Halloween Weekend: Horror Movies

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so the next three days will be themed appropriately. :)

Tonight is a short list of my favorite Japanese horror movies, all old enough to be found subtitled in English. As a note on these recommendations, if you're interested in renting any of these, I'm more of a Paranormal Activity/Blair Witch horror fan than torture-fests like Saw (blech).

1. The Ring (Ringu)
2. The Grudge (Juon)
3. One Missed Call (Chakushin Ari)

All of these also have allegedly faithful American remakes, which I'm told are scarier than the Japanese originals due to Hollywood's larger effects budgets, but I haven't gotten around to seeing them.

Unlike most optimistic American horror (there is a chance you can defeat, at least temporarily, Freddy/Jason/Myers), Japanese horror often includes the idea that you are ultimately powerless against evil spirits, which makes it a refreshing change from the "main character aura" that saves most American movie characters no matter how contrived the situation has to become to save them.

If a Japanese character is in danger, you're not actually sure if they're going to survive or not. Does anyone make it out alive in the three above movies? I'm not telling... you'll just have to watch!

Upcoming Movies: The Warrior's Way

Some movies you see for the plot, others just because they're pretty. Or you do if you're me, anyway.

The Warrior's Way, starring Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth and South Korean actor/entertainer Jang Dong-gun and due out December 3 this year, looks to be a little of Column A and a whole lot of Column B.

A mishmash of the post-apocalyptic dystopian future theme (I think?), Westerns and samurai dramas, this movie looks like what would happen if you had a bunch of really drunk guys sitting around going "Dude. You know what would be AWESOME? Cowboys against ninjas. Duuuuuuuuuude. And the ninjas would be like flying all over the place and the cowboys would have Gatling guns and... duuuuuuuuude."

But unlike most drunk guys, these drunk guys had a film budget. And the producer of Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, while the cliched plot isn't grabbing me (cold, badass assassin quits rather than kill an innocent, flees to another land, boss comes to collect), the highly stylized look of the movie and action sequences could make it worthwhile. I'm mentioning it here because it seems from the trailer as if the main Asian culture they're pulling from is Japan, even if it's more of an influence than a historically accurate take on anything in particular.

So, who do you think would win in a fight? Cowboys or ninjas? ;)

Japan in Pop Culture: Inception

If you haven't seen the latest box office hit, Inception, go check it out. For several reasons: great acting, interesting plot, and, as my friend puts it, men looking hot in suits. Lots of men. ;)

One of the characters, a Japanese businessman, is played by famous Japanese actor Ken Watanabe (thank you, Christopher Nolan, for not playing "all Asians are alike" in your casting and actually using a Japanese person for a Japanese role).

Because of his character's nationality, several tips of the hat to Japan appear in the movie early on: a beautiful room with traditionally painted sliding doors, an awesome mutiple-layer "kimono collar" shirt Watanabe wears, and shots of the country's famous bullet trains, both inside and out.

So if you need another reason to go see Inception, go see it for the Japanese stuff. Or something. :D

Movie Review: Death Trance

Some movies are truly great, delivering amazing stories and characters that stay with you long after the film ends.

2005's Death Trance(subtitled and dubbed), a Japanese-themed fantasy action movie, is not one of these movies. It's pretty bad. But in the end, that's Death Trance's biggest strength: it's so bad that it's good.

The story follows "Grave", a less-than-talkative warrior who steals a giant coffin from a temple and is lugging it through the countryside (to where exactly we're not entirely sure... one of the biggest plot holes is that supposedly anyone who opens the coffin will be granted wishes. Why he's hauling this thing around rather than popping it open the first chance he gets is never explained).

Grave's world is populated by people in a lot of whiteface and eyeliner and shredded clothing, along with a really hot young monk and Steven Seagal's son (seriously). They all do a lot of fighting, mostly over the coffin, while a creepy little girl sits and watches them. Tonfas that double as guns, phallic throbbing sword hilts, and a double barreled sword gun will make you either cringe or laugh as you watch.

Dir en grey, a jrock band infamous for its hardcore rock/death metal//puking-on-stage music, provides the soundtrack, so just when the film starts to feel fantasy-esque, the heavy guitars yank you right back into cheesy 1980s music-video land.

