'BOBTAIL' REVIEW / DOCUMENTARY FILMS / JAPANESE FILMS

Campaign (2007)

In THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN (1992), a con-man-turned-candidate-for-the-Congress (Eddie Murphy) runs the shameless election campaign on a low budget. He drives a car fitted with loudspeakers around the town, just to sell his ‘name’. “Jeff Johnson, the name you know”. He figures that most voters wouldn’t care and vote for him simply because the name sounds familiar (Jeff Johnson is the name of a dead Congressman). He cruises around the town in a van, advertising his name through the speakers in different accents to appeal to different ethnic groups. Well, THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN was a comedy. It was supposed to be …

DOCUMENTARY FILMS / JAPANESE FILMS

Tokyo Olympic

Well, it’s final. 2020 Olympic will be held in Tokyo. Now, it’s buzzing everywhere; from internet to TV to coffee shops: who will direct the opening ceremony? It will be very hard to top London, they say. Hayao Miyazaki? Well, he announced his retirement from animation, but not from anything else. How about Anno? Well, Katsuhiro Otomo must be the man, since his AKIRA predicted 2020 Tokyo Olympic, in dystopian universe.

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DOCUMENTARY FILMS / JAPANESE FILMS

Buzz of A Honeybee and the Island of the Holy

Iwai-shima, a small island of 7.67 square kilometers in its area and 12 kilometers in its perimeter, is a part of Kaminoseki/Kumage county of Yamaguchi prefecture. It is located in the west end of the Seto Island Sea (the sea you see in Ozu’s “Tokyo Story”), just several kilometers off the coast of the main land. The population is only little more than 500, roughly 70% of which are over seventy years old. These aging islanders are making living by line fishing and small-scale farming on steep slopes of the island. The place is often hit by typhoons, which sometimes …

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