Watch Wilco’s Nels Cline join Japanese Breakfast onstage at Solid Sound Festival

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorJapanese Breakfast, Wet Leg and Madlib were among the top winners at the Libera Awards on Thursday night, the American Association of Independent Music’s annual awards ceremony.The event returned in a hybrid setting, with people from the indie community gathering at New York’s Webster Hall to receive awards, catch a DJ set from Madlib (featuring a freestyle from Talib Kweli) and live sets from Sammy Rae & the Friends and others, while concurrently a livestream of performances from Japanese Breakfast, Brittany Howard, Jason Isbell, Helado Negro and Cautious Clay was played in a separate room at the venue. Also performing live at the event were Tré Burt, Canadian Brass and Adrian Daniel.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefWith a mission to bring Japanese independent cinema to a world audience, todoiF launched Friday as a new specialist streaming platform.The service is privately backed and operated by Kawano Koichi, a San Francisco State University alumnus who worked as a talent agent in Japan for two decades, before becoming involved between 2019-21 in the start-up of another Japanese specialty streamer Cinema Discoveries.The new venture will start very small, possibly as few as eight carefully-curated titles, and make them available on a transactional-VOD only basis. New titles will be uploaded monthly and will typically be available for a year before rotating off the service.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentSkip City International D-Cinema Festival, a leading launching pad for emerging Japanese and world filmmakers, has unveiled the line-up for its 19th edition, which will be held July 16-24, 2022, at venues in Kawaguchi, a Tokyo suburb. In addition to its first physical screenings in three years, the festival will present an online segment July 21-27.The president of the international competition jury is Terajima Shinobu, winner of the best actress silver bear at the 2010 Berlinale for her performance in the Wakamatsu Koji’s WWII drama “Caterpillar.” The president of the Japanese film competition jury is cinematographer Ashizawa Akiko.The opening film is “Deadly School,” a coming-of-age ensemble drama about high school girls prepping for their school festival, directed by three-time Skip City winner Isobe Teppei and adapted from Asakusa Kaoru’s hit play.

Rina Sawayama has dropped a glitzy video for the track, ‘This Hell’.The visual, directed by Ali Kaur, depicts the singer getting married in a lavish wedding, all while drinking, line-dancing, and playing air guitar. “We’re burning up together, baby, that makes two / Cause the devil’s wearing Prada and loves a little drama / This hell is better with you,” she sings on the track’s euphoric chorus.‘This Hell’ was first shared last month as the lead single to her new album, ‘Hold The Girl’.

Harry Styles has delivered an intimate performance of his song ‘Boyfriends’ for Japanese YouTube series, The First Take.The performance depicts Styles delivering a stripped-back version of the ‘Harry’s House’ track against a clean white background, in line with the series’ typical style. Sarah Jones and Elin Sandberg provide backing vocals, while guitars come courtesy of Ny Oh and Mitch Rowland.The series is known for challenging artists to perform any song of their liking, but in one take without any vocal or visual effects.

Naman Ramachandran Shailaja Padindala’s Kannada-language film “Naanu Ladies” won best narrative feature and Pedro Peira’s English and Spanish-language film “LA QueenCianera” best documentary feature at the 2022 Kashish LGBTQ+ film festival in Mumbai.Gujarati-language shorts “Muhafiz” by Pradipta Ray and “Dal Bhat” by Nemil Shah” won best Indian narrative short and the Riyad Wadia Award for best emerging Indian filmmaker respectively. “Muhafiz” also won best screenplay for Ray and Ashutosh Pathak.Padindala said: “ ‘Naanu Ladies’ is a film attempting to identify cis-het culture [as it] weaves itself into the queerness of everyday life.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentBack in Japan after his Korean-language drama “Broker” won two prizes at this year’s Cannes festival, Kore-eda Hirokazu appeared as a press event in Tokyo on Tuesday to announce the launch of a group of industry professionals who aim for structural reform of the Japanese film industry.The group calls itself the “Association for the Establishment of a Japanese Version of CNC.” The reference is to France’s government-backed oversight body, the Centre National du Cinema et de l’Image Animee. Kore-eda noted the low incomes and long working hours of freelance filmmakers and emphasized the need for reform.

Justin Lin recently made headlines for stepping away from “Fast X,” while already in production. While the reasons behind his unexpected departure from the “Fast & Furious” franchise have been discussed to death, the filmmaker has already lined up his next big project.

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir is now being adapted into a feature film, and just a few weeks ago Time recognized her as a rising star by adding her to its annual list the Time 100 Next.Last year also saw the band release its third proper studio album, Jubilee, which felt like a debut all over again. Zauner does not entirely throw out her original playbook, and builds on her vocal prowess and knack for telling a good story.But Jubilee is far more dramatic and unrestrained than we might ever have expected, delivering nicely on Zauner’s goal to go “all out” on her third album, taking particular inspiration from Icelandic pop star Björk and her own third album, Homogenic.On Wednesday, Japanese Breakfast drops by Wolf Trap for an inspired double-bill pairing with Belle and Sebastian, a seven-piece, wistful-pop act, dubbed “Scottish sovereigns of indie pop” by Rolling Stone.They’re touring in support of an 11th studio album, A Bit of Previous, released last month, 26 years after their debut.Wednesday, June 15, starting at 7 p.m.

