bmwracer wrote:

Bruce Phee (or is it Pho?). Vietnamese.

every country needs a hero.

Tu_triky wrote:

every country needs a hero.

Even if it's the same one.

We all look alike anyways, ne?

bmwracer wrote:

Even if it's the same one. We all look alike anyways, ne?

that's what the ppl in hollywood seem to think...

Tu_triky wrote:

that's what the ppl in hollywood seem to think...

At least they have gongs in the background...

dochira wrote:

At least they have gongs in the background...

Tu_triky wrote:

I meant to say "don't", but I'll leave my post as-is as a reminder to eat my lunch.

dochira wrote:

I meant to say "don't", but I'll leave my post as-is as a reminder to eat my lunch.

it's funny either way!

It isn't just the Asian cultures that are brutally misrepresented in Hollywood. It is ALL cultures east of the sea.

I mean, it's rare to find a south asian character who doesn't speak English with an accent. Not all brown people wear turbans and not all brown people are Islamic.

I find this particularily annoying when it comes to cultural dress. Every country in South Asia has a different cultural dress style, and yet you never see anything BUT Indian dress to represent brown people. So frustrating! That's even worse than speaking English in ONE south asian accent ALL THE TIME.

Anyways, that was off topic, but I do know exactly what you mean with Geisha. I liked the movie because it was visually beautiful to watch, but yea, after reading the book I was totally disappointed with the plot.
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Wynter wrote:

It isn't just the Asian cultures that are brutally misrepresented in Hollywood. It is ALL cultures east of the sea. I mean, it's rare to find a south asian character who doesn't speak English with an accent. Not all brown people wear turbans and not all brown people are Islamic. I find this particularily annoying when it comes to cultural dress. Every country in South Asia has a different cultural dress style, and yet you never see anything BUT Indian dress to represent brown people. So frustrating! That's even worse than speaking English in ONE south asian accent ALL THE TIME. Anyways, that was off topic, but I do know exactly what you mean with Geisha. I liked the movie because it was visually beautiful to watch, but yea, after reading the book I was totally disappointed with the plot.

i refuse to watch the movie....just watching the trailer you know it's a hack job.

I still want to see it, i'm sure it will still be OK, just not as good as it could have been.

Anime Dad wrote:

The House of Kim..... Japanese-NOT! LOL Is The Young and the Restless STILL going? Amazing. Although, nothing in that show even approaches reality, so a Japanese firm called The House of Kim is definitely possible.

ahhhh.... as opposed to american soap operas, korean and japanese soap operas actually have an ENDING!!! there was this article i read once about a day time soap that aired in---1969?!?!? and has been airing since?!?!?!? i think it was All My Children--susan lucci grew up with that soap, and she's supposedly a grandmother in the show now....ayaaa..
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it's true one can be overwhelmed, and sometimes even underwhelmed. but can't you just be like, whelmed?!?!?!

I watched the movie- looked amazing, "soul" was there but you had to find it in all the visual beauty
hehehe
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its actually good.. not bad either... but the visuals sometimes destroys the movie.. i will even enjoy it if the movie was made natural.. less visual... hollywood thing.. you know what i mean..
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slashersam016 wrote:

its actually good.. not bad either... but the visuals sometimes destroys the movie.. i will even enjoy it if the movie was made natural.. less visual... hollywood thing.. you know what i mean..

Do you think they over did the set design and all? Maybe that took away the soul, probably more face and character time was needed?
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Look who won a Grammy last night:

Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media: "Memoirs of a Geisha," John Williams, composer.

People need to stop acting sensitive and face reality. Just like the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation condemned the Snickers ad in the Super Bowl, saying it promoted anti-gay prejudice and condoned violence against gay Americans. Or just like the Chinese keep criticizing the Japanese about the past. It's not America being insensitive. It's the people who are being sensitive. Oh please, Sino-Japanese war... Japanese attacking Chinese... quit dealing stuff about the pasts. If you want to get emotional, be a woman.

Asians are going to look alike in America's perspective. Whether you're Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or whatever Asian race you are, you will look the same. And that's reality. Whether you're Irish, French, Italian, Portuguese, or whatever European ethnicity in America, you will be White. If you look white in America, majority are not going to ask what kinda background you are. The bottomline is you're white.

By the way, in terms of the movie, Yakusho Koji wasn't supposed to be in the movie. During his first audition, he was rejected because his English was poor. So then he took extensive English lessons and succeded his second audition so he got the job. There isn't really any Japanese star actresses in Hollywood. Plus it's about money at the box office. You're not going to succeed the film in America if you want it in Japanese (in this case). Unless you make a film for Japanese people to watch like Two Letters from Iwo Jima, that's a different story. But just because it's a freakin good movie, it doesn't mean you're going to get money from the box office. Two Letters from Iwo Jima succeded very well in Japan but people don't talk about it in America. Hollywood movies are a matter of in America. Americans don't like reading English subtitles. Unless you have lots of interest in movies, interest in that specific culture or country. But most Americans don't.

