dude, koreans have downtown sushi checked but them Chinaman got uptown PON LOCK SEEN....
actually Sushi on Bloor, the one every broke ass fool name checks is Chinaman owned. They curse up a storm in there, diu this and pok guy that, haha....
You're harshing my mellow with your hatting!!!!!! Hah I hear you O-dub but I'm just a lazy american at heart I know. I can dig her sad sentimental hipster vibe it's silly escapism to me and SJ was bangin in that film, lol. (I guess the Grey Goose and Monster energy drink concotion I'm downing is not helping). Yah, she trampled some ish but you said it: "LIT" was a WKW tribute (read super bite) that at the very least was better than "Samurai." She admits being heavily influenced by WKW somewhere on the DVD extras or something.
We should not settle though, damn straight.
I WANT SOME "AUTHENTIC" LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL PORTRAYAL FILMS WITH SUBTITLES UP IN THIS BATCH RIGHT NOW!!!!! HOLLYWOOD CLOWN PRODUCERS, TAKE NOTE!!!!
There are some fine women out there of the paler persuasian but SJ? She's like Uma 2003 to me.
You're harshing my mellow with your hatting!!!!!! Hah I hear you O-dub but I'm just a lazy american at heart I know. I can dig her sad sentimental hipster vibe it's silly escapism to me and SJ was bangin in that film, lol. (I guess the Grey Goose and Monster energy drink concotion I'm downing is not helping). Yah, she trampled some ish but you said it: "LIT" was a WKW tribute (read super bite) that at the very least was better than "Samurai." She admits being heavily influenced by WKW somewhere on the DVD extras or something.
We should not settle though, damn straight.
I WANT SOME "AUTHENTIC" LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL PORTRAYAL FILMS WITH SUBTITLES UP IN THIS BATCH RIGHT NOW!!!!! HOLLYWOOD CLOWN PRODUCERS, TAKE NOTE!!!!
I haven't read most of this thread but all i know is my dad had something to do with filming this film, The story and acting looks weak. I'm biased but i know it'll be worth seeing just for the visuals. He told me something about how they built a 4 acre set of tokyo because it was cheaper then filming in tokyo.
I haven't read most of this thread but all i know is my dad had something to do with filming this film, The story and acting looks weak. I'm biased but i know it'll be worth seeing just for the visuals. He told me something about how they built a 4 acre set of tokyo because it was cheaper then filming in tokyo.
fuck this shit. although not like all the crackers who watch this shit know the difference between all the slant-eyed fucks, right? this shit is for people to watch and act like they're cultured.
The Rock (wrestler, Scorpion King and all that shit) is supposed to play King Kamehameha in a move about the King's life. Doggie is not Hawaiian. What about that?
In any case, it'd be really weird if a film like, say, The Godfather had NO Italian Americans cast in the lead roles, though, if I recall, only Pacino and DeNiro, were right?
just for the recording, you forgot John Cazale.......
as Fredo Corleone
and abt the topic I can't add anything else to the intelligent comments you all posted, I'm just glad to see again on screen such beautiful woman as
fuck this shit. although not like all the crackers who watch this shit know the difference between all the slant-eyed fucks, right? this shit is for people to watch and act like they're cultured.
Also, if anyone is looking for Hollywood to keep (it real) anything cultural or a historically correct, ur gonna have to throw out 95% of the films made.
Exactly...go watch the Promise. Why the hell anyone would turn to North America for an Asian film is beyond me anyhow.
Do you expect South Korea to produce the next Starwars?
lol
We're talking about a Country that plans on remaking JSA by making a parallel with the US/Mexican border....lol
Is Lucy Liu mad she's losing work? That's the real question.
P.S. This reminds me of when I saw Charlton Heston playing a "Mexican" in "A touch of evil". The literally put some brown make-up on him, gave him a "swarthy" looking moustache and named him"Vargas".
Thats a dope ass movie though. Welles is straight up gangster in that shit.
Favorite Welles film - prefer it over 'Citizen Kane' actually... Cobbled together by Welles 'cause he'd been pretty much frozen out by Hollywood @ that point...
