Veteran Japanese film executive to head up festival, which will undergo several changes in 2017.
The Tokyo Film Festival has tapped up Takeo Hisamatsu (pictured) to head up the 30th edition of the festival later this year.
Hisamatsu, who was formerly an executive managing director at Shochiku Co. and deputy general manager of Warner Bros. Pictures Japan, will replace outgoing Director General Yasushi Shiina, who held the top post at the Tokyo festival for four years.
With a nearly 40 year track record in the film business, Hisamatsu is currently the president of his own company My Way Movies.
In recent years, Hisamatsu has played a role in such productions as the 2013 Japanese remake of the Clint Eastwood western Unforgiven, Miwa Nishikawa’s 2009 comedy-drama Dear Doctor and Bushi No Ichibun, Yoji Yamada’s 2006 semi-prequel to Zatoichi.
“It is my hope that through this festival, we can continue to present films from around the world in all their diversity and richness...
The Tokyo Film Festival has tapped up Takeo Hisamatsu (pictured) to head up the 30th edition of the festival later this year.
Hisamatsu, who was formerly an executive managing director at Shochiku Co. and deputy general manager of Warner Bros. Pictures Japan, will replace outgoing Director General Yasushi Shiina, who held the top post at the Tokyo festival for four years.
With a nearly 40 year track record in the film business, Hisamatsu is currently the president of his own company My Way Movies.
In recent years, Hisamatsu has played a role in such productions as the 2013 Japanese remake of the Clint Eastwood western Unforgiven, Miwa Nishikawa’s 2009 comedy-drama Dear Doctor and Bushi No Ichibun, Yoji Yamada’s 2006 semi-prequel to Zatoichi.
“It is my hope that through this festival, we can continue to present films from around the world in all their diversity and richness...
- 3/10/2017
- ScreenDaily
Channing Tatum has taken it all off ... his head! The " G.I. Joe " star was spotted at an L.A. office building with a completely buzzed head -- though no word yet on what the new look is for. Tatum has two movies lined up right now -- one, " Magic Mike ," where he plays a male stripper, and another, " Love and Honour ," where he'll play a soldier trying to win the affections of Catherine the Great . What do you think of the new 'do? Click the gallery to vote -- plus see more stars who have buzzed it all off! Read more...
- 7/13/2011
- by tooFab Staff
- TooFab
On the eve of his movie comeback, can Mel Gibson finally tame his demons?
It was a balmy spring evening in Cannes. Arriving for the premiere of his latest film, The Beaver, Mel Gibson seemed anxious as he walked the red carpet last month, a little uncomfortable posing for the massed ranks of photographers who were shouting his name. When the movie's director, Jodie Foster, leaned across to adjust his bow-tie, Gibson smiled, right on cue. But while the two of them chatted and laughed for the cameras, the actor's brow remained furrowed. The next day's photographs would all show the three deep wrinkles cut horizontally across his tanned forehead, giving him the air of someone who expects disappointment and – more often than not – is rewarded with it.
He was understandably worried, perhaps, about how the film would be received. The Beaver, in which the 55-year-old Gibson plays a depressed...
It was a balmy spring evening in Cannes. Arriving for the premiere of his latest film, The Beaver, Mel Gibson seemed anxious as he walked the red carpet last month, a little uncomfortable posing for the massed ranks of photographers who were shouting his name. When the movie's director, Jodie Foster, leaned across to adjust his bow-tie, Gibson smiled, right on cue. But while the two of them chatted and laughed for the cameras, the actor's brow remained furrowed. The next day's photographs would all show the three deep wrinkles cut horizontally across his tanned forehead, giving him the air of someone who expects disappointment and – more often than not – is rewarded with it.
He was understandably worried, perhaps, about how the film would be received. The Beaver, in which the 55-year-old Gibson plays a depressed...
- 6/6/2011
- by Elizabeth Day
- The Guardian - Film News
Director: Zeze Takahisa. Review: Adam Wing. Outbreak gets a Japanese makeover in Zeze Takahisa’s crisis drama, in which a deadly virus is the key to mankind’s annihilation, infecting millions of people and threatening to destroy the lives of many more. Tsumabuki Satoshi (Dororo) stars as a young doctor who finds himself centre stage in a fight against a highly contagious illness that begins with flu-like symptoms and ends in death. Dan Rei (Love and Honour) plays a World Health Organization officer, not to mention token love interest, who joins him in the race against time to find a cure. They used to be lovers but personal ambition drove them apart, and now they must work together in order to survive the relentless chaos that threatens to consume them. Directed by Zeze Takahisa (Flying Rabbits), Pandemic spreads fear through the heart of an impressive supporting cast including the likes...
