Midnight Eye. 11/04.

Jaspar Sharp's survey of the early pivotal works of Japanese animation picks right up where it left off in the last issue of Midnight Eye to conclude with a note on its significance for the present:

With animation as one of the nation's biggest cultural exports, directors such as Mamoru Oshii and Katsuhiro Otomo continue to push the medium in search of new levels of realism and way past the thematic and intellectual boundaries of the nation's live action cinema.... It's been tempting for Western audiences to assume that these modern works have sprung up from nowhere as if by magic, but the box of treasures unearthed at Puchon in 2004 reveals that Japan possesses as long and as bountiful a legacy in the animated medium as virtually any other country you could name in the world, and there's no hint of the good times coming to an end any time soon.

Sharp's chat with Makoto Shinozaki is also a follow-up of sorts; Tom Mes interviewed the director back in 2001. This time around, talk is mostly of dogs. After all, as Sharp observes at the beginning of his review of Shinozaki's latest film, Walking With the Dog, "2004 is the Year of the Dog as far as Japanese cinema is concerned." But there are also interesting exchanges concerning Tomio Aoki, the influence of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and the origins of the Cop Festival project.

Mes briefly reviews The Cinema of Japan and Korea, a collection of essays to which both he and Sharp contributed, so it's an admirable gesture when he notes that the book is "well worth considering for its Japanese half, and pretty much indispensable for its Korean section."

There's no overriding theme to the "Round-Up" this issue; just five quick reviews. The other two lengthier reviews: Nicholas Rucka on Marronnier, Hideyuki Kobayashi's "twisted karaoke video-doll-slasher-movie," and on Umizaru, evidently sort of like a Japanese Top Gun, only much better.

Posted by dwhudson at November 1, 2004 4:48 AM