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The Voice judge and Maroon 5 member Adam Levine has given us numerous iconic songs that continue to remain popular years after their release. One such song is the lead single from their studio album, V, which broke records upon its release and debuted at the top of several charts across the world. The song talks about following a “map” to find a person they love, no matter where they are.

If you haven’t guessed it yet, of course, we are talking about Maps. A song about not giving up on someone even when they are gone, it has a catchy tune, but is deeply emotional and tragic. While there is no explicit connection established, many believe the song seems to have inspired Prime Video’s latest rom-com, The Map That Leads to You.

Prime Video’s The Map That Leads to You Echoes Maroon 5’s Maps Madelyn Cline and...

Before Bong Joon‑ho’s Parasite swept the world with 2019 Oscar domination, another masterpiece, Lee Chang‑dong’s Burning (2018), adapted from Haruki Murakami’s short story ‘Barn Burning,’ set a high bar for contemporary cinema. A psychological thriller and critically acclaimed, the film was a hit at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, winning the Fipresci International Critics’ Prize.

Widely hailed as one of the best South Korean films ever made as well as one of the best movies of the 2000s, it also became the first South Korean film to make the final nine-film shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. Yet despite that honor, it ultimately went un‑nominated, an omission that continues to be seen as a glaring oversight given its global impact and artistry.

Steven Yeun Starrer Burning: A Murakami Masterpiece Left Off Oscars Final List Burning | Credits: Pinehouse Film

Based on Haruki Murakami’s subtle and surreal short story called Barn Burning,...

In the 2nd episode of Smoke, Dave and Michelle set their sights on Arch, because they were convinced that he was the arsonist I have nicknamed Potato Chips. But after stalking him for days, they didn’t have anything concrete that would allow them to issue a warrant to search his bunker. Feeling the pressure of her duties, Michelle decided to break into Arch’s “mancave,” that too without informing Dave, to see if she could find a shred of evidence that could be used against the disgusting bigot. Although Arch’s bunker didn’t have any material that could be used for arson, it was full of enough guns to arm an entire army. In addition to that, there was some kind of a Bdsm dungeon where Arch probably partook in some shady activities. Arch caught Michelle trespassing, and in retaliation, she shot him in the leg and framed...

Already adapted into a (not so good) movie with the same name in 2021, “Hotel Iris” is one of the most renowned books by Yoko Ogawa, a writer famous for winning every major Japanese literary award, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Yomiuri Prize, along with a number of international ones.

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The 164-page novel begins in a quiet Japanese seaside town, one of those resorts filled with tourists during summer and nearly empty in winter. Mari, a 17-year-old girl, helps her controlling mother run the titular hotel after her father’s death years earlier. Her mother refuses to let her out of her sight, partly because she needs help managing the hotel, which employs only a maid besides the two, and partly because she prioritizes the hotel’s survival over her daughter’s well-being.

However, one fateful night, after an incident involving...

The interview was conducted through the good offices of Parco Theater | Parco Stage.

Special acknowledgement to The New National Theatre, Tokyo and sincere gratitude for the support.

‘Till the Stars Come Down‘ is a compelling new play by Beth Steel, first staged at the National Theatre’s Dorfman Theatre in London in early 2024. Directed by Bijan Sheibani, the production garnered widespread acclaim for its rich character development, sharp humor, and poignant exploration of societal change. Set in the East Midlands town of Mansfield, Till the Stars Come Down unfolds during Sylvia and Marek’s wedding day. As the celebration progresses, the gathering of family and friends reveals underlying tensions and unspoken truths. The play delves into themes of love, identity, and the complexities of family dynamics, all while addressing broader societal issues such as migration and economic hardship. The play received numerous accolades, including: ★★★★★ reviews from The Guardian, The Telegraph,...

Bitters End has acquired international sales rights for “Two Seasons, Two Strangers,” the latest feature from Japanese director Sho Miyake, ahead of the Cannes film market.

With three decades in the business, Bitters End has established itself as a leading Japanese distributor, handling films from internationally acclaimed filmmakers including Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Bong Joon-Ho, the Dardenne brothers, and Jia Zhangke. Recent acquisitions include “Anora,” “Sex/Love/Dreams,” “Caught by the Tide,” “La Chimera,” and “Perfect Days.” The company also produces and was behind the Academy Award-winning “Drive My Car.”

