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Ballad of Narayama

"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…

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Cast and Crew

* This filmography is not intended to be a comprehensive list of this artist’s work. Instead it reflects the films this person has been involved with that have been reviewed on this site.

#170 June 5, 2013

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: Behold a truly rare sight. London in 1924 in color. "The Open Road" was shot by an early British pioneer of film named Claude Friese-Greene and who made a series of travelogues using the colour process his father William (a noted cinematographer) had been experimenting with. The travelogues were taken between 1924 and 1926 on a motor journey between Land's End and John O'Groats. You can find more footage from The Open Road at The British Film Institute's YouTube channel for the film. You can also explore their Archives collection over here.

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#163 Special Edition

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: I was looking for something to make Roger laugh, when the phone rang. It was a bad connection, but this much I did hear: "Roger has died." That's how I learned he was gone, and my first thought was of the cruel and unfair timing of it. He'd been on the verge of realizing a life long dream: to be the captain of his own ship.

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#158 February 6, 2013

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: Holy crap! THE KRAKEN IS REAL!" Humankind has been looking for the giant squid (Architeuthis) since we first started taking pictures underwater. But the elusive deep-sea predator could never be caught on film. Oceanographer and inventor Edith Widder shares the key insight - and the teamwork - that helped to capture the squid on camera for the first time, in the following clip taken from her recent TED talk." And to read more about the story, visit Researchers have captured the first-ever video footage of a live giant squid at i09.com

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#157 February 27, 2013

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: It's a long story and it starts with a now famous video of a meteor exploding over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Followed by alien conspiracies fueled by the internet and which led me to investigate further. Where did it come from? Does anyone know..? Yes! According to The NewScientist, the rock came from the Apollo family of near-Earth asteroids, which follow an elongated orbit that occasionally crosses Earth's path.That in turn led me to yet another site and where I learned a team of scientists had discovered two moons around Pluto, and asked the public to vote on potential names. They also accepted write-in votes as long as they were taken from Greek and Roman mythology and related to Hades and the underworld - keeping to the theme used to name Pluto's three other moons. And how I eventually learned "Vulcan" has won Pluto's moon-naming poll! and thanks to actor William Shatner who suggested it. Behold Vulcan: a little dot inside a green circle and formally known as P5.

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#156 February 20, 2013

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: As some of you may have heard, a fireball lit up the skies over Russia on February 15, 2013 when a meteoroid entered Earth's atmosphere. Around the same time, I was outside with my spiffy new digital camera - the Canon PowerShot SX260 HS. And albeit small, it's got a built-in 20x zoom lens. I was actually able to photograph the surface of the moon!

(click to enlarge)

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Free sample of Ebert Club Newsletter

by Roger Ebert  |    | 

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This is a free sample of the Newsletter members receive each week. It contains content gathered from recent past issues and reflects the growing diversity of what's inside the club. To join and become a member, visit Roger's Invitation From the Ebert Club.

Marie writes: Not too long ago, Monaco's Oceanographic Museum held an exhibition combining contemporary art and science, in the shape of a huge installation by renowned Franco-Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, in addition to a selection of films, interviews and a ballet of Aurelia jellyfish.The sculpture was inspired by the sea, and reflects upon maritime catastrophes caused by Man. Huang Yong Ping chose the name "Wu Zei"because it represents far more than just a giant octopus. By naming his installation "Wu Zei," Huang added ambiguity to the work. 'Wu Zei' is Chinese for cuttlefish, but the ideogram 'Wu' is also the color black - while 'Zei' conveys the idea of spoiling, corrupting or betraying. Huang Yong Ping was playing with the double meaning of marine ink and black tide, and also on corruption and renewal. By drawing attention to the dangers facing the Mediterranean, the exhibition aimed to amaze the public, while raising their awareness and encouraging them to take action to protect the sea.

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#153 January 30, 2013

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: Kudos to fellow art buddy Siri Arnet for sharing the following; a truly unique hotel just outside Nairobi, Kenya: welcome to Giraffe Manor.

