Friday @ Cinefamily - ''The Top Japanese Films of The Last Year, If Not The Last Decade''

Ask yourself this question: when was the last time a movie really mattered to you, and shattered your world? Every so often, a film comes screaming out of the ether that magically reveals a larger truth about this thing we stumble through called life, and the latest cinematic salve is the unforgettable, uncategorizable, unmissable Love Exposure, the brand-new behemoth from Sion Sono (Suicide Club, Strange Circus) that gleefully tackles life's biggest issues: love, death, sex, revenge, religion and up-skirt panty photography. Winner of festival awards across the globe, and breaker of art house attendance records in Japan, Love Exposure has only been seen in the U.S. at a handful of sell-out screenings, with its initially daunting 237 minutes leaving audiences desperate for another installment. Purportedly based on the life of one Sono's friends, the film tells the epic story of Yu, a teenager who loses his Catholic faith when his mother dies and his bible-thumping priest father demands that the innocent boy confess to sins that he hasn't committed. As he manufactures sins to keep his father pleased, Yu trains in the 'art' of panchira (clandestine panty snapshots!), and all bets are off when he crosses paths with Yoko, the woman of his dreams (his "Virgin Mary"), at a streetfight. As he pursues his heart, Yu finds himself tripped up by apocalyptic religious cults, Catholic guilt and the call of pornography, and must use his love to fight his way out of darkness.

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What's going on Saturday? - Yayoi Kusama at Gagosian Gallery

Yayoi Kusama
Flowers That Bloom at Midnight

May 30 - Jul 17, 2009

Beverly Hills

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto City, Japan in 1929. She studied Nihonga painting, a rigorous formal style developed during the Meiji period (1868–1912) to deflect the wholesale influence of Western art through the revitalization of the traditions of Japanese painting and their synthesis with aspects of Western art. Attracted by the experimental promise of the postwar international art scene, Kusama moved to New York City in 1958.

As a young struggling artist in New York, Kusama produced her first astonishing Net paintings in 1959—vast canvases measuring up to 33 feet in width, entirely covered in rhythmic undulations of small, thickly painted loops. The inherent philosophical paradox of these paintings—that "infinity" could be quantified and constrained within the arbitrary structure of a readymade canvas—combined with the more subjective and obsessional implications of their process, distinguish these works from Minimalist abstraction, which would dominate the New York art scene several years later. The mesmerizing, transcendent space of the Nets was further reinforced by Kusama's own insistent psychosomatic associations to her paintings. She went on to develop other striking bodies of work, including the phallic soft-sculptures Accumulation, Sex Obsession...

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@ REDCAT

February 17-18, 2009

Awaji Puppet Theater Company

Peerless in its uncanny integration of intricate three-person puppet manipulation, gorgeous costumes and sets, live shamisen music, and chanted narration, the Awaji Puppet Theater Company traces its roots to the originators of bunraku puppetry some 500 years ago--a legacy for which it has been named "Intangible Folk Asset" by the Japanese government.

Awaji now brings to Los Angeles three stunning works from the top shelf of its repertory: Hidaka-gawa Iriaizakura (The Cherry Trees Along the Hidaka River), an intense dance piece based on the famous folktale of a lovelorn woman transformed into a serpent; the lighthearted folk dance Ebisu-Mai (Dance of the Fisherman God); and Tsubosaka Reigen-ki (The Miracle at Tsubosaka Temple), a powerful traditional drama of intrigue and redemption in which a desparate couple commit double suicide but are reanimated through divine intervention.

Organized and produced by the Japan Society, New York, in partnership with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, MEXT; The Japan Foundation through the Performing Arts JAPAN program; The Jim Henson Foundation; and Awaji Ningyo Shibai Support Group.

Tickets available here.