Tony Takitani (2004)

Actors: Issei Ogata, Rie Miyazawa, Shinohara Takahumi, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Shizuka Moriyama
Director: Jun Ichikawa
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: Japanese
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Strand Releasing
DVD Release Date: January 31, 2006
Run Time: 75 minutes

Amazon.com review:
Sound and visuals are what movies are made of, yet in Tony Takitani, director Jun Ichikawa somehow communicates primarily through feeling. This is a work of profound, aching sadness, made exquisite more by what isn't heard and seen than what is, as Ichikawa brings writer Haruki Murakami's short story to the screen with a sense of restraint, apparent in every aspect of the process (storytelling, acting, music, cinematography), that transforms the usual cinematic experience into something much closer to a prolonged meditation. Issei Ogata plays the title character, son of a jazz musician who gave Tony his strange, Americanized name. Like his father, who is no more fit to be a dad than Tony is to be a son, Tony lives a life of total solitude. But solitude isn't the same as loneliness, as the middle-aged man learns when he meets and marries the much younger Eiko (Rie Miyazawa). At that point, as we're told in voice-over (a wonderfully low key performance by Hidetoshi Nishijima, who actually does more talking than the characters themselves), the newly-content Tony now is beset by feelings of terror and dread as he imagines what life would be like without her. But Eiko is no more connected to the real world than Tony, and her addiction to designer clothes ("they fill up what's missing inside me") eventually leads to tragedy. That happens in a sequence that might be amusing, in a black kind of way, in any other film, but not in this one. As it is, it triggers some rather strange behavior on Tony's part, as well as his return to a state of impenetrable, ineffable melancholy. Tony Takitani is not a warm experience. The dialogue is spare, the scenery severe, the colors muted, and Ichikawa's directing, though masterful, keeps us at arm's length. But there is greatness in this beautifully-rendered, 75-minute movie. --Sam Graham

Offical Site
Excellent Midnight Eye review by Dean Bowman
Haruki Murakami Successfully Adapted by Dennis Lim
imdb.com page
Colin Marshall - on matters cultural review
The Concretebadger.net review

All God's Children Can Dance (2007)

Director: Robert Logevall
Writer (WGA): Scott Coffey (screenplay)

In Korea Town Los Angeles, a young man, Kengo, believes he's the son of God - that's what his mother told him since he was a young boy. He spends his days working his dead-end job and figuring out his complex feelings for his girlfriend until, one day, he sees a one-eared man who could be his father and decides to follow him around Los Angeles.

Film trailer
imdb.com page

The Bakery Attack パン屋襲撃 (1982)

Director: NAOTO YAMAKAWA

Two existentially hungry labourers ‘get in character’ to rob a baker’s shop. But the communist baker outwits them: if they’ll listen to a Wagner opera, he’ll give them all they can eat. They take the deal but the trade off leaves them hungry.

Attack on the Bakery is an adaptation of a short story (originally called The Second Bakery Attack) by Haruki Murakami, one of the few screen adaptations Murakami has ever sanctioned.   In the original story, a young lawyer tells his new wife about a time when he attacked a bakery as a struggling student. His wife persuades him that the attack has left him cursed and that they must stage another in order to overcome the all-encompassing hunger that has beset them in the middle of the night.

Naoto¹s stylish adaptation does not retell the original story,but instead returns to the initial bakery attack, translating Murakami¹s peculiar wit and ironic use of moral ambiguity seamlessly into the language of film.

Distribution: Cinema16 World Short Films
youtube presentation
Screenshots by the_green_fish