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#146 December 12, 2012

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes:  For those unaware, it seems our intrepid leader, the Grand Poobah, has been struck by some dirty rotten luck..."This will be boring. I'll make it short. I have a slight and nearly invisible hairline fracture involving my left femur. I didn't fall. I didn't break it. It just sort of...happened to itself." - Roger

(Click to enlarge)

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Robert Zemeckis returns to reality

by Jim Emerson  |    | 

May Contain Spoilers
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I packed my bags last night, pre-flight Zero hour, 9 a.m. And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then. -- Elton John & Bernie Taupin, "Rocket Man" (1972)

Cinema, for me, has always been something like music composed with photographic images. Others see it more like "action painting," and we've seen a lot of discussion in recent years about what J. Hoberman and others have called "post-photographic cinema," in which computers have replaced cameras, and animation has replaced photography, as the primary means of creating images on a screen. (Hoberman: "With the advent of CGI, the history of motion pictures was now, in effect, the history of animation.") "Flight" is Robert Zemeckis's return to live-action photography for the first time since "Cast Away" (2000), after a series of IMAX 3D animated adventures: "The Polar Express" (2004), "Beowulf" (2001) and "A Christmas Carol" (2007). It's also a return to making movies aimed at an adult audience -- and one that proved to be a different, and more interesting, than the movie I'd seen advertised in the trailer.

(spoilers)

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#137 October 10, 2012

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: I may have been born in Canada, but I grew-up watching Sesame Street and Big Bird, too. Together, they encouraged me to learn new things; and why now I can partly explain string theory.That being the case, I was extremely displeased to hear that were it up Romney, as President he wouldn't continue to support PBS. And because I'm not American and can't vote in their elections, I did the only thing I could: I immediately reached for Photoshop....

(Click image to enlarge.)

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#134 September 19, 2012

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: Intrepid club member Sandy Kahn came upon the following recipe and wisely showed it to me, so that I might share it in turn with all of you. Behold the morning chocolate cookie - a healthy breakfast treat loaded with good stuff; like fiber and imported French chocolate.

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Louie: Funny is gravy

by Jim Emerson  |    | 

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It's not enough to say that Louis C.K.'s "Louie" is the finest, funniest, most adventurous half-hour comedy on television. It's not even necessarily accurate, since the series is more like a short story anthology than any kind of sitcom you've ever seen. Yes, Louie is the main character, a divorced New York stand-up comedian whose observations and adventures provide the backbone for the stories (sometimes more than one per show), but other characters or storylines may or may not continue beyond the half-hour in which they're introduced. Last season, for instance, Louie found himself in temporary but indefinite custody of his 13-year-old niece at the end of the episode... but she never reappeared.

The flighty, fidgety bookstore employee played by Parker Posey, whose name we don't discover until the last word of the two-parter called "Daddy's Gilfriend" (it's Liz), is unlikely to show up again, but Posey says she'd love to come back in the role he originally envisaged for her -- as his shrink. This, I think, is a good thing. Liz's function was to act as a force of instability, to shake Louie out of his risk-averse routine. And, boy, did she succeed. She is fascinating, goofy, beguiling -- and baffling, frustrating, unsettling, frightening, exhausting, all in one volatile, bubbling cauldron of moods and impulses. You can read it all in Louie's face as he attempts to figure out what to make of her, from situation to situation, moment to moment, all through the night. (His range of tentative reactions reminded me of the wife of bus driver Mark Ruffalo in "Margaret," who churns through turbulent sequence of responses as she tries to get a read on Lisa Cohen and what she could possibly want from her husband.)

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#123 July 11, 2012

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: club member Sandy Kahn has found some more auctions! Go here to download a free PDF copy of the catalog.

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#119 June 13, 2012

by Marie Haws  |    | 

Marie writes: Next door, across a long narrow drive and beyond the row of cedar hedges which run parallel to it, there resides an elementary school dating back to 1965, along with an assortment of newer playground equipment rendered in bright, solid primary colors...I'm sure you know the sort I mean...

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Berlinale 2012: The tantalizing and the taboo

by Roger Ebert  |    | 

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What does it take to get your film into a world class festival? That's the question asked with gleeful irreverence by "The Woman in the Septic Tank," which screened at the recently concluded 2012 Berlinale, one of the world's foremost festivals. This hilarious satire of international art filmmaking finds two aspiring auteurs sitting in a Manila café, jealously regarding a rival's Facebook photos taken at the Venice film fest. They vow to devise the ultimate movie to win festival audiences and prizes: a single mother of five suffering in the slums is forced to sell her son to a rich pedophile. But like Mel Brooks' "The Producers" (1968), the project gets out of hand, and before we know it we're watching a musical version with the pedophile singing "Is this the boy / who'll bring me endless hours of joy?" It's one of many delightful detours taken by these filmmakers seeking the road to art house glory.

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