Jonathan Clements's Blog, page 26

Edinburgh Loves Anime

And now the bookings are live for Scotland Loves Anime's second weekend, over at the Edinburgh Film House from Friday 15th October until Sunday 17th. Films on show include Summer Wars, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, Redline, and One Piece: Strong World. There is also a rare chance to catch Akira in a cinema.

The organisers are flying in voice actor/director Michael Sinterniklaas from America to talk about dubbing anime, and on the 15th I'll be handling the morning session of the a

Christmas in August

"You know," says Mamoru Hosoda, "I have been directing films for over a decade, and until now I haven't killed off a single human being. I'm a little bit proud of that. I ask another director how they're doing, and they've already lost track of the body count! I've made a lot of works for children with Toei Animation in the past, so obviously that steers me towards a certain resistance to death. But even in Summer Wars, I resisted the death that we had in the script, even though it was...

Suffer Little Kildren

"I turned 55 last year," notes Mamoru Oshii. "When you're young, there's so many things you want to do, so many mountains to climb…. Then, it was like I woke up. Suddenly, I'm the adult on the production, and the staff are all younger than me. I thought, very deeply, very strongly, that this film had something to say to the young people of today."

Oshii is speaking of a common theme in science fiction all around the world, ever since the end of WW2 – the concept that today's children have...

Glasgow Loves Anime

Details are now up online of the first weekend of Scotland Loves Anime, to be held at the Glasgow Film Theatre on 9th and 10th October 2010. Screenings include Redline and Trigun Badlands Rumble, the latter to be introduced by Satoshi Nishimura and Shigeru Kitayama.

I shall be there introducing a bunch of other films, including Summer Wars and Professor Layton & The Eternal Diva. Someone has already asked on the Twitter feed if I will be signing copies of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis. God, yes! In ...

Salon Futura #1

The first issue of Salon Futura is out today, including my giant obituary-article on the late Satoshi Kon.

The magazine is viewable as a webpage or downloadable onto e-Readers equipped with the EPUB format.

Coincidentally also up online today, my obituary of Kon for the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound website.

The Secret History of Genghis Khan

Andrei Borisov's epic film By the Will of Genghis Khan presents the historical figure Temujin not as the terrifying bogeyman of European lore, but as he is remembered across much of the East, as a just ruler, a lawgiver, and a man of honour. It places the lifestyle of the steppe peoples front and centre, presenting the ever moving, herd-following Mongols, Naimans and Buryats as the norm, and questioning the "civilised" notion of putting down roots in one place. The history of Central Asia...

What's Up, Spider Lily?

Higanjima is a multiple pun in Japanese. It literally means Equinox Island, or the Yonder Isle, perhaps even The Island on the Other Side. However, as noted by the characters when they first arrive on the notorious "vampire island", it is also a reference to higanbana (Lycoris radiata), the red-flowered spider lilies whose poisonous bulbs are sometimes strewn at the edges of Japanese farmhouses to kill mice. Flowering around the time of the autumn equinox, spider lilies have become...

Men in Black

With a gruelling shoot that spanned April 2007 to September 2008 after its leading man's injury on set, filmed in the sub-tropical heat of Japan's idyllic Ryukyu island chain, Kamui: The Lone Ninja recreates a lost world of fishing villages on the Inland Sea, a time when the samurai wars were done, and the people of Japan returned to their fields and their boats. It also evokes a savage era where all unwelcome influences were ruthlessly suppressed, and plays with the notion that the...

The Borrower

Since this week is probably the best (and only) time to post anything I have about the Frank Chickens, another article from the vault, this time about Kazuko Hohki's book Underfloor World (Rondon no Yukashita)

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Kazuko Hohki is the driving force behind the Frank Chickens pop phenomenon, but also the author of a Japanese-language book about life in London. Hohki has taken her title, Underfloor World, from The Borrowers, the children's book that drove her to come to England in the first place...

We Are Ninja (not Geisha)

In honour of Stewart Lee's tirade against modern evils, and the possibility that the Frank Chickens might become comedy gods…

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The Frank Chickens are a trio, or a duo. Sometimes they're more like an octo. But anyway, they're all Japanese. Apart from the ones who aren't. In fact, the Frank Chickens are a nebulous entity, born from the London Musicians' Collective. They've had more members over the last ten years than Spinal Tap have had drummers, but the one unifying figure is the...