JAPANESE FILMS

Musashino, the Landscape That Never Was (Part 3)

In THE LADY OF MUSASHINO, Mizoguchi features various images of water. When Tsutomu and Michiko take a long idle stroll in the area for the first time, clear water running in the canal introduces us to the world of Musashino. Later, a trip to the large reservoir (the Murayama Reservoir) definitely changes the fates of their lives. Transition from quiet water of the reservoir to violent, turbulent storm eloquently speaks the evolving emotions of the protagonists. These images remind us that the Musashino is abundant with natural water resources, as the mountainous area far north supplies the massive amount of …

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JAPANESE FILMS

The Dark Side of the Nation

This is part eight of “Films of 1949” series (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7). In the previous post “Mistresses and Lovers”, I mentioned “There were many bloody incidents involving assassinations and terrorism, all linked to underground operatives of U.S. secret agency.” Alex in Florida asked me what this “underground operatives of U.S. secret agency” means. I’m afraid I dropped this historical trivia too casually, so I try to explain this. Before going into details, I would like to provide a little background. It’s about a railway system. The railway system in Japan was extremely important back in 1949. The Japanese Government Railway (Tetsudosho, J.G.R.) …

 
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Chinese Film Pulled From Tokyo International Film Festival

I feared something like this would happen. Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) issued a statement that it canceled the screening of the Hong-Kong Chinese production, Yim Ho’s FLOATING CITY. “It is with great regret that we have to announce the cancellation of the scheduled screening of Floating City in the Winds of Asia-Middle East section at the 25th Tokyo International Film Festival due to certain reasons on the production side. Although we have strongly made request to those involved not to call off the plan to take part in the festival, the cancellation has unfortunately been finalized.” These “certain reasons …