I didn't even try the English dub version, so I leave that world of discovery to others. ^_^;

Death Trance does get points in my book for the fantasy takes on kimono, attractive leads, decent fight scenes, and the female Goth twins. And it gets points for making me laugh. Save it for a free rental (that's what I did!) or anytime you're in the mood for something so bad it's good.

Fans of the director, Yuji Shimomura, who have seen his work as action director in Versus or Devil May Cry 3 may also want to give it a shot.

Japan in Pop Culture: Yakuza in Predators

For those of you who hate any kind of spoiler, stop reading after this sentence: If you are a fan of gritty, dark sci-fi or action go see Predators, which I found to be an entertaining addition to and return to the feel of the original Predator.

If you don't mind a spoiler or two about the yakuza character seen in the trailers, keep reading!



From a sci-fi geek and Japanese culture perspective, Predators delivers in a truly awesome way by giving us a one-on-one showdown between a kendo-trained yakuza with a katana and a giant, beefy Predator using one of its arm-mounted blades. Hanzo, the yakuza, acquires the sword earlier on in the film, and as the characters are running, decides he's going to make his last stand shirtless in a moonlit field with swaying grass (how many anime and Japanese movies have you seen this in?) armed with nothing but the antique katana.

At first, watching him stand and wait, I thought he'd instantly be toast, but thinking about my own "Walmart" katana knockoff, katana in general do have a pretty good reach and are damn sharp. If you were trained to use one you could definitely put the hurt on someone or something, even if it was bigger than you.

So how did the fight turn out? You'll have to go watch the movie. :D

In the meantime, if you'd like to read more about Louis Ozawa Changchien, the actor playing the yakuza, here's an interview where he talks about his background and the movie. One neat tidbit: He's been studying kendo since the age of 5 and his sensei choreographed the Predators katana showdown.

How accurate was the yakuza character himself? Well, he came well-dressed (believable from my own thankfully at-a-distance sightings of yakuza harassing shop owners), armed with a gun (believable as basically only the mafia carry guns in Japan), didn't come already equipped with the sword (which would have been incredibly lame and Japanese-y stereotypical) and had a dry sense of humor for his couple of spoken lines rather than spouting pseudo-Zen wisdom.

I'm sure some people will complain about this or that regarding the character, but given the genre he appeared in I feel it was a fair treatment and worlds better than how the same character would have been handled ten years ago.

"One Missed Call" and Vengeful Ghosts

(If you hate spoilers and haven't seen the old horror films One Missed Call, The Grudge, or The Ring you'll probably want to skip this post.)

Today I got around to watching the old, original Japanese version of One Missed Call, a horror movie that starts off with people receiving "one missed call" messages on their phone, dated a day or two in the future, with the message being the sounds of their own deaths. I found the first half pretty good but felt it fell apart in the last 30 minutes in terms of plot and consistency.

Execution of the idea aside, a central element to One Missed Call, and other more popular horror movies like The Grudge and The Ring, is the yuurei, 幽霊 the vengeful ghost.

While the ghosts of the dead can be cute in Western culture, a la Casper, yuurei in Japanese culture are bad news: singularly driven by revenge (The Ring), a desire for proper burial (One Missed Call), or simply strong, unresolved emotions (The Grudge), they often kill innocent bystanders or anyone who wanders across their path as well as those who wronged them. Whether or not you had anything to do with their death makes no difference: it's just plain bad luck on your part if you run across one.

Traditionally, they are usually female, most often show up between the hours of 2 and 3am, and are likely to hang around the site of their death.

In pop culture, the almost ubiquitous pale-girl-in-white-with-long-disheveled-black-hair is the 21st-century yuurei, though her look can be traced back to the famous 18th century painting to the right, one of the first popular representations showing the features associated with them today.

Painting: Maruyama Okyo (1733-1795) - "The Ghost of Oyuki"

Iron Man 2

If you're particularly averse to any kind of spoiler, don't read this, but I promise it has nothing to do with the plot!

