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Tokyo festival opens with grueling boxing 'Underdog' film
Read full article: Tokyo festival opens with grueling boxing 'Underdog' filmThis undated photo provided by 2020 UNDERDOG FILM PARTNERS shows film director Masaharu Take at the movie set of Underdog. Underdog opens the Tokyo International Film Festival, which starts Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020. (2020 UNDERDOG FILM PARTNERS via AP)TOKYO – Masaharu Take’s films have always focused on painful stories about Japan's “under-class,” people who are often overlooked in a nation stereotyped as monolithically well-to-do. The heroes of his latest work, “Underdog,” couldn’t be more beaten down, stoically hardworking yet hopelessly under-class: They are boxers. “Underdog” premieres as the opener for the Tokyo International Film Festival, which starts Saturday and runs through Nov. 9.
Japanese director known for single shots releases Zoom film
Read full article: Japanese director known for single shots releases Zoom filmThis undated photo provided by the @One Cut of the Dead Mission: Remote shows Shinichiro Ueda, director of One Cut of the Dead Mission: Remote, a YouTube spinoff of his 2017 award-winning film. A comedic horror film centered around teleworking, "One Cut of the Dead Mission: Remote” was released earlier this year and shared for free on YouTube. It features the same characters from his award-winning 2017 film “One Cut of the Dead,” which has one shot that was 37-minutes long. Ueda’s style incorporates slapstick comedy and focuses on visual, rather than explanatory verbal storytelling, an approach relatively rare in contemporary Japanese film. “It’s only after 200 or 300 bad films you will have that one great film,” he said.