup–opening act. Continue reading →

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The end

Posted on October 27, 2010 by philipbrasor

Seems like a good idea to start with an ending. Yesterday I signed off on my last movie reviews for the Asahi Shimbun/International Herald Tribune, for which I’d written since 1996. This, in fact, is the second time I’ve been dropped by the newspaper. The first time was April 2008. Exactly one year later they asked me to do it again–and for a higher fee. It was a good gig while it lasted, though for the past 18 months I was told to write exclusively about English-language films, and the pickings are getting slimmer by the month, owing not just to the sclerotic nature of Hollywood commercial fare but also to the fact that foreign film distributors in Japan are either going out of business or becoming more conservative in their preferences (thus the higher percentage of horror films in my output). Anyway, these are the last three. It’s probably a bit unethical to publish them here before the street date of the newspaper (Oct. 29), but who’s gonna read it? Continue reading →

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