News

Japanese distributor and producer Gaga Corporation is boosting its investment in lucrative anime features and eyeing a move into video games, following its majority stake acquisition by entertainment firm Genda.

Gaga president and CEO Tom Yoda is at the Cannes market with an “aggressive” growth strategy and a diverse slate that includes an upcoming martial arts drama from acclaimed filmmaker Takashi Miike and two Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction anime films, based on the popular manga by Inio Asano.

Yoda notes that the Japanese box office has been dominated by anime titles in recent years and such success would help...

Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s “Evil Does Not Exist,” was Sunday evening named as the best picture at the Asian Film Awards.

The 17th edition of the prizes was held at the Xiqu Centre, part of the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong.

While “Evil Does Not Exist” and Korean blockbuster “12.12: The Day” had dominated the nominations with six each, including those in the best film category, the prizes on Sunday were much more evenly distributed. No title collected more than two prizes.

Outside, crowds failed to be muted by the March drizzle, though VIP guests were given escorts with purple umbrellas.

Filmmaker and industry attendance was also robust. Those spotted on the red carpet and pre-event cocktails included: Lee Yong Kwan (former chair of the Busan film festival), Tom Yoda, Udine festival heads Sabrina Baracetti and Thomas Bertacche, Anthony Chen, Stanley Kwan, Rina Damayanti, Hong Kong distributor Winnie Tsang,...

Gaga’s Tom Yoda will retain a stake in the company.

Japanese distributor and producer Gaga Corporation has sold a majority stake to Genda Inc, an entertainment business known for operating amusement arcades.

Genda will acquire a 78.05% stake in Gaga from T.Y. Limited, the firm owned by Gaga president and CEO Tom Yoda, on November 30. Yoda will retain the remaining 21.95% and will be the representative director and chairman of the board. Financial terms have not been revealed.

A new management structure will see Genda director and Cco Yuzo Sato appointed representative director and president/CEO. Nao Kataoka, founder and...

Japanese gaming firm Genda Inc is acquiring a 78.05% stake in leading Tokyo-based buyer and producer Gaga Corp.

Genda is acquiring the shares from Gaga president and CEO Tom Yoda’s own company T.Y. Limited, with the deal scheduled to go through on November 30, 2023.

Yoda will retain the remaining 21.95% stake as well as the position of Gaga chairman. All other Gaga executive appointments remain unchanged.

Genda chairman Nao Kataoka and Cco Yuzo Sato will have seats on the Gaga board, with the latter executive serving as Gaga president and CEO.

Gaga was founded in 1986 and Yoda’s T.Y. Limited took a majority stake in 2009. Under his management, the company has emerged as one of the world’s leading indie film distributors, handling a wide range of international titles, and has also expanded its local production slate.

The company has distributed seven Oscar Best Picture winners, including Coda and Everything Everywhere All At Once,...

Leading Japanese indie film company Gaga Corporation has seen a controlling share stake sold to Genda Inc., a fast-moving entertainment conglomerate with its roots in arcade gaming.

Genda is buying the 78% share holding owned by Gaga chairman Tom Yoda’s T.Y. Limited company. Yoda will retain the outstanding 22% in his own name and stay on as Gaga’s chairman and representative director. The value of the transaction was not disclosed.

While a new management structure will see Sato Yuzo, director, Cco of Genda, become the representative director and president/CEO, and Kataoka Nao, founder and representative director and chairman of the board at Genda, will become director of the board at Gaga, Gaga’s other senior management remain unchanged in their posts.

Gaga was founded in 1986, with T.Y. Limited coming on board in 2009 as majority owner. Today it operates as producer, distributor and sales agent.

In the 15 years...

Exclusive: In a world where the space for specialist and non English-language cinema is shrinking in cinemas, it’s encouraging to see that Tokyo-based Gaga Corporation is committed to bringing a diverse range of theatrical releases to Japanese audiences.