“Two Seasons, Two Strangers” stars Korean actor Shim Eun-kyung alongside Japanese actor Shinichi Tsutsumi (“Always: Sunset on Third Street”). Currently in post-production, the project is targeting a November domestic release in Japan.

Miyake has built a strong festival reputation with previous works including “All the Long Nights” (Berlinale 2024), “Small, Slow But Steady” (Berlinale 2022), “And Your Bird Can Sing” (Berlinale 2019), and “Playback” (Locarno 2012). His contemplative,...

Two of Haruki Murakami’s classic tales of ennui and ambivalence – Scheherazade and Sleep – gain new life in this impressive manga adaptation.

The right story can reach an entire generation and become a foundational text, but the medium in which it’s presented is often just as important. There are plenty of horror novels that didn’t truly pop until they were turned into movies, while other movies struggled until lengthier TV series adaptations came along. The way in which stories are told is often as fundamental as the story itself. Two unique mediums can present the same story in completely different ways, which is so powerful to consider.

Haruki Murakami is a renowned Japanese novelist whose works have been turned into unnerving films like Burning and Piercing. Murakami’s works have recently started to receive manga makeovers though the Haruki Murakami Manga Stories series. Volume 1 included Super-Frog Saves Tokyo,...

Japanese author Haruki Murakami is a celebrated writer of essays, short stories, and novels that have enchanted readers around the world, and the work of Murakami has inspired not only avid bookworms but filmmakers as well. Since the 1980s, both shorts and featured films have been made from his books. Titles like Norwegian Wood, The Elephant Vanishes, and the three novels that make up the Trilogy of the Rat have had such a big influence on Japanese literature that it seems only right these humanist stories would be brought to life on the screen.

With 10 adaptations so far, the best Murakami movies have succeeded in captivating even the most die-hard fans of the acclaimed author. Of course, being notoriously difficult to make, some movie adaptations are better than others. Murakami’s work in particular can be a challenge, with its use of abstract themes and often poetic prose. While some...

Makoto Shinkai, a renowned author and filmmaker, has a knack for weaving together captivating tales of love and fate. After the immense success of works like Your Name, Shinkai wanted something different. The traditional romance didn’t hold enough magic to attract Shinkai anymore.

Suzume and the Door [Credits: CoMix Wave Films Inc. and Story Inc.]

Makoto Shinkai then decided to take a bold step and step out of his comfort zone with Suzume no Tojimari. Instead of the ‘boy meets girl’ romance, Shinkai said he wanted to use his skills to tell a tale that ties together the themes of loss, hope, recovery, and human connection.

I did everything that I possibly could in terms of ‘boy meets girl’ and ‘will they, won’t they, will they meet.’

This bold step was a risk that eventually paid off; the much anticipated Suzume no Tojimari was received with enthusiasm and praise worldwide and grossed over 320 million dollars, becoming...

Acclaimed Japanese director Lisa Takeba is developing “Children of the River,” a Japan-Italy co-production that explores themes of identity and loss through the story of twin sisters. The project is participating in the Tokyo Gap-Financing Market operated by Tiffcom, the film market allied to the Tokyo International Film Festival.

This film is scheduled to be shot in the summer of 2025 and is set along the beautiful rivers of Shikoku, located in the southern part of Japan. It tells the story of a summer journey of self-discovery by twin sisters who are young art students. The region is also a Buddhist pilgrimage site, featured in Haruki Murakami’s novels.

“It’s a story about identity crisis,” Takeba told Variety. “Since a twin embodies a kind of dual identity, it makes for an excellent subject to explore themes of identity.”

The project marks one of the first features to take advantage...

When it comes to animation, Hayao Miyazaki’s name is often mentioned by other anime directors, and Makoto Shinkai is also one of them. The acclaimed director of Your Name and Suzume has long aspired to follow in the footsteps of Miyazaki. However, there’s one individual who ignited Shinkai’s passion for storytelling long before Miyazaki did, and that is none other than the legend, Haruki Murakami.

Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name | Credit: CoMix Wave Films

Murakami, a contemporary novelist known for his surreal, dreamlike narratives, is one of Japan’s most famous authors. By understanding the significance of Murakami’s literary influence and Miyazaki’s animation legacy, we can appreciate how Shinkai has crafted his unique, emotionally charged brand of anime.

