middle ground

[robin]

Hi kinejapaners

Do you want a funny example of a "middleground"?

When I first talked about Kinji Fukasaku with my wife (who is Japanese), she said to me: "Kinji Fukasaku? The director of Kamata Koshinkyoku? He is very well-known in Japan for that film..."

That's a middle ground isn't it?
It's somewhere in-between Graveyard of Honour and Battle Royale!

Robin

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: andrew osmond <andrew at ozma.demon.co.uk>
Reply-To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 08:07:06 +0100

>M Arnold <ma_iku at hotmail.com> writes
>
>>If I were asked to think of a 
>>contemporary Japanese film that hasn't been or can't be described as a new 
>>Ozu, a new 'cult' movement or a post-modern work of art, other than a few 
>>documentaries I probably couldn't think of anything.  
>
>I'm cautious about entering this thread, because my own Japanese film
>viewing is shamefully limited, though I've at least read Schilling's
>Contemporary Japanese Film. But how about the animations Mononoke and
>(especially) Spirited Away, which are after all the two highest-grossing
>Japanese films? I know some critics see Mononoke as post-modern; there's
>a group who'd see any animation as 'cult' by definition; and maybe Mike
>would argue that Miyazaki is now a fetishised director, though I'd like
>more filling-out of this phrase. (Was the later Hitchcock fetishised?
>A.I.? How about a critically disreuptable pic like Phantom Menace?)
>Personally, though, I think both Miyazaki films are plausible e.g.s of
>middle ground Japanese film-making.
>-- 
>andrew osmond
>