Actually, that was one of Welles' last studio projects, and they edited it in ways he didn't like and he wrote a famous letter berating them and begging them to not ruin the film, and specifically noting edits that were bad or didn't make sense. That's why you see 'the restored version' on the later VHS/DVD copies of the film after they re-edited it based on the letter and existing footage that was still around. The film was then re-released to theatres in the late 90s. I think he had forsaken Hollywood earlier(or vice versa) but been lured back to make the film. It ended up being a pretty bitter pill for him that he still couldn't do what he wanted, how he wanted, and he ended up making most of the rest of his films abroad.
I wonder if the Japanese film industry isn't part to blame for this.
If you look at the Korean and Chinese film industries as compared to the Japanese, it's much easier to list actors and actresses that have global marketability. Can the same be said about Japan?
Take for example the Korean media industries, more specifically the TV Drama's that have taken over the Asian region. The Korean music and movie industries are starting to flood into Japan, and the Japanese are trying to prevent this as opposed to competition. It's sad actually. It's not rare to find articles in the Chinese or Japanese media speaking on the success of Jewel in the Palace for example.
I'm not sure about others, but it's very hard to be a Japanese Film conesour. For the most part Japanese DVD's are $40-$50 US for single disc editions, and they rarely offer subtitles outside of English. I don't often see Japanese films being produced in other regions either. The distribution of Japanese film containing Japanese actors or actresses is limited. I see films from China and Korea being produced by Japanese DVD companies as Limited Editions, but it's very rare for example to see a Chinese or Korean edition of a Japanese film unless we're talking bootleg.
Survive Style 5+ is a prime example, as is Mindgame. I cannot for the life of my figure out how either hasn't been released outside of the $50 US price tag of the Japanese Import. Hell, one of them stars Sonny China and Vinnie Jones, and was produced by one of the most exciting and fresh/new directors in Japan today!
What's my point? Ky??ko Koizumi and Yumi Asou both performed well in Survive Style 5+, where Ky??ko Koizumi was hard to forget! I can still picture her character today. If Survive Style 5+ would have got North American dist, people would have picked it up because of Vinnie Jones, as in turn became familiar with Ky??ko Koizumi. Instead, I'm willing to bet 99.9999999999999% of people in North American don't know who Ky??ko Koizumi is, and they shouldn't.
Yet people know Ziyi Zhang because of Hero and HOFD and CTHD!
While I respect and appreciate the controversy found in China and Japan over this film, I can't help but to wonder if the Japanese film industry shouldn't look at itself in the mirror and place some of this blame on itself.
We are talking about the movie industry after all, which is all marketing and entertainment. Actors are paid to play something they are not, and external features are key. I expect commerical film to be as "grassroots" as major label music. It's about names and recognition, not "reality".
I'm not sure about others, but it's very hard to be a Japanese Film conesour.
Uh, how do you explain the preponderance of Japanese film connoisseur outside of Japan then? Provided, you clearly have an insider's knowledge on issues of cost and distribution but don't you think, from a Western perspective, there's a rather huge cult following in the U.S. and elsewhere around Japanese films? I know a lot of folks who are relatively "up" on at least Kurosawa, Kitano, Miike and Miyazaki not to mention hardcore film snobs into everyone from Ozu, to Mizoguchi, Oshima and Kore-Eda. Even Naruse is celebrating a minor surge of awareness in the U.S. right now thanks to a traveling retrospective.
Way way off topic, but MoSS... I just read this. Do you know anything on it or is/will there ever be anything available to buy.
On the Lone Wolf and Cub TV series:
Two full-fledged television series based on the manga have been broadcast to date. The first, Lone Wolf and Cub (Kozure Ōkami) was produced in a typical jidaigeki format and broadcast in three 26-episode seasons from 1973 to 1976, each episode 45 minutes long. Kinnosuke Yorozuya Nakamura played Ogami Ittō, he later reprised the role in a miniseries in the mid-1980s and several related television movies. Yorozuya's portrayal of Ōgam in the series, and the series as a whole, is said to be more faithful to the manga than the Wakayama films. Considering the length and number of episodes this can only be expected. The series was released for the Toronto, Canada market by CFMT-TV (now OMNI 1) in the original Japanese with English subtitles as The Iron Samurai.[/b]
I'm not sure about others, but it's very hard to be a Japanese Film conesour.
