At the time this article was published, the author used the pen name “Kenji Akutagawa.”
To bring the copyright notice into line with the author’s current name, it has been changed to “© MIKIO KISARA.”
The arguments and content of the main text remain as originally written.
Today’s greatest gift…I have just finished watching “The Boat That Rocked,” which began at 9 p.m. on Star Channel HV…
This was one of the finest films, a film that could be made precisely because it was British…I think it is a hundred times better than something like “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
The mere fact that Kenneth Branagh and Philip Seymour appear in it should tell those who understand all they need to know.
Bill Nighy…when I watched “Act Naturally,” I thought he was France’s Johnny Hallyday playing his older self…
In this film, too, a 2009 British-German co-production, he gives an appealing performance as the owner of the pirate ship and the rock station…
Just as an actress like Cate Blanchett could not exist in Japan, this film, too, is one of those things that cannot be made in Japan today…
Even if a semblance or an imitation could be made…
There are things that “peasants in spirit” who belong to someone else can never create.
Unless Japan understands this, it cannot become a world leader.
It makes one wonder whether Philip Seymour appeared in the film to deliver this line…even as the ship was sinking, he continued DJing and said…politicians can never create a better world, but young people all over the world will go on creating dreams through music…
This film made me have a dream this morning unlike any I had ever had before.
Everything was clear.
The place was Montreal.
It was something truly wonderful, unlike the concerts that emerging musicians had given before…everything, including its structure, was filled with intellect and an atmosphere of freedom.
When the one book that is my mission—not in the form I had envisioned five years ago, but this “The Turntable of Civilization”—is on the shelves of bookstores nationwide by next May…I am beginning to think that perhaps I could write it in a form entirely different from the one I had envisioned…that perhaps I could point to this within the book.
The film named in the title ended with an on-screen caption announcing that there are now 299 music stations in Britain, broadcasting rock and pop every day.
© MIKIO KISARA