'BOBTAIL' REVIEW / JAPANESE FILMS

A Black Picture Book: A Testimony by A Salary Man

In the era of economic boom, roughly from 1950’s to 90’s, being a salary-man (a businessman) in Japan was a ticket to a comfortable life. Not a great, but a decent pay. Nice bonuses twice a year. Unless you are not aiming for the VP’s chair, you don’t have to be seriously competitive, just doing your job is fine. If you are lucky, you may even get promoted. And even if you don’t, there is a pretty fat retirement plan when you survive through roughly 40 years of the service in the same company. If you don’t screw things up.

 
'BOBTAIL' REVIEW

Points and Lines (2007)

In 2007, almost half a century after the first movie, “Points and Lines” was remade for TV. It was an ambitious endeavor for a TV drama; it was a 2-part program, almost 2 hours each, totaling 4 hours; because the story was set in 1950’s, a huge budget was put into artworks and sets to recreate the era, and many of the location shootings were meticulously planned and executed not to give away anything modern; the story was reworked to be more convincing to modern audience while expanding the role of the detective from Fukuoka (Torikai), the role played by …