Tony Takitani is available for sale on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Tony-Takitani-Isse...

i bought mine from borders, so i know you can get it there as well, although you may want to check your store for availability.

hope this helps!

Wow! It's great to hear about Kafka On the Shore at the Steppenwolf. I think Kafka is my favorite Murakami, so I'm definitely going to this production. Good thing I live in Chicago.

I've been trying to find any of these movies online to buy, but didn't find any.
Can anyone help about where to shop for them?
They are not on amazon not ebay no where I can find them.

Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre is hosting a production of Kafka on the Shore, adapted for the stage, this fall. Anyone in the area who is able to check it out should. I'm curious as to how it is going to translate to the stage (esp. the characters Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders...).

I'll most certainly be going.

More here:

http://www.steppenwolf.org/boxoffice/pro...

Whoa, so there's two Murakami movies out there and I haven't seen either of them? 'All God's Children can Dance' (posted by Eric in the thread about it here) looks awesome:

http://www.monocle.com/sections/culture/...

And it's from my favorite short stories collection, 'After the Quake'.

The link that Matthew put up might be broken, it didn't take me directly to the right page for the Tony Takitani movie, this one should:

http://www.themorningnews.org/digest/wat...

I'll have to see if I can persuade my housemate to put them on her netflix queue. :)

I just bought myself a copy of the movie. I enjoyed it. I don't know what I would have thought had I not been a Murakami fan or read the story. I watched it with a friend of mine and he didn't seem to be as into it as I was.

I liked it a lot and what made it even better is that I didn't even know about it, I just happened to come across it on the Sundance Channel.

Hey Mike,

I absolutely agree with your assessment of the cinematography. The wind, the side-ways pans, the characters, set-design...all of it, beautiful. Indeed, this is very true to the atmosphere of Murakami's novels. All this tends to illuminate the mundane, even in its most melancholy moments (of which there is no shortage). And this is, no doubt, one of Murakami's great strengths.

I do, however, feel like he can carry this mundane over the brink and into cliche. Case in point, the issue of Takitani's wife impulsively buying clothes. There is no acknowledgement of how conventional this conflict is in a middle-class household. Thankfully, the conflict is exaggerated through her filling the closet with her things, which then effectively (although heavy-handedly) illustrates his loss and isolation when she dies (in the vast, empty closet).

I'm not looking for horror or oddity. I love Murakami's simple sublimity, I just think his handling of love stories is overly simple. Sorry, just can't dig "Norwegian Wood," etc.

-Josh

just wait a minute ... how many of you people who are attacking this movie are actually fans of Murakami's books?

I ask because, apart from a small revelatory moment of surrealism every now and then through the extent of eac narrative, VERY LITTLE HAPPENS in your standard Murakami novel.

It's all about atmosphere, and character.

So, I watched Tony Takitani again, last night ... and the way the wind was sympathetically incorporated into the film like an honoured guest, and the set design, and the enigmatic characters, and the downbeat endings, and pathetic struggle of humanity against the elements of fate, they were all there. It was an homage piece to the atmosphere (and character) of Murakami's work.

I know Murakami's supposed to be working on a 'horror' novel right now but this is a first, and there's no guarantee this'll be an 'action adventure' like many who were disappointed by the Tony Takitani movie.

Additionally, who on this group has seen (or was a big fan of) the films of Peter Greenaway? In particular, I think the side-ways scrolling camera that director Jun Ichikawa used throughout Tony Takitani was a narrative device directly lifted from Peter Greenaway's A COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER. Great film, just wondered what everyone else thought.

Have either of you read the story? As I remember it, a lot of the narration is just that, the narrator reading the story. It's pretty much the story with some pictures to accompany it.

Hey Ray,

I'm going to have to agree with you. Thanks to this conversation, I just rented it with high hopes. I'd been waiting for a Murakami adaptation for a while.

While I thought the tone and pacing were absolutely sublime, this speaks more to the strength of the director. Shot by shot, the film was beautiful. The story, however, ran into the same pitfalls that most of Murakami's romances do (especially South of the Border, West of the Sun). There is a point where simplicity becomes trite, and the plight of the everyman becomes irredeemable when all trace of individuality is lost. Tony Takitani is everyman; that's his and Murakami's problem.

-Josh

I saw this movie about a year ago... and was quite disappointed.

To me, it didn't have Murakami's tone and pacing, so I have to disagree with Walter.

I also didn't like the fact where there was a lot of narration explaining Tony's various motivations.

Ilima,
that's really cool. Thanks. I like how tony takitani wishes it was an action film that starred bruce willis :) Very little action in this film.

thanks,
that was a great little piece - wonderful how Murakami can add 'character' to a strange name dragged through the ass-end of post-war Japan. Man's a genius.

:)

I live on Maui and I know the REAL Tony Takitani! Here's an article about him from 2005:
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/articl...

Thanks for bringing this one up! I just added it to my netflix and moved it to the top of my queue.

I didn't realize that Rie played both female parts. I just checked imdb and Issei Ogata plays both Tony and his father.
I think it is quite a beautiful film too. There is only one scene i don't really like. Maybe the most remarkable aspect is that it's just like reading the story.

It's excellent.

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/d...

I didn't spot this on first viewing but Rie Miyazaki plays both female parts. A very quiet Japanese film, based on a story by Haruki Murakami - you watch it and wonder, then you watch the DVD extras and the way there's a soft breeze running through every perfectly-framed shot, you understand. Very subtle, touching and well produced film.

Has anyone seen this movie? It's based on the story by the same name in "blind willow". I'm wondering what people think of it. Care to comment?