Uh, how do you explain the preponderance of Japanese film connoisseur outside of Japan then? Provided, you clearly have an insider's knowledge on issues of cost and distribution but don't you think, from a Western perspective, there's a rather huge cult following in the U.S. and elsewhere around Japanese films? I know a lot of folks who are relatively "up" on at least Kurosawa, Kitano, Miike and Miyazaki not to mention hardcore film snobs into everyone from Ozu, to Mizoguchi, Oshima and Kore-Eda. Even Naruse is celebrating a minor surge of awareness in the U.S. right now thanks to a traveling retrospective.
O -
I'm not trying to start anything here, but I will concur w/ Moss in that the Japanese tend to be fairly insular when it comes to exporting product @ times - case in point, Shoichiku Studios reissued all of Ozu's films in a series of 3 to 4 DVD box sets; the project was devised w/ no other audiences than the domestic (or Japanese-speaking) in mind: NO subtitles - this despite the fact that renown Japanese cinephile/critic Donald Ritchie (who's resided in Tokyo since '47) advised the studio to do so in order to advance sales elsewhere! Shoichiku's response: who cares? This same criticism easily could be levied against the French as well when it comes to made-in-France DVD product of Gallic content (some of Jean Gabin's titles for instance)...
I also do know firsthand that a lot of the studios in Japan are fairly exorbitant in charging fees for screenings such that a touring Mizoguchi (or Oshima) retro heading forward will be unlikely owing to the prohibitive costs associated... This despite any involvement from the Japan Foundation...
I'm not a Japanese film expert by any means. I'm just observing - as a layman - that American film snobs tend to know far more about Japanese cinema than they do, say, Thai, Korean, mainland Chinese or Filipino. I do not doubt, at all, that there's an insularity at work here but I'd argue that, despite that kind of parochialism, the interest in Japanese cinema in America at least has faciliated more of a crossing over than from other industries in Asia. I mean, how much do most American film buffs know about Bollywood? I'm not sure if people would describe Bollywood as insular but I do know that there's not enough interest in the States for a significantly crossover to manifest.
I'm not sure about others, but it's very hard to be a Japanese Film conesour.
Uh, how do you explain the preponderance of Japanese film connoisseur outside of Japan then? Provided, you clearly have an insider's knowledge on issues of cost and distribution but don't you think, from a Western perspective, there's a rather huge cult following in the U.S. and elsewhere around Japanese films? I know a lot of folks who are relatively "up" on at least Kurosawa, Kitano, Miike and Miyazaki not to mention hardcore film snobs into everyone from Ozu, to Mizoguchi, Oshima and Kore-Eda. Even Naruse is celebrating a minor surge of awareness in the U.S. right now thanks to a traveling retrospective.
O -
I'm not trying to start anything here, but I will concur w/ Moss in that the Japanese tend to be fairly insular when it comes to exporting product @ times - case in point, Shoichiku Studios reissued all of Ozu's films in a series of 3 to 4 DVD box sets; the project was devised w/ no other audiences than the domestic (or Japanese-speaking) in mind: NO subtitles - this despite the fact that renown Japanese cinephile/critic Donald Ritchie (who's resided in Tokyo since '47) advised the studio to do so in order to advance sales elsewhere! Shoichiku's response: who cares? This same criticism easily could be levied against the French as well when it comes to made-in-France DVD product of Gallic content (some of Jean Gabin's titles for instance)...
I also do know firsthand that a lot of the studios in Japan are fairly exorbitant in charging fees for screenings such that a touring Mizoguchi (or Oshima) retro heading forward will be unlikely owing to the prohibitive costs associated... This despite any involvement from the Japan Foundation...
We're talking about a Country that plans on remaking JSA by making a parallel with the US/Mexican border....lol
I read that as well. ????? Brain freeze at the thought... There is no parallel. Have the idiots even seen the film... Stupid... Bad enough they are doing My Wife Is A Gangster & Infernal Affairs, but they are already remaking Old Boy... But he better watch out, there's already a Bollywood version...http://www.zindathefilm.com/
Way way off topic, but MoSS... I just read this. Do you know anything on it or is/will there ever be anything available to buy.
