Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 9:30PM Since the last posting of this kind we've had six new submissions announced for Oscar's International Feature Film race, bringing the total to 25 thus far. We're tracking both here on the Oscar charts and at letterboxd. (We usually end up around 90 titles but we suspect there will be fewer titles this year due to the pandemic and the resulting cinema chaos.)
Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 7:37PM 
Ryuichi Sakamoto is a master of music that needs no introduction. Thanks to his work with the Yellow Magic Orchestra and solo experiments, Sakamoto has helped shape the evolution of electronic music like few other artists in the past decades. His avant-garde sound is difficult to confuse with that of other composers, but he's not an artist predisposed to repetition or stagnation. Since the 1970s, has never stopped composing, never stopped challenging himself, or dazzling his audience with music whose beauty transcends comprehension. Sakamoto's also an avid cinephile and had been writing film scores since the 80s when Nagisa Oshima cast him in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Across the years, he's built an eclectic filmography that's rich in artistic brio and lacking in mediocre efforts. He even won an Oscar.
Because of such excellence, the Criterion Channel has curated a selection of 10 Ryuichi Sakamoto scored pictures. Here are some highlights…
Saturday, July 11, 2020 at 11:00PM We've been celebrating 1957 for a couple of weeks. Here's one more from Cláudio Alves
In 1957, Miyoshi Umeki became the first and only Asian woman to win an acting Oscar. However, the Best Supporting Actress champion wasn't the only Japanese performer to score an Academy Award nomination that year. Sessue Hayakawa, who played the ruthless Colonel Saito in the Best Picture winner The Bridge on the River Kwai, became the first male actor of Japanese descent to be nominated by the Academy. Unlike Umeki, who had less than a decade of experience in show business by the time she achieved Oscar glory, Hayakawa had a long history with Tinsel Town. Many decades before his nomination, when the American film industry was creating itself and Silent Cinema was entertainment for the masses, Sessue Hayakawa had been one of the first sex symbols…
Thursday, June 18, 2020 at 11:00AM 
100 years ago in 1920, Setsuko Hara was born in the city of Yokohama, Japan. Thanks to the powers of nepotism and the influence of her brother-in-law, she got a job at the Nikkatsu Studios at the age of 15. In the next few years, she rose to prominence. By the 1940s, Hara became somewhat of a symbol of new Japanese womanhood. Curiously enough, that's not how she's best remembered today, in part thanks to her most famous directors being ones that cast her in roles typifying the conservative values of a traditional Japan. Despite multiple collaborations with such legendary filmmakers as the master of melodrama Mikio Naruse and Japan's superstar director Akira Kurosawa, it's her work in the films of Yasujiro Ozu that now most define her legacy…
Sunday, June 14, 2020 at 10:11AM 
At times Martin Scorsese's filmography looks like a string of projects that took decades before they saw the light of day. These monstrous productions include films like the bloody epic Gangs of New York and last year's mob drama The Irishman, and the 17th century set religious historical drama Silence (2016).
Silence is near the top of my own list of favourite Scorsese films. There are many reasons for that, not least of which is the fact the original novel, by Japanese author Shûsaku Endô, is one of my favorite books and it focuses on Portuguese characters. Consider also the empathy Scorsese shows towards every character, along with the willingness to pursuit complex ideas and murky morality when a straightforward approach would have been easier to follow. These qualities are especially evident in Silence (2016) because we can compare Scorsese's adaptation to that of another world-renowned director…