Japanese Film Festival 2022 - Online

This was my first reaction too. Then I thought, why not have a look, see what those cafes are all about after all. Then I ended up being pleasantly surprised and actually enjoying it. Don’t let the maid cafe stop you from watching it, the “maid” part is just incidental.

To answer my own question, yes, these seem to be 干し餅, a traditional preserved food of the Tsugaru region. It’s basically mochi cut in rectangular shapes, tied with straws and hung outside to dry.
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I just watched しあわせのパン and I indeed feel very 癒やされた. The language was overall unproblematic, too, though I probably benefit from having read the book. (Even if it’s been a while.) The hardest part was, as expected, the old couple coming to visit in winter with their dialect.

I was wondering what to watch next, so I’ll be making good use of everyone’s reviews. :slight_smile:

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Tried to start Mio’s cookbook and ReLife but I’ll probably not continue with either of them. Mio’s cookbook has very nice photography but other than that it hasn’t managed to intrigue me so far. And ReLife seems to be exactly the kind of silly romantic comedy that I can’t stand (I may be wrong, as I stopped only 15 minutes in, but I don’t see myself continuing watching to find out).

Anyone know what countries Awake is available in? It’s the only one so far that’s giving me a “not available in your country” message. (and I’ve tried “travelling” to several)

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Ooooh, that’s amazing, totally forgot that you can choose the country! :blush: For AWAKE, I had good results with South Korea. (Although maybe they don’t make it available because the internet speed might be too bad? :thinking:)

EDIT: Oh, and it’s also being hosted in Italy, that would make more sense for me tbh…

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It’s on the list here in Australia, and it’s got a “Watch” button, though I haven’t actually tried watching it.

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Thanks, Italy works a treat. Why on earth would it be available in Italy but not in Germany for example? :thinking:

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Because why not. :slight_smile:

I’m sure there’s reasons.

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If all else fails, there might be some legal issues involved :woman_shrugging:

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I guess, but isn’t EU supposed to be a single market? Then again, most European countries are left out anyway. I’m sure there’s reasons. I just don’t get them.
Back on topic, Awake is pretty good so far. I know nothing about shogi (although it keeps cropping up all the time) but this doesn’t stop me enjoying the intellectual rivalry between two kids obsessed with moving beautiful wooden pieces on a board :slight_smile:

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I actually tried watching that (or a TV show version I think?) a year or so ago and had the same reaction. I also didn’t finish it though, so who knows, maybe it’d actually rock our worlds. :joy:

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In most cases, we still have territorial licensing in the EU. The European Film Industry + TV industry and the EU Commission have been fighting it out for a while.

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Tried Mio’s Cookbook. The scenery was nice and I enjoyed seeing sushi being sold as street food, among other things. But the dialogue was very, very simple (… insipid, you might say clears throat, though very easy to understand as a byproduct) and just about every scene felt overacted. Dropped it but oh well, can’t like them all. Going to try either Happy Flight or Under the Open Sky next!

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So it’s not available in Japan… Looks like it’s gonna be the classic JP → US → JP VPN switcheroo.

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Awake was certainly worth the trip to Italy! It was a film that mainly consisted of long silent scenes of people staring at screens or shougi boards, but somehow managed to be exciting, even suspenseful, throughout. It was basically about the rivalry between two young men that began in their childhood, about their drive to win and their dedication to (verging on obsession with) shougi. It was also about the conflict between man and machine, with the interesting twist that we were mostly shown the developer’s point of view, and thus were subtly nudged towards rooting for the machine to win.

I loved how they always formally greeted the opponent before each game, even if the opponent was only a computer screen. I also found it interesting that there was no female player to be seen, not even when they were still learning as children.

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I also watched Mio’s Cookbook the other day, and while I watched it to the end, I was not really pulled into it either. I kept thinking the actors (especially the children at the beginning) were amateurs? The scenery also looked a bit artificial… This became most visible when they showed the streets that got rained on, because that was real rain in a real street, I think. I briefly thought that I was in a different movie…
But what I really liked was their portrait of the different (male) Japanese characters, the beautiful costumes and the food pictures :blush:

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I imagine the game is traditionally mostly played by male players, still much more so than chess. And just like in chess, all the game’s top players are male. That’s probably because in order to become a top player, you have to lead a rather boring life, studying the game obsessively for thousands of hours.

Chess did once have a top 10 female player, Judit Polgar, probably the greatest female (and one of the greatest in general) chess player of all time, who peaked at rank number 8 in the world in 2004. She retired though, even if still commentating top games very nicely from time to time (like the last world championship).
Currently, the top rated female player, Hou Yifan, is rank 82 in the world.

There’s a shogi anime with a female shogi playing protagonist, Shion No Ou. It’s quite good, especially if you’re interested in Shogi. Not as good as March Comes in like a Lion maybe, which is extremely good even if you’re not a shogi fan.

There’s also the first foreign-born female pro shogi player in Japan, Karolina Styczynska from Poland.
" She learned about the game from a Japanese manga, and played shogi on the Internet before arriving in Japan."

It would be nice to see more female representation in games like Shogi, chess has been doing a lot for that in recent years. (also see the excellent Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit”)

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There definitely were a lot of aspects, such as the immaculate makeup and aesthetic, that felt too modern. A lot of the cloth also looked very new (ex: the noren, the print on it also looked awkwardly modern) or at least slightly suspicious (ex: the bedding) considering their financial situation; I would have expected to see more boro (Boro (textile) - Wikipedia), and sashiko (Sashiko - Wikipedia) at the very least, but I’m not such an expert I could properly criticize this area. People in the backgrounds often looked awkwardly directed, and in general the streets lacked a certain sense of disorder; each scene and shot seemed too carefully staged. I tend to be more lenient on kid actors and I do feel bad since I think that the direction and dialogue they were given were particularly awful, but I also agree with you there…

I’m probably nitpicking way too much at this point anyway, but all of those things combined do take away from the sense of place. I don’t think it was really the movie’s aim to be that historically accurate to be fair, so I didn’t want to sound overly harsh. :slight_smile:

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I watched Happy Flight (lovely mild comedy) and ReLife. The acting in ReLife is a bit on the weak side. I did not see the anime so wanted to check the live action version of it. Somehow, I also wrongly guessed the sexual orientation of several characters (in the movie, every character is heterosexual). Tonight, I plan to see Aristocrats. I wanted to see Awake but it is not available in the USA. Not sure, if using a VPN is going to work I suspect they get your country when you register no? I registered last year so not sure. The reason a movie is available in some European countries but not in others is licensing. Same reason Netflix in Italy does not have the same movies as Netlfix in Germany.

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VPN works. They seem to only check the IP when the movie starts playing, so even if the VPN is turned off halfway, the movie continues to play just fine.

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Happy Flight was an unassuming, amusing comedy. :slight_smile: Lots of Japanese English to train your ear. I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of romance. From the poster, I half-expected the two ‘main leads’ to hit it off. It was also quite refreshing to see the movie focus quite a bit on the older, professional colleagues.

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