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In Iron Man 2, which I saw today, I thought it was cute that one of the fight scenes takes place in a "classical" Japanese/anime setting, complete with red tori gate, fluttering cherry blossoms falling around the characters, and an attack that involves some katana-like slicing through an entire tree trunk in one go. Nice tip of the hat to the Japanese comic book world. :)

As far as the movie, I liked the first one better but thought this was one was ok. I think the solid plot of the character-creation arc of the first one is tough to follow, and the characters didn't grow much this time around.

Movie Review: Ninja Assassin

Last night I got around to seeing 2009's Ninja Assassin, which was about what I expected it to be, with some major gore thrown in: a B-grade action flick.

Korean pop star Rain's character Raizo is abducted as a child and raised by a clan of ninja bad-asses, who can literally melt out of the shadows and heal themselves. Unlike fellow magical boarding school Hogwarts, Raizo's new home has a major downside in that the main teaching method is beating small children with sticks and killing those who try to run away. He eventually escapes and begins fighting against the clan.

We learn all this through a series of flashbacks set over the events of the modern day, where a plucky government forensic researcher tries to prove the existence of ninja clans to her boss and things start going downhill from there.

Lots of bad dialogue and action take place, the action primarily consisting of black-suited men in dark rooms hacking at what look like exploding blood packs on each other's bodies: messy, hard to follow, and save a couple of scenes not very coherent. The opening scene almost made me shut the movie off, as I don't mind purposeful gore when it's relevant, but I really don't need to see prolonged shots of a guy's head chopped off above the mouth.

Long story short, my friend and I are glad we only paid the rental fee. Don't bother with this one unless you're a Rain fan (he's certainly easy on the eyes, and his dancing background makes his ninja poise believable) or are looking for some mindless action fluff to pass the time with.

"Yakuza" in New Predator Movie

While more than likely rooted in fantasy rather than fact, a katana-wielding yakuza character will appear in Predators, the latest entry into the Predator movie series and coming out this summer. I found it interesting that Japan has come far enough in American popular consciousness to produce even secondary characters that specific. (You can check out the trailer on the Rottem Tomatoes site.)

On another note, this one coming from my deep love of sci-fi and action films, if you haven't seen the original Predator I highly recommend it. While the ones after weren't as great, the first is arguably a sci-fi-action classic, and an interesting look back at the manly-man movies of the 1980s. Long story short, the Governator and his squad are on a black-ops mission to rescue a team lost in the jungle when it becomes clear something bigger, badder and more advanced is hunting them.

Movie Review: As You Like It

As You Like It
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Starring Kevin Kline, Bryce Dallas Howard, Brian Blessed
Released 2006, Rated PG


Once, in high school, I was part of a Shakespeare production. King Lear, to be exact. I was a second understudy for evil daughter Regan, and got a couple of bit parts as well. As I wasn't a drama kid and sort of fell into the parts, I had no idea what creativity lurked in the hearts of high-school directors.

Like the Disco Inferno Chicken Wire set.

We knew we were going to attempt a "futuristic" take on King Lear, but when we all came in to see the finished set, we were greeted by a collection of large boxes and mini "towers" covered in tin foil, wrapped in chicken wire and with red lights shining up through them.

You could argue a lot of things about the future, but we were all pretty sure it wasn't going to look like that.

So, why am I rambling about high school?

Well, the 2006 movie adaptation of the Bard's play As You Like It may be a fine work of Shakespearian acting, but the costuming approach feels like Disco Inferno all over again.

Director Branagh's idea was to take the story out of Europe and drop it into 19th-century Japan. There are some pretty costuming moments early on, like the juxtaposition of Western bustle dresses with painted screens, but fairly soon it descends into cheesy mistakes that suggest the costumer's research into Japanese clothing was about ten minutes spent on the Internet.

Some of the more notable mistakes are women with chopsticks in their hair, no obi knots at all on the back of kimono, and men wearing women's kimono at the end of the movie (watch for the long, black-patterned ones. Those are called "kurotomesode", and are the most formal garments for married women. Men would never, ever wear them unless they were cross-dressing).

If you're willing to squint and not focus on the mistakes, As You Like It is a soft, pretty movie and a different take on Shakespeare, but definitely not a look into 19th-century Japan. Whether that moves it up or down on your movie wishlist is up to you!