Volume 04, Number 07
Movies
Movie News
By Bill Hersey
My sincerest thanks to Tohokushinsha Chairman/CEO Banjiro Uemura for setting up a private screening of his company's documentary film on internationally renowned artist Yoshitomo Nara.
I learned about the artist from long time friend and huge friend of Nara's Tsukasa Shiga, who graduated from St. Mary's, went to university in Boston, and is now president of Ceremony of a very successful wedding and funeral company in Saitaima Ceremony.
Nara's personality and work style really brought back memories of some great times and interesting times with pop artist Andy Warhol at his "factory" in New York. Will do a flashback on Andy in the near future. Sorry I was out of Japan when Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad was here to promote his highly acclaimed award-winning film Paradise Now. The story is about two Palestinian childhood friends who have been recruited as suicide bombers for a strike on Tel Aviv and focuses on their last days together.
The film was shot on location in Nablus, Nazareth and Tel Aviv. Filming, as you can imagine, was not always easy for the international film crew but hard work, patience and dedication resulted in an excellent film that really tells a story and is really worth seeing. Check out the surprise ending.
If you could have seen the reaction of the full house crowd at The Piccadilly Theater, you would have seen a lot of happy people really enjoying the premiere of Warner Brother's Oscar-winning animated film Happy Feet. The theater lobby was full of stuffed smiling penguins greeting the guests and adding to the festive mood of the evening.
Happy Feet director George Miller (Mad Max) and Producer Douglas Mitchell flew in for the special evening and appeared on stage before the film with Johnny Jimusho's pop group "News". One of the group's members Yuya Togoshi dubbed the voice of Mambo for the Japanese version of the film.
George gave me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He was carrying his Oscar in a laundry bag, and when I asked him if it was heavy, he took the beautiful award out and handed it to me. Yes, my friends, the Oscar statues are heavy.
MOVIE REVIEW
Blood Diamond—War is a Spectacle. By Nine Yamamoto-Masson
Adventure, action, gorgeous exotic locations, heinous crimes, social and moral issues, romance, and the triumph of humanism all come together in Edward Zwick's (director of The Last Samurai, Shakespeare in Love) film about three very different individuals whose paths cross in Africa's heart of darkness—the inferno that was Sierra Leone's gruesomely violent civil war in the late 90's. The film deals with a topic rarely seen on the big screen: the illicit diamond trade, the shady side of what most people only know as the epitome of glamor.
A so-called blood diamond is a diamond mined in a war zone and sold to finance rebel war efforts. For nearly two and a half hours, Blood Diamond takes us to the limits of what one can stomach—several scenes make the viewer recoil in horror and shiver with empathy. Africa's vast and lush landscapes are splendidly captured by Girl with the Pearl Earring cinematographer Eduardo Serra and will take you away to a place that, as Solomon's son Dia says, it could be paradise on earth when peace has settled.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Honsou give exceptional performances in this epic action-drama set in a country torn apart by the struggles for power and control over the diamond mines. DiCaprio plays the white Zimbawean Danny Archer, a gritty, heartless former mercenary turned smuggler, who risks his life multiple times in search of a huge diamond of a rare pink coloring he has only heard of, found and hidden by native fisherman Solomon Vandy (Honsou) while a captive of the rebel militia.
The three main characters are united in their quest for different motives: gritty, morally ambiguous Danny wants to find the precious stone for monetary gain and to be able to leave Africa forever, idealistic journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly) wants to uncover the ugly truth behind the diamond trade and trace it back to the prestigious jewelers in London, and the brave Solomon needs Danny and Maddy to reunite with his family and rescue his son from the rebels who kidnapped and brutalized him into becoming a child-soldier, a killing machine—one of the most horrifying realities of African civil war.
To sum up: diamonds can be dirty business, and especially when they are used to finance war, things get very ugly. Not all white guys are greedy devils, not all black guys are the victims, and not all that glitters is gold—and the clearest diamond may be rotten to the core from all the blood shed for it. Opens Apr. 7, 2007.