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Tag: Ryuichi Sakamoto

  • What to stream this week: Matt Damon on a heist, ‘Dance Moms’ jazz it up and J Balvin parties

    What to stream this week: Matt Damon on a heist, ‘Dance Moms’ jazz it up and J Balvin parties

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    Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy” premieres its final season and a Boston heist movie starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Also among the streaming offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: a new “Dance Moms” series, a “Yo Gabba Gabba” reboot for younger audiences and J Balvin promises an album that hits like a house party.

    NEW MOVIES TO STREAM

    — A poorly planned heist goes terribly wrong in “The Instigators” (Friday, Aug. 9, on Apple TV+), a loosely amiable Boston-set caper starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. The movie, directed by Doug Liman (“Go,” “The Bourne Identity”), returns Damon and Affleck to familiar hometown terrain. They play a despondent pair who try to steal money from a corrupt mayor (Ron Perlman) but end up on the run, with a therapist (Hong Chau) in tow. In my review, I called it “a rudderless but winningly shaggy action comedy.”

    — Jeff Nichols (“Mud,” “Take Shelter,” “Loving”) extends his survey of classically American dramas with “The Bikeriders,” a chronicle of a Chicago motorcycle club in the 1960s. In the film (Friday, Aug. 9, on Peacock), Austin Butler and Tom Hardy star as riders with an antiauthoritarian streak who help found the Vandals, but watch as their club grows beyond their control. In a male-populated film, though, Jodie Comer, as the heavily accented narrator, is closer to the main character. In my review, I called it “a vivid dramatization of the birth of an American subculture.”

    — This month, the Criterion Channel is running two overlapping series: one of movies directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, one of films starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman was a mainstay in Anderson’s films from the start (he steals “Hard Eight” with one scene) and a central presence in films like “Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love” and “The Master.” The Hoffman series includes plenty other highlights, too; look especially for the exquisitely tender 2010 drama “Jack Goes Boating.” The Anderson series also includes an exclusive streaming of the director’s radiant 2021 coming-of-age tale “Licorice Pizza,” which poignantly starred Hoffman’s son, Cooper.

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    NEW MUSIC TO STREAM

    — Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Opus” — the posthumous album and documentary of the same name — was captured while the Japanese film composer was dying of cancer. Across 20 songs, Sakamoto performs a collection of his biggest songs on piano, like the memorable themes for Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” and “The Sheltering Sky.” The album also includes the first ever recorded version of “Tong Poo,” from his early days with techno-pop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra.

    — On Friday, Aug. 9, Colombian reggaetónero J Balvin will release a new full-length project, “Rayo.” Across 15 tracks, he’s promised an album that hits like a house party — just in time for the hottest summer month of the year. “Rayo” is stacked with good time collaborations — reggaetón superstar Fied, regional Mexican musician Carín León, Bad Gyal, Zion, Dei V, Ryan Castro, Blessd and Luar La L among them. The previously released singles, “Gaga” with SAIKO, “Polvo de tu Vida” with Chencho Corleono, and “En Alta” with Quevedo, Omar Courtz and YOVNGCHIMI, embody that spirit. At his party, everyone is invited.

    — Also on Friday, Aug. 9, “Not Not Jazz,” a documentary following the avant-garde, acid jazz-fusion band Medeski, Martin & Wood, becomes available to stream via video on demand. The film follows the improvisational trio as they endeavor to record a new album at the Allaire Studio in Woodstock, New York. It is a peek behind the curtain of their processes, and a celebration of music that is far too often underserved.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    NEW SHOWS TO STREAM

    — The dramatic world of “Dance Moms” returns with a new coach, dancers and, of course, invested moms. In “Dance Moms: A New Era,” mothers hover as eight girls are trained by instructor Glo Hampton, a.k.a. Miss Glo, to compete nationally. The original “Dance Moms” ran for eight seasons and featured breakout stars Jojo Siwa and Maddie Ziegler. It also introduced the world to coach Abby Lee Miller, who was often criticized for being too harsh on her students. Miller was sentenced to a year in prison in 2017 for bankruptcy fraud. “Dance Moms: A New Era” debuts Wednesday, Aug. 7.

    — Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy” premieres its final season on Thursday, Aug. 8. The show follows a family of adopted superheroes — who were stripped of their powers in season three — who must work together to stop the apocalypse. Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman and David Cross are new faces in season four alongside regulars that include David Castañeda, Tom Hopper and Elliot Page.

    — The musical cartoon for preschoolers called “Yo Gabba Gabba!” is also getting a reboot called “Yo Gabba GabbaLand!” on Apple TV+. The 10-episode series premieres Friday, Aug. 9. It’s hosted by Kamryn Smith as Kammy Kam and brings back other characters from the original.

    — Michael Imperioli, who played Tony Soprano’s protégé Christopher on “The Sopranos,” can’t shake the mob. He’s the executive producer and narrator of a three-part docuseries on five Italian American families who were selected by Charles “Lucky” Luciano in 1931 to rule the organized crime world. “American Godfathers: The Five Families” debuts Sunday, Aug. 11 on The History Channel. It will also stream on The History Channel app, history.com and major TV video on demand platforms.

    — A four-part docuseries adapts historian Donald Bogle’s 2019 book called “Hollywood Black” for MGM+. Executive produced by Forest Whitaker, the series examines the history of cinema through the Black perspective. Creatives including Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay, Issa Rae, LaKeith Stanfield, Gabrielle Union, Lena Waithe are interviewed. “Hollywood Black” premieres Sunday, Aug. 11.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    NEW VIDEO GAMES TO PLAY

    — People who love collecting cute monsters and making them fight have long been drawn to Pokémon. This year’s Palworld upped the ante by adding guns to the mix. But what if you just want to cuddle? That’s where 11 Bit Studios’ Creatures of Ava comes in. You’re an explorer on a planet bustling with wildlife — but the creatures are being threatened by an infection called “the withering.” It’s your mission to tame the beasts with your magic flute and help them heal. It’s a cozier take on the old “gotta catch ’em all” formula, and it comes to Xbox X/S and PC on Wednesday.