Haruki Murakami’s Influence on Makoto Shinkai’s Storytelling

During the time promoting his films at the BFI London Film Festival, Makoto Shinkai shared the details with...

Netflixs 100 Years of Solitude adaptation is a deeply ambitious project, and there has been a lot of hesitation around the streamer's ability to bring the magical realism classic to life on the screen. However, recently released images, which show the cast and set of the TV series, seem to bode very well for the limited series.

The photos, published by Deadline, grant fans a first look into the live-action world of Macondo, the fictional town in Colombia where the story transpires. The images show the town being flooded, and people and animals wading through the water, as well as two of the characters meticulously engaged in an alchemical endeavor. From the set design, to the costuming, the previews for the Dynamo-produced series demonstrate a great attention to detail, which elicits much of the charm of the novel.

Related Prime Video's God of War Series Gets Unfortunate Update 2 Years After...

South Korean writer Han Kang, whose international breakthrough novel The Vegetarian was made into a film, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024.

The Swedish Academy unveiled the honoree Thursday, lauding “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Han’s 2007 novel The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English, won the International Booker Prize in 2015. The story of Yeong-hye, a part-time graphic artist and homemaker, whose decision to stop eating meat leads to mental health struggles and problems in her familial life, was adapted as a feature film by Woo-Seong Lim and screened at Sundance in 2010.

The honor is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in 1895. The others are prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize.

Han Kang is the first South Korean to win the literature Nobel.

Based on Haruki Murakami‘s first novel and the first in the “Trilogy of the Rat”, a book that the author, embarrassed by it, kept its English translation in obscurity for many years, “Hear the Wind Sing” is essentially an experimentation on how Murakami’s style, which is not exactly made for film material, could translate on the big screen. Let us take things from the beginning though.

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We are first introduced to the protagonist-narrator, a student at a university in Tokyo who has decided he wants to become a writer, but also finds the task terribly painful. As it is summer, he has returned to his seaside hometown in Niigata for vacation, with the suicide of a girl he dated at the university still lingering in his mind. During his time there, he frequents the bar of J, the Chinese...

This September, Max is bringing you a lot of entertainment with the highly anticipated DC action crime drama series The Penguin starring Colin Farrell and the new season of HBO’s great series My Brilliant Friend. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to Max this month and have a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the 5 best films coming to Max in September 2024 with a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

Boogie Nights (September 1)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Boogie Nights is a period drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The 1997 film revolves around Eddie Adams, a high school dropout who begins working as a porn star and achieves huge success but his new glamorous lifestyle goes to his head and he gets addicted to drugs. Boogie Nights stars Mark Wahlberg in the lead role with Burt Reynolds,...

The BBC and The Reading Agency have joined forces to launch an exciting initiative, “The Big Sporting Read,” which aims to encourage people to read more and discover new authors. The campaign features titles from renowned authors Taylor Jenkins Reid, Tom Daley, Jessica Ennis-Hill, and Haruki Murakami. ## Taylor Jenkins Reid Taylor Jenkins Reid, an […]

The Big Sporting Read: An Initiative by the BBC and The Reading Agency...

After years of making films in his native Japan, writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi found unexpected global success in 2021 with “Drive My Car.”

Adapted and expanded from short stories by Haruki Murakami, it’s an exquisite drama about a grieving theater director staging a multilingual “Uncle Vanya,” and his relationship with the pensive young woman employed to drive his cherry-red Saab.

Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, where Hamaguchi and co-writer Takamasa Oe won the Best Screenplay prize, “Drive My Car” went on to dominate the fall festival circuit. The film clocked up an astonishing four nominations at the 2022 Oscars, including Best Picture and a Best Director nod for Hamaguchi, and went on to win Japan’s first Oscar for Best International Film.

Hamaguchi’s latest film, “Evil Does Not Exist” is to some extent a response to that overwhelming acclaim. “I knew that I wanted my next work to be very...

Lee Chang-dong set Cannes ablaze in 2018 with the uneasily beautiful “Burning,” a loose Haruki Murakami adaptation about the folie à troix between an alienated delivery man (Ah-in Yoo), the wily young woman (Jong-seo Jun) he covets, and the handsome charisma machine who blows them apart. The South Korean director’s sixth film made history as Korea’s first to make the International Feature Oscar shortlist (it wasn’t nominated) but is perhaps best remembered for two scenes: the woman, Haemi (Jun), dancing topless for them to the tune of Miles Davis’ “Elevator to the Gallows” soundtrack, and for its abruptly violent ending involving murder and arson in the nude. Then, there’s a missing cat that may have never existed — pure Murakami.

