All posts tagged: media

Mrs. Noisy Feature Image

Mrs. Noisy

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

A once successful novelist, Maki (Shinohara Yukiko), moves into a new apartment hoping it’s the change she needs to get herself out of her writing slump. However, every time she seems on the verge of an inspired breakthrough, she is violently interrupted by her neighbor’s furious beating of the futons. Day and night, the incessant thwacking drives Maki past annoyance and well into an all-out rage. She confronts the neighbor, Miwako (Ootaka Yoko), and the seemingly small argument snowballs into a fight that gets caught on camera. The video goes viral on social media, and the two inadvertently get caught up in a media storm. But in the ensuing fallout, Maki gets an idea for a novel. (Japan Foundation) The timing for Amano Chihiro’s movie couldn’t have been more appropriate, hence its success with audiences both on the domestic and international film festival circuit. The story is a simple microcosm the themes of which viewers realize are applicable in various facets of their life and even on a much broader scope. More importantly, it shows how …

Eye-One-Made-in-Japan

Made in Japan

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

A brutal murder by a minor happens along the river of an industrial area. Kyoichi works at a factory nearby and happens upon an article about the crime in a magazine. He realizes the culprit was a subordinate at the place he worked part-time a while ago. When Kyoichi posts this realization on Twitter, he is inundated with interview requests from the mass media. So, he accepts an offer from a reporter. The latest by Matsumoto Yusaku is a 30 minute short which takes on media sensationalism and that buzzword of the times “fake news” through the story’s developments. He aims to ask important questions about whether or not the mass media acknowledges and takes responsibility for lies compounded by more lies after they gobble up and sensationalize a story. Conversely, he also seeks to question the populace’s seeming disinterest in learning the actual truth to the latest media scandals, challenging unempathetic attitudes in either creating, consuming, or propagating information in the age of social media. The trailer below again displays Matsumoto’s penchant for holding …

Eye-on-Stolen-Japanese-Indie-movie

Stolen

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

North Korea is on the minds of a lot of people these days with its leader and the U.S. President goading one another like impetuous children attempting to prove their manhood on a playground, except they are not playing with sand. North Korea’s ballistic missile program is certainly the latest threat from Pyongyang, but for Japan and South Korea–two countries literally currently caught in the middle–a much more human dilemma continues unresolved: the kidnapping of its citizens a few decades ago. The governments of the two countries had been engaged in negotiations to compel North Korea to either return its citizens or at least provide their current status and whereabouts. With the focus shifting to a military/defense affair, the plight of the kidnapped victims and their families have all been but brushed aside. In fact, the kidnapping issue has all but disappeared from public consciousness despite being seen as a top foreign affairs issue not so long ago. It is this human element to which the mid-length movie, Stolen, attempts to draw attention once again. Its …