Tag Archives: japan society

GLOBUS FILM SERIES — LOVE WILL TEAR US APART: AIR DOLL

Nozomi (Bae Doona) dreams that there’s more to life in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s AIR DOLL

AIR DOLL (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, March 3, $12, 2:00
Series runs March 2-18
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Over the last twenty years, Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda has compiled a remarkable resume, directing eight narrative features and four documentaries that investigate such themes as memory and loss. His 2009 film, Air Doll, examines loneliness through the eyes of a blow-up doll come to life. Bae Doona stars as Nozomi, a plastic sex toy owned by Hideo (Itsuji Itao), a restaurant worker who treats her like his wife, telling her about his day, sitting with her at the dinner table, and making love to her at night. But suddenly, one morning, Nozomi achieves consciousness, discovering that she has a heart, and she puts on her French maid costume and goes out into the world, learning about life by wandering through the streets and working in a video store, always returning home before Hideo and pretending to still be the doll. Adapted from a manga by Yoshiie Goda, Air Doll is another beautiful, meditative study from Kore-eda. Nozomi’s wide-eyed innocence at the joys of life comes sweet and slowly, played with a subtle wonderment by South Korean model and actress Bae (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, The Host). The film does, however, take one nasty turn and is a bit too long, at more than two hours. But it’s still another contemplative gem from the masterful director of Maborosi, Nobody Knows, and Still Walking. Air Doll is screening on March 3 at 2:00 as part of the Japan Society series “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” twenty-two films over three weeks from Japan and Korea that examine twisted, obsessive, dangerous, and downright crazy sex and romance.

UNDER THE RADAR: HOT PEPPER, AIR CONDITIONER, AND THE FAREWELL SPEECH

HOT PEPPER . . . examines an office temp’s imminent departure in absurdist ways (photo by Toru Okada)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Through January 14, $22
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.undertheradarfestival.com

Built around an office temp’s imminent departure, Toshiki Okada’s Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech is a highly stylized, very funny three-part absurdist comedy that riffs on Japan’s Generation Y culture and office politics. The sixty-five-minute piece is set in Japan Society’s reconfigured gallery space, with a white table and chairs placed in a corner in front of a white backdrop. In the first section, “Hot Pepper,” three temps are on break, discussing where they should hold a farewell party for fellow temp Erika, whose contract at the company has been terminated early despite her fine knowledge of Excel. One at a time, the temps deliver brief monologues, the man insistent on picking a restaurant from the latest issue of Hot Pepper magazine, one of the women obsessed with motsu hot pot, and the other woman confused as to why three temps and not full-timers have been put in charge of the party. As they make their points, they walk around the small set in awkward, carefully choreographed gestural movements, with different-colored lights casting shadows on the walls behind them, their words forming a rhythmic pattern. In the second part, “Air Conditioner,” a pair of full-time workers get into a conversation about the office temperature (a metaphor for the office temps), the woman concerned with how cold it always is. “I mean, 23°C is like, it’s the middle of summer, OK, 23°C is ridiculous, don’t you think?” she says. “I’m seriously totally freezing and like, every day is like this hellish ordeal, the state I’m living in, like, my desk is, where I sit is pretty much right in front of the air conditioner, the air blows right into my face, like on my forehead, like, I’m in the situation all day long where I can’t get any work done at all, I’m miserable, like what am I doing here at work, it’s a really miserable feeling, you know what I’m talking about?” As in the first scene, the employees repeat their assertions over and over, rambling on and on about the same thing, echoing what often happens in a work environment. But whereas they all have very specific points to make, Erika really rambles on in the play’s conclusion, “The Farewell Speech,” in which she gives a wonderfully disjointed good-bye speech to the other workers, words spilling out of her in a stream-of-consciousness eruption of nearly manic proportions. Performed by Okada’s chelfitsch Theater Company (a play on the word “selfish”), which was last at Japan Society in September 2009 with Five Days in March, the show features Taichi Yamagata, Riki Takeda, Mari Ando, Saho Ito, Kei Namba, and Fumie Yokoo as the office workers, an engaging group of very different personalities. Performed in Japanese with English subtitles, the charming Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech continues at Japan Society through January 14 as part of the Under the Radar festival.