Those of you live in America who want to go to Japan and experience there or want to live there for the rest of your life, ha good luck. If you're Japanese-American, tough luck for you. Most Japanese people don't like Japanese-Americans. If you look like a foreigner and speak Japanese, good for you. Unless those people have no interest in any other country besides Japan, you're out of luck. If you are Chinese, Korean, or some Asian race and can't speak or little Japanese and go to Japan, majority of the Japanese will assume you are Japanese and speak it fluently. It's not just America, folks. If you go to Japan, most people don't care about other countries besides Japan. Only the ones who are interested in other languages, have interest in going abroad. It's just like America. Over half of America's citizens don't even have passports because they only care about America and have no interest in going to Europe, South America, Asia, or Africa. Probably because majority of America thinks they're #1.

Maybe eventually people will be able to recognize the differences. Or maybe not.

With all the controversy surrounding Memoirs. . . here is a review from the Japan Times' movie critic Mark Schilling about a new movie playing in Japan. As you will see, a significant portion of the review contrasts this movie with Memoirs. . . . I thought it was pretty interesting reading; the movie sounds interesting as well.

Walking tall in the Edo Period

By MARK SCHILLING
How did "Memoirs of a Geisha" ("Sayuri" here in Japan) get it so drearily wrong -- and Mika Ninagawa's new film, "Sakuran," get it so gloriously right?

Sakuran Rating: (5 out of 5)


Anna Tsuchiya blossoms brightly in "Sakuran." (c) 2007 NINAGAWA GUMI "SAKURAN" FILM COMMITTEE PHOTOS
Director: Mika Ninagawa
Running time: 111 minutes
Language: Japanese
Opens Feb. 24, 2007
[See Japan Times movie listing]

Experts on geisha culture, as well as geisha themselves, slammed Rob Marshall's film for its inaccuracies in everything from obi patterns to Zhang Ziyi's glitzy solo dance, which had about the same relation to real buyo (Japanese dance) as "The Chorus Line" does to kabuki. The decision to cast non-Japanese in the three main female roles also came in for criticism, for reasons ranging from xenophobic revulsion to cold box-office logic.

I found Ziyi's dance ludicrous and the casting culturally obtuse -- it was like starring four Commonwealth actresses (say a Brit, a South African, a Kenyan and a Jamaican) in the quintessentially American "Dreamgirls," but my main objection to the film was its phony exoticism, echoing the Hollywood films of the 1950s set in the "mysterious East," but with less of an excuse.

Ninagawa, a photographer-turned-director whose father is stage director Yukio Ninagawa, takes as her subject not the done-to-death geisha, but the Edo-era prostitutes of Yoshiwara, the nightlife district that served as an emporium of the flesh for everyone from elite samurai to working-class Taros for hundreds of years. (It still exists, but sleazy "soaplands" [sex parlors] have replaced the once-storied Japanese brothels)

True to her background -- and her own uninhibited tastes, Ninagawa dresses her actresses and decorates her sets in a theatrical riot of color, with a cheeky indifference to period fidelity. Did the bordellos of the period feature the gorgeously extravagant flower arrangements found in "Sakuran?" Did the whores, even the elite oiran, wear such fabulously glam kimonos every working night? I suspect the answer is a big, thundering "no" -- but I didn't mind the visual overload, quite the opposite.

Unlike Marshall, who imposed a romanticized Western (or rather Broadway) template over his geisha, Ninagawa sees her oiran as, not hapless victims of a cruel patriarchy or idealized figments of male erotic imaginations, but young women alive and whole, with desires, dreams and tastes immediately recognizable to their 21st Century peers. (Oiran as the Edo's answer to the Shibuya gyaru ["gal"]). Also, she is not a slipshod curator of dusty cultural artifacts, but a sui generis artist who flamboyantly but perceptively re-imagines the era. Her Yoshiwara may be more highly colored than the real thing, but it vividly expresses the glamour and beauty at the heart of the place's appeal, while exposing its everyday realities, from the trivial to the tragic.

Her heroine is Kiyoha (Anna Tsuchiya), who was brought to the Tamagikuya brothel in Yoshiwara while still a child -- and hated it. A feisty sort, she tried to escape its walls at every opportunity, but was always brought back by Seiji (Masanobu Ando), the brothel's relentless-but-sympathetic bancho (chief clerk). Kiyoha chafes under the supervision of Shohi (Miho Kanno), a canny oiran who looks down on her an as an untutored peasant, but she finally decides to become an oiran herself.

