MOVIES are a lot like families: They begin with the birth of something new, require lots of coddling throughout infancy, tolerance during toddlership, and frank but kind, constructive criticism during adolescence. OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two” for On The Other Side Of The Universe – https://otosotu.yolasite.com) has now reached young adulthood, entering pre-production with intriguing, meaningful and mature character-and-scene concepts. During the December, the JET Progress product...

HAVING just recently spent 5 weeks in Japan, I have to mention my delight in discovering hoshigaki. I came across them my first day and almost every day afterwards, tied together in long strings hung from porch roofs throughout the main island, Honshuu. Looking like beaded curtains of brilliant orange, they are the start of dried Japanese persimmons, which herald December and the pending New Year. 

While Christmas is celebrated by many Japanese families, it's New Year celebration that is the...

DURING a brief trip to Japan in late November to visit family, actress Sakura Kai (Setsuko Tsuchiya) and I made an even briefer stop at Toei-Kyoto Studios jidaigeki (Japanese period drama) Park and filming lot for a day — https://global.toei-eigamura.com. Needless to say, being actors ourselves, we had a wonderful time transported back to Japan’s Edo period (1600 to 1868 AD) Japan, walking streets we’d seen in various Japanese movies and shows in the taiga (historical) drama genre. Ac...

CNN reporter Ashley Strickland recently published an article entitled “Mysterious, fast radio bursts in space keep getting stranger (https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/14/world/repeating-fast-radio-burst-quirk-scn/index.html#).

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) — “bright, millisecond-long flashes of radio waves in space” — in their own right, are, in my opinion, quite mysterious enough. Known since 2007, FRBs seem to be “coming from distant points across the universe.” According to Strickland,...

READERS sometimes email me at drjanik@gmail.com asking me if, with my wife and I being actors, we regularly take a limo to go somewhere. Well, yes, it’s true Sakura Kai (aka Setsuko Tsuchiya – https://setsukotsuchiya.com) and I, Daniel S. Janik (https://janik.yolasite.com/actor.php) are actors as well as authors, but, ummm, sad to burst the limo bubble, but we walk together to work whenever possible, which is most of the time.

First, weight and body tone always come before luxury. The ca...

TRY this brain-twister: OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two” for ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE – https://otosotu.yolasite.com) – is welcoming an eleventh character, Chad Stuart. Chad, played by award-winning actor, screenwriter and author William Maltese, is a contemporary screenwriter, actually THE hypothetical screenwriter of this Sci-Fu, action-adventure-drama as it unfolds on this and the other side of the universe. Not twisty enough? Well then, William Maltese, who plays Chad ...

DANIEL S. JANIK here, director and lead actor of OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two” which is the acronym for ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE). I was recently asked what I thought would be the biggest challenge in filming OTOSOTU. Remember that OTOSOTU is a production of JET Progress, a small, independent production company in Hawaii — https://jet-progress.yolasite.com.

Well, the final scene will be one in which Michael Mylo will appear inside a spaceship with Brit Mylo, both roles w...