First Annual KineJapan Youtube Festival

[Mark Nornes]

The way bandwidth works, I'm looking forward to the day I can watch  
any Japanese film from here in midwest America. It seems to me  
Youtube is significant step towards this anytime/anywhere film  
culture. But it's low-bandwidth aesthetic, length restrictions, and  
peculiar online sub-culture lends it to surveillance of dumb  
politicians, a new brand of home-movie, porn (the other brand of home  
movie), dull parodies by children and film school students—and  
television weirdness of every sort. I'm partial to the latter, so....

I propose we start an annual KineJapan Youtube Festival.

I have been meaning to do this for a while now, but have finally been  
compelled by a recent problem. My son and I had been enjoying a  
particularly crazy SMAP skit on Youtube when it suddenly disappeared.  
All that was left was something rude about copyright violations.  
Google didn't pull it up anywhere else, either. We threw up our hands  
and went on with life.

Then I noticed a piece in the New York Times business section that  
explained what happened. After Google bought Youtube for $1.65  
billion, the site began purging copyrighted material. Japanese films  
were the first to go, thanks to a threat by the Japanese Society for  
Rights of Authors, Composers and publishers. Citing copyright  
infringement they forced Youtube to get rid of 30,000 clips,  
including my son's favorite SMAP madness.

Youtube's not going to around forever, and obviously the clips on it  
are ephemeral. Not only would it be interesting to share the current  
best of Japanese Youtube clips—because I'm sure you have some—but it  
would be a nice record of our current moving image culture. For  
posterior's sake.

So I'll kick it off.  I hope you can join me by posting your  
favorites, along with a short kaisetsu, if you don't mind. And it  
doesn't have to be Youtube; I use that only because it's reaching a  
popularity that turns it into a verb, like Google before it. In fact,  
the first clip I'll send is actually my son's SMAP bit, which I found  
on a Youtube clone. So any moving image clip will do.

Join me in the Grand Premiere screening just below; party will be  
afterwards—How about Kinema Club at Nippon Connection?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Katsuken II Lesson

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhpd7_katsuken

Matsuken Samba, a song-and-dance routine by jidai geki actor  
Matsudaira Ken, was under the radar of the under 50 crowd until SMAP  
started making fun of it with "Katsuken." I heard Matsuken was doing  
a new Matsuken Awaodori; while searching for that, I came across the  
flash of brilliance from SMAP. My son became obsessed with this, so  
we've been mastering the moves (far more difficult than you'd think— 
try it!). I can cry "Spanish!" and he'll stop whatever he's doing and  
strike me a pose. Here's the original tutorial (http://www.geneon- 
ent.co.jp/music/sounddata/matsuken/gnbl1015_03.ram) from Matsuken's  
website (http://www.geneon-ent.co.jp/music/matsuken/).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So let's get festive. What have you been enjoying lately?

Markus




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