Launched in 1986, the company is one of Japan’s longest established buyers, releasing between 20-25 films a year, with its president and CEO Tom Yoda a familiar face on the international festival and markets circuit. The company is also an active producer of Japanese films, with recent titles including Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster, which is screening as a Special Presentation in Toronto, following its Best Screenplay award in Cannes.

As Japan was moving out of the pandemic, the company says it was pleased with the box office results for acquisitions such as Todd Field’s Tar, French filmmaker Claude Zidi Jr’s opera-themed Tenor and multiple Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All At Once,...

Leading executives from the Japanese firm outline their strategy for the year ahead.

Gaga Corporation has secured Japan rights to Max and Sam Eggers’ upcoming psychological horror The Front Room from A24.

It marks the feature directorial debut of the Eggers Brothers, whose sibling Robert Eggers has worked with A24 on The Witch and The Lighthouse. Max, who co-wrote The Lighthouse, and Sam, who co-wrote Olympia, adapted the screenplay from Susan Hill’s short story of the same name and the feature is in post-production.

The pre-buy builds on previous deals between Gaga and A24 that have included Everything Everywhere All At Once,...

Gaga is “strong and we are growing” according to the renowned executive.

Tom Yoda, chairman of Japanese distributor and producer Gaga Corporation, wants everyone in Cannes to know that “Japan is on the mend” after the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Even after a turbulent two years, Gaga is “strong and we are growing” according to the renowned executive. At the Marché, Gaga is announcing a multi-platform strategy that comprises international film distribution; local film and anime production; game and character businesses derived from anime; as well as “aggressive overseas market cultivation” and internet business. The latter involves Nft and metaverse businesses including VR.

“Ennio,” the hotly anticipated Ennio Morricone doc by Oscar-winning Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore has sold to a slew of territories ahead of its world premiere Friday at the Venice Film Festival

Block 2 Distribution, which is the sales arm of Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai’s Jet Tone films, has announced sales of the doc to Germany and Austria (Koch Media), Benelux (Periscope), France (Le Pacte), Scandinavia and Baltics (Non Stop Entertainment), Italy (Lucky Red), Japan (Gaga) and China (Blossoms Island Pictures).

“Ennio” will also go out across the Middle East via (Front Row) and has been additionally sold to Poland (Best Film), Spain (Karma Films) and Turkey (Filmarti).

Negotiations for sales to other territories are underway on the Lido.

Morricone who is among the most prolific and admired composers in film history –– and who died last year at 91 –– had a very close rapport with Tornatore, having composed the...

“The Farewell” filmmaker Lulu Wang has reportedly added another major product to her growing slate. Observer reports that Wang has been tapped to direct an English-language remake of the beloved Hirokazu Kore-eda film “Like Father, Like Son” for Focus Features. A source close to Focus confirms the news, and that it is currently in early development stages at the studio. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has been attached to write the screenplay and Wang will produce alongside Josh McLaughlin under his Wink Productions banner.

Kore-eda’s 2013 feature debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won both the Jury Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention. Sundance Selects released the dramedy in the U.S., which examines two very different families who discover that their six-year-old sons were switched at birth. Kore-eda’s film starred Fukuyama Masaharu, Ono Machiko, Maki Yoko, and Lily Franky, and was produced by Kameyama Chihiro,...

Block 2 Distribution, the sales arm of Wong Kar-wai’s Jet Tone Films will handle international rights to “Ennio: The Maestro.” The film is an upcoming documentary about legendary film musician Ennio Morricone, written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore.

Morricone, who is 91, has more than 500 movie credits to this name including scores for Sergio Leone’s so-called “Dollars Trilogy” – “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”

Tornatore and Morricone have worked together on 13 films, with their best known effort “Cinema Paradiso” in 1988, which claimed the best foreign language film Oscar. The documentary involves a mix of interviews with film-making partners – including Wong, Quentin Tarantino, Bernardo Bertolucci, Clint Eastwood and Bruce Springsteen – that are intercut with fragments of Morricone’s private life, recordings from Morricone’s world concert tours, clips of classic films scored by Morricone, and previously unseen archival footage of...