“Burning” remains a new classic of the 2010s, an elusive portrait of loneliness and desire that never spills on its narrative secrets. It grossed an impressive $718,000 at the U.

Evil Does Not Exist Photo: Janus Films There are few things more bone-chilling than the real-life evils set upon our planet and its people each and every day. This is the type of horror Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is contending with in Evil Does Not Exist, the stirring and eerie follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2021 film,...

Evil Does Not ExistPhoto: Janus Films

There are few things more bone-chilling than the real-life evils set upon our planet and its people each and every day. This is the type of horror Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is contending with in Evil Does Not Exist, the stirring and eerie follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2021 film,...

Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi became globally known after the success of Drive My Car, which earned him three major Oscar nominations, and one win (Best International Feature). After adapting Haruki Murakami’s short story, Hamaguchi has moved on to a new project, which was presented to audiences last year in Venice, where it won five out of the six awards it was nominated for. Evil Does Not Exist is the movie we are talking about, and ahead of this year’s American premiere, an official trailer for the movie has been released.

The movie is based on an original screenplay by Hamaguchi and based on the success it has had so far, the movie is slated to be another big hit for the Japanese filmmaker, which might earn him several awards later this year and next year.

The film will feature Hitoshi Omika as Takumi, Ryo Nishikawa as Hana, Ryuji Kosaka as Takahashi,...

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Quick Answer: Watch Sydney Sweeney host SNL online for free with trials to DirecTV Stream and fuboTV.

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Madame Web and Immaculate star Sydney Sweeney will host Saturday Night Live for the first time tonight. The Anyone But You actress will be joined by musical guest Kacey Musgraves, who’s set to release her new LP, Deeper Well, on March 15. Here’s what...

The first promo for her Saturday Night Live hosting debut finds Sydney Sweeney strolling through studio 8H, book in hand, when she bumps into castmember Michael Longfellow. She drops her book, he picks it up and goes into a reverie about the title – Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore – as romantic music swells. We hear Longfellow’s internal monologue as he gets the courage up to ask Sweeney out, but then the clip cuts to Sweeney and, well, let’s say she’s not interested.

You can watch it below.

Sweeney is coming off the back of one hit movie and one that flopped. She stars alongside Glen Powell in romantic comedy Anyone But You, which has become a surprise box office hit with nearly a $200M worldwide opening. She is also in Madame Web, alongside Dakota Johnson, crawled to a $26M opening in and received bad reviews.

SNL...

I was watching a video of a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show for the Rabbit R1, an AI gadget that promises to act as a sort of personal assistant, when a feeling of doom took hold of me.

It wasn’t just that Rabbit’s CEO Jesse Lyu radiates the energy of a Kirkland-brand Steve Jobs. And it wasn’t even Lyu’s awkward demonstration of how the Rabbit’s camera can recognize a photo of Rick Astley and Rickroll the owner — even though that segment was...

It’s that time of year again. While some directors annually share their favorite films of the year, Steven Soderbergh lists everything he consumed, media-wise. For 2023––another year in which he not only Magic Mike’s Last Dance Review: Steven Soderbergh and Channing Tatum Take a Familiar, Gentle Bow”>released a new film, but dropped two TV series (Full Circle and Command Z“>Command Z) and shot another film (the Sundance-bound Presence)––he still got plenty of watching in.

Along with catching up on 2023’s new releases, Ferrari, Anatomy of a Fall, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Air, Reality, Dead Reckoning, among others), he took in plenty of classics, including Eyes Wide Shut, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Casablanca, Out of the Past, The Shining, the epic War and Peace, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and, following Tom Wilkinson’s passing, Michael Clayton. He also got an early look at Pussy Island,...

Hayao Miyazaki's 1978 sci-fi anime series and directorial debut, Future Boy Conan, is set to receive a new stage adaptation in summer 2024.