- 4/27/2011
- 24framespersecond.net
Step Up and GI:joe hunk Channing Tatum has snagged a lead role in Randall Wallace's Love and Honour. The film is adapted from Wallace's own novel, which is based around the life of Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Tatum will play an American soldier who is sent by Benjamin Franklin to persuade the legendary ruler not to take sides with the British. Anne Hathaway has been offered the role of Beatrice, who is apparently one of Catherine's servants and a potential love interest for Tatum's character. Randall Wallace should feel right at...
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- 11/6/2010
- by Matt Maytum
- TotalFilm
Step Up and GI:joe hunk Channing Tatum has snagged a lead role in Randall Wallace's Love and Honour. The film is adapted from Wallace's own novel, which is based around the life of Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Tatum will play an American soldier who is sent by Benjamin Franklin to persuade the legendary ruler not to take sides with the British. Anne Hathaway has been offered the role of Beatrice, who is apparently one of Catherine's servants and a potential love interest for Tatum's character. Randall Wallace should feel right at...
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- 11/6/2010
- by Matt Maytum
- TotalFilm
Although it was made recently, Yôji Yamada's Bushi no ichibun has a very old feel to it. Even though the film's characters seldom contain their true feelings and thoughts, this doesn't mean that the film can't make its point.
This adaptation of Shûhei Fujisawa is set in feudal Japan. Shinnojo Mimura (Takuya Kimura), a lower-rank samurai, is one of a feudal lord's "poison tasters". This means that before the lord eats his meal, Shinnojo and other men taste it. Since Shinnojo finds his job dull, he tells his wife Kayo (Rei Dan) that he wants to open a kendo (fencing) school accessible to any child notwithstanding the caste they belong to. Unfortunately, Shinnojo is struck by an illness after he had tasted for the lord a sashimi made from shell fish. In fact, because this shell fish is out of season (the cooks didn't know it) it can harm anybody who consumes it.
This adaptation of Shûhei Fujisawa is set in feudal Japan. Shinnojo Mimura (Takuya Kimura), a lower-rank samurai, is one of a feudal lord's "poison tasters". This means that before the lord eats his meal, Shinnojo and other men taste it. Since Shinnojo finds his job dull, he tells his wife Kayo (Rei Dan) that he wants to open a kendo (fencing) school accessible to any child notwithstanding the caste they belong to. Unfortunately, Shinnojo is struck by an illness after he had tasted for the lord a sashimi made from shell fish. In fact, because this shell fish is out of season (the cooks didn't know it) it can harm anybody who consumes it.
- 5/2/2010
- by anhkhoido@hotmail.com (Anh Khoi Do)
- The Cultural Post
Kabei -- Our Mother
CompetitionBERLIN -- Kabei -- Our Mother, the latest blockbuster from prolific director Yoji Yamada (Love and Honor, the Tora-san series) is not as artistically refined as his Samurai trilogy, but hits all the right spots to make you cry like chopping onions. Just as Yamada modernized the samurai genre by making his heroes family men and struggling breadwinners facing professional restructuring, Kabei authenticates Japan's wartime history by showing in quietly chilling detail how foreign aggression aside, the nation also turned on her own citizens who expressed dissident ideas. The film is adapted from the best-selling autobiography of Teruyo Nogami, who was script supervisor for several of Akira Kurosawa's films.
Domestically, Kabei drew largely senior audiences. Judging from the unanimous sobbing and repeated round of applause at the Berlinale press screening, the film might find favor with a more varied age group abroad. Indeed, Yamada's lifelong celebration of ordinary people who live with dignity and forbearance in economic or political hardship could find sympathizers everywhere. Excellent production values deserve some overseas commercial theater release.
"Kabei begins in February 1940, when the Nogami sisters enjoy a meal with their gentle, doting mother and scruffy-intellectual father. At night, the police suddenly arrest father for the "thought crime" of opposing war with China in his writing. His presence of at the meal table is replaced by his photo thereon.
Yamazaki (Tadanobu Asano), Tobei's helpful student becomes a beacon in their dark days of poverty and discrimination. The rest of the film portrays mother's efforts to hold the family together, the daily indignities they suffer and their small assertions of pride. Interactions with a colorful galley of relatives and neighbors demonstrate the decency and mean-spiritedness people are capable of. Scenes of the clumsy Yamazaki crying on a prison visit, an eccentric uncle's gruff defiance of the patriotic brigade, and the community club's sheeplike emperor-worship lighten the increasing soppy narrative development.
