Café Society

Posted on by
  • Café Society

1/5/24 (Fri)

Woody Allen’s 2016 work is pretty standard fare for him. The young Woody type, here named Leonard, moves from NY to Hollywood seeking a job with his uncle, a powerful film producer. He falls in love with a down-to-earth girl, but her problem – she has a boyfriend. Bigger problem – her boyfriend turns out to be the uncle. After some back and forth, she goes for the money. The disillusioned Leonard goes back to NY and works at his gangster brother’s nightclub. He becomes a terrific schmoozer and meets another beautiful woman, who he marries. Then his ex turns up at the club with the uncle, now her husband. She has taken on the airs of a Hollywood insider, not at all the simple girl she was before. Nevertheless, Leonard can’t stop thinking about what might have been…

Continue reading →

Kuroneko (藪の中の黒猫)

Posted on by
  • 藪の中の黒猫 (Kuroneko)

1/9/24 (Tues)

Shindo Kaneto’s 1968 horror film is less scary than it is spooky and moody. It takes place in Kyoto near Rajomon (known later as Rashomon), the massive gate that had become a dilapidated structure by the late Heian Period when, judging from the clothing and the presence of Lord Raiko, the movie is set. The gate was by this time known as a haunted spot good for disposing of corpses and unwanted infants. (The film’s full Japanese title, “Black Cat [or Cats] in a Grove”, perhaps intentionally recalls Akutagawa’s short story In a Grove that was the basis for Kurosawa’s Rashomon. I’m not sure why they chose Kuroneko as the English title rather than the translation, Black Cat.) Cats are supernatural beings in Japanese folklore in the form of “bakeneko” (ghost cats), so the notion of felines lurking somewhere in the woods immediately signals something shadowy.

Continue reading →

The Irony of Fate (Ирония судьбы)

Posted on by
  • The Irony of Fate (or Enjoy Your Bath)

1/2/24 (Tues)

This two-part Soviet television film of 1976 reportedly proved an instant success, playing to an estimated 100 million viewers, and has since become a beloved New Year’s Eve ritual all around the ex-Soviet world, many of its lines and routines instantly recognizable to Russian speakers. It’s been likened to a Russian It’s a Wonderful Life, though I’ve also seen comparisons to Annie Hall since the characters are members of the intelligentsia (the leads are a surgeon and schoolteacher) rather than common laborers. I’d never heard of it until a few days earlier but was intrigued by the premise. I found Part 1 easily on YouTube.

Continue reading →

7th Heaven

Posted on by
  • 7th Heaven

12/29/23 (Fri)

Frank Borzage’s 1927 film, based on a play that itself ran for nearly two years on Broadway, was apparently a massive hit in its day. It won the first Academy Awards for Best Direction and Actress (it lost Best Film to Wings), spawned several remakes over the decades (including a flop musical), and turned the pairing of Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell into a sensation that carried over for another 11 films. Sawato Midori, the benshi narrator who voiced all the characters live for today’s show, noted that Ozu featured a poster of this film in one of his early works, so it must have been popular in Japan as well. A benshi would have presented the movie in this way back in its day (further explained here), so the event was very much a throwback to the silent era. Sawato performed to the accompaniment of a five-piece band.

Continue reading →

The Song Lantern (歌行燈)

Posted on by
  • 歌行燈 (The Song Lantern)

11/26/23 (Sun)

A 1943 film by Naruse based on a novel by early 20th-century author/playwright Izumi Kyoka (which has the much more evocative English title A Song by Lantern Light). Izumi’s fantasy contents wouldn’t seem an ideal subject for the more grounded Naruse, but maybe the apolitical subject matter was a way for the director to get around wartime restrictions and censorship. The film opens ominously with an exultation for the “100 million to carry the burden for bereaved households” (i.e., homes whose sons have died in battle), but the story thereafter is completely war-free. The Noh-based story has similarities with Mizoguchi’s Kabuki-based Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), and while it does not reach those heights, it has its moments. Hanayagi Shotaro repeats his lead performance from the stage version, where it became one of his signature roles.

Continue reading →

Battle Royale (バトル・ロワイアル )

Posted on by
  • バトル・ロワイアル (Battle Royale)

11/19/23 (Sun)

Fukasaku Kinji’s 2000 cult classic about kidnapped high schoolers with a mission to kill is like a manga on speed. Fukasaku is best known for Battles Without Honor and Humanity, where the violence is grounded in reality of a sort. He abandons any semblance of reality here to give us a head-spinning series of murders, suicides and humiliations as the plot itself – the violence is the film’s entire reason for being.

That said, he manages to create unique and sympathetic characters who, despite the ridiculous plot, largely feel real within the world they’re given. Continue reading →

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding

Posted on by
  • Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (live streaming)

11/18/23 (Sat)

This highly praised show was being live streamed in the final week of its Broadway run. The League of Live Stream Theater, which was providing the broadcast, made everything super easy. When I discovered that I had accidentally bought tickets for the wrong performance, they instantly cleared it up for me, and when a friend who I had gifted a ticket couldn’t get online 30 seconds before the show, they immediately sent him a new e-mail that allowed him to catch the show from the beginning. Three cheers for them. The show has drawn crowds in New York but at a notably low average ticket price, suggesting that they’re attracting different audiences than usual; my friend felt from the laughter that many viewers must have been black since they recognized small points that others wouldn’t understand (as he proved to me). If so, that’s a very good thing for Broadway. Let’s hope that’s emulated in other shows.

Continue reading →

Billie

Posted on by
  • Billie

11/13/23 (Mon)

A 2019 documentary about Billie Holiday by James Erskine based on extensive interviews conducted by an obsessed fan in the 1970s for a planned biography. The book was never completed due to the author’s untimely death, which was ruled a suicide but is considered suspicious (for one thing, who puts on a pre-bed face mask before jumping out a window?) given the many shady characters she was researching in connection with the drug-addicted singer. The tapes, which sat for years before the director rediscovered them, cover not only musical luminaries like Count Basie (who the film hints had an affair with the researcher), Sylvia Syms and Charles Mingus but peripheral figures like Holiday’s psychiatrist (who called her a “psychopath”), pimp (who bragged about beating her) and her arresting officer.

Continue reading →

Shadow of Fire (火影)

Posted on by
  • 火影 (Shadow of Fire)

11/9/23 (Thurs)

The latest overwrought work by provocateur Tsukamoto Shinya. The Foreign Correspondents Club was showing a subtitled version for the overseas press, and free sounded like the right price. That proved optimistic. There was an after-talk by the director (who produces his own films – no one else will), but we opted for dinner instead.

Continue reading →

Good (National Theatre Live)

Posted on by
  • Good (National Theatre Live)

10/22/23 (Sun)

I was jet lagged when I saw this superb production of C.P. Taylor’s 1981 classic in London almost precisely one year earlier, so I wasn’t going to miss the chance to catch the NT Live recording. As Holocaust dramas are not necessarily a big thing in Japan, I figured tickets would be easy to come by and booked that morning, only to discover that the theater was nearly sold out; I was lucky to get two adjoining seats. I presume that’s due to the presence of David Tennant  in the lead role, though I’m not sure how they know him here.

Continue reading →

My Darling Clementine

Posted on by
  • My Darling Clementine

10/7/23 (Sat)

John Ford’s 1946 version of the OK Corral gunfight shows a civilization in the throes of creation, a community coming together in a spartan desert territory as it sets the laws and values that it wants to live by. Much the same process was explored in the musical Oklahoma! just three years earlier.

Continue reading →