As part of Geeked Week, Netflix announced the new movie Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, based on the Haro Aso Japanese manga series and dropped the following photo above.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentNaomi Kawase, Japan’s best-known female film director, has been accused of bullying her company staff and assaulting a member of her film crew.In late April, Bunshun Online, the website of a leading weekly tabloid, published an interview with a former male staffer of Kawase’s production company Kumie. He stated that Kawase had punched him in the face in the company office in October of 2015.

Netflix on Tuesday announced a new film based on the popular Japanese manga series “Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead,” a zombie movie and horror comedy that will soon premiere worldwide on Netflix. “Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead” was unveiled as part of Netflix’s Geeked Week presentations continuing Tuesday, and the film is inspired by the manga series written by Haro Aso and illustrated by Kotaro Takata of the same name.

This is one “America’s Got Talent” act we haven’t seen before.

Japanese Breakfast recently joined New York chiptune-based rockers Anamanaguchi to perform a cover of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World song ‘Black Sheep’.The original version of the song was written by Metric for the 2010 film adaptation of Scott Pilgrim Vs.

Florence + The Machine has covered John Lennon‘s ‘Jealous Guy’ in the studio – check out the performance below.Florence Welch and co. performed the cover while appearing on SiriusXM, performing a number of tracks from new album ‘Dance Fever’ as well as the version of Lennon’s famous track, first released on 1971 album ‘Imagine’.‘Dance Fever’ was released last month and beat Kendrick Lamar‘s Mr Morale & The Big Steppers’ to top spot in the UK charts, marking the band’s fourth UK Number One album following 2009 debut ‘Lungs’, follow up ‘Ceremonials’ and 2015’s ‘How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful’.Check out Florence + The Machine’s acoustic cover of John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’ for SiriusXM below.In a four-star review, NME said that ‘Dance Fever’ boasts “gorgeously expressive songs”, adding: “This 14-track collection reflects a new sense of resolve, packing an invigorated spirit into powerful, sneakily thrilling pop.”Florence + The Machine will showcase the album on a UK and Ireland headline tour in November.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent“Plan 75,” Hayakawa Chie’s Japanese dystopian drama which world premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, has been sold in a raft of territories by Urban Sales. The movie is set in Japan, in a near future where a government program called Plan 75 encourages senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanized in order to remedy the aging society. The film weaves the stories of an elderly woman who isn’t able to live independently, a pragmatic Plan 75 salesman and a young Filipino caregiver.

Japanese Breakfast will feature as a musical guest on the Apple TV+ show Helpsters.From the makers of Sesame Street, Helpsters is a children’s show about a group of monsters who work together to solve the problems of customers in their shop. The first season launched alongside Apple TV+ in 2019, with the third season set to debut on Friday (May 27).Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner performs a track with Cody and her friends in the third season.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefKawase Naomi, the Japanese auteur who won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 and has had films in competition on multiple other occasions, is paying a flying visit to the festival with “Official Film of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Side A,” which screens on Wednesday evening.A feature-length documentary, “Side A” is focused largely on the athletes. “Side B,” Kawase’s next project, casts a wider net and captures what Kawase calls a turning point for Japanese society.The International Olympic Committee hired me to do it. I was elected or nominated by the IOC.

Adele and Japanese Breakfast have both been named on Time‘s 2022 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.The news magazine’s annual list spotlights the “pioneers, leaders, titans, artists, innovators and icons” of the past year.Adele is listed under the ‘icons’ category alongside Jon Batiste, Keanu Reeves and Mary J. Blige, with Late Late Show host James Corden writing in support of the singer’s entry.Japanese Breakfast, AKA Michelle Zauner, is celebrated as an ‘innovator’ along with Zendaya, Taika Waititi and Miranda Lambert.Questlove, Jazmine Sullivan, Oprah Winfrey, Issa Rae and Quinta Brunson are also named on the Time 100 list for 2022.

Japanese Breakfast made her Saturday Night Live debut last night (May 21) on the show’s season 47 finale – watch her play ‘Be Sweet’ and ‘Paprika’ below.The singer-songwriter, aka Michelle Zauner, released new album ‘Jubilee’ last year, and appeared alongside host Natasha Lyonne, star of Russian Doll and Orange Is The New Black.Zauner played two of the biggest hits from ‘Jubilee’ on the show. For ‘Be Sweet’, she was dressed in deep red and backed by a four-piece band all in white, before she donned a white frock and was joined by a horn section for ‘Paprika’.Watch the two performances below.Last night’s SNL season finale also saw the departure of longtime cast member Pete Davidson.Fellow cast members Aidy Bryant, Kate McKinnon and Kyle Mooney also announced they were to leave the show after last night’s episode.The news comes after Davidson remarked in 2021 that he was “ready to hang up the jersey” with regards to his stint on SNL.Elsewhere on the 47th season of the show, Post Malone made his Saturday Night Live debut, with Selena Gomez also be making her debut on the NBC programme as host.During his performance, the rapper was joined by Fleet Foxes to premiere ‘Love/Hate Letter to Alcohol’, a song from his forthcoming album ‘Twelve Carat Toothache’.The May 7 episode of SNL, meanwhile, featured Arcade Fire as musical guests, following the release of their latest album ‘WE’ last Friday.