It’s almost 2AM here at Kani HQ, and we’ve been on a Denzel binger (Taking of Pelham 1,2,3; Man on Fire; turns out I’d already seen The Equalizer) to try and keep our nerves down as we wait for Kani to launch… and we’re live!
Introducing Being Natural, a film that had Ariel running around the house ecstatically when he first saw it all the way back in 2018. Working on this (and upcoming releases) has been a steep learning curve for us. We hope we don’t let you down.
In the next few weeks, we’ll both be sharing more about working with Asian cinema. Not making promises on when exactly, but I’m drafting a piece about re-translating Herman Yau’s Ebola Syndrome for Vinegar Syndrome’s recent Blu-ray/UHD release. The film presented a very unique challenge due to the… imaginative qualities of my mother-tongue. Working on that presentation really helped us finetune exactly how we wanted to present Asian films in context and away from the prevalent perspective of otherness.
With that in mind, we’ve put together the following bonus materials for Being Natural:
A discussion between the director Tadashi Nagayama and the SFX & VFX teams
An interview with the director, the actor Yohta Kawase, and co-writer Yuriko Suzuki
A new essay by Mathieu Li-Goyette
A washi-tape tortoise sticker
English and Japanese subtitles for optimal accessibility
Please forward this newsletter to a friend or three, and gift Being Natural to the slackers, the fishers, the vegans, cousins, grocers, and uncles in your life. Especially if they have January birthdays.
With love and off to bed,
Pearl (& Ariel)