Anime Friday: Paranoia Agent (part 1)

By msarko on 1/9/09 3:15pm
Add Comment

Up until this week, all the anime I've watched for this project has been in the form of feature-length films. Today's entry, Satoshi Kon's Paranoia Agent, is a short series. At thirteen episodes, it seems tailor made for this kind of analysis.

It occurs to me that anime works best when it's serialized, at least usually. Arguably, a series like Dragonball Z would work a lot better as a dense, two hour action piece than the stretched-thin punchline that it is. But when it comes to the serious stuff, the format benefits from a slow burn. Paranoia Agent wouldn't really be able to convey the slow buildup of tension and all-around strangeness that it does if the whole thing were packed into a two hour exercise. Odd as it is for me to say it, this anime rides on subtlety and nuance.

The first seven episodes of Paranoia Agent introduce us to a cast of loosely related characters. Each one becomes involved, either as a victim of or an adversary to a mysterious assailant called Shounen Bat (baseball bat boy for you anglophones).

Read more >

Chatmonchy

By nerdyspice on 1/7/09 2:34pm
Add Comment

As a rabid collector of music, it is not so odd for me so occasionally purchase albums that simply catch my eye, regardless of if I have previously heard the artist. I would say my success rate in such affairs is at about 50/50 which is not so bad considering what a rewarding experience it can be to take so blind a chance and discover something that I will listen to for many years to come.
In the summer of 2006, I took such a chance at a Tower Records in Tokyo, Japan. I had been in country for only a couple of days and had engrossed myself in music magazines and entertainment trades. This was, after all, a perfect place to take chances in that realm as I had almost no deep knowledge of music from the area. The few bands that I did know of had at least some success in the States, however small it may be, but to come across something truly Japanese, with no prior Western success, was my ultimate goal. I soon came across a picture of three young women standing in a field, dressed rather hip and for one reason or another, it reminded me squarely of Sleater-Kinney.

Read more >

Storm Riders

By akgoemans on 1/7/09 8:21am
Add Comment

Some people argue that watching a foreign film is not unlike catching the public transport to the park. After all, those few hours seem to drag on forever, you wonder if this trip worth all that effort just get a glimpse of nature's finest and you know someone is bound to retell a depressing life story at some point during the ride/movie. Well, suffice it to say that not all foreign films are like that. Take for instance Storm Riders. An immensely popular fantasy flick made in Hong Kong, it boasted three vital elements that had all self-respecting gamers queuing up for tickets - well choreographed battle scenes, characters with magical abilities and epic story telling. Made in 1998 and inspired by a famous Chinese comic book (Fung Wan), the story was typical of the wuxia genre - powerful, larger-then-life warriors standing up to an evil regime. This particular movie, while bemoaned by comic book fans as an annoying deviation of the original plot line, was critically acclaimed by many.

Read more >

France Gall and April March

By msarko on 1/5/09 5:30pm
Add Comment

In 1964 at the tender age of 16, a Parisienne named Isabelle donned the moniker "France Gall" and used her family's music industry background to chart a hit single, "Ne sois pas si bête". The next year, she teamed up with the legendary Serge Gainsbourg and became a European sensation, especially after winning the 1965 Eurovision song contest with "Poupée de cire, poupée de son". Her partnership with Gainsbourg produced a number of hits, not the least of which was the double-entendre laden "Les Sucettes", a song with more than just a few references to oral sex. In fact, much of Gall's early career is filled with unintentionally controversial tracks. By the late 60's, she departed for a much more stable career in Germany with the likes of composer Werner Muller and performer Horst Buchholz.

After the fertile German period, France Gall had a shaky set of years back in her home country.

Read more >

Anime Friday: Kite

By msarko on 1/2/09 2:16pm
1 Comment

In last week's edition of Anime Friday, I mentioned that I needed a break from the cute, family-friendly stuff. I asked that my pool of Japanophiles recommend me a film from the opposite end of the spectrum. The result was an ill-informed decision to eat dinner while watching Yasuomi Umetsu's 1998 experiment in extremes, Kite.

Few animes have been cut or outright banned as frequently as Kite. In China and Norway it's just plain illegal, and Germany is the only country outside Japan where you can get a legitimate uncensored copy. All the same, Kite isn't just a series of intense, unrelated scenes of sex and violence. It's close to that, but there still is a plot.