On the Lone Wolf and Cub TV series:
Two full-fledged television series based on the manga have been broadcast to date. The first, Lone Wolf and Cub (Kozure Ōkami) was produced in a typical jidaigeki format and broadcast in three 26-episode seasons from 1973 to 1976, each episode 45 minutes long. Kinnosuke Yorozuya Nakamura played Ogami Ittō, he later reprised the role in a miniseries in the mid-1980s and several related television movies. Yorozuya's portrayal of Ōgam in the series, and the series as a whole, is said to be more faithful to the manga than the Wakayama films. Considering the length and number of episodes this can only be expected. The series was released for the Toronto, Canada market by CFMT-TV (now OMNI 1) in the original Japanese with English subtitles as The Iron Samurai.[/b]
You can get bootlegs of the series on eBay. I doubt these will ever be "ofically" released on remastered DVDs with English subs and even if they were they would be very expensive. I think these bootlegs are from old vhs copies that were taped off of Hawaiian TV in the 80s. Samurai TV series were shown on TV in Hawaii with English subs during that time and have now made it onto dvd-r. The quality is like VHS, but it is the only way to get the shows cheap and with English subs. I have all 5 seasons of "Kage No Gundan" and both seasons of "The Yagyu conspiracy" on dvd-r from the old videos and they are great!
Somewhat tangential, but did any of you read this article in the NYTimes right before Thanksgiving? My personal biases aside (I'm half Korean and lived amongst the marginalized Okinawans from 1988-1992), I think the Japanese have some issues of their own where "representation" is concerned. This doesn't get the producers of Memoirs off the hook, but Americans are certainly not the only ones who are guilty of such essentialism.
Full article is below for those who are interested:
Ugly images of Asian rivals become best sellers in Japan
By NORIMITSU ONISHI (nytimes.com)
Updated: 2005-11-21 08:58
TOKYO - A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!" In another passage the book states that "there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of."
In another comic book, "Introduction to China," which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive."
The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.
In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia.
They also point to Japan's longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity, which is akin to Britain's apartness from the Continent. Much of Japan's history in the last century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea's rise to challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here.
Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.
Mr. Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbors, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan's most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said Japan should emulate the advanced nations of the West and leave Asia by dissociating itself from its backward neighbors, especially China and Korea.
"I wonder why they haven't grown up at all," Mr. Nishio said. "They don't change. I wonder why China and Korea haven't learned anything."
Mr. Nishio, who wrote a chapter in the comic book about South Korea, said Japan should try to cut itself off from China and South Korea, as Fukuzawa advocated. "Currently we cannot ignore South Korea and China," Mr. Nishio said. "Economically, it's difficult. But in our hearts, psychologically, we should remain composed and keep that attitude."
The reality that South Korea had emerged as a rival hit many Japanese with full force in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer's World Cup and South Korea advanced further than Japan. At the same time, the so-called Korean Wave - television dramas, movies and music from South Korea - swept Japan and the rest of Asia, often displacing Japanese pop cultural exports.
The wave, though popular among Japanese women, gave rise to a countermovement, especially on the Internet. Sharin Yamano, the young cartoonist behind "Hating the Korean Wave," began his strip on his own Web site then.
"The 'Hate Korea' feelings have spread explosively since the World Cup," said Akihide Tange, an editor at Shinyusha, the publisher of the comic book. Still, the number of sales, 360,000 so far, surprised the book's editors, suggesting that the Hate Korea movement was far larger than they had believed.
"We weren't expecting there'd be so many," said Susumu Yamanaka, another editor at Shinyusha. "But when the lid was actually taken off, we found a tremendous number of people feeling this way."
So far the two books, each running about 300 pages and costing around $10, have drawn little criticism from public officials, intellectuals or the mainstream news media. For example, Japan's most conservative national daily, Sankei Shimbun, said the Korea book described issues between the countries "extremely rationally, without losing its balance."
As nationalists and revisionists have come to dominate the public debate in Japan, figures advocating an honest view of history are being silenced, said Yutaka Yoshida, a historian at Hitotsubashi University here. Mr. Yoshida said the growing movement to deny history, like the Rape of Nanjing, was a sort of "religion" for an increasingly insecure nation.
"Lacking confidence, they need a story of healing," Mr. Yoshida said. "Even if we say that story is different from facts, it doesn't mean anything to them."
The Korea book's cartoonist, who is working on a sequel, has turned down interview requests. The book centers on a Japanese teenager, Kaname, who attains a "correct" understanding of Korea. It begins with a chapter on how South Korea's soccer team supposedly cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup; later chapters show how Kaname realizes that South Korea owes its current success to Japanese colonialism.