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Participant and Japan’s Gaga Corporation have announced at Afm a multi-year output deal for Participant films financed through its investment in Amblin Partners.

The parties have worked together on a number of films over the past several years, including The Great Invisible, A Most Violent Year, On the Basis of Sex, and last year’s best picture Oscar winner Green Book, which grossed nearly $20m at the Japanese box office

“Gaga is one of the premier film distributors in Japan focused on entertaining and impactful storytelling, and we are thrilled to continue our longstanding partnership with Tom Yoda,...

Green Book producer Participant has entered a multi-year output agreement with Japanese distributor Gaga Corporation.

The tie-up, announced at the Afm, strengthens a relationship that saw Gaga release Participant’s Oscar-winning Green Book in Japan in March, grossing a chunky $20m.

Now, Gaga will release all of Participant’s films that are financed via its investment in Amblin Partners. Upcoming projects include Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater with Matt Damon.

Other past Participant titles released by Gaga include The Great Invisible, A Most Violent Year, and On the Basis Of Sex.

“Gaga is one of the premier film distributors in Japan focused on entertaining and impactful storytelling, and we are thrilled to continue our longstanding partnership with Tom Yoda, Kiyoshi Watanabe, and the rest of the team,” said Participant CEO David Linde.

Gaga chairman Tom Yoda commented, “We are very pleased to be partners with Participant. We highly respect and trust...

Japanese distributor Gaga Corporation has struck an output deal with U.S. financier and producer Participant Media, giving it the Japanese release of Participant’s films that are financed via its investment in Amblin Partners. The deal was announced on the sidelines of the American Film Market in Santa Monica.

Participant and Gaga previously worked together on recent films including “The Great Invisible,” “A Most Violent Year,” “On the Basis of Sex,” and last year’s Oscar best picture winner “Green Book,” which grossed nearly $20 million at the Japanese box office.

“We highly respect and trust David and his creative teams’ tasteful and commercial eyes such as ‘Green Book,’ as well as ‘Roma.’ We are hoping that we can work with Participant not only as a film distribution partner in Japan, but also in film productions in the near future,” said Gaga chairman Tom Yoda.

Participant positions itself as a...

Tensions between the two nations have buyers and sellers spooked

South Korea and Japan are embroiled in a trade war that has led to a boycott of Japanese goods and services, but will it affect business at the Asian Film Market which opens today in Busan?

The dispute ignited in July when Japan announced it would tighten control over the export of chemicals to South Korea necessary for producing semiconductors – an essential component of most electronic devices, which are a top export for the country.

Japan explained its actions over security concerns about South Korea leaking information to North Korea...

The heads of Japan’s leading studios discussed their strategies for expanding into international markets at the close of Japan Day Project’s seminar programme on Monday.

Toho president Yoshishige Shimatani talked about how the company has set up a division to work on remakes of its content: “Sales of Japanese movies are small. We need new strategies and can’t just dub our movies into other languages and try to export them,” Shimatani said.

He also talked about working with Legendary Pictures on its Godzilla reboot: “Godzilla is like our Mickey Mouse. We handed it over to Legendary and they made a very good movie out of it.”

Kadokawa chairman Tsuguhiko Kadokawa explained how the company is setting up the Kadokawa Contents Academy in several Asian countries to offer courses for animation, manga and character design. “We want to use Japanese pop culture to produce quality content creators associated with local cultures,” Kadokawa said.

Jay...

The folks at Sundance Selects are smiling, as they not only acquired U.S. rights to Cannes Palme d'Or winner "Blue is the Warmest Color," a lesbian romance that is sure to be a hot ticket back stateside, but U.S. rights to Japanese writer-director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Jury Prize Winner "Like Father, Like Son," as well. With a screenplay by Kore-eda, the film stars Fukuyama Masaharu, Ono Machiko, Maki Yoko, and Lily Franky, and was produced by Kameyama Chihiro, Hatanaka Tatsuro, and Tom Yoda. The film made its world premiere this week in Competition at the festival. The heart-tugger is about what happens when two families discover that their six year old sons were switched at birth. Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “Like Father, Like Son proves once again that Kore-eda Hirokazu is an exquisite filmmaker, artist and storyteller. We welcome the opportunity to work...

