Speed of Life

From Kino studio: "A lost cat, a giant talkative frog and a tsunami help a bank employee without ambition, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant to save Tokyo from an earthquake and find a meaning to their lives in the animated feature Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Based on stories by acclaimed Japanese author Haruki Murakami (Drive My Car), the debut of composer Pierre Földes won the Jury Special Mention award at the renowned Annency Animation Film Festival. Tokyo, a few days after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Kyoko suddenly leaves her husband after spending five days in a row glued to unfolding earthquake footage on TV. Her helpless husband Komura takes a week’s leave from work and heads north to deliver a box and its unknown contents to two young women. His colleague Katagiri, a simple debt collector by profession and an awkward loner in life, returns home one evening to find a two-metre-tall frog asking for his help to save Tokyo from an imminent earthquake. T...

by Gregg Chadwick Author Gabriel Urza’s family has roots in Spain’s Basque region. His new novel “All That Followed” http://amzn.to/2eyXpMY shows us the faces of civil wars — the Spanish Civil War of the 1930's, the Basque separatist movement, and the small wars that families and couples often find themselves fighting. Urza recounts a fictional tale based on real events that explores the kidnapping and killing of a young politician by even younger separatists in the late 1990s. Urza limns a town where everyone knows where bullet holes were left by Franco’s murderous thugs decades before. Ghosts of the murdered seem to arrive in the slanted rain —  txirimiri in Basque. In a Rashomon like retelling of the politician’s murder, three disparate voices speak in alternating chapters: Joni, an aging American expat teacher. Mariana, the victim’s young wife. And Iker, a student activist turned abductor. Joni and Mariana’s pain and loss are balanced with Iker’s hunger for ...

by Gregg Chadwick Peter Clothier's scurrilously witty new novel "The Pilgrim's Staff" explores lust, lecherousness, and love through the voices of two men from two disparate centuries. David Soames, a contemporary figurative painter living as an ex-pat in Los Angeles, receives a curious package in the mail from an English cousin. Wrapped in layers of tape and memory is the two hundred year-old journal of an English gentleman, who begins his tale with the words,"I am no Rake!" "Rake" is a wonderfully antiquated word that refers to a man caught in the snares of immorality, particularly concerning the charms of the opposite sex.  William Hogarth A Rakes's Progress:3 The Rake at the Rose Tavern 62.5x75.2  cm oil  on canvas 1734 Collection Sir John Soane's Museum , London Writing this on the 10th of November, in a coincidence worthy of Clothier's novel, I am reminded that the 18th century English painter Wi...

by Gregg Chadwick Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando) Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (Ohashi Atake no Yudachi) (#58 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo) Sheet: 14 3/16" x 9 1/8" woodblock print 9th month of 1857 Brooklyn Museum Photo Courtesy The Brooklyn Museum Japanese fiction is a great love of mine. My taste ranges widely from the postmodern antics of Murakami, to the quiet intellectualism of Endo, to the luminous spaces of Kawabata, and to the pent up rage of Mishima. In a culture which traditionally values quietly getting along even when catastrophe strikes, fiction allows a space for readers to wail with those who hurt and lash out at those who would oppress. Japanese novels of mystery and horror provide such a space to ponder the darker recesses of humanity. Mystery writer Keigo Higashino, originally from Osaka and now resident in Tokyo, is currently one of the best selling authors in Japan. Reading "The Devotion of Suspect X" provides un...