"It is Japan who made it possible for Koreans to join the ranks of major nations, not themselves," Mr. Nishio said of colonial Korea.
But the comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan's conflicted identity, its longstanding feelings of superiority toward Asia and of inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features.
That peculiar aesthetic, so entrenched in pop culture that most Japanese are unaware of it, has its roots in the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century, when Japanese leaders decided that the best way to stop Western imperialists from reaching here was to emulate them.
In 1885, Fukuzawa - who is revered to this day as the intellectual father of modern Japan and adorns the 10,000 yen bill (the rough equivalent of a $100 bill) - wrote "Leaving Asia," the essay that many scholars believe provided the intellectual underpinning of Japan's subsequent invasion and colonization of Asian nations.
Fukuzawa bemoaned the fact that Japan's neighbors were hopelessly backward.
Writing that "those with bad companions cannot avoid bad reputations," Fukuzawa said Japan should depart from Asia and "cast our lot with the civilized countries of the West." He wrote of Japan's Asian neighbors, "We should deal with them exactly as the Westerners do."
As those sentiments took root, the Japanese began acquiring Caucasian features in popular drawing. The biggest change occurred during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, when drawings of the war showed Japanese standing taller than Russians, with straight noses and other features that made them look more European than their European enemies.
"The Japanese had to look more handsome than the enemy," said Mr. Nagayama.
Many of the same influences are at work in th
e other new comic book, "An Introduction to China," which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution, and has sold 180,000 copies.
The book describes China as the "world's prostitution superpower" and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, "I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China."
The book waves away Japan's worst wartime atrocities in China. It dismisses the Rape of Nanjing, in which historians say 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers in 1937-38, as a fabrication of the Chinese government devised to spread anti-Japanese sentiment.
The book also says the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 - which researched biological warfare and conducted vivisections, amputations and other experiments on thousands of Chinese and other prisoners - was actually formed to defend Japanese soldiers against the Chinese.
"The only attractive thing that China has to offer is Chinese food," said Ko Bunyu, a Taiwan-born writer who provided the script for the comic book. Mr. Ko, 66, has written more than 50 books on China, some on cannibalism and others arguing that Japanese were the real victims of their wartime atrocities in China. The book's main author and cartoonist, a Japanese named George Akiyama, declined to be interviewed.
Like some in Taiwan who are virulently anti-mainland, Mr. Ko is fiercely pro-Japanese and has lived here for four decades. A longtime favorite of the Japanese right, Mr. Ko said anti-Japan demonstrations in Chinese mainland early this year had earned him a wider audience. Sales of his books surged this year, to one million.
"I have to thank the mainland, really," Mr. Ko said. "But I'm disappointed that the sales of my books could have been more than one or two million if they had continued the demonstrations."
Do you expect South Korea to produce the next Starwars?
You mean they aren't? Shit, so much animation gets outsourced to South Korea already, I wouldn't be surprised if ILM went ROK.
Well, George Lucas and ILM did open up a pretty impressive TV/special effects/digital animation studio in Singapore last year, so I guess he's already on that path.
I wonder if people would have cared as much if it was Kim Yoon-jin (Who I believe was asked early on to play the part).
I mean, damn... She's Korean (Eventhough she was raised in NYC) and is trained in Peking Opera Dance and published a Japanese photobook and is a spokesperson for a Japanese cosmetics company.
Some people should maybe just come out and tell others where their place is in life.
It would have been an absolute disgrace if she would have taken this part. She would have never worked again in korea, thats for sure.
There is too much of a brutal history between Korea and Japan. And the idea of "Geisha" is too much of a reminder of "comfort women". Korean sex slaves to the Japanese. Some of these poor women are still alive and still remember it all too well.
Kim was smart not to take a role as a Geisha. It would have been shameful.
And also, I don't think its that hard to tell the difference between chinese, japanese, korean, filipino, etc.... most of the time. I remember seeing some Japanese tourists once in korea and I was like "damn!". The looked SOOOOO different. kinda crazy.
Comments
actually Sushi on Bloor, the one every broke ass fool name checks is Chinaman owned. They curse up a storm in there, diu this and pok guy that, haha....
my top 3
1) Sushi Kaji
2) Hashimoto's
3) Hiro
those ain't cheap though, but if you're looking for an izakaya, japango is the spot.
We should not settle though, damn straight.