Sundance Selects is acquiring U.S. rights to Japanese writer-director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s "Like Father, Like Son," which took a jury prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. "Like Father, Like Son" a dramedy that examines two families who discover that their six-year-old sons were switched at birth. It's the fourth festival title that Sundance Selects purchased at the festival. The film stars Fukuyama Masaharu, Ono Machiko, Maki Yoko, and Lily Franky, and was produced by Kameyama Chihiro, Hatanaka Tatsuro, and Tom Yoda. The film made its world premiere this week in Competition at the festival. Sundance Selects’ sister label, IFC Films, previously released Hirokazu’s "Still Walking" and "Nobody Knows." The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, senior VP acquisitions and productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Carole Baraton at Wild Bunch on behalf of the filmmakers. Sundance Selects made deals at the festival already for several festival award winners.

Sundance Selects acquired U.S. rights to Japanese writer-director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Jury Prize Winner Like Father, Like Son from Wild Bunch. With a screenplay by Kore-eda, the film stars Fukuyama Masaharu, Ono Machiko, Maki Yoko, and Lily Franky, and was produced by Kameyama Chihiro, Hatanaka Tatsuro, and Tom Yoda. The film made its world premiere this week in Competition at the festival. Pic mixes drama and humor as the film examines the agony of two families who are informed that their 6-year-old sons were switched at birth. Sundance Selects’ sister label IFC Films previously released Hirokazu’s Still Walking and Nobody Knows. Deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Carole Baraton at Wild Bunch on behalf of the filmmakers.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Japanese embassy in Washington D.C have honored Tom Yoda, outgoing chairman of the Tokyo International Film Festival, for his outstanding contributions to the Japanese filmmaking industry, the MPAA announced on Tuesday. Yoda, left, was appointed chairman of the Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) in March 2008 and oversaw his final festival last month.  MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd, and the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, presented Yoda with the special award for promoting and protecting the screen community in Japan on...

Lorraine Levy's Palestinian/Israeli drama, "The Other Son," won the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix, the top award at the 25th Tokyo International Film Festival, on Sunday night. Levy also took home the best director honors at the festival, which marks the final go-round for festival chairman, Tom Yoda. The special jury prize went to Kang Yi-kwan's "Juvenile Offender." Seo Young-joo, who stars in the film, was awarded the best actor prize. The best actress award went to Neslihan Atagul for "Araf -- Somewhere in Between." Tetsuaki Matsui's "Flashback Memories 3D," about a...

Controversy surrounding the Chinese film "Feng Shui" continued to swirl at the Tokyo International Film Festival on Monday, when the film's cinematographer, Liu Younian, was prevented from taking part in a news conference tied to the screening of the film. Liu arrived in Tokyo on Monday, after the film's director, Wang Jing, and actors Yan Bingyan and Jiao Gang canceled their trip. Their action followed the film's producers attempts late last week to stop the film's participation in the festival amid ongoing territorial tensions between China and Japan. Tom Yoda (left), chairman of the festival, confirmed...

Yim Ho's Floating City has been withdrawn from competition following mounting political tensions between China and Japan

A Hong Kong-Chinese film has been withdrawn from the Tokyo international film festival owing to ongoing political tensions between China and Japan, reports Screen Daily.

Festival organisers announced on Tuesday that Yim Ho's Floating City, a Cantonese-language drama chronicling the meteoric rise of an illiterate man (played by Aaron Kwok) from a local fishing family to a powerful figure in Hong Kong's corporate world, would not after all be screening in the Japanese capital next month.

