Since 2020 I’ve been writing a Substack newsletter, which is why you haven’t seen new posts here. At Substack, Under The Hollywood Sign covers many of the same subjects I’ve covered on WordPress: film, TV, Japan, history–in greater depth, while allowing me to earn money through subscriptions. I’ve also been able to branch out into other areas, notably travel and genealogy. If you’re interested, you can sign up for only $6 a month at hopeanderson.substack.com. If you can’t pay, there are occasional articles to read with a free subscription–most recently “The Long Shadow of Henry Kissinger”, the ..read more

For the past couple of years I’ve been writing a Substack newsletter, which is why you haven’t seen new posts here. At Substack, Under The Hollywood Sign covers many of the same subjects I’ve covered on WordPress: film, TV, Japan, history–while allowing me to earn money through subscriptions. I’ve also been able to branch out into other areas, notably travel and genealogy. If you’re interested, you can sign up for only $5 a month at hopeanderson.substack.com. If you can’t pay, there are occasional articles to read with a free subscription–most recently “‘Fight Club’: Still Brilliant After All ..read more

The Cinerama Dome On Monday I saw a movie in a theater for the first time in over 19 months. I can’t blame this gap on the pandemic alone, since the last movie I saw publicly was on January 3rd, 2020, when Covid19 was still a Chinese problem. The truth is that I’d been watching at home for years because almost everything–screeners, art films, comedies and dramas–was online. During that time, horror movies and the Marvel juggernaut took over the theaters, leaving me cold. To the extent that I ventured out to the movies, it was to rarely seen films at UCLA Film Archive and the American Cinemathe ..read more

Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” Heidi Ewing’s “I Carry You With Me” Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow” When Kathryn Bigelow won the Academy Award for Best Director in 2009, breaking into what was arguably the world’s most formidable men’s club, most people assumed that more women directors would follow. But eleven years later, only one—Greta Gerwig, for “Lady Bird”–had been nominated, and she didn’t win. In the two years that followed, the Best Director nominee list reverted to what it had been almost every year since the Academy began handing out Oscars in 1929: five men, almost all white. Then came 2020 ..read more

This review contains plot spoilers At the outset “True Mothers” seems almost a cliché: a happy couple with an adopted child get an unexpected jolt when his desperate birth mother suddenly appears.  Fortunately, nothing is as it appears in Naomi Kawase’s masterful film, and the great pleasure of watching is its uncertainty. What begins as the story of a mother, father and five-year-old son keeps shifting, beginning with a red herring and ending on a surprisingly hopeful note. In between, we see flashbacks of Satoko (Hiromi Nagasaku) and Kiyokazu (Arata Iura) Kurihara’s struggle wi ..read more

Yukio Mishima While my newsletter requires a subscription, there are occasional free articles like “Some Things About Yukio Mishima: Remembering A Literary and Political Conundrum, Fifty Years On”. Here’s an excerpt: Yukio Mishima…at the time occupied a similar position to Norman Mailer’s: as a serious man of letters with an outré persona that enhanced his fame while detracting from his work. As obnoxious as Mailer could be, Mishima was by far the weirder of the two. While Mailer was busy throwing punches and feuding with fellow writers, Mishima was obsessively pumping iron, establishi ..read more

Twelve years have passed since I began writing Under the Hollywood Sign. Conceived to promote my documentary of the same name and to further explore Hollywood history, UTHS soon grew to include my previous documentaries, magazine work and interviews. It also spawned two collections of essays. As time went on, my focus shifted to other people’s films, books and TV shows. I also wrote visual art, architecture and Japan, where I grew up, and its rich popular culture. All of this has been a labor of love, and hundreds of posts and pages later it’s time for me to try something new. Beginning today ..read more

“Jim Thompson, Silk King”/Copyright 2015 Hope Anderson Productions Curious about the documentaries that inspired this blog? Here’s a good chance to see them at a bargain price, and to give them as holiday gifts. From now until January 1, 2021, each purchase of a full-length documentary on DVD will include a free companion documentary. Each order of “Under the Hollywood Sign” will come with “Peg Entwistle: The Life and Death of an Actress”, while each order of “Jim Thompson, Silk King, 2015 Edition” will come with “The Jim Thompson House and Art Collection.” This offer does not apply to digit ..read more

The first time I encountered Oliver Stone–close to twenty years ago, at a restaurant in the Valley–he was so loud and obnoxious that he drowned out the conversation I was having with my lunch partner. ‘Ugh,’ I thought, ‘What an asshole.’ But age has calmed him considerably, and when I heard him speak at a screening of “The Doors” last year he was thoughtful and incisive. Because I knew little about how Stone transformed himself from Yale dropout and Vietnam War vet to A-list screenwriter and director, I decided to listen to the new memoir Chasing The Light, which covers his first 40 years. It ..read more

Retsuko and Aggretsuko This post contains plot spoilers Netflix has aired a number of excellent Japanese TV series, including “Sparks,” “Midnight Diner” and “Terrace House,” but the animated series “Aggretsuko” surpasses all of them in its writing, acting and insight. A show about anthropomorphic characters developed by Sanrio, the inventor of “Hello Kitty”, sounds like a gimmick; instead, “Aggretsuko” is very funny, occasionally sad, and always compelling. And its depiction of Japan’s corporate hamster wheel and the plight of office workers, especially women, is profound. Retsuko, an adorabl ..read more