The story (thin as it is) revolves around Sawa, a young girl who has been turned into a relentless assassin by a vigilante police detective named Akai and his sick friend Kanye who works as a coroner. To say that Akai and Kanye are corrupt is putting it lightly. It's revealed fairly early on that Akai killed Sawa's family, though for unknown reasons.

Read more >

Coupling UK vs. US

By msarko on 12/29/08 5:47pm
1 Comment

In 2000, Steven Moffat's cleverly-written comedy Coupling first aired on BBC2. The show had a 4-series run and was extremely well-received. It tested so well, in fact, that American television network NBC attempted a remake of Coupling in 2003. The US version failed spectacularly despite a significant cult following of the British version in the States. At one point, BBC America aired two episodes of Coupling UK every night. The American Coupling used scripts that were nearly word-for-word to its UK counterpart, so why did it fail to capture an audience?

A lot of critics blamed the casting choices for the show's failure, saying that the US cast was amateurish by comparison. While the UK version's cast was really a stellar ensemble of talented comedians, the US cast had a lot with which to compete.

Read more >

Anime Friday: Howl's Moving Castle

By msarko on 12/25/08 11:34pm
2 Comments

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of "Anime Friday". This week, my study continues with another film by Hayao Miyazaki, Howl's Moving Castle. Right off the bat, I feel like I'm kinda cheating with this movie. It's based on a book by Diane Wynn Jones and it definitely shows its Western influences. Also, I watched the dubbed version of the movie because it features so many famous voices. Christian Bale lends his pipes to the title character, while Emily Mortimer voices our protagonist, Sophie. In the most bizarre turn, Billy Crystal voices Calcifer, the fire demon keeping the castle functioning. I didn't realize until Howl's how similar Billy Crystal's voice is to that of James Woods. I believe that this movie would be significantly better if Woods had somehow been involved, but I say that about a lot of movies.

Howl's Moving Castle takes place in a semi-magical steam age world that looks to be cross between southern France and provincial Japan.

Read more >

Love Actually: British or American?

By msarko on 12/24/08 2:21am
Add Comment

Love Actually is a strange beast of a film. It straddles various definitions in such a way that it falls into multiple categories without necessarily fitting into any of them. Is it a Christmas movie or just a movie that takes place on and around Christmas? Is it a comedy or a drama? Does it feature an ensemble cast or is it really more a series of small-cast vignettes? And, for our purposes today, is it a British film or an American film?

Written and directed by Richard Curtis, Love Actually has a cast and production team that causes it to lean toward the British end of the spectrum. Aside from the overwhelmingly British cast, Curtis himself has been behind more than a few projects that are more easily classified. His hand was in the script for The Girl in the Cafe and even some of Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder series.

Read more >

Rechov Sumsum: Muppets B'Ivrit

By msarko on 12/21/08 11:47pm
Add Comment

With Chanukah upon us, I began contemplating Israeli media. There have been a number of cultural entertainment exchanges between The United States and Israel, the most recent being HBO's tense, intimate therapy drama In Treatment based on Hagai Levi's Betipul. Way back in 1979, long-time Sesame Workshop employee Dr. Lewis Bernstein pitched the idea to bring the popular Sesame Street muppets to Israel. The result was a series of shows, beginning with 1982's Rechov Sumsum.

Rechov Sumsum is a literal translation of "Sesame Street". Its main characters are Kippi, a giant hedgehog who acts as a surrogate Big Bird and his friend Moishe, a brown version of Oscar the Grouch. The show ran for four very successful seasons and the characters remained popular long after the last episode aired.

Read more >

Anime Friday: Spirited Away

By msarko on 12/19/08 1:35am
Add Comment

My friend Andy is a lover of all things Japanese, especially anime. Me? I never quite understood it. It’s not that I actively dislike anime, it’s just that the appeal of it just doesn’t quite register with me. Maybe I’ve seen the wrong films or have been subjected to particularly bad dubbing. At Andy’s request, I’ve decided to give anime another shot in a feature called Anime Friday. Every week, I will be watching one feature-length anime film or a respectable portion of an anime TV series and recording my reactions here on Foreign Entertainment. I won’t be selecting films at random, either. I will strictly follow a list provided to me by a concurring panel of conversant anime fans. Also at their insistence, I will be watching everything with subtitles unless specifically encouraged to experience a well-acted dub.

Without further ado, let’s jump in with Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. This particular film was recommended to me as an introduction to the genre because it’s apparently specific enough to Japanese culture to be genuine, but not enough to confuse a neophyte gaijin like myself.

Read more >