Prior to the release of Castle of Cagliostro, Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki captivated audiences with his tale of a courageous young boy surviving on a war-ravaged earth. Per Horipro Stage and Comic Natalie, the upcoming stage version of Miyazaki's sci-fi classic will run at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theater Playhouse through May and June 2024. David Manboeuf, an exclusive performer for France's Theatre National Du Folk, collaborated with Israeli director and choreographer Inbal Pinto to create the show, which uses musical segments to retell its story. The latter has previously helmed several renowned productions, including the stage version of Haruki Murakami's 1994 novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Related Former Ghibli Staffer: New Hayao Miyazaki Doc "Borderline Fake," Paints "False History" Those familiar with Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron...

In 2021, Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi became internationally known and admired when he released Drive My Car. Based on a collection of short stories by renowned author Haruki Murakami, Drive My Car follows stage actor and director, Yusuke Kafuku, who after the death of his beloved yet complicated wife, accepts a job as the director of a production of Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. Soon after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival where it won the Best Screenplay award, it soon became the most talked about movie of the year and went on to become one of a handful of foreign language films to be nominated for Best Picture.

When 24-year-old Zoe Jackson scrolls her for-you-page, there are books all the way down. As a BookTok creator, Jackson spends much of her time on TikTok watching videos and recommendations surrounding the best books out there, from newly published novels to classic tomes. But while the average reader might stop scrolling when they recognize a book cover from high school English or a college course — like Catcher In The Rye, The Brothers Karamazov, or Infinite Jest, Jackson usually keeps it moving in an effort to avoid one of BookTok’s biggest icks: bro-lit.

Exclusive: Lighthouse Media & Management has signed the multi-hyphenate Kiko Mizuhara, best known for starring in Toho’s adaptation of Norwegian Wood and the beloved manga Attack on Titan, for representation in all areas.

Based on the novel by Haruki Murakami, the former film follows Toru Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama), a young man in 1960s Tokyo, as he grapples with the suicide of a friend, as well as fledgling relationships with both the friend’s girlfriend and another woman. Mizuhara played the latter, Midori. After world premiering in Venice, the film was released in Japan in 2010, making its way to the U.S. two years later.

Released in two parts in 2015, Shinji Higuchi’s live-action Attack on Titan — based on the Hajime Isayama manga — is a post-apocalyptic actioner picking up with Eren (Haruma Miura) and his friends as they join a military group known as The Survey Corps, in order to take...

Past Lives is a romantic drama movie written and directed by Celine Song. The A24 film follows the story of two childhood friends, who get separated as one of them moves out of South Korea, but decades later they meet again for a fateful week in which they ruminate about love and the choices they made in their lives. Past Lives stars Teo Yoo and Greta Lee in the lead roles of Hae Sung and Nora. So, if you loved the romantic drama film here are some similar movies you could check out next.

Lost in Translation (Netflix & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Universal Pictures

Synopsis: Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) are two Americans in Tokyo. Bob is a movie star in town to shoot a whiskey commercial, while Charlotte is a young woman tagging along with her workaholic photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi). Unable to sleep, Bob...

Implementing stage play aesthetics, and particularly excessive dialogue, is a practice that occasionally works quite well for cinema, especially when the story and the characters doing the talking are interesting. If not, though, the approach tends to become overly problematic, since the audience definitely expects different things from cinema than they do from theater. Shinya Nakata in his second film, “Ten Years + One Day” implements a similar approach. Let us see how he fares.

Ten Years + One Day is screening at Skip City International D-Cinema Festival

On a rural roadside outside of the urban centers, Harasaki and Morita reunite for the first time in ten years. The latter immediately insists on going to meet Kikushima, another girl from their common past, but the young man is reluctant. Her insistence, however, “convinces” him and the two meet Kikushima, who never actually left the village they find themselves now. There seems to...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Annihilation (Alex Garland)

More terrifying than any creature Hollywood could dream up is the unraveling of one’s mind—the steady loss of a consciousness as defined by the memories, motivations, and knowledge built up from decades of experience and reflection. With Annihilation, Alex Garland’s beautiful, frightening follow-up to Ex Machina, he portrays this paralyzing sensation with a sense of vivid imagination, and also delivers a cadre of horrifying creatures to boot. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: Netflix

Barbarian (Zach Cregger)

The kind of horror film that resembles the experience of traveling down the dark recesses of one’s nightmares, Barbarian is also quite funny to boot. While its thin characterization and merely surface-level thrills hold it back from...

[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Bear” Season 2, including the ending.]

