japanese memoirs miscellany

The Japanese language movie of my book, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, is coming out next month in, appropriately enough, Japan.* (If this last sentence doesn't make sense to you: www.gabriellezevin.blogspot.com/2008/12/tokyo-story-1-writing-life-4-japanese.html )

Here's a picture Hans took of the poster in Shibuya Station:



I don't have a scan of the poster by itself, but, if you look really closely, you'll recognize the image on the poster as the scene from the book where everyone decides to dress up in all-white clothes for Heaven Prom. Oh, wait, that wasn't in the book?!? Actually, this is just an image created for the poster -- as far as I know, the movie itself is free of white clothes except for the suit Naomi's father wears for his wedding.)

The short "flash" trailer:



The full-length trailer AKA the "dammit, we're talking about tennis" version.



You can find both of the trailers and even more miscellany at the film's official website: http://www.darekiss.com/
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*The Japanese title of the movie is Dareka ga Watashi ni Kissu wo Shita which translates to Someone Kissed Me.

the writing life #8

I took a fairly dry science class with Elif Batuman about ten years ago. The teacher, as I recall, was a Russian man, who seemed unsure what to do with us and vaguely terrified to find himself among us savages. Back to Elif: I remember her as an effortlessly clever gal who wore her jeans well and who was an intimate of my long lost friend, Dan, (who always had a knack for making the most interesting friends).

From a review of her book The Possessed in O Magazine.
"I now understand that love is a rare and valuable thing, and you don't get to choose its object," Batuman writes. "You just go around getting hung up on all the least convenient things—and if the only obstacle in your way is a little extra work, then that's the wonderful gift right there."

This, for the record, is completely lovely. I can't wait to read this book. (An ecstatic review ran in today's NY Times as well.)*

I stumbled across the O review while deciding whether to watch or write through today's Oprah which is about the families of serial killers. I will be watching. (In the broadest sense, the topic falls under research for my next book, which I have almost completed and thus requires no further research.)

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*My favorite excerpt from that review: The problem with creative writing programs, she says, is their obsession with craft. “What did craft ever try to say about the world, the human condition, or the search for meaning?” Ms. Batuman asks. “All it had were its negative dictates: ‘Show, don’t tell’; ‘Murder your darlings’; ‘Omit needless words.’ As if writing were a matter of overcoming bad habits — of omitting needless words.”