– There is no such thing as a movie being better than the book. And the screen version of Where the the Wild Things Are directed by Spike Lee Jonze will probably prove this beyond a doubt (if it’s an exception to the rule, however, excellent!).
– Hollywood is poison to successful Hong Kong talent. Case in point #1: Chow Yun Fat, #2 John Woo, #3 Michelle Yeoh (also read: The law of diminishing returns)
– Amazingly, Japanese TV manages to suck even harder than American TV
– Even more amazingly, Japanese MTV sucks even harder than American MTV (see also: Japanese rappers, J-Pop)
– The only thing more annoying than trailers for a retarded show like Ally McBeal is trailers for a retarded show like Ally McBeal in Japanese (theme songs and all)
– CNN Japan occasionally airs The Daily Show episodes at 3:30 in the morning
– Kiefer Sutherland has nothing to lose by legally changing his name to Jack Bauer
– It is my firm belief that most Japanese people have never seen a Kurosawa film (although many claim to have, and they all DO know who he was, at least)
– At movie theaters in Thailand, people stand up and sing in honor of the king before the movie begins (they hold their right hand over their hearts like the Pledge of Allegiance, if I remember correctly)
– Movie theaters in Thailand have had better seating reservation systems than most in the US or Japan for the past 5 years (customer-operated Windows-based touch screen systems at the ticket booth)
– Overseas movies routinely take several months to appear in Japanese theaters
– Movie channels on Japanese cable/sat TV are unbelievably pathetic (“new features” are often 2-3 years old)
– The NTSC system suxxors compares to PAL
Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
I know of no one who has seen “The Seven Samurai” or “Rashamon”, but everyone seems to about them. The closest that anyone under 40 has come to seeing a Kurosawa film would be the Anime series “Samurai 7”, which does it justice in the same way that the old Hobbit cartoon measures up to the book.
Kurosawa is more famous in Japan because he is famous overseas; otherwise he would have been forgotten. His earlier films were popular in his day, but Japanese started disregarding him after he got serious, like Woody Allen. It got to the point where to make a movie, he had to turn to Coppola and Lucas. But then he made “Rhapsody in August,” with the theme of the atomic bombings, with Richard Gere apologizing on behalf of all Americans, and he became popular again. Go figure on what that means.
On The Daily Show: it’s the “International Edition,” meaning they took, from the past week of shows, one interview and skit and some of the newsdesk stories and patched them together with a few minutes of Stewart in original footage. Getting the real thing off of BitTorrent is much more rewarding.
On the movie delay thing, what’s with that? Some flicks open at roughly the same time, but some take up to a year to get here. Disney films always lag about 6 months behind, and in many cases, one can get the DVD from the U.S. via Amazon before the film opens in theaters here.
Yeah, I’m always downloading it via BT, but I just happened to catch a snippet the other night when flipping through channels. Same with movies, which is good because it saves a hell of a lot of money in movie tickets.
Spike Lee? For this material? WTF?
Now with Spike Jonze, they might have a chance.
Ah, Curtis Al. Not sure who’s making the classics of tomorrow. It’s obviously not the biggest moneymakers – Spielberg’s biggest are entertaining, but probably not a classic in the bunch. Tarantino’s?? Not sure about him either. I guess a couple of Coppola’s could be. But that’s about it. Oh – Buckaroo Banzai, now that’s a classic. I think as a planet – the human race must be getting dumber – or at least not any smarter. There’s just no other explanation.
Ooooooops. It is Spike Jonze. Thx for the catch.