Yasukuni Documentary

I’ve written about the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan before, and all the controversy it causes, especially every year when the prime minister decides to go or not to go to pay respects. I was therefore very interested to read this article on the BBC yesterday all about a documentary that has been made about the shrine, simply called “Yasukuni,” by a Chinese director. It sounds fascinating to me, especially its attempts to understand what the shrine represents to differing groups:

In all, Li Ying has spent 10 years, on and off, making the film.

During visits to Yasukuni he says he was at times threatened, abused, and on occasion had his equipment confiscated. Newspapers here have reported that he has received death threats.

He says he set out to try to understand better what the shrine means to Japanese people.

[...]

To many it is one of the most sacred places in Japan. To others it is a place they feel glorifies war.

10 Things I Hate About You

In honor of Friday, something frivolous for all of us:

Today I have been pondering the mystery of why, out of all my favorite movies, I can’t seem to get enough of 10 Things I Hate About You. No matter how much I love a movie, I usually hit some kind of limit for how often I’m willing to see it. Not so with 10 Things. I once watched it 3 times in one weekend, which is unheard of for me. Even the soundtrack is addictive. But why?

Yes, it’s got the lovely Julia Stiles, who I generally adore, and the even more lovely Heath Ledger, who really needs no further explanation. There’s even the cute guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Allison Janney, in a hilarious departure from her more staid West Wing role. Fine recommendations, all, but there must be more to it.

Brad Bird, Todd Haynes and the real audience of Barack Obama’s race speech

For me, the most striking part of Barack Obama’s uberspeech about race Tuesday was the extent to which he seemed to be talking directly to the individuals in the media, and not just in a facile “okay, this is a chance to change the weekly narrative” way.

Did That Critter See His Shadow?

If you’re in the U.S., it’s not unlikely that a certain rodent crossed your path this morning. Like most celebrities, he’s put on a few pounds in his old age and is getting ever more difficult to hoist in the air when that all-important premonition proclamation is made by his inner circle. Yes, that’s right: it’s Punxsutawney Phil’s day to shine . . . just like the early-morning sun, which cast a long shadow behind him and means six more weeks of winter. Phooey.

The holiday’s roots go back to the European tradition of Candlemas, when candles were blessed and distributed and the day’s weather was used to foretell the coming of spring. Imported by German settlers, Groundhog Day has been officially celebrated in that small town in Pennsylvania since 1887, though real interest in attending the ceremony didn’t take off until the Bill Murray/Andee MacDowell film highlighting the holiday and the town was released in 1993 (need to jog your memory?).

Unless you like a media circus, you’re better off visiting Phil any other day of the year when you’ll have his full and undivided attention. The town has developed a small number of groundhog- and weather-related attractions which can be enjoyed year-round. Your pilgrimage must include a stop at Phil’s home, a terrarium called “Groundhog Zoo” at the library building on Punxsy’s town square. Before leaving town, pick up a Phil-shaped cookie cutter and bake a few groundhogs in his honor every February ever after. Punxsutawney is approximately 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh and 150 miles southeast of Erie in west-central Pennsylvania.

Warning: Paprika contains “dream sequences”

I did indeed spend my Monday night entertainment hours on the Duke campus, but not at the Karl Rove speech. Instead, Mark and I went to a screening of the anime movie Paprika. It came out in 2006 and has been one of those movies that everyone I know has heard of and has been asking if I’ve seen it. Up until Monday, I hadn’t, and it was starting to bug me. So, when I saw that it would be showing as the final movie in the CineEast series at Duke, I made a note to go.

What I knew about the movie before I went: Many people were comparing it to Appleseed, another sci-fi anime movie that came out in 2004. Mark also thought he remembered hearing that Paprika was actually set in the Appleseed world. The description of the movie in the email announcement I got opened with, “Following its own brand of dream logic, Paprika is an eye-opening mind trip that never fails to dazzle.”

I am now developing a theory, which becomes more robust with each test, that any movie advertised as having “dream sequences,” “dream-like sequences,” “dream logic,” and other related “dream”-y properties can have its description more accurately translated to mean “will look and feel like you’ve heard acid trips described.” I’m not really saying the movie was bad, just really, really weird. (And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with Appleseed, other than the fact that they are both anime movies with pretty animation and good soundtracks.)

In what follows, I will give a more in depth review of the actual movie and its content, but I’m warning you now that I’m not worried about spoilers, because honestly, the plot isn’t particularly important to the movie.

The Writer’s Strike and Restructuring

Most people know I’m a big fan of stories and such. I love television and movies, I love editing the bad ones in my head and watching well crafted ones created. I’ve been watching the writer’s guild strike with some interest, not for the impact on current shows and projects, though I really hope the Daily Show returns soon, but for the broader impact it will have on the industry in the future. One of the reasons the studios are fighting so hard on this strike is that more potential strikes are on the horizon with the actor’s and director’s contracts coming up for negotiation. If the studios can ‘win’ this strike they’ll be going into those contract negotiations with a big tactical advantage.

