Blog
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Jacob Cheung Chi-Leung’s 2011 film ‘Rest on Your Shoulder’ presents a haunting exploration of love, sacrifice, and supernatural intervention set against the backdrop of a mysterious epidemic. The narrative centers on botanist Yan Guo and his fiancée Baobao, who journey to Moon Island, a nature reserve shrouded in myth and wonder, to research the medicinal…
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Yojiro Takita’s 2012 film ‘Tenchi: The Samurai Astronomer’ presents a fascinating biographical portrait of Yasui Santetsu, the 17th-century polymath who revolutionised Japanese astronomy and calendrical science. The film chronicles Santetsu’s extraordinary journey from his early mastery of the strategic board game go to his appointment as Japan’s first official astronomer during the Edo Period, culminating…
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Yoji Yamada’s 2013 film ‘Tokyo Family’ presents a deceptively simple narrative that becomes profoundly moving through its exploration of intergenerational disconnection. The story follows an elderly couple who travel from their quiet hometown to visit their adult children in bustling Tokyo, only to discover that their offspring are consumed by their own busy lives—careers, relationships,…
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Album: Freedom – Piano Stories IV – A Television in Hawaii Joe Hisaishi had just finished composing Howl’s Moving Castle. He was on holiday in Hawaii — the kind of complete break that only makes sense after the sustained intensity of a Miyazaki collaboration — when he turned on the television and saw something that…
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Yoshihiro Nakamura’s 2013 film ‘Miracle Apples’ tells the remarkable true story of Akinori Kimura, a determined farmer who decides to cultivate apples without chemical pesticides in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture. When his wife Mieko develops a severe allergic reaction to pesticides, Akinori makes the courageous decision to abandon conventional farming methods entirely. What follows is a…
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Hayao Miyazaki’s final directorial work, “The Wind Rises” (2013), stands as a poignant meditation on dreams, creativity, and the moral complexities of artistic ambition. The film follows Jiro Horikoshi, a visionary Japanese aviation engineer whose lifelong passion for flight leads him to design the A-6M fighter plane during World War II. Rather than presenting a…
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Isao Takahata’s final masterpiece, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, tells the timeless Japanese legend of a mysterious girl discovered inside a glowing bamboo stalk by an elderly woodcutter and his wife. As she grows with impossible rapidity into a breathtakingly beautiful young woman, the princess captivates everyone around her with an ethereal grace that…
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Yoji Yamada’s 2014 film “The Little House” presents a delicate meditation on memory, loss, and the hidden depths of ordinary lives. The narrative unfolds through an intimate discovery: when the elderly and unmarried Taki passes away, her young relative Takeshi finds handwritten pages containing her carefully preserved memories. These intimate recollections transport him—and us—back to…
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Setsuro Wakamatsu’s 2014 film ‘Snow on the Blades’ presents a contemplative meditation on loyalty, obsolescence, and the inexorable march of modernization in nineteenth-century Japan. The narrative centres on Shimura Kingo, a master swordsman bearing the weight of a catastrophic failure at Sakurada Gate in 1860, when his lord and the shogun’s chief minister fell to…
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Toshio Masuda’s 1987 film ‘This Story of Love’ offers a unique cinematic exploration of the lives and relationships of stunt performers—individuals who exist in the shadows of cinema, risking their bodies to create the illusions audiences cherish. The film weaves together multiple narratives centered on these unsung professionals, examining how danger, dedication, and human connection…
