JQ Magazine: Nippon in New York – ‘Paprika,’ FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH Orchestra, ‘The Colors Within’
By JQ magazine editor Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02). Justin has written about Japanese arts and entertainment for JETAA since 2005. For more of his articles, click here.
Start the new year right by heading down to your local concert venue, cinema, or arts center for some fantastic new year’s fare. Whether you enjoy movies, travel, or orchestral performances, treat yourself and catch a break from the cold.
This month’s highlights include:
© MadHouse Inc.
Jan. 8, 9, 12
Various theaters
Various prices
Anime Expo Cinema Nights presents the final film ever made by visionary director Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers) with his mind-bending thriller Paprika, which has been restored in 4K for these exclusive theatrical screenings! When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patients’ dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist, Paprika, can stop it. Dreams become reality and vice versa in this psychological fantasy you won’t want to miss! Featuring the voice talents of Megumi Hayashibara, Kōichi Yamadera, and Tôru Furuya.
Courtesy of AWR Music Productions
Saturday, Jan. 11, 2:00 and 8:00 p.m.
FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH Orchestra World Tour
Carnegie Hall, 881 Seventh Avenue
From $53.50
FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH features new symphonic arrangements of the music of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, with scores by Nobuo Uematsu with contributions from Mitsuto Suzuki, Masashi Hamauzu, and other composers and arrangers, performed by the Shinra Symphony Orchestra and chorus of over 100 musicianns led by conductor Arnie Roth. These concerts will have composer Masashi Hamauzu in attendance and include a special performance of Nobuo Uematsu’s “No Promises to Keep” by the song’s original vocalist Loren Allred. A limited number of VIP Meet & Greet tickets will be available for purchase as an add-on to a concert ticket. The VIP Meet & Greet add-on grants access to the post-concert meet & greet event with artists including an autograph and photo opportunity.
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle © Yoji Ishizawa
Jan. 15-18, 7:30 p.m.
Shuji Terayama’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle
Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street
$36, $48
Bluebeard is given a Harajuku makeover in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, a wild burlesque-like subversion of the French gothic horror legend. Shuji Terayama, father of Japan’s angura (underground) theater movement in the 1960s and ’70s, was repeatedly drawn to the story of Bluebeard’s wives and the locked castle door, culminating in this mind-bending game of cat-and-mouse that questions the very nature of theater itself. Saturated with dark magic tricks, fiddlers and accordion players, aerial dance and more, Project NYX, led by Kanna Mizushima, brings a cross-dressing cast of nearly 30 members to Japan Society for a production directed by illustrious Korean-Japanese experimental theater director Kim Sujin. Find out who escapes the castle in this macabre, magic-infused Lolita fashion spectacle. On Friday, January 17, a pre-performance lecture on Shuji Terayama led by University of California, Los Angeles Professor Emerita of Theatre Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei will begin at 6:30 p.m. All ticketholders for Duke Bluebeard’s Castle are welcome to attend this one-night-only pre-performance event with a valid ticket as space allows. Performed in Japanese with English supertitles.
Courtesy of Metrograph.com
Jan. 17-23
Bye Bye Love: Fujisawa and the Japanese New Wave
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow Street
$10-$17
Considered lost until 2018, when its negative was discovered in a warehouse and restored by producer/director Suzuki Akihiro, Fujisawa’s lyrical, surrealism-tinged, 16mm-shot 1974 road movie Bye Bye Love about a couple—nihilistic young rebel Utamaro and his genderfluid partner, Giko—on the run from the cops, has since been reclaimed as a classic of Japanese queer cinema and an exemplar of the liberated, exuberantly experimental spirit of the 1970s jishu eiga, or self-produced film. With Bye Bye Love enjoying its U.S. theatrical premiere alongside the two films Fujisawa made as assistant director to Hiroshi Teshigahara—Woman in the Dunes and The Face of Another—audiences will have a chance to discover one of the most original debuts in Japanese cinema of its era, a late resurgence of the Japanese New Wave in which Teshigahara had earlier been a central force.
© 1985 Warner Bros. All rights reserved.
Jan. 19-20
Various theaters
Various prices
Steven Spielberg, Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon films) and Chris Columbus (Harry Potter films) collaborate to create an epic children’s adventure of subterranean caverns, sunken galleons and a fortune in lost pirate treasure waiting to be found by a group of friends known as The Goonies. With brothers Mikey (Sean Astin) and Brand’s (Josh Brolin) house slated for demolition by greedy land developers, the boys decide their only hope lies in finding a long-lost treasure. They uncover a treasure map and with their friends descend to a subterranean sea and an abandoned galleon in this fun-filled, fast-paced adventure. This Fathom’s Big Screen Classics event includes exclusive insight from Leonard Maltin.
© 2024 Science SARU INC. / STORY inc. / TOHO CO., LTD./JR East Marketing & Communications, Inc. / Lawson Entertainment, Inc.
Tuesday, Jan. 21, 7:00 p.m.
The Colors Within New York Premiere with Naoko Yamada
Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street
$20-$25
Totsuko is a high school student with the ability to see the “colors” of others. Colors of bliss, excitement, serenity and more. While keeping this a secret, she forms a band with two friends with secrets of their own: Rui, who plays music in secret from his family, and Kimi, who has secretly stopped going to school. As they practice, their music brings them together, forming friendships and stirring affections. What “colors” will they show to the audience for their first live performance? And will they discover their true “colors” for each other? Directed by the praised Naoko Yamada (A Silent Voice) and with production by animation studio Science SARU (The Night is Short, Walk On Girl, Devilman CRYBABY, Inu-Oh), The Colors Within is a staggeringly beautiful tour de force. A whimsical, heartfelt and aching film, it combines both Yamada’s detailed direction and Science SARU’s exuberant animation into a revelatory testament to the unbridled power of anime.
Courtesy of Nyphil.org
Jan. 23-25, 7:30 p.m.
Yuja Wang Leads Rhapsody in Blue and More
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza
$67-$75 (Jan. 25 9:30 p.m. performance with Tiler Peck)
As the 2024–25 Mary & James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, Grammy-winning pianist Yuja Wang joins the Orchestra in two subscription concert weeks: one featuring Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, and another in which she not only plays but also directs works by Janáček, Stravinsky, and Gershwin. These appearances will be complemented by other residency activities during the season. Artist-in-Residence Yuja Wang plays the dual role of soloist and orchestra leader in this unique program. The winds of the NY Phil join in works by Janáček and Stravinsky, followed by the original jazz band version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which the composer described as a “musical kaleidoscope of America.” Craving more? Stay after the Jan. 25 concert for an intimate Kravis Nightcap performance, featuring Wang, NY Phil musicians, and New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck.
For more JQ articles, click here.