Yamada really brings out the tear gas in a final scene set in postwar times, when the bedridden Kabei drops her stiff upper lip to mutter an emotionally devastating line. Regarded as a living icon of Japanese cinema, Sayuri Yoshinaga's performance is above reproach, but it does take major suspension of disbelief to see the 63-year-old actress as a mother of school age kids.
In a time when historical revisionism is making a comeback through films like Yamato and For Those We Love, which romanticize militarism and suicide missions, Yamada's reconnection with the classic genre of hahamono (mother-centered stories) to convey his moral indignation, is a minor version of Keisuke Kinoshita's traditional yet progressively humanist masterpieces like A Japanese Tragedy and Twenty-four Eyes.
KABEI -- OUR MOTHER
Kabei Film Partners/Shochiku Co Ltd
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Yoji Yamada
Co-screenwriter: Emiko Hiramatsu
Based on the book by: Teruyo Nogami
Producers: Hiroshi Fukasawa, Takashi Yajima
Director of photography: Mutsuo Naganuma
Production designer: Mitsuo Degawa
Music: Isao Tomita
Costume designer: Kazuo Matsuda
Editor: Ishii Iwao
Cast:
Kayo Kabei: Sayuri Yoshinaga
Toru Yamazaki: Asano Tadanobu
Hatsuko: Mirai Shida
Teruoyo: Miku Sato
Hisako: Rei Dan
Shigeru Nogami Tobei: Bando Mitsugoro
Running time -- 133 minutes
No MPAA rating
"...
Domestically, Kabei drew largely senior audiences. Judging from the unanimous sobbing and repeated round of applause at the Berlinale press screening, the film might find favor with a more varied age group abroad. Indeed, Yamada's lifelong celebration of ordinary people who live with dignity and forbearance in economic or political hardship could find sympathizers everywhere. Excellent production values deserve some overseas commercial theater release.
"Kabei begins in February 1940, when the Nogami sisters enjoy a meal with their gentle, doting mother and scruffy-intellectual father. At night, the police suddenly arrest father for the "thought crime" of opposing war with China in his writing. His presence of at the meal table is replaced by his photo thereon.
Yamazaki (Tadanobu Asano), Tobei's helpful student becomes a beacon in their dark days of poverty and discrimination. The rest of the film portrays mother's efforts to hold the family together, the daily indignities they suffer and their small assertions of pride. Interactions with a colorful galley of relatives and neighbors demonstrate the decency and mean-spiritedness people are capable of. Scenes of the clumsy Yamazaki crying on a prison visit, an eccentric uncle's gruff defiance of the patriotic brigade, and the community club's sheeplike emperor-worship lighten the increasing soppy narrative development.
Yamada really brings out the tear gas in a final scene set in postwar times, when the bedridden Kabei drops her stiff upper lip to mutter an emotionally devastating line. Regarded as a living icon of Japanese cinema, Sayuri Yoshinaga's performance is above reproach, but it does take major suspension of disbelief to see the 63-year-old actress as a mother of school age kids.
In a time when historical revisionism is making a comeback through films like Yamato and For Those We Love, which romanticize militarism and suicide missions, Yamada's reconnection with the classic genre of hahamono (mother-centered stories) to convey his moral indignation, is a minor version of Keisuke Kinoshita's traditional yet progressively humanist masterpieces like A Japanese Tragedy and Twenty-four Eyes.
KABEI -- OUR MOTHER
Kabei Film Partners/Shochiku Co Ltd
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Yoji Yamada
Co-screenwriter: Emiko Hiramatsu
Based on the book by: Teruyo Nogami
Producers: Hiroshi Fukasawa, Takashi Yajima
Director of photography: Mutsuo Naganuma
Production designer: Mitsuo Degawa
Music: Isao Tomita
Costume designer: Kazuo Matsuda
Editor: Ishii Iwao
Cast:
Kayo Kabei: Sayuri Yoshinaga
Toru Yamazaki: Asano Tadanobu
Hatsuko: Mirai Shida
Teruoyo: Miku Sato
Hisako: Rei Dan
Shigeru Nogami Tobei: Bando Mitsugoro
Running time -- 133 minutes
No MPAA rating
"...
- 2/14/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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