SALON

David Lazarus

Wednesday, Jun 2, 1999 4:00 PM UTC

Under the volcano

The Japanese, never known for their frivolity, have grown downright depressed as their decade-long economic troubles proliferate.

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A few weeks ago, 51-year-old Kazunori Fukuda, Osaka branch manager of
the failed Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, checked into a hotel in the port
city of Kobe, produced a rope from his bag, and hanged himself. He left a note
behind saying he was tired of living.

Only two weeks earlier, a senior executive at the same bank — now under state
control — killed himself in a Tokyo hotel room. Before that, an employee of
Japanese tire maker Bridgestone committed hara-kiri in his company’s head
office.

And, in the most notorious such case to date, three businessmen belonging to
related firms checked into a hotel in a Tokyo suburb last year, shared a final
drink together, and hanged themselves in separate rooms. Some say there have
been dozens of other such suicides in recent months, and that the Japanese
press is deliberately downplaying the incidents so as not to encourage
imitators.

Japan is now approaching almost a full decade of recession, and, by most
accounts, the end is nowhere in sight. The strange thing, however, is that
this doesn’t look anything like an economy in flames. People are still
shopping for brand-festooned clothing and accessories (Gap cargo pants: $70).
They’re still dining out on small portions in absurdly overpriced restaurants.
They still line up to pay about $15 for a ticket to see Robert De Niro blow
things up in “Ronin,” which just opened here.

The Japanese government has worked so hard to create a soft landing for its
plunging economy, it has succeeded in erasing virtually all sense of crisis or
urgency. The foundation may be crumbling, but, from the outside, Japan’s
economic house appears as neat and tidy as ever.

This is no small accomplishment. While neighboring South Korea has been to
hell and back over the past couple of years restructuring its once-bankrupt
economy and restoring a semblance of global competitiveness, Japan has managed
to dither along with a series of short-term fixes that only scratch the
surface of its deeper problems. If putting off the really hard work has been
Japan’s economic policy goal, then it can be said the country has succeeded
brilliantly.

“The government has made it possible for companies to avoid restructuring and
for many people to stay in their jobs,” said Brian Rose, senior economist at
Warburg Dillon Read (Japan). “There has been no dramatic crisis, and this has
allowed the country to keep muddling along.”

Of course, such a situation can’t continue indefinitely. “It may not feel like
a recession,” Rose observed, “but things are worse now than they were a year
ago, and we think they’ll get worse still. Japan has yet to hit bottom.”

The Japanese government sees things differently. Although the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development is projecting that Japan’s economy will
shrink 0.9 percent this year, Tokyo has forecast slight growth in coming
months. Moreover, Eisuke Sakakibara, Japan’s influential vice minister of
finance for international affairs, has predicted “robust recovery” by next
year, paced by rapid corporate restructuring, “albeit in a Japanese way.”

“It’s almost like they’re willing the economy to grow,” Rose responded. “Their
forecasts are wildly optimistic.”

I can’t speak to the validity of the numbers, but I can offer the perspective
of someone who lived in Tokyo for seven years, from the height of the fat-rich
“bubble economy” in the late 1980s to the first inklings that things had gone
terribly wrong in the mid-1990s. Japan has changed, and not for the
better.

In turn, the Japanese, never a particularly cheerful people, now seem
downright miserable.

There are a variety of factors at work here: rising crime in a nation that
takes justifiable pride in its relative lawfulness; the emergence of a younger
generation perhaps more interested in self-satisfaction than in contributing to the greater welfare of society; plummeting land prices; the once-unthinkable
collapse of established corporate institutions like Yamaichi Securities; a
stagnant political system; and living conditions so severe for some as to merit
scrutiny by Amnesty International.

But what has finally shaken the Japanese out of their state-sanctioned complacency more than anything else is the widespread realization that the nation’s much-cherished system of “lifetime employment” was actually a fiction.

Japan’s unemployment rate remained at a record 4.8 percent in April. This
number will almost surely increase as bloated companies continue struggling to
reduce payrolls, and as more and more college students spill into a labor
market that has no places for them. A recent survey by the Bank of Japan found
that no fewer than 80 percent of the country’s wage earners are concerned
about losing their jobs, and that nearly half have consequently cut back on
personal spending.