I WANT SOME "AUTHENTIC" LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL PORTRAYAL FILMS WITH SUBTITLES UP IN THIS BATCH RIGHT NOW!!!!! HOLLYWOOD CLOWN PRODUCERS, TAKE NOTE!!!!
now playing: Danny Cox covering A Day in the Life
There are some fine women out there of the paler persuasian but SJ? She's like Uma 2003 to me.
HAHA! CLASSIC!
Mandrew helped clarify this for me via PM the other day:
whoa
If a nice rack is all it takes...dude, you need to step your standards up.
just for the recording, you forgot John Cazale.......
as Fredo Corleone
and abt the topic I can't add anything else to the intelligent comments you all posted,
I'm just glad to see again on screen such beautiful woman as
Kind of like the movie crash....lol
Exactly...go watch the Promise. Why the hell anyone would turn to North America for an Asian film is beyond me anyhow.
Do you expect South Korea to produce the next Starwars?
lol
We're talking about a Country that plans on remaking JSA by making a parallel with the US/Mexican border....lol
Actually, that was one of Welles' last studio projects, and they edited it in ways he didn't like and he wrote a famous letter berating them and begging them to not ruin the film, and specifically noting edits that were bad or didn't make sense. That's why you see 'the restored version' on the later VHS/DVD copies of the film after they re-edited it based on the letter and existing footage that was still around. The film was then re-released to theatres in the late 90s. I think he had forsaken Hollywood earlier(or vice versa) but been lured back to make the film. It ended up being a pretty bitter pill for him that he still couldn't do what he wanted, how he wanted, and he ended up making most of the rest of his films abroad.
If you look at the Korean and Chinese film industries as compared to the Japanese, it's much easier to list actors and actresses that have global marketability. Can the same be said about Japan?
Take for example the Korean media industries, more specifically the TV Drama's that have taken over the Asian region. The Korean music and movie industries are starting to flood into Japan, and the Japanese are trying to prevent this as opposed to competition. It's sad actually. It's not rare to find articles in the Chinese or Japanese media speaking on the success of Jewel in the Palace for example.
I'm not sure about others, but it's very hard to be a Japanese Film conesour. For the most part Japanese DVD's are $40-$50 US for single disc editions, and they rarely offer subtitles outside of English. I don't often see Japanese films being produced in other regions either. The distribution of Japanese film containing Japanese actors or actresses is limited. I see films from China and Korea being produced by Japanese DVD companies as Limited Editions, but it's very rare for example to see a Chinese or Korean edition of a Japanese film unless we're talking bootleg.
Survive Style 5+ is a prime example, as is Mindgame. I cannot for the life of my figure out how either hasn't been released outside of the $50 US price tag of the Japanese Import. Hell, one of them stars Sonny China and Vinnie Jones, and was produced by one of the most exciting and fresh/new directors in Japan today!
What's my point? Ky??ko Koizumi and Yumi Asou both performed well in Survive Style 5+, where Ky??ko Koizumi was hard to forget! I can still picture her character today. If Survive Style 5+ would have got North American dist, people would have picked it up because of Vinnie Jones, as in turn became familiar with Ky??ko Koizumi. Instead, I'm willing to bet 99.9999999999999% of people in North American don't know who Ky??ko Koizumi is, and they shouldn't.
Yet people know Ziyi Zhang because of Hero and HOFD and CTHD!
While I respect and appreciate the controversy found in China and Japan over this film, I can't help but to wonder if the Japanese film industry shouldn't look at itself in the mirror and place some of this blame on itself.
We are talking about the movie industry after all, which is all marketing and entertainment. Actors are paid to play something they are not, and external features are key. I expect commerical film to be as "grassroots" as major label music. It's about names and recognition, not "reality".
You mean they aren't? Shit, so much animation gets outsourced to South Korea already, I wouldn't be surprised if ILM went ROK.
lol...Touch??
Uh, how do you explain the preponderance of Japanese film connoisseur outside of Japan then? Provided, you clearly have an insider's knowledge on issues of cost and distribution but don't you think, from a Western perspective, there's a rather huge cult following in the U.S. and elsewhere around Japanese films? I know a lot of folks who are relatively "up" on at least Kurosawa, Kitano, Miike and Miyazaki not to mention hardcore film snobs into everyone from Ozu, to Mizoguchi, Oshima and Kore-Eda. Even Naruse is celebrating a minor surge of awareness in the U.S. right now thanks to a traveling retrospective.