UNDER THE RADAR: THE BEE

Hideki Noda’s THE BEE centers on an intense stand-off between a salaryman and an escaped killer (photo by Masahiko Yakou)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Through January 15, $25
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.undertheradarfestival.com

On his way home from work, a Tokyo salaryman named Ido is shocked to find that his street has been roped off by the police. Swarmed by the media, Ido soon discovers that his wife and son have been taken hostage by an escaped murderer named Ogoro. Frustrated by the lack of help from the police and the insensitivity of the press, Ido suddenly decides to take matters into his own hands, leading to an intense stand-off in Hideki Noda’s brilliant experimental stage drama The Bee. Based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s short story “Mushiriai” (“Plucking at Each Other”) and set in the summer of 1974, The Bee is a brutal examination of just how far one man will go to save his family. Kathryn Hunter is outstanding as Ido, her small body stuffed into a business suit, her nasally voice an excellent counter to Clive Mendus’s British Detective Inspector Dodoyama, Glyn Pritchard’s stuttering Ogoro, and Noda’s Japanese stripper, Ogoro’s wife. The latter three actors take on multiple roles, often going back and forth in an instant, with Mendus also playing a reporter and a TV chef, Noda playing a reporter as well, and Pritchard also portraying a reporter and Ogoro’s six-year-old son. The early fast pace eventually slows down as Ido heads over the edge, a simple family man who just wanted to come home and celebrate his son’s birthday but instead is mired in a violent psychological battle with a confused criminal amid a media-driven society. A hostage drama reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low and Archie Mayo’s The Petrified Forest, The Bee features unusually choreographed movement, particularly by Hunter; a translucent mirrored backdrop; and, as the audience take their seats, a Japanese version of the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” Vastly entertaining and, ultimately, extremely disturbing, The Bee is running at Japan Society through January 15 as part of the Under the Radar festival.

UNDER THE RADAR

Judith Malina of the Living Theatre and Silvia Calderoni of Motus collaborate on THE PLOT IS THE REVOLUTION, a special Under the Radar presentation on January 9 at La MaMa (photo by End & Dna)

The Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. between East Fourth St. & Astor Pl.
January 4-15, free-$25
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com

The eighth annual Under the Radar: A Festival Tracking New Theater from Around the World offers another diverse collection of live performances that provide a welcome alternative to conventional theater. Running January 4-15, this year’s fest includes such promising productions as Hideki Noda’s The Bee, an English-language drama at Japan Society about a horrible surprise waiting for a businessman upon returning home from the office; Bambï & Waterwell’s Goodbar, a live concept album reimagining of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, at the Public Theater; Suli Holum & Deborah Stein’s Chimera, about a woman who is her own twin, at HERE; and Stefan Zeromski Theatre’s unique musical take on Bernard-Marie Koltès’s In the Solitude of Cotton Fields, set to live Polish punk rock, at La MaMa. The Public will also be home to the LuEsther Lounge, presenting free live music throughout the festival. Among the other free events are the installation Gob Squad Resource Room at the Goethe-Institut’s Wyoming Building (the Gob Squad Arts Collective will also be presenting the interactive Super Night Shot at the Public); Camille O’Sullivan’s Feel, in which the Irish singer will play a different character for songs by Jacquel Brel, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, David Bowie, and others, at the Public; and the panel discussion “Performance and Context: The Black Box and the White Cube,” January 8 at 1:00 at the Public. In addition, a post-show discussion will follow the January 7 performance of Motus’s Alexis. A Greek Tragedy at La MaMa, a preshow talk will precede the January 8 performance of the Living Word Project’s Word Becomes Flesh at the Public, a panel will follow the January 11 performance of biriken & Ayça Damgaci’s Lick But Don’t Swallow! at La MaMa, chelfitsch’s Toshiki Okada (Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech) will lead a workshop for theater and dance professionals on January 14 at 1:00 at Japan Society, and “Everyone’s a Critic! Exploring the Changing Landscape of Arts Writing” will take place January 15 at 1:00 at the LuEsther Lounge. As always, Under the Radar offers adventurous theatergoers a chance to see a bunch of very different works, from an excellent selection of international companies.

