Japanese company gives staff holiday to play ‘Elden Ring’

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.From sound engineers and screenwriters to celebrity makeup artists and stylists, Variety’s new series “Ask an Insider” will ask top professionals within the entertainment industry to share their must-have essentials, for work… and for play. In this installment, Michelle Zauner, the lead singer and songwriter behind the indie rock band Japanese Breakfast, shares her love for the Fender electric guitars she plays on stage, as well as her other tour essentials.Japanese Breakfast’s third studio album “Jubilee,” as the name would suggest, is about joy — a thematic departure from Michelle Zauner’s distinctly somber, melancholic music that lends itself to an entirely new sonic landscape.

Japanese Breakfast‘s Michelle Zauner has joked about comparisons between a new Machine Gun Kelly album cover and her 2021 album, ‘Jubilee’.Kelly’s sixth studio album, ‘Mainstream Sellout’, was announced yesterday (March 14) with a track-list and album art being shared. Upon the reveal of the cover art, Rolling Stone drew a parallel between it and the cover of ‘Jubilee’ for its positioning and placement of coloured tomatoes.Zauner initially responded to the comparisons via Twitter, joking that she had stumbled into the “feud of the year” on account of them.

FromSoftware employees have reported poor wages and working conditions with issues stemming back to over a decade ago.First spotted by TheGamer, the reports were posted on popular job board, Career Connection.The developer currently has a rating of 2.6 out of 5.0 stars on the site. Employees rated the company 2.2 for job satisfaction, 1.9 for compensation, and 2.6 for stress management.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTwo feature films from Ukraine will this month be given special screenings in Tokyo, Japan, as part of a fund- and awareness-raising initiative about Russia’s war in Europe.Both films “Atlantis” and “Reflection” were made by director Valentyn Vasyarovych. They played at the Venice film festival but have not been licensed to Japan or released commercially there.However, under the banner of the Ukrainian Filmmaker Support Screening Association, former Tokyo International Film Festival programmer Yatabe Yoshi, has arranged special permission for the benefit screenings to go ahead.

Red Velvet have shared teasers and details of their debut Japanese-language studio album ‘Bloom’.On March 12, the quintet unveiled the promotional schedule for ‘Bloom’.

Nicolas Cage and his wife Riko Shibata are the most adorable pregnant couple ever! The pair, who announced they are expecting their first child together back in January, were beaming on the red carpet at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas on Saturday (March 12). The Oscar-nominated actor held hands with his stunning partner as they arrived for the premiere of his new film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner has shared an update on the film adaptation of her 2021 memoir, Crying In H Mart.As announced in June last year, the musician is writing the screenplay for the film adaptation and the soundtrack under the moniker, Japanese Breakfast.Speaking to Consequence about her progress on the film, Zauner said: “So I actually just finished the first draft of the screenplay.“My producers really like it, so hopefully the revision process won’t be too brutal. And yeah, hopefully that will come out sometime in the next couple years.

EXCLUSIVE: Japanese director Hikari is to helm Netflix’s dramedy Beef.

Super Nintendo World will open at Universal Studios Hollywood in 2023, the company announced today. Construction is already underway on what will be the first Super Nintendo World in the United States.

Clayton Davis The “Cinderella” story for “Drive My Car” has been one of the award season’s most enlightening. The Japanese submission captured a nom for best international feature, best picture, director and adapted screenplay.

A mysterious ancient rock said to have an evil demon trapped inside has cracked open - sending believers into meltdown.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefAcclaimed Japanese animated film “Poupelle of Chimney Town” will release in North American home entertainment markets from May.The rights in the U.S. and Canada are controlled by Eleven Arts which has appointed Shout! Factory to handle distribution.

Japanese Breakfast has rescheduled her upcoming UK tour due to “lingering uncertainty” over COVID-related “travel protocols”.The Michelle Zauner-led project had been due to tour in the UK and Europe next month in support of her June 2021 album ‘Jubilee’.Zauner has now confirmed that she has had to move her upcoming UK live dates to later this year, while also cancelling a number of her scheduled European shows.“Due to lingering uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 travel protocols, we have decided to reschedule our UK and European dates from March to October 2022,” she said in a statement this afternoon (February 28).Zauner added that her planned gigs in Cologne, Hamburg, Antwerp, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and Copenhagen had been cancelled: “I am truly devastated we can not make it work at this time but I promise we will be back as soon as possible.”A post shared by Japanese Breakfast (@jbrekkie)All tickets will remain valid for the rescheduled shows, though refunds are also available from the point of purchase.You can see Japanese Breakfast’s rescheduled UK and European tour dates below, and find more ticket information here.October20 – Marble Factory, Bristol21 – Brudenell, Leeds22 – Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow24 – Albert Hall, Manchester25 – O2 Forum Kentish Town, London26 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands27 – Gretchen, Berlin, Germany Japanese Breakfast recently performed the track ‘Be Sweet’ live on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in the US, which followed on from a performance of ‘Slide Tackle’ on The Late Late Show last month.Japanese Breakfast’s cover of Yoko Ono’s ‘Nobody Sees Me Like You Do’, meanwhile, recently featured on the tribute album ‘Ocean Child: Songs Of Yoko Ono’.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe box office domination by patriotic local film “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” ground on into a fourth weekend in China. Hollywood’s “Death on the Nile” slipped out of the top five on its second weekend of release.“The Battle at Lake Changjin II” earned $11.0 million, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That lifted its cumulative to $611 million since release on Feb.

TOKYO -- A musical revolution in Jamaica has a connection with a bouncy rhythm from a portable electronic keyboard that’s the brainchild of a Japanese woman.The pattern that resonates in the 1985 reggae hit by Wayne Smith, “Under Mi Sleng Teng," came from Casiotone MT-40, which went on sale in 1981, the first product Hiroko Okuda worked on after joining the Tokyo-based company behind G-Shock watches.“It’s really like my first child, and the child turned out so well it’s outright moving,” said Okuda, honored as “the mother of Sleng Teng” among the hard-core reggae aficionados.Sleng Teng is a form of digital Jamaican music that began in the mid-1980s, part of the rich repertoire of the disco-like genre called “dancehall.” No one contests the key role played by artists like Smith and King Jammy, as well as the humble, battery-operated, $150 MT-40.One of the rhythm patterns Okuda created called “rock” on the MT-40 evolved into “Sleng Teng riddim.”As legend goes, Noel Davey, the Grammy-winning keyboard player for the Marley Brothers, got an MT-40 from a friend, who picked it up in California.

Red Velvet have announced their first concert in over two years as a full group, The ReVe Festival: Prologue, will take place next month.The K-pop girl group last gave an in-person concert in February 2020 when they performed in Fukuoka, Japan. However, they were without singer Wendy for the show, who was recovering from a stage accident that happened in December 2019.Red Velvet’s full line-up – completed by Seulgi, Joy, Yeri and Irene – will bring The ReVe Festival: Prologue concert to Seoul’s Olympic Handball Gymnasium on March 19 and 20.

Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of the Oscar-nominated movie Licorice Pizza, is finally responding to the backlash the film received for scenes in which an actor uses a fake Asian accent.