On the Lone Wolf and Cub TV series:
O -
I'm not trying to start anything here, but I will concur w/ Moss in that the Japanese tend to be fairly insular when it comes to exporting product @ times - case in point, Shoichiku Studios reissued all of Ozu's films in a series of 3 to 4 DVD box sets; the project was devised w/ no other audiences than the domestic (or Japanese-speaking) in mind: NO subtitles - this despite the fact that renown Japanese cinephile/critic Donald Ritchie (who's resided in Tokyo since '47) advised the studio to do so in order to advance sales elsewhere! Shoichiku's response: who cares? This same criticism easily could be levied against the French as well when it comes to made-in-France DVD product of Gallic content (some of Jean Gabin's titles for instance)...
I also do know firsthand that a lot of the studios in Japan are fairly exorbitant in charging fees for screenings such that a touring Mizoguchi (or Oshima) retro heading forward will be unlikely owing to the prohibitive costs associated... This despite any involvement from the Japan Foundation...
I read that as well. ????? Brain freeze at the thought... There is no parallel. Have the idiots even seen the film... Stupid...
Bad enough they are doing My Wife Is A Gangster & Infernal Affairs, but they are already remaking Old Boy... But he better watch out, there's already a Bollywood version...http://www.zindathefilm.com/
You can get bootlegs of the series on eBay. I doubt these will ever be "ofically" released on remastered DVDs with English subs and even if they were they would be very expensive. I think these bootlegs are from old vhs copies that were taped off of Hawaiian TV in the 80s. Samurai TV series were shown on TV in Hawaii with English subs during that time and have now made it onto dvd-r. The quality is like VHS, but it is the only way to get the shows cheap and with English subs. I have all 5 seasons of "Kage No Gundan" and both seasons of "The Yagyu conspiracy" on dvd-r from the old videos and they are great!
Here is the first lone wolf and cub series:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Lone-Wolf-and-Cub-Samurai-TV-series-Season-1-26-epis_W0QQitemZ6463664091QQcategoryZ617QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Full article is below for those who are interested:
Ugly images of Asian rivals become best sellers in Japan
By NORIMITSU ONISHI (nytimes.com)
Updated: 2005-11-21 08:58
TOKYO - A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!" In another passage the book states that "there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of."
In another comic book, "Introduction to China," which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive."
The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.
In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia.
They also point to Japan's longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity, which is akin to Britain's apartness from the Continent. Much of Japan's history in the last century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea's rise to challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here.
Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.
Mr. Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbors, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan's most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said Japan should emulate the advanced nations of the West and leave Asia by dissociating itself from its backward neighbors, especially China and Korea.
"I wonder why they haven't grown up at all," Mr. Nishio said. "They don't change. I wonder why China and Korea haven't learned anything."
Mr. Nishio, who wrote a chapter in the comic book about South Korea, said Japan should try to cut itself off from China and South Korea, as Fukuzawa advocated. "Currently we cannot ignore South Korea and China," Mr. Nishio said. "Economically, it's difficult. But in our hearts, psychologically, we should remain composed and keep that attitude."
The reality that South Korea had emerged as a rival hit many Japanese with full force in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer's World Cup and South Korea advanced further than Japan. At the same time, the so-called Korean Wave - television dramas, movies and music from South Korea - swept Japan and the rest of Asia, often displacing Japanese pop cultural exports.
The wave, though popular among Japanese women, gave rise to a countermovement, especially on the Internet. Sharin Yamano, the young cartoonist behind "Hating the Korean Wave," began his strip on his own Web site then.
"The 'Hate Korea' feelings have spread explosively since the World Cup," said Akihide Tange, an editor at Shinyusha, the publisher of the comic book. Still, the number of sales, 360,000 so far, surprised the book's editors, suggesting that the Hate Korea movement was far larger than they had believed.
"We weren't expecting there'd be so many," said Susumu Yamanaka, another editor at Shinyusha. "But when the lid was actually taken off, we found a tremendous number of people feeling this way."
So far the two books, each running about 300 pages and costing around $10, have drawn little criticism from public officials, intellectuals or the mainstream news media. For example, Japan's most conservative national daily, Sankei Shimbun, said the Korea book described issues between the countries "extremely rationally, without losing its balance."
