Japanese cinema and the Best Costume Design Oscar

by Cláudio Alves

The Academy has always had a certain difficulty in recognizing excellence from films made in any language other than English. When it comes to Asian cinema, that is especially true. Parasite's recent grand victory may be a sign that times are a-changing, but there are still branches of AMPAS that remain quite closed-off and insular.

Thankfully that hasn't been the case with thee design branches. For a long time they were the only place where you could hope to find any sort of honor given to the works of masters like Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi. Japanese cinema, in particular, has found success in the Costume Design category. Overall, five pictures from Japan have been nominated for the prize and two have won. Since all those films are currently available online, most of them streaming on the Criterion Channel, it's a good time to take a look at this peculiarity of Oscar history…

Click to read more ...

National Pet Week: "Jiji" from Kiki's Delivery Service

Team Experience is celebrating pets at the movies (and in our homes) for a couple more days. Here's Cláudio Alves...

Me and Maggie

In my family, the history of our pets tends to be linked to a sense of loss. Through my early childhood, we had two dogs, a beautiful Cocker Spaniel called Gigi and an English Setter by the name of Minnie. Gigi had been my mother's dog and she, unfortunately, died while I was still very young, but Minnie was born the same year as me and we grew up together. That is until she got sick when I was nine, cancer quickly making the lively companion become lethargic and in constant pain. She was put down before the suffering continued and I was heartbroken. Seeing that, my mom, who had a lifelong distrust for cats due to some unfortunate experiences as a child, put her bad feelings aside and decided to adopt an adorable little kitten I had grown fond of in the weeks before Minnie's passing…

Click to read more ...

Toshiro Mifune @ 100: Red Beard

Our Toshiro Mifune centennial tribute has come to its final day. Here's Cláudio Alves...

Throughout his career Toshiro Mifune worked with some of the best Japanese directors ever, becoming the face of that country's cinema in the aftermath of World War II. He gave great support to Mizoguchi's leading ladies, provided emotional intensity to Naruse's deepfelt dramas, was perfect in Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion and utterly iconic in many a Hiroshi Inagaki production. Still, his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa remain the most important. From 1948 to 1965, they made 16 films together, ranging from crime thrillers to action spectacles, from melodrama to historical epics, and the great majority of them are either considered classics or should be.

While I find High and Low to be their best film and Throne of Blood to feature Mifune's greatest performance, when it came time to choose, I knew there was no other option than to write about Red Beard. Released in 1965, it was the last film the Emperor and the Wolf ever did together. It's also an absolute masterpiece that deserves much more love than it usually gets... 

Click to read more ...

But why is it called "Bleach"?

by Nathaniel R

boys and their toys... i mean, superpowers.

How often do you have random streaming adventures where you watch something you've literally never heard of? This week on Netflix I caught a new Japanese flick called Bleach (2018) though for the life of me I can't figure out what the title means. It's one of those movies that's 1000% obviously based on a manga because it throws lots of random names, superpowers, and world-building terms and rules at you and assumes you'll be able to keep up. But nowhere in the entire picture does the word "bleach" factor in. I've turned it over and over in my head and unless I blinked during a crucial subtitle the title makes no sense whatsoever.

It was a fun popcorn watch but I had to share one moment near the beginning that had me howling...

Click to read more ...

Isle of Dogs Goes Wide.

What did you see this weekend? We'll skip the charts this week but let it be known that The Rock had another #1 opening weekend ($34 million for Rampage), horror hit A Quiet Place closed in on $100 million, and Isle of Dogs went wide in its 4th weekend and has a cumulative gross of $18 million. That means it's going to be about as succcessful as Fantastic Mr Fox and The Life Aquatic (i.e. his second tier successes) with his tier 1 biggest hits by a large margin being Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Moonrise Kingdom. 

I've been a bit sad that the inventive delights and storytelling nuances of Isle of Dogs aren't being discussed as thoroughly as the film's take on Japan...

Click to read more ...