{"id":8940,"date":"2019-10-14T15:01:07","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T14:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/?p=8940"},"modified":"2019-10-14T15:01:08","modified_gmt":"2019-10-14T14:01:08","slug":"lff-to-the-ends-of-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/lff-to-the-ends-of-the-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"LFF: To The Ends Of The Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>To The Ends Of The Earth<\/em>&nbsp;is a delightful little film from&nbsp;director&nbsp;and&nbsp;director&nbsp;Kiyoshi&nbsp;Kurosawa&nbsp; that&nbsp;really examines loneliness. Atsuko Maeda plays Yoko, a presenter on a Japanese TV travel show. She\u2019s on location in Uzbekistan where her and her small crew are trying to shoot an episode exploring the country.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The travel they\u2019re making mostly seems to consist of putting Yoko into slightly tricky situations and banking on her on-screen effervescence to make something of it. Think of a poorly produced Blue Peter travelogue.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The all-male crew don\u2019t really have a great deal of interest in Yoko at first. It\u2019s just another job. The director is especially disinterested, using the show only as a vehicle to find something more worthwhile to make. Only the junior soundman has any kind of empathy with her.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In one scene Yoko is forced to ride a rickety fairground ride multiple times \u2013 to make sure they capture the shot \u2013 despite the protestations of the ride\u2019s manager who says that it\u2019s not safe for younger people or for anyone to go through&nbsp;it&nbsp;multiple times.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When not shooting the show, Yoko has hours of spare time, spent either in her hotel room where the instant messages her boyfriend, a firefighter based in Tokyo. Other times she goes out and wanders the towns and cities she finds herself in. But she\u2019s lost \u2013 sometimes physically, and sometimes metaphorically. Since only the fixer the crew are working with has both Uzbek and Japanese language skills, she\u2019s very much on her own, as she&nbsp;explores.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s a dreamlike quality to these sequences, especially one in which she finds a theatre, and we get fantasy sequences that make use of Maeda\u2019s singing skills (she\u2019s also a J-pop star).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The kind of film you\u2019re only likely to see at a festival or perhaps on a streaming service like Mubi, I really enjoyed this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To The Ends Of The Earth&nbsp;is a delightful little film from&nbsp;director&nbsp;and&nbsp;director&nbsp;Kiyoshi&nbsp;Kurosawa&nbsp; that&nbsp;really examines loneliness. Atsuko Maeda plays Yoko, a presenter on a Japanese TV travel show. She\u2019s on location in Uzbekistan where her and her small crew are trying to shoot an episode exploring the country.&nbsp; The travel they\u2019re making mostly seems to consist of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[49,43],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8941,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8940\/revisions\/8941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}