"It is with great regret that we have to announce the cancellation of the scheduled screening of Floating City at the 25th Tokyo international film festival owing to certain reasons on the production side," a statement read. "Although we have strongly requested those involved not to call off the plan to take part in the festival, the cancellation has unfortunately been finalised.

Japanese film luminaries announced the 24th edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival earlier today. The president of Unijapan, Hideyuki Takai, opened the event with Tom Yoda, the Chairman of the 24th Tiff. Fifteen films complete the Competition Selection, out of 975 submitted films from 76 countries. Two hundred more films will screen at the festival in Roppongi Hills and Tokyo. Tiff opens with swashbuckler The Three Musketeers on October 22nd, and runs through October 30; Toronto hit Moneyball will close the festival. Japanese director Shuichi Okita and his Tiff title The Woodsman and the Rain star Koji Yakusho also attended the festival announcement. Other titles in the competition line-up are below: Competition Line-up for the 24th Tokyo International Film Festival Albert Nobbs Directors: Rodrigo ...

The green policy of Tokyo, the city, was evident upon check in at one of the Tokyo International Film Festival’s main hotels, the Villa Fontaine, where a poster in the lobby spells out all of the eco-friendly policies. These range from energy-saving measures revolving around lighting and temperature adjustments in the lobby to the choice of having one’s bed sheets changed only every other day.

Meanwhile, at the festival proper, green initiatives have taken on an ever-greater role at the 10-day event, since they were first introduced three years ago.

The most evident symbol of Tiff’s environmentally friendly focus is its green carpet — a play off the traditional red carpet that must play havoc with stylists’ minds. Still, it gets the point across in no uncertain terms that Tiff is serious about saving the planet.

In keeping with the spirit of things, sponsors and guests get to...

Cannes film review, In Competition Blindness

Do you suppose an apocalyptic fable would ever possess any lightness or even rogue humor? No, social disintegration and degradation are the order of the day, and Fernando Meirelles' Blindness is no exception.

There is an extraordinary visual plan and considerable cinematic challenges to overcome for the Brazilian filmmaker (City of God) in adapting Nobel laureate Jose Saramago's 1995 novel to the screen so there is much here to quicken the pulse and engage the mind. Blindness is provocative cinema. But it also is predictable cinema: It startles but does not surprise.

An appreciative critical response will be needed stateside for Miramax to market this Brazilian-Canadian-Uruguayan co-production. Other territories may benefit from the casting of an array of international actors with some boxoffice draw.

The script by Don McKellar bears witness to a mysterious plague of blindness, a "white" disease in which people's eyes suddenly see only white light. As a cosmopolitan city struggles to cope with the horrifying fallout, a panicked government orders the immediate quarantine of those infected. The herding of shunned people into prison-like camps clearly provokes images of any number of 20th-century atrocities.

The film follows a few characters into a filthy, poorly equipped asylum where social order swiftly breaks down into gang conflict between republicans and royalists, between democracy and dictatorship. The republicans have a ringer though. The wife (Julianne Moore) of a doctor (Mark Ruffalo) -- an eye doctor in a deliberate irony -- can actually see but tells no one.

As in Lord of the Flies or even Animal Farm, the order that establishes itself is elitist, corrupt and lethal. A bartender (Gael Garcia Bernal) in the next ward is soon demanding valuables, then sexual favors for the distribution of the food, which he unaccountably controls. His ringer is a nasty old man (Maury Chaykin), blind from birth, who knows how to navigate in the world of sightlessness.

First comes acquiescence by the other wards, then rapes, murders and finally rebellion. Only then do the prisoners discover the guards have long disappeared. The entire world is caught in the throes of this plague. The ragged survivors stumble into a city of starvation and brutality.

Meirelles bathes the screen in a kind of white overexposure and other times a blurriness to convey the terrifying sense of dislocation and fear. You see the characters -- and the digusting filth they do not -- yet feel their helplessness when the screen jars or distorts your vision.