Richie’s arc in “The Bear” Season 2 is at once the most practical and the most endearing. Prompted by last season’s near-manslaughter scare and buoyed by Olivia Colman’s Episode 7 assurance that it’s “never too late to start over,” Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s character, who was once an obstinate obstacle to change, transforms into a definitive new man. Richie’s reading leads him to realize he doesn’t have a particular set of skills, or otherwise irreplaceable function at work, and if he’s going to provide for his daughter, then he needs a reliable source of income, preferably one that will bring a little happiness, too — whether The Bear succeeds or not.

With a little nudge from Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and a lot of patience from the good folks at Ever, he recognizes that source. He steps up. He finds his purpose.

While not the strongest film – even within director Jun Ichikawa's oeuvre – 2001's “Tokyo Marigold” is interesting within the context of Japan's ‘lost decades' and the changing face of the metropolis. At the turn of the millennium, the grime and gloom of 90s cinema was replaced by a cleaner, fresher look, as style replaced substance. Clearly a student of Ozu, Ichikawa's Tokyo story shows a Japan of the gloss and sheen of Haruki Murakami novels and Muji furnished apartments; of upwardly mobile young office workers in doomed, short-term love affairs.

Eriko (Rena Tanaka) is a young woman somewhat lost in adult life, working as a clerk for a car dealership, drifting through her days. Around her, colleagues and friends appear surer of themselves, going places with their lives, offering her friendly advice, job opportunities and chances at love: More exciting work comes when she bumps into an old school...

Recently, Katie Holmes was reading Haruki Murakami’s “Novelist as a Vocation.” Within the memoir, which is composed of 11 different essays from the revered Japanese writer, Holmes said she found a story that spoke directly to her own vocation: director.

Holmes said she was struck by a story the writer shared from early in his career, in which he lost a floppy disc that held an important first draft for a new work. “He was so upset, obviously, and had to rewrite [this section] and thought it wasn’t as good as the first draft,” Holmes said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “Years later, he found that floppy disk and he saw that actually that [lost] section wasn’t as good as what he ended up rewriting. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s kind of it.'”

That’s the way Holmes, who has directed three films since 2016 — two of them since...

The recent films Drive My Car and Burning, two exquisite screen adaptations of Haruki Murakami’s fiction, delve into unsettling enigmas and longings, spun around performances of gripping subtlety. As a work of animation, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman can’t plumb behavioral depths and tics in quite the same way. But animation is an apt medium for exploring another aspect of Murakami’s work, his magic-realist spin on existential angst. Pierre Földes, a composer and visual artist at the helm of his first feature, has made something that mixes the painterly and the stylized, a film that’s lovely, mysterious and also, at times, fittingly odd.

The writer-director finds connective tissue among the various storylines in the idea of an earthquake as a psychic rupture, shaking loose the dissatisfactions and yearnings that are usually under wraps, keeping people shut off and stuck. Földes’ multiple roles here include writing the score,...

The short stories of Haruki Murakami are becoming an increasing fixture on the big screen––it may have taken considerably more time since their initial publications, but not since Stephen King’s earliest collections has an author’s back catalog found itself getting adapted so rapidly. After Lee Chang-dong and Ryusuke Hamaguchi managed to weave epic tales of obsession and grief from two comparatively conversational works (in their respective masterpieces Burning and Drive My Car), a handful of other tales are adapted far more faithfully for the screen in Pierre Földes’ animated anthology.

Named after Murakami’s 2006 collection of the same name, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman recontextualizes several of his more fantastical short stories, relocating them to a Tokyo still reeling from the devastating earthquakes of March 2011. In doing so, Földes creates something of an unofficial MCU (Murakami Cinematic Universe), tying together several narratives unrelated in their source materials via...

Ron Bernstein, a veteran rights agent who has brokered adaptive deals for modern classics like “No Country for Old Men” and “Blackhawk Down,” has joined the Agency for the Performing Arts.

He will serve as senior vice president of media rights, a mantle he will take up after a 23-year run at ICM Partners. Bernstein joins APA partners Steve Fisher and Debbie Deuble Hill in the publishing and media rights group. APA president Jim Osbourne announced Bernstein’s hire, effective Thursday. The addition is another big score for APA as the representation business continues to shift amid consolidation.

Over a long and enviable career, Bernstein has represented some of the most acclaimed novelists, authors and journalists in the marketplace and sold the rights to countless feature films, limited series and shows to major buyers.

Clients expected to join Bernstein at APA include Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Mark Bowden, John Burdett,...

