Midnight Eye. Readers and reviews.

The results of Midnight Eye's Readers Poll are in and, by a healthy margin, Satoshi Kon's Paprika has been voted best Japanese film of 2007.

Tied in 5th place with Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution is Michael Arias's Tekkon Kinkreet. "Arias has crafted a debut feature that not only lives up to Studio 4ºC's reputation, but also compares favorably to the recent works of a number of much more established directors, Japanese and American alike," writes Paul Jackson.

"Faces of a Fig Tree is Kaori Momoi's first feature film, in which the actress shows an inventive streak likely to baffle or enthrall," writes Robin Gatto. "But the seasoned actress, whose diverse range of experiences includes collaborations with Art Theatre Guild and Akira Kurosawa, as well as Memoirs of a Geisha and Aleksandr Sokurov's The Sun, does not hide the fact that her intention was to rock the stereotypical world of filmmaking in Japan." Gatto also talks with Kaori Momoi.

"Winter Days, an adaptation of a renga by Basho, is a unique project in terms of scale," writes Catherine Munroe Hotes. "Renga is a collaborative form of poetry involving a minimum of three poets. The original poem Winter Days involved six poets (Basho, Yasui, Kakei, Jugo, Tokoku, Shohei and Yasui) who alternated contributing verses. Kihachiro Kawamoto and Tatsuo Shimamura took on the daunting task of assembling an impressively diverse group of 35 animators, including themselves, to make the 36 short films required." Here's a clip.

"The Swords in the Moonlight trilogy (aka The Killer Pass) by the neglected Tomu Uchida will seem uncannily familiar to anyone who has seen the better known Sword of Doom by Kihachi Okamoto," writes Dean Bowman. But: "Made in 1966, Okamoto's abstract, existential meditation could not be any more different from Uchida's lavishly staged melodrama made almost ten years earlier."

"Yasuo Baba's Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust (Bubburu e go: Taimu-mashin wa doramu-shiki) deserves the distinction of being the first Japanese comedy to be retrospectively set in the 'bubble era' of Japanese history, that glorious period in the late 80s where loan interest rates were staggeringly low, property values ludicrously high, worker bonuses doled out in extravagant amounts, etc, etc," writes Bryan Hartzheim. "It's also a particularly painful place to return to for many Japanese: lurking around the corner of such seemingly free-spirited fun is Sumitomo bank chief Ichiro Isoda's sudden resignation and the tide of bank scandals that would follow, resulting in the recession Japan has only recently begun to pull itself out of. Perhaps Baba, and more specifically screenwriter Ryoichi Kimizuka, felt enough time had passed to create a parody of the past and a satire of the present."

Posted by dwhudson at March 17, 2008 1:02 PM