    — Lou Kesten

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  • ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus’ Review: An Exquisite and Stirring Farewell From a Renowned Composer

    ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus’ Review: An Exquisite and Stirring Farewell From a Renowned Composer

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    To call Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus a concert film would be correct and also drastically inadequate. What unfolds onscreen is no mere performance, no mere gesture, but a face-to-face between presence and absence. Beginning its theatrical run just before the one-year anniversary of Sakamoto’s death from cancer, at 71, the handsome film is a testament to the artistic spirit and, above all, an act of love — by the performer, who was facing mortality and thinking of legacy, and by the director, Nero Sora, who is Ryuichi Sakamoto’s son.

    The performances captured in Opus were filmed over a week in September 2022, at a studio in Tokyo’s NHK Broadcasting Center that Sakamoto believed offers the finest acoustics in Japan. He and Sora embarked on this project while Sakamoto was still well enough to perform. Other than the unseen filmmakers, there is no audience. Alone at a Yamaha grand, a bright lamp burning above him like a moon, the composer makes his way through 20 pieces he curated from his lifetime of music-making.

    Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus

    The Bottom Line

    Magnificent minimalism.

    Release date: Friday, March 15
    Director: Neo Sora

    1 hour 43 minutes

    The selections include his famous movie scores — The Sheltering Sky, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and his Oscar-winning work, with David Byrne and Cong Su, for The Last Emperor — as well as his solo recordings and the influential electropop of Yellow Magic Orchestra, the trio he formed in 1978 with Yukihiro Takahashi and Haruomi Hosono. (Drummer Takahashi died in January 2023, a couple of months before Sakamoto.)

    Reconfiguring some of the compositions, a few of which he’d never before performed publicly on solo piano, Sakamoto travels through a varied musical terrain: quiet passages, melodic lyricism, bursts of thunderous churning. For one number, he creates a so-called prepared piano by placing screws and bolts on the strings to produce an un-piano-like sound. The fine recording, mixing and mastering, credited to ZAK, misses nothing, not even a brief instance of muttering when Sakamoto regroups between selections. Other than that, the piano does the talking.

    In the music’s subtle interplay of tradition and modernism, the selections are distinct and connected, quoting and commenting on one another with a quickening intensity as the film proceeds. Sakamoto is not just revisiting his compositions but rediscovering them. Searching, communion and occasional delight play upon his face; he’s still creating, still profoundly invested in the work.

    Nero builds this wordless drama with silvered black-and-white imagery and shifts in light that suggest a movement toward night. Bill Kirstein’s attentive camerawork finds a rich variety of angles and perspectives within the limited setting, and editor Takuya Kawakami intercuts Sakamoto’s performance with shots of the empty keyboard, the studio’s unused microphone stands, and the musician’s shadow on the unvarnished wood floor — visuals that heighten the sense of departure that infuses the film no less than the stirring music.

    Opus begins with a view of the composer from behind, seated at the piano, looking small and vulnerable with his boyishly artsy shock of snow-white hair. As this unhurried emotional journey proceeds, Sakamoto’s passion and precision are inseparable from the gift he offers, and the film feels more and more like a balm in a world of device overload and music-biz grandiosity. Sora has made a work of magnificent minimalism. Its vision of immortality might be most stirring in the moments when Sakamoto’s elegant hands hover above the keyboard at the end of a piece. It’s as though he’s coaxing the final chords to resonate just a bit longer before they fade into something like silence but now, after his conjuring, much richer.

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    Sheri Linden

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  • Composer & Pop Star Ryuichi Sakamoto Has Died

    Composer & Pop Star Ryuichi Sakamoto Has Died

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    Photo: Isa Foltin (Getty Images)

    Ryuichi Sakamoto, the famed Japanese musician and composer, has died at the age of 71.

    What Gotham Knights And Shrek 2 Have In Common

    He had been battling failing health for several years, having been diagnosed in 2014 with throat cancer, then bowel cancer in 2021. Through all his treatments and surgeries, however, he continued to write music and perform, even giving an online performance as recently as December 2022.

    Sakamoto is perhaps best known for his work composing the score to several films, especially The Last Emperor (for which he won an Academy Award), The Last Buddha, The Revenant (which saw him nominated for a Golden Globe) and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, in which he also appeared on-screen alongside David Bowie.

    Yet he was also famous for his earlier pop career, both as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, an electronic group that was huge in Japan in the early 80s. YMO had an impact on Western musicians and markets as well; their song “Computer Game” charted in the UK, and they appeared live on Soul Train in 1980.

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    Over his decades-long career writing music Sakamoto even worked on a few video games, from 1989 RPG Tengai Makyou: Ziria, the first game in the long-running Far East of Eden series, to 2006’s Dawn of Mana, for which he composed the opening theme (for more on this surprisingly excellent but also confusing credit, see here)

    His most recent contribution to a video game was 2014’s wonderful Hohokum, in which (among other excellent selections) the track Reticent Reminiscence, a collaboration between Sakamoto and electronic musician Christopher Willits, appears.

    Sakamoto died on March 28, with the announcement of his passing coming after his funeral on April 2. He is survived by his four children, one of whom is Japanese pop star Miu Sakamoto.

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    Luke Plunkett

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