Haruki Murakami doesn’t write in any particular genre — the Japanese literary giant is a genre. While his expansive bibliography has seen him dip his toe into everything from magical realism and hardboiled mysteries to straightforward literary fiction and fitness commentary, his singular worldview ensures that every genre he chooses to play with is bent to his will — never the other way around.

At this point, the novelist’s trademarks are known to anyone with even a passing interest in contemporary literature. His stories unfold like steam rising off a lake, flowing in seemingly directionless patterns before forming something indescribably beautiful. His protagonists are often ambitionless men who appear content to let life happen to them. But as they get sucked into increasingly surreal adventures, their passive dispositions and willingness to go along with things quickly make Murakami’s bizarre plots seem relatively normal.

By seamlessly shifting his focus between...

As one of the most highly regarded current writers in the world, Haruki Murakami has plenty of fans. His works have often been adapted for film, and even his short stories lend themselves for being adapted into great long films. Hamaguchi Ryusuke's Drive My Car is an excellent recent example, as is Lee Chang-dong's Burning. French animator Pierre Földes, however, does something else: in his debut feature Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman he takes no less than six stories from the Japanese master, and weaves them together into a single, strange narrative. It's an approach which works because Murakami himself often leaves questions unanswered, being more interested in making his readers think than in providing them with a rigid story. Földes uses one story to plug...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Unfolding in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Pierre Földes’ animation - based on the work of Haruki Murakami - is filled with unexpected movement, from rumbling discontent to relationship aftershocks and from the real to the imagined. The sense of flow extends to the narrative, which weaves together a series of stories, connected not so much by plot intersection as by existential questions of purpose and loss.

Chief among the characters are two bank employees, Mr Komura (voiced by Ryan Bommarito in the English language dub that is currently on release in the UK) and Mr Katagiri (Marcelo Arroyo). Komura is facing a seismic shift in his life, after his girlfriend Kyoko (Shoshana Wilder) suddenly leaves him. Meanwhile, Katagiri, who is under immense stress in the loan department at work, begins to have strange visitations from a giant frog who wants him to help save...

Animation ‘Mummies’, French hit ‘The Night Of The 12th’ also open.

Action adventure Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves sets off on its UK-Ireland box office run this weekend in 680 cinemas through eOne.

The film depicts a charming thief and band of unlikely adventurers who embark on a quest to retrieve a lost relic, but run afoul of the wrong people.

It is based on the tabletop role playing game that was first published in 1974, which has become one of the most popular tabletop games worldwide, with the game’s publisher Wizards Of The Coast claiming that over 50 million people...

In the 1970s, giant robot cartoons sparked a love affair with French fans (including Emmanuel Macron) – now the country is the world’s largest manga importer, and home to a new Murakami film

You might say that Vincent van Gogh was one of the first Japanese pop-culture otaku (geeks) in Europe. With the 19th-century japonisme craze in full swing, he coveted ukiyo-e woodblock prints like modern-day collectors hoard rare manga. Japanese art deeply influenced his work, from his flattening of perspective to his bold lines. He went to the south of France hoping to encounter the same radiant nature and spiritual freshness that figured in his east-Asian fantasia. Upon seeing Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa – a supposed inspiration for his own The Starry Night – he raved to his brother Theo in a letter: “The waves are claws, the boat is caught in them, you can feel it.

The seductively quirky sad-serious tone of the author is evident as a constellation of characters try and save the city – including a lost cat and a giant talkative frog

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has inspired some prestigious movies, most recently Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car. Regardless of whether this new Murakami adaptation (based on his short story collection of the same name) comes to be considered the best, I think it might actually capture the elusive essence of Murakami more than any other – something in it being a Rotoscope animation of elegant simplicity. It has the ruminative lightness, almost weightlessness, the watercolour delicacy and reticence of the emotions, the sense of the uncanny, the insistent play of erotic possibility and that Murakami keynote: a cat.

Pierre Földes makes his feature directing debut here, having been long been a composer; his musical credits include Michael Cuesta’s L.I.E.

Mamoru Oshii was jury president of the new prestigious animation event.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman has scooped the grand prize at the inaugural edition of Niigata International Animation Film Festival (Niaff), which ran in the Japanese port city of Niigata from March 17-23.

The animated feature is the directorial debut of US-born French composer Pierre Földes, who also wrote the screenplay and score, and is based on a collection of short stories by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. It ollows the lives of multiple characters as they navigate existence after the 2011 tsunami in Japan.