Over coffee, a man I’ll call Hiro Takahashi, a 39-year-old employee of an
electronics company you’ve heard of, said the head of his section was recently
transferred to a distant subsidiary — the Japanese version of corporate
exile — and that he’s pretty sure others in his department will be let go.

“I don’t have enough seniority,” Takahashi lamented. “If there are cutbacks,
then I might lose my job.” He isn’t sure what would happen after that.
“Luckily,” he said, “I’m not married. I will manage to survive. But there are
others who have wives and families. What happens to them when their jobs
disappear?”

What indeed. The government seems to be at a loss for how to deal with the
social cost of widespread restructuring, and has done little more to date than
establish the usual task forces and study groups delegated to look into the
problem. As part of recent propaganda efforts, the state-affiliated Japan
Productivity Center for Socioeconomic Development reported that about 2.6
million new jobs could be created if companies simply stopped existing
employees from working overtime.

Takahashi laughed at such a suggestion. “Working overtime is part of the system,” he said. “We consider it part of our regular salary.”

The simple, unpleasant fact is that Japan’s leaders lack the stomach for the
sort of wholesale changes that painfully restored a pulse rate to South
Korea’s economy, which grew by 4.6 percent in the first quarter. “Any
restructuring implies a redistribution of wealth,” noted Andrew Shipley,
senior economist at Schroders Japan. “Japanese society isn’t ready to condone
such changes.”

He pointed out that the country’s rapidly aging population — within 20
years, it’s predicted, fully a quarter of all Japanese will be senior citizens — means tax revenues will decline, despite continued governmental spending to
prop up ailing companies and institutions.

“Ultimately, Japan runs out of money,” Shipley warned. “The Japanese system in
place right now is not generating sufficient wealth to keep the structure
intact. Japan is basically in a deflationary spiral, which has been held in
check by the government spending lots of money. As soon as the government
stops spending, things will get a lot worse.”

Not everyone, however, takes such a dire view of the country’s prospects.
Takashi Imai, head of the powerful Japan Federation of Economic Organizations,
a leading business association, believes that “the economy has passed its
worst stage,” and that “bright signs” are already visible on the economic
horizon. (Apparently those bright signs don’t include a 4.8 percent drop in
April retail sales at the country’s largest stores, according to the Ministry
of International Trade and Industry, or a third straight month of declines in
average household spending, as tallied by the Management and Coordination
Agency.)

Richard Jerram, chief economist at ING Baring Securities (Japan), is one of
the few foreign observers to hold a moderately bullish opinion of Japan’s
economic outlook. “Japan is well past bottom,” he insisted. On top of that,
Jerram believes the government has acted prudently in not taking a Korea-style
blowtorch to its corporate hierarchy.

“You don’t want an aggressive restructuring of your economy when you’re in a
deep recession,” he said. “It’s unnecessarily destructive. Some people say
Japan must destroy so it can rebuild, but this is staggeringly bad economics.”

Jerram gives high marks to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi — the man once
described as having all the charm of cold pizza — for having made more
strides toward addressing problems in the financial sector in the last nine months than previous administrations made in nine years. With Obuchi’s
standing in public-opinion polls holding steady, it seems a safe bet that
he’ll be reelected to a second term in office when Japan’s political power
brokers convene either late this summer or in the fall.

In other words, expect the country to stick to its current course of go-slow
recovery efforts and half-hearted restructuring. “It just doesn’t seem like
Japan is going to keep up with the rest of the world, and especially with the
rest of Asia,” said Warburg’s Rose.

Interestingly, Japan’s youngest citizens already seem to have an instinctive
grasp that the nation they’ll inherit will be vastly different from the one
their parents knew. A recent study by Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance found
that students in kindergartens and primary schools nationwide have paid
attention to the grumbling of their fathers about uncertainties at the office,
and that few are looking ahead to a life of white-collar servitude.

Instead, a majority of Japanese children seem to be anticipating a country
that has tumbled from its economic pedestal, almost returning to its feudal,
agrarian roots. What occupation are kids here most looking forward to? Not
businessman. Not doctor. Not even baseball or soccer player.

They want to be carpenters.

Thursday, May 31, 2001 7:00 PM UTC

“Seven Samurai”

A Japanese film scholar gives new life to Kurosawa's sword-fighting epic.