For this part, screenwriter McKellar creates two points of view -- initially that of the sighted wife, who tries to create order without giving away her ability to see, then switching occasionally to a man with an eye-patch (Danny Glover), whose philosophical commentary on metaphorical blindness expresses an authorial point of view.

One considerable problem with the first viewpoint is the character's slowness to act. She could easily have prevented any number of murders and rapes (including her own). Her failure marks an inexplicable failure of both nerves and morals that warps this not always convincing fable. And Glover's intellectual postures amid such physical distress come off as slightly pompous, perhaps cruelly so.

This philosophical coolness is what most undermines the emotional response to Meirelles' film. His fictional calculations are all so precise and a tone of deadly seriousness swamps the grim action. (Only a Stevie Wonder song and a line about volunteers raising their hands draw laughs.) Even the eventual lifting of the state of siege, while a welcome ending, has the arbitrariness of an author who has made his point and simply wants to sign off.

Removing a fable from the comfort of the printed page to the photo-reality of film can sometimes lead to its own kind of blindness.

Cast: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, Yusuke Iseya. Director: Fernando Meirelles. Screenwriter: Don McKellar. Based on the novel by: Jose Saramago. Producers: Niv Fichman, Andrea Barata Ribeiro, Sonoko Sakai. Executive producers: Gail Egan, Simon Channing Williams, Tom Yoda, Akira Ishii, Victor Loewy Director of photography: Cesar Charlone. Production designer: Tule Peake. Music: Marco Antonio Guimaraes. Costume designer: Renee April. Editor: Daniel Rezende.

Production companies: Miramax Films presents a Rhombus Media/O2 Filmes/Bee Vine Pictures production

Sales: Focus Features.

This review was written for the festival screening of "Silk".Toronto International Film Festival

TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.

Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."

Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.

Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.

His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).

The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.

Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.

You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.

What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.

SILK

Picturehouse

Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation

Credits:

Director: Francois Girard

Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding

Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco

Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai

Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco

Director of photography: Alain Dostie

Production designer: Francois Seguin

Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa

Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto

Editor: Pia Di Ciaula

Cast:

Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt

Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley

Baldabiou: Alfred Molina

Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho

Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani

Ludovic: Mark Rendall

Girl: Sei Ashina

Running time -- 109 minutes

MPAA rating: R...

This review was written for the festival screening of "Silk".Toronto International Film Festival

TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.

Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."

Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.

Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.

His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).

The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.

Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.

You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.

What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.

SILK

Picturehouse

Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation

Credits:

Director: Francois Girard

Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding

Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco

Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai

Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco

Director of photography: Alain Dostie

Production designer: Francois Seguin

Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa

Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto

Editor: Pia Di Ciaula

Cast:

Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt

Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley

Baldabiou: Alfred Molina

Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho

Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani

Ludovic: Mark Rendall

Girl: Sei Ashina

Running time -- 109 minutes

MPAA rating: R...

Toronto International Film Festival

TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.

Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."

Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.

Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.

His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).

The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.

Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.

You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.

What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.

SILK

Picturehouse

Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation

Credits:

Director: Francois Girard

Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding

Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco

Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai

Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco

Director of photography: Alain Dostie

Production designer: Francois Seguin

Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa

Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto

Editor: Pia Di Ciaula

Cast:

Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt

Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley

Baldabiou: Alfred Molina

Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho

Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani

Ludovic: Mark Rendall

Girl: Sei Ashina

Running time -- 109 minutes

MPAA rating: R...

Toronto International Film Festival

TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than Silk has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.

Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid The Red Violin) stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."

Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.

Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.

His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).

The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.

Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.

You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.

What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.

SILK

Picturehouse

Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation

Credits:

Director: Francois Girard

Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding

Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco

Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai

Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco

Director of photography: Alain Dostie

Production designer: Francois Seguin

Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa

Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto

Editor: Pia Di Ciaula

Cast:

Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt

Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley

Baldabiou: Alfred Molina

Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho

Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani

Ludovic: Mark Rendall

Girl: Sei Ashina

Running time -- 109 minutes

MPAA rating: R...