As one of Yoshiwara's elite, she will command enormous sums for her favors and perhaps, like Shohi, eventually leave on the arm of a rich danna (patron). That, she knows, is her only realistic avenue of escape.

At the age of 17, Kiyoha takes her first customer, a kindly old sybarite (Sadanji Ichikawa) who is a patron of the brothel's top oiran, the arrogant Takao (Yoshino Kimura). Then she falls in love with the young, sensitive Sojiro (Hiroki Narimiya) -- and lets her various masks (tough cookie, polished pro) slip. In doing so, she risks ruin. In a business that sells the illusion of love, the real thing is the most dangerous emotion of all.

She also incurs the jealousy of Takao when one of the oiran's patrons, the painter Mitsunobu (Masatoshi Nagase), begins to show an interest in her.

Despite the romance and rivalry, Kiyoha is promoted to oiran, receives a new name -- Higurashi -- and becomes a Yoshiwara star. Finally, a rich, indulgent samurai, Kuranosuke (Kippei Shiina), appears as the answer to all her prayers -- i.e., the danna who will set her free. By now, however, she is like the fish that swim about in the brothel's aquariums -- a creature of her enclosed, protected environment. Has freedom come too late?

As Kiyoha/Higurashi, Anna Tsuchiya dominates the screen with a swaggering, profane verve reminiscent of her biker girl in "Shimotsuma Monogatari (Kamikaze Girls)" -- the role that made her a star -- but with flashes of a previously unseen vulnerability. She also makes no attempt to play the period -- or rather ape period drama cliches, and thus comes across as totally authentic.

Perfectly expressing the old-is-new vision of "Sakuran" is the soundtrack score by pop diva Sheena Ringo. It swings ferociously in a mix of jazz and pop idioms, unlike anything I've ever heard in any movie, foreign or Japanese. Did I mention that the artist of the original manga (Moyoco Anno), the scriptwriter (Yuki Tanada), the art director (Namiko Iwashiro) and the producer (Chikako Nakabayashi) are also women? Mr. Marshall, face it -- you passed over these and other Japanese women of similar talent because you were blind. But now the whole world will see "Sakuran."

shin2 wrote:

With all the controversy surrounding Memoirs. . . here is a review from the Japan Times' movie critic Mark Schilling about a new movie playing in Japan. As you will see, a significant portion of the review contrasts this movie with Memoirs. . . . I thought it was pretty interesting reading; the movie sounds interesting as well. Walking tall in the Edo Period By MARK SCHILLING How did "Memoirs of a Geisha" ("Sayuri" here in Japan) get it so drearily wrong -- and Mika Ninagawa's new film, "Sakuran," get it so gloriously right? Sakuran Rating: (5 out of 5)

Nice article.

Sounds like the approach and execution were spot-on (and less the "it's gotta make money" Hollywood mindset)... And I think a lot of people feel the same way about Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima: it's done right without cliches, stereotypes, and fluff.

Me and my friend wondered about this too. A Japanese inspired movie yet Chinese Women portrayed as geishas.

Wonder why Chinese actors are more popular though..

Wow... when I started this thread, didn't realize it would hit 19 pages.

Given that Spielberg was the producer... and the courage and sensitivity he displayed with Schindler's List... and Rob Marshall's talent at handling dancing... I had hoped for better than a ham-fisted Americanized movie.

When I found out that all 3 main female characters were famous Chinese actresses, that was the first clue that this film was going the complete Hollywood route. Yes, it was Sony Pictures, but the casting decisions were not made by the corporation.

Marshall's excuse about not being able to find a Japanese actress that could speak English adequately is a flat out joke. He just didn't have the guts to say why he did what he did.

The second clue that this film would be nothing more than a big budget stereotyped Hollywood production was when I saw the trailer and Zhang shouted, "I want a love of my own!" There was no scene like that in the book and it was totally out of character, not to mention culturally off by many decades.

Why this was so disappointing is that despite Golden getting a significant portion of the historical and cultural facts incorrect, Memoirs was still a very enjoyable read, a terrific opportunity for an unusual story to become a film. Unexpected gifts don't happen very often, so when they get wasted, it's a sad event.

And to reiterate point from an earlier posting: if they had cast even just one Japanese actress out of the three lead actress roles, I've never had started this thread; I'm a fan of Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh, am okay with Zhang Ziyi, and would have been fine with any of the three being in the movie if there had been a Japanese actress in the group.

Here's hoping for better movies... and the film debut of Memoirs of a Geezer!



Cheers,
PCM