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“Seven Samurai”
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura
Criterion Collection; original full screen (1.33:1 aspect ratio)
Extras: Audio commentary, trailer

Every so often a DVD comes along that makes you forget all the fluff found on most discs and reminds you just how cool this technology can be. This is the case with Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece “Seven Samurai,” outstandingly packaged and presented by the Criterion Collection. The picture and sound are both cinema quality, but what makes this DVD such a treat is the superb audio commentary by Japanese film scholar Michael Jeck.

You already know the story: Beleaguered 16th century Japanese villagers seek to thwart local bandits by hiring the services of seven out-of-work samurai warriors. The samurai, led by Takashi Shimura but with Toshiro Mifune serving as their clown prince, meticulously plan out the village’s defenses, stage a preemptive raid on the bandits’ lair and then pull the villagers together for the climactic battle that leads to the film’s bittersweet close. This is the movie that spawned numerous Hollywood knockoffs, from “The Magnificent Seven” to Roger Corman’s “Battle Beyond the Stars,” though none has come anywhere close to the original’s epic grandeur and subtle undercurrents.

Jeck’s commentary is the real revelation — and, because the film is subtitled, a rare occasion in which the voice-over does not prevent viewers from keeping up with the dialogue. He approaches his task as if giving a three-hour lecture for a film class, and no detail is small enough to escape his notice. Kurosawa fans will gain a whole new appreciation for one of cinema’s greatest directors as Jeck describes how nearly every shot was created and how the film’s intensity was consistently magnified. Even the wind and rain became characters in Kurosawa’s hands, underlining a scene’s emotional impact.

Typical of Jeck’s insights is his spotlighting of a single samurai walking down the street as the villagers seek out their saviors. This samurai is not to their liking and his appearance in the film is limited to no more than a couple of seconds. But Jeck is able to note that this was none other than Tatsuya Nakadai, who would go on to become one of Japan’s biggest stars. Kurosawa himself must have seen something in the actor’s brief walk-through. He would go on to cast Nakadai as one of the leads in “Yojimbo.”

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Thursday, Feb 8, 2001 8:00 PM UTC

“The Green Mile”

Stephen King thought the script made from his serial novel was the best film adaptation he'd ever read. But that doesn't make the movie any better.

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“The Green Mile”
Directed by Frank Darabont
Starring Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan
Castle Rock Entertainment; widescreen anamorphic (1.85:1 aspect ratio)
Extras: Behind-the-scenes documentary, cast and crew notes, trailer

Lost amid the bloated sprawl of “The Green Mile” is a halfway decent episode of “The Twilight Zone.” But this death-row, supernatural, religious, triumph-of-the-spirit tale, based on Stephen King’s serial novel, is so long and self-indulgent that its redeeming qualities — not the least of which is another winning performance by Tom Hanks — only barely prevent the whole enterprise from sinking.

Aside from a present-day framing device, the story is set during the Great Depression. Hanks heads up a generally good-hearted band of prison guards who are determined to bring a sense of peace to their charges’ last days (the green mile is their name for death row). Then giant John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) arrives — convicted for the murder of two little girls — and “The Green Mile” heads off into Rod Serling territory. Coffey, like a certain biblical figure also with the initials J.C., has a gift for healing, and soon relieves Hanks of a decidedly painful urinary infection. Hanks seeks to return the favor by attempting to learn whether Coffey is truly guilty. “The Green Mile” strives for a happy ending, but at best can muster only a strange note of cheerful melancholy.

Director Frank Darabont, who did well by King with his version of “The Shawshank Redemption,” offers no commentary on the DVD, so the viewer can only guess about his technical achievements this time around. Darabont notes in a brief behind-the-scenes documentary on the disc that “The Green Mile” “didn’t have the fur, and the fangs, and the haunted cars, but it had this rich world that it presented.” Unfortunately, he takes such a leisurely approach to the material that the second half of the film crawls slower than a life sentence. The focus shifts so frequently between Coffey, Hanks, the other inmates and the warden’s ailing wife that it’s hard to recall the main strand of the plot.