Sold by The Match Factory, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman...

Guy Maddin: “I’m just always shuffling around timelines in my head to make sense of time’s great flow.”

Guy Maddin on hacking my dreams, elevators and escalators, Franz Wright’s Kindertotenwald, Lois Weber, Haruki Murakami, Mathieu Amalric and Arnaud Desplechin’s dreamwork, thinking of numbers, Federico Fellini’s dream journal, A Director’s Notebooks, I Vitelloni and Rimini, Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, and an enchanted place called Riminipeg were all discussed in the second instalment on The Rabbit Hunters, co-directed with Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, and starring Isabella Rossellini as a “merged version” of Fellini and Giulietta Masina.

Guy Maddin with Anne-Katrin Titze on his hometown and Federico Fellini’s: “Fellini is from the city of Rimini in Italy, which is really just the Winnipeg of Italy.”

From Winnipeg, Guy Maddin joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on The Rabbit Hunters.

Anne-Katrin Titze:...

For our latest dive into recent books on or related to cinema, we’re spending time with some icons––fictional (James Bond) and non. Let’s start with 50 color palettes and one beautifully unique new text.

Colors of Film: The Story of Cinema in 50 Palettes by Charles Bramesco (Frances Lincoln)

Colors of Film is an engrossing study of how filmmakers utilize color in complex, ingenious, emotionally impactful ways. Some of these examples (e.g. the red jacket in Schindler’s List) have inspired much discourse. What makes this book––by the always-entertaining and -intelligent critic Charles Bramesco––so special is its focus on less-obvious films. A noteworthy case: Hype Williams’ Belly and its “flights of stylistic fancy.” During its hyper-stylized opening, as gangsters Buns and Sin “prowl through the dance floor, ceiling-mounted blacklights make the men look extraterrestrial, their eyeballs glowstick-turquoise against deeper blue skin.” Other entries focus on everything...

"Living with you... was like living with a chunk of air." Zeitgeist Films has revealed the official US trailer with English dubbing for an acclaimed indie animated film titled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, the feature directorial debut of composer Pierre Földes. This premiered at last year's Annecy Film Festival, also stopping by the Toronto & Busan Film Festivals. Based on several short stories by the renowned Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Utilizing a surreal hybrid animation style that incorporates live-action references, 3D modeling, and traditional layouts, the film begins in Tokyo just days after the earthquake of 2011. Aided by a lost cat and a loquacious giant frog, an unambitious salesman, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant are called upon to save their city from obliteration and find meaning in their lives. "It is sure to appeal to the wide range of Murakami fans and hopefully anyone who wants to take a...

Three-time Grammy winner Cécile McLorin Salvant will team with French studio Miyu Productions and Belgian animator Lia Bertels on “Ogresse,” a wry and irreverent fairytale inspired by a narrative performance piece the musician has toured since 2019.

Described as a murder ballad set to a jazz tempo, the animated musical will hit tragicomic notes as it follows a forest-dwelling ogress, ostracized because of her physical difference and pursued by a young hunter determined to claim her heart in either love or combat. Salvant and Bertels — one a lauded vocalist and one a festival acclaimed auteur – will co-direct, marking their joint feature debut adapting the show for the big screen.

“‘Ogresse’ is a love story inspired by my own experiences,” says Cécile McLorin Salvant. “It explores self-love and beauty ideals with a brave, complex, sometimes cruel and always endearing heroine. It will be an eclectic, dense, rich, and genderless film that will...

Adaptations of the celebrated Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s novels and short stories into live-action films, have always generated a mixed bag of outcomes; their success – in my opinion – being often inversely proportional to their adherence to the original source material. To mention some, “Tony Takitani” by Jun Ichikawa, “Hanalei Bay” by Daishi Matsunaga”, “Burning” by Lee Chang-dong and the most recent “Drive My Car” by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. The author’s rich universe, fluctuating between magical realism, mundanity and straight-out surrealism, makes visual representation an arduous enterprise. For his ambitious animated feature film debut, “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”, composer, screenwriter, and animator Pierre Földes draws inspiration from several Murakami’s short stories, to create his own tale about how trauma can open the doors of perception. The film is an international coproduction that involves France, Holland, Luxemburg and Canada, and, so far, has won the Jury Distinction in the Best...