The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

Yesterday, I was standing in my backyard and heard what I thought was artillery fire from the nearby army base. After a few moments, I realized that no, it wasn’t from the base. Instead, it was probably a 21 gun salute at Arlington National Cemetery, probably a memorial for Veteran’s Day.

I thought I’d introduce a new feature, in which I recommend books, movies and other things on a particular topic. What better topic to start off with than WWI? November 11th is remembered all over the Western world as Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, or Veteran’s Day. All over large portions of the world, we wear red poppies to remember Flander’s Field. But, in the US, WWI is so often overlooked.

Not The Bourne Ultimatum after all

I did a dumb thing. I was on a very boring business trip, and I needed something else to read. So I bought a book. Despite my usual aversion to buying books republished with movie scenes on the cover to encourage more sales, I did in fact buy The Bourne Ultimatum. I couldn’t help it! The back matter was intriguingly written and I wanted to know what happened. So I bought the book, and I read it.

In and of itself, that was not the dumb thing. The dumb thing was reading the book just a few weeks before the movie of the same name came out. I mean, I have nothing against a good Matt Damon action movie. He’s good-looking, the action was fast-paced, there was lots of suspense and intrigue. It wasn’t a bad movie, nor were its predecessors. And if you’ve never read any of the books and only seen the movies, they even make a great deal of sense. (For a series of contrived spy action movies, I mean.)

However, and I admit that it is entirely my own fault that this annoys me, they have nothing to do with the books. At all. Yes, they star a character named Jason Bourne who lost his memory and turns out to be a super spy. But at that point, pretty much all plot similarity is abandoned, leaving me to wonder why they didn’t just give the character, and the movies, different names, and just not deal with buying the rights to the books or whatever at all. Because it would have been a lot easier, and then the script writers wouldn’t have had to feel so wracked with horrible guilt for completely erasing the plots of a perfectly good series of books for a new generation of people. (And if they do not feel this crushing guilt, they should.)

Pride and Prejudice Overanalysis, Part 1: Hollywood vs. Bollywood

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post comparing Hollywood vs. Bollywood interpretations of supermen. That project amused me so much, I thought I’d try comparing some other Hollywood vs. Bollywood movies on similar themes, intending, as I mentioned at the end of that post, to pit the 2005 Hollywood Pride & Prejudice against the 2004 Bollywood Bride & Prejudice. As of about two weeks ago, I finally got around to it. Given the seriousness of some of our more recent posts, it’s probably about time to do something fluffy. It is summer, after all.

Anyway, while Geek Buffet’s very own co-author akdmyers (otherwise know as Ann) was visiting me, we watched both movies back to back. To get a feel for a more traditional interpretation of the book, we watched the Hollywood version first. We will leave aside arguments about whether or not this version paled in comparison to the BBC mini-series, because let’s face it, this version is only 2 hours long, and they had to make some editorial decisions the BBC was not faced with. (We shall also ignore the issue of whether the lack of Colin Firth invalidates the new version’s worth altogether. The not-Colin-Firth-iness of the new actor wears off very quickly, I promise.)

The Hollywood version sticks fairly close to the book, particularly in spirit. The biggest differences I felt between the book and movie were some of the distinctly Hollywood-esque touches that rendered the gentry even more grandiose than they were portrayed originally. Not for Hollywood to be content with merely a portrait of Darcy hanging in the gallery of his family home for Elizabeth to fall in love with; no, no, let’s have a white marble bust! With lots of other museum-like naked statuary around it! Excellent. And they managed to give Lady Catherine more dignity than she deserved simply by having her played by Dame Judy Dench.

Immortal Mechanics

The movie National Treasure was on television this evening. Dana and I had been talking about the film for a couple of days before hand, and when we saw that it would be showing tonight, it seemed fitting to watch it. I had never seen the movie before, and having done so, I found that it triggered in me a response I’ve had over and over again when I watch movies like this.

Have you ever driven a really old car that still ran like it was new? If so, how old was it? More importantly, how often had it been worked on, maintained, and had the oil changed over the course of its lifetime? Have you ever used a machine that had been left, oh, I don’t know, beneath the water table with a subway line running nearby to shake everything once every half an hour, for hundreds of years? Would you expect one to work if you found it? In spite of the obvious difficulties of these things, Hollywood script writers seem to take it for granted that centuries-old hydraulic and counterweight systems will work smoothly like the day they were designed, just as soon as the hero presses on the secret panel or inserts the long-lost key into the strange slot in the wall of an ancient tomb.

What is it about this sort of plot device that keeps it coming back over and over again? I enjoy suspending my disbelief in order to enjoy a film, but I have my limits. Asking me to think that some kind of counter-weighted, self-opening door system buried hundreds of feet beneath a city where the water table is less than twenty feet below the surface of the ground is going to be not only dry and dusty, but also fully functional nearly two hundred years after it was built? There is suspension of disbelief, and then there is a blatant disrespect for the most basic principals of engineering.