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Mark Schilling

Related: film - Japanese cinema

Mark Schilling Bio

Born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1949, Mark Schilling arrived in Tokyo in 1975 and has lived there ever since. He has been reviewing Japanese films for The Japan Times since 1989 and writing about the Japanese film industry for Screen International since 1990. In 1997 he published The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture and in 1999 Contemporary Japanese Film, both with Weatherhill. He has contributed to several other books, including Japan Pop! (M.E. Sharpe, 2000), Ichikawa Kon (Cinematheque Ontario, 2001) and Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture (Routledge, 2002), as well as translating and writing the introduction for "Princess Mononoke -- The Art and Making of Japan's Most Popular Film of All Time" (Hyperion, 1999). He teaches courses in Japanese film at Tokyo International University and the Tokyo campus of Temple University and is currently working on a book about Japanese gang films that Stone Bridge will publish in the spring of 2003. He lives in Tokyo with his wife Yuko and his two children, Ray and Lisa.

Roberto Curti

Director Teruo Ishii was a featured director at the 5th Udine Far East Film Festival. Curti analyzes Ishii's ero-guro (erotic-grotesque) cinema. --http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/ishii_teruo.html

Teruo Ishii

Ishii Teruo has operated under the popular and critical radar in the West for much of his five-decade career, though in Japan he is known as “the king of cult” and considered one of the leading genre directors of his generation. One reason is that he was absent from the screen for a fourteen-year stretch, from 1979 to 1993, when fans in the West were discovering the delights of Suzuki Seijun and Kato Tai, who like Ishii, worked in the once-lightly-regarded yakuza genre, but, unlike him, had remained active as feature directors after the yakuza movie boom ended.--Mark Schilling

Books

1. Contemporary Japanese Film - Mark Schilling [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
   The Japanese reporter for the prestigious Screen International, Mark Schilling gets to see all the new films in advance, and brings not just a reviewer's critical eye, but a linguist's critical ear = his comments on translation and delivery add a whole new dimension lacking from writers who can't speak Japanese. His comments, even where I don't initially agree with them, such as his Poppoya review, are always thought-provoking and worthy of consideration, and his introductory essays on the state of modern Japanese film are unequalled in the current market. Some of the background stories, such as the influence of the Middle Eastern carpet trade on the Japanese film business, are quite mind boggling, bu also bery interesting explanations for some of the strange behaviour of Japanese film producers. An excellent survey of Japanese film in the 1990s, from someone who was there when it all happened. --Greg Kermode for amazon.com

   The Yakuza Movie Book : A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films (2003) - Mark Schilling

   

   The Yakuza Movie Book : A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films (2003) - Mark Schilling [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

   From Publishers Weekly
   Yakuza films, with their "endless variations on the theme of revenge," have influenced American directors from Francis Ford Coppola to Quentin Tarantino. These Japanese gangster genre pics are a "great guilty pleasure," says Japan Times film reviewer Schilling, and though they had their "Golden Age" in the 1960s and 1970s, they're now enjoying renewed popularity in the West. Schilling has compiled profiles of and interviews with directors and actors, along with 100 reviews of yakuza movies, to present what the publisher calls the first book in English devoted entirely to this genre. Schilling charts yakuza's development, explains the origin of Japanese gangs, the various styles and qualities of the films, and the ways in which fans-in Japan and elsewhere-have responded to these movies. Each film review lists the director and cast members and offers a plot summary and Schilling's own critique; 60 black-and-white photos complement the text. It's a comprehensive package, sure to be of value to fans of yakuza and other gangster movies. --Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

   see also: crime

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