The Past 4 Months, The Next 8

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, I'd be booked up until spring. The past four months has been one of the busiest stretches I've had. Blog entries are obviously less frequent than before but I try to make them count.

Below is a recap of what I've been doing and some updates on certain projects. More than anything it serves as a snapshot for me to look back on. The rest of this year is up in the air. As I tweeted in recent weeks, I'd like the remainder of 2010 to be more about screenwriting and production.

- I translated a screenplay by Kurosawa Kiyoshi. The producers have requested to keep details under wraps so I can't say what it's about. What I can say is that it's an ambitious project and also quite different from any of Kurosawa's previous films in several respects. I hope it makes it to the big screen.

- I've subtitled a couple of films so far this year, one of them being Lee Toshio's BOX! (『ボックス！』), which will have a print burned for Cannes after the final simulation screening this week. Based on Hyakuta Naoki's novel, BOX! is an enjoyable youth sports drama with rousing fight scenes. It's more orthodox than kooky Detroit Metal City but close to Lee's heart. Indeed, the kanji for Lee's first name Toshio (闘士男), given to him by his boxing-mad father, literally mean "fighter/warrior man". Lee even dabbled in the Sweet Science. Star Ichihara Hayato is convincing as a hot-headed boxing prodigy (with the Osaka-ben laid on thick) and Kôra Kengo is solid as his more serious foil. Both performers obviously trained very hard.

- Max Mannix screenplay Family Matters has found a home. The company that bought it has invested in quite a few films in the last four years. They're working on signing a director now. Most films take years to get going here.

- Sabu's Arrested Memories (see collected posts) now has a UK-based production company on board. Sabu is very excited by the prospect of shooting his first overseas film. In other Sabu news, his new late-night genre TV drama Troubleman (『トラブルマン』) is airing every Friday night on TV Tokyo. There's a good possibility it'll get subtitled for export. Also stay tuned for an upcoming Sabu retrospective in NYC.

- I've been helping coordinate part of a Canal+ documentary on Tokyo. Japanese Cinema -- specifically the crazy creations of Nishimura/Iguchi/Sakaguchi & friends -- will be one topic touched on in the 90-minute show, hosted by famous French guy Antoine de Caunes. Shooting gets underway soon.

- I still write for Screen, though it's more based around commissions for the monthly magazine and festival issues rather than daily news nowadays. Screen switched to a square-bound monthly "mook" after almost 25 years as a weekly. The daily news site is also behind a pay wall though you can still read most stories if you take a certain route on the net. I have a piece on the film acquisition situation here in the upcoming Cannes issue. Also did some writing for CNNGo and Midnight Eye (see my earlier posts this year).

- I translated a set of director interviews conducted during last fall's Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF). Translations continue to be added to the interview page. Don at Ryuganji also did a stack of these.

- In a return to a job I hadn't done since the early noughties, I translated a large chunk of UniJapan's annual "Japanese Film" catalog, which contains synopses of 2009's releases as well as industry data and contacts.

There were other little jobs peppered between all that but the above is what formed the first third of my 2010.