<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">There are two films picking up serious advertising real estate in Japan right now. One is Geto Monogatari, a Ghibli film directed by Miyazaki Hayao's son (father dissed the film, making for good old-fashioned melodrama). The other is Nihon Chinbotsu, a adaption/remake of the 1973 novel/movie. Mark Schilling has a review in Japan Focus this week: <DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Trebuchet MS" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">"Nippon Chinbotsu" gets right down to business from its first scene, with a massive earthquake that reduces the city of Numazu to rubble. The film, however, lacks the headlong momentum of Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," another recent film with an apocalyptic theme (if with eruptions of space monsters, not lava). Instead, the narrative follows the stop-and-start pattern of many a 70s disaster movie -- frequently slowing to a halt for fraught meetings and partings, in spaces that are islands apart from the destruction raining down outside..."Nippon Chinbotsu" offers enough earthquakes, eruptions and general havoc to keep disaster fans happy, even if the CG lava flows aren't quite up to Hollywood snuff. For me, though, the film's brand of soft nationalism held more interest, No one sings "Kimigayo" as yet another cultural landmark falls to rubble, but most of the good characters opt to stay with Dainippon until the bitter (or rather salty) end.</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Trebuchet MS" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Trebuchet MS" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">Full review: <FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><A href="http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2188">http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2188</A></SPAN></FONT></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Markus</DIV></BODY></HTML>