SHIZUOKA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER: MEDEA

The Shizuoka Performing Arts Center’s reimagining of Euripides’ MEDEA comes to Japan Society this weekend (photo © Takuma Uchida)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
September 23-25, $32
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

For his reimagining of Euripides’ classic Greek tragedy Medea, Satoshi Miyagi, artistic director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, has moved the powerful story of an embattled wife and mother seeking revenge to the Meiji era, incorporating unique costumes, a play-within-a-play story line, live music and singing, and two actors playing each role, set on a colorful stage centered by a large red circle. The sold-out production runs Friday through Sunday at Japan Society, but a limited amount of wait-list tickets will be available one hour before showtime, so you still have a chance to see this highly acclaimed spectacle that has traveled the world.

NYAFF 2011 / JAPAN CUTS — MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY

Yoshimasa Ishibashi’s wild and wacky MILOCRORZE will open the tenth annual New York Asian Film Festival on July 1 and screen at Japan Cuts on July 10

MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY (Yoshimasa Ishibashi, 2011)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, July 1, $13, 9:00
Series runs July 1-14, ten-film pass $99
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Sunday, July 10, $12, 8:00
Series runs July 7-22, five-film pass $50
212-875-5601 / 212-715-1258
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinemanews.com
www.japansociety.org/japancuts

The North American premiere of the wild and wacky, genre-iffic Milocrorze: A Love Story kicks off the tenth anniversary of New York City’s most exciting annual film series, the New York Asian Film Festival, running July 1-14 at Lincoln Center. Melding Michel Gondry with Quentin Tarantino and Takashi Miike filtered through Max Ophüls’s La Ronde and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie, longtime commercial, video, and television director Yoshimasa Ishibashi makes his feature-film cinematic debut with this highly stylized three-part tale of love and romance. In the first section, seven-year-old salaryman Ovreneli Vreneligare, wearing one of the most charming costumes and hairstyles ever put on celluloid, falls in love with the beautiful, and adult, Milocrorze (Maiko) in a candy-coated fantasyland of lush colors and dreamlike sets. That bittersweet tale leads into the second part, in which bizarre youth counselor Besson Kumagi (Takayuki Yamada) abusively screams relationship advice to lonely boys over the phone, then breaks out into self-celebratory dance numbers with a couple of hot babes, a sort of Japanese version of Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton character. That story segues into the violent, vengeful mini-epic of rogue samurai Tamon (Yamada again), who starts out as a simple man who falls in love with Yuri the flower girl (Ann Ishibashi) but is soon trying to rescue her from a high-priced gambling and prostitution ring. Ishibashi then circles back to Milocrorze and Ovreneli Vreneligare (Yamada yet again, in his third role) years later for the tender finale. Milocrorze is a vastly entertaining, wonderfully absurd, and utterly ridiculous (and we mean that in a good way) exercise in multiple genres from the endlessly inventive Ishibashi. The samurai section goes on way too long, but otherwise this is a rousing success from start to finish, even when it is making absolutely no sense, which is very often. Milocrorze is the opening-night selection of NYAFF 2011, and both Ishibashi and Yamada will be at Lincoln Center on July 1 to participate in a postscreening Q&A; prior to the screening, Yamada will receive the Star Asia Rising Star Award. The film is being presented in conjunction with Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema, screening at Japan Society on July 10, followed by a Q&A with Ishibashi. Keep watching twi-ny for more reviews of select films from our two favorite film festivals of the year.

AKIKO YANO SOLO: REVEALING HER MAGIC

TRANSFORMING KOTOBA (“J-WORDS”) INTO MUSIC
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, June 3, $28, 8:15
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.akikoyano.com

A child piano prodigy in her native Japan, New York City-based jazz musician and singer Akiko Yano has released more than two dozen records since her debut, 1976’s Japanese Girl, collaborating with such producers and performers as Pat Metheny, Marc Ribot, T-Bone Burnett, Thomas Dolby, Lowell George and Little Feat, Hayao Miyazaki, John Zorn, Hiromi, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, whom she married and has a daughter with. (They divorced in 2006.) Her most recent release is 2010’s Ongakudo, a solo project that features twelve cover songs and three new originals. The fifty-six-year-old Yano, a regular at Joe’s Pub, bends, twists, expands, and contracts Japanese words in her songs, incorporating poems and folktales into her storytelling. She’ll be at Japan Society on June 3, performing solo and discussing her working process in a special one-time-only presentation. (Half of all ticket sales will go to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund, which to date has raised more than eight million dollars.)