And this, undoubtedly, was just fine with King, who has made no secret of his dissatisfaction with Hollywood’s past treatment of his work. The novel version of “The Green Mile” also covered a lot of ground, but it had the luxury of a much larger canvas. King is a skillful yet sloppy storyteller, and Darabont should have known better than to try to remain absolutely faithful to the original material. On the other hand, when an author of King’s stature tells you that your script is “the best film adaptation that I have read, hands down,” what are you going to do?

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Tuesday, Jan 9, 2001 8:00 PM UTC

“Gone in 60 Seconds”

Super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer on his genius: "I do it to entertain people." So where are all the car chases?

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“Gone in 60 Seconds”
Directed by Dominic Sena
Starring Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi
Touchstone Home Video; widescreen (2.35:1 aspect ratio)
Extras: Making-of featurettes, highlight reel, interview with producer, trailer, music video

“Gone in 60 Seconds” is remarkably flaccid for a big-budget action pic. This is a movie about stealing 50 cars in a single night, and all but one are boosted virtually without incident. Nobody gets hurt. And although Angelina Jolie is the love interest, leading man Nicolas Cage can’t get past first base.

Hello?

This is not a film that was crying out for a remake; the 1974 original directed by H.B. Halicki wasn’t exactly a milestone in cinema history (although it did have the distinction of totaling about 90 vehicles). In the new version, Memphis Raines (Cage) comes out of car-theft retirement when a not-very-menacing gangster threatens to do in his inept younger brother (Giovanni Ribisi). To get Little Bro off the hook, Raines must deliver 50 stolen cars to the Long Beach port in a single night. With the help of a lovable crew of felons, he does.

“A great car movie, a great chase movie, hasn’t been around,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer says on the DVD. “So it’s time to do one.” The clock’s still ticking on that score. “Gone in 60 Seconds” has all the Bruckheimer hallmarks — it’s loud, it doesn’t dwell on characterization and never lets plot get in the way of action sequences — but this one is utterly lacking in the popcorn appeal of such other offerings as “Armageddon” and “Con Air.” That “Gone” features only a single chase scene is an astounding misstep. What, did the filmmakers think too many car chases would distract from the metaphorical exploration of spiritual redemption through grand theft auto?

The DVD includes no fewer than three behind-the-scenes featurettes about “The Big Chase,” plus lots of stuff about how the stars took special driving classes to appear convincing on the road. In an interview segment, Bruckheimer waxes lyrical about his producing skills: “It’s been said my pictures have grossed about $11 billion, which means what I’m doing people like, and that’s what I do it for. I do it to entertain people.” The interview includes scenes from most of Bruckheimer’s movies, including the yet-to-be-released “Pearl Harbor,” but not a single glimpse of “Gone in 60 Seconds.”

Maybe they didn’t want to steal any thunder from the DVD’s “Action Overload” extra — a music-video-style mish-mash of random scenes from “Gone” set to a thumping heavy-metal score. There’s no story, no characters. Just noisy, in-your-face pyrotechnics. It’s the perfect Bruckheimer film, in other words.

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Thursday, Jan 4, 2001 8:00 PM UTC

“Scary Movie”

Sex and guns and new handicap gags, but no word on how the directors found the right fart sound for Carmen Electra.

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“Scary Movie”
Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans
Starring Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Anna Faris
Dimension Home Video; widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio
Extras: Additional scenes, making-of featurette, trailer

“In order to be funny, you got to push the envelope,” declares Marlon Wayans on the DVD of “Scary Movie.” Or, to be more specific, you got to toss in a lot of fart jokes. “Scary Movie” is primarily a send-up of “Scream,” Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven’s deconstruction of teenage horror movies, which makes it a spoof of a spoof. It also takes jabs at “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Urban Legend,” “The Sixth Sense” and “The Blair Witch Project,” among other films. There are some pretty good chuckles, but, by and large, it’s pretty lightweight fare.

Luckily, the bulk of the Wayans brood — Damon must have been busy — didn’t have to bother themselves with matters of plot and characterization in concocting this film; the objects of their mirth didn’t have much going on in these departments either. It helps if viewers have seen the originals to fully appreciate the layers of ridicule in “Scary Movie,” but it’s not necessary. Most of the gags are self-explanatory and are about as challenging as a Three Stooges short (though not nearly as funny).