As nationalists and revisionists have come to dominate the public debate in Japan, figures advocating an honest view of history are being silenced, said Yutaka Yoshida, a historian at Hitotsubashi University here. Mr. Yoshida said the growing movement to deny history, like the Rape of Nanjing, was a sort of "religion" for an increasingly insecure nation.
"Lacking confidence, they need a story of healing," Mr. Yoshida said. "Even if we say that story is different from facts, it doesn't mean anything to them."
The Korea book's cartoonist, who is working on a sequel, has turned down interview requests. The book centers on a Japanese teenager, Kaname, who attains a "correct" understanding of Korea. It begins with a chapter on how South Korea's soccer team supposedly cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup; later chapters show how Kaname realizes that South Korea owes its current success to Japanese colonialism.
"It is Japan who made it possible for Koreans to join the ranks of major nations, not themselves," Mr. Nishio said of colonial Korea.
But the comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan's conflicted identity, its longstanding feelings of superiority toward Asia and of inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features.
That peculiar aesthetic, so entrenched in pop culture that most Japanese are unaware of it, has its roots in the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century, when Japanese leaders decided that the best way to stop Western imperialists from reaching here was to emulate them.
In 1885, Fukuzawa - who is revered to this day as the intellectual father of modern Japan and adorns the 10,000 yen bill (the rough equivalent of a $100 bill) - wrote "Leaving Asia," the essay that many scholars believe provided the intellectual underpinning of Japan's subsequent invasion and colonization of Asian nations.
Fukuzawa bemoaned the fact that Japan's neighbors were hopelessly backward.
Writing that "those with bad companions cannot avoid bad reputations," Fukuzawa said Japan should depart from Asia and "cast our lot with the civilized countries of the West." He wrote of Japan's Asian neighbors, "We should deal with them exactly as the Westerners do."
As those sentiments took root, the Japanese began acquiring Caucasian features in popular drawing. The biggest change occurred during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, when drawings of the war showed Japanese standing taller than Russians, with straight noses and other features that made them look more European than their European enemies.
"The Japanese had to look more handsome than the enemy," said Mr. Nagayama.
Many of the same influences are at work in th e other new comic book, "An Introduction to China," which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution, and has sold 180,000 copies.
The book describes China as the "world's prostitution superpower" and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, "I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China."
The book waves away Japan's worst wartime atrocities in China. It dismisses the Rape of Nanjing, in which historians say 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers in 1937-38, as a fabrication of the Chinese government devised to spread anti-Japanese sentiment.
The book also says the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 - which researched biological warfare and conducted vivisections, amputations and other experiments on thousands of Chinese and other prisoners - was actually formed to defend Japanese soldiers against the Chinese.
"The only attractive thing that China has to offer is Chinese food," said Ko Bunyu, a Taiwan-born writer who provided the script for the comic book. Mr. Ko, 66, has written more than 50 books on China, some on cannibalism and others arguing that Japanese were the real victims of their wartime atrocities in China. The book's main author and cartoonist, a Japanese named George Akiyama, declined to be interviewed.
Like some in Taiwan who are virulently anti-mainland, Mr. Ko is fiercely pro-Japanese and has lived here for four decades. A longtime favorite of the Japanese right, Mr. Ko said anti-Japan demonstrations in Chinese mainland early this year had earned him a wider audience. Sales of his books surged this year, to one million.
"I have to thank the mainland, really," Mr. Ko said. "But I'm disappointed that the sales of my books could have been more than one or two million if they had continued the demonstrations."
Courtesy of the New York Times
Well, George Lucas and ILM did open up a pretty impressive TV/special effects/digital animation studio in Singapore last year, so I guess he's already on that path.
It would have been an absolute disgrace if she would have taken this part. She would have never worked again in korea, thats for sure.
There is too much of a brutal history between Korea and Japan. And the idea of "Geisha" is too much of a reminder of "comfort women". Korean sex slaves to the Japanese. Some of these poor women are still alive and still remember it all too well.
Kim was smart not to take a role as a Geisha. It would have been shameful.
And also, I don't think its that hard to tell the difference between chinese, japanese, korean, filipino, etc.... most of the time. I remember seeing some Japanese tourists once in korea and I was like "damn!". The looked SOOOOO different. kinda crazy.