The DVD lacks a commentary from one or all of the Wayans, but this isn’t much of a loss. What could they do — explain the pains they took to craft a fart noise worthy of Carmen Electra’s posterior? Instead, the disc, like many recent DVDs, features “additional scenes” that are in reality “some stuff swept up from the cutting-room floor that wasn’t good enough for the original release.” In this case, the scenes include an unfunny sex bit involving Marlon Wayans, a willing partner and a pair of guns, and some slapstick with Cheri Oteri that may constitute the most offensive treatment of a disabled person in a mainstream film. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

A making-of featurette for the most part consists of director Keenen Ivory Wayans and his two siblings enthusing about the need to mock the teen-slasher genre — something the “Scream” films already did fairly effectively — and why their offering is different. “Scream” was an “unfunny spoof,” Marlon explains, while Keenen notes that “Scary Movie” is “a spoof of a satire.” Oh. Put it like that, it almost sounds clever.

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Tuesday, Dec 19, 2000 8:00 PM UTC

“The Abyss”

Extras galore reveal teary breakdowns, chlorine burns and the nightmarish conditions behind this watery "Close Encounters."

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“The Abyss: Special Edition”
Directed by James Cameron
Starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn
widescreen (2.35:1 aspect ratio)
Extras: Additional scenes, text commentary, making-of documentary, trailers, screenplay, storyboards, games

“The Abyss” is almost a great movie. Director James Cameron, with his typically maniacal attention to detail, pulls off what is described on the DVD as “the toughest shoot in film history” to tell the story of a disastrous deep-sea mining operation. With its tight, claustrophobic interiors and amazing underwater vistas, “The Abyss” is fast-paced, suspenseful and full of surprises. If only the story didn’t veer off in the last reel into a completely different movie, this, and not “Titanic,” would easily be Cameron’s masterpiece.

Ed Harris heads the mining team down about 2,000 feet below the surface. A U.S. sub crashes nearby, and Harris’ crew is dispatched on a rescue mission, accompanied by his estranged wife (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and a handful of badass Navy SEALs. So far so good. But when Harris goes over the side of a seemingly endless undersea chasm in search of the sub’s lost nuke, “The Abyss” turns, weirdly, into “Close Encounters.” Suddenly we’re meeting friendly underwater aliens and receiving preachy lessons about loving one another. You pretty much expect everyone to break out in a chorus of “Kumbaya” before the credits finally put a stop to the silliness. What could Cameron have been thinking?

We find out on the two-disc DVD. Along with the slimmed-down theatrical version of the film, there is a “special edition” version containing 28 extra minutes of footage that tell the story the way the director originally envisioned. It’s not exactly an improvement; someone should have told Cameron to can the cuddly ETs before filming ever began.

Most of the extra scenes simply bring more depth to the characters. The two main additions are a computer-graphic tidal wave that the aliens use to send a little message to mankind (no one gets wet) and an extended scene in which the benevolent space critters communicate with Harris. Mankind gets the point. We all live happily ever after.

It would have been nice if Cameron had provided audio commentary for one of his most important films. Instead, “The Abyss: Special Edition” offers text commentary in the form of subtitles — like “Pop-Up Video” but more distracting. Much better is the one-hour documentary, “Under Pressure: Making the Abyss,” that follows the production from its start to soggy finish. “We realized from the beginning it was going to be difficult,” says producer Gale Anne Hurd. “What we didn’t realize is that it was going to be impossible in the sense that we never really got things under control.”

Shot in an abandoned nuclear power plant, the movie required the cast and crew to remain submerged for as long as 12 hours at a stretch, exposing everyone to chlorine burns and all manner of stress. The chasm sequence — it was actually shot sideways — was so difficult for Harris that he broke down in tears. “I really thought I was going to die,” he says. Mastrantonio actually stormed off the set one day when the camera ran out of film in the middle of a difficult scene. And then the makeshift tank holding millions of gallons of water started falling apart.

“Welcome to my nightmare,” Cameron told the cast on the first day of production. He was right — “The Abyss” was a genuinely horrific experience. But the result, warts and all, is unlike any other film ever made. The DVD, with its sharp picture and excellent sound, brings the movie’s many elements into focus and provides a much-needed guide to Cameron’s original concept. The special-edition set is almost too much of good thing — the behind-the-scenes features are so plentiful they’re nearly impossible to navigate — but what else would you expect for a movie with this title?

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