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| Tuesday, May 10, 2005 11:24 AM |
| Movies |
 by Fëanor |
- First, a link not at all related to movies, from kds: Apparently May 9th was Orgasm Day. Now there's a holiday I can support.
- I did indeed finish watching Chushingura last night and I have to say, I was disappointed. I have the feeling it would have been a lot more effective if I were Japanese. The story it tells is an old legend in Japan (which you may know as the story of the 47 ronin) about the honorable lord Asano who is forced to commit ritual suicide after being goaded into doing something dishonorable by the utterly despicable and corrupt lord Kira. Asano's now masterless samurai vassals wait a long time and endure much indignity and dishonor while planning in secret for their revenge.
The thing is, the movie forces us to wait that long time with them, and I was never clear on why they were waiting. At first I thought maybe it was so they could gather evidence to prove that Kira was corrupt or something like that, but ultimately they just end up killing him, so I guess not. It seems to me they could have killed him a long time ago if that's all they wanted to do--like, before he gathered an army of 200 bodyguards to protect himself. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something.
It didn't help that the story was loaded with melodrama, of which I'm not a big fan, and I conflated two of the subplots involving young couples into one subplot, and ended up very confused at the end when one couple was dead and the other still alive.
The movie does have occasional bursts of exciting action and occasional scenes of moving drama. But the fighting sequences feel a bit clumsy and fake (yes, I realize that fighting scenes in movies are pretty much always fake, except for that one in They Live, but they shouldn't feel that way), and as I mentioned above, the drama is often overdone.
There is also not nearly enough Toshiro Mifune in the film. His character seems almost unnecessary to the story, but he's one of the most interesting guys (and, of course, best actors) here and I wish he'd been more involved with the main action of the plot.
Some of the characters are so simplistic and stereotypical it's ridiculous. The villain, Lord Kira, for instance, is so completely without any positive characteristics that it's just laughable. He's a greedy, sleazy, womanizing, dishonorable, corrupt, carousing, cowardly scumbag. I mean, come on. They could have left off the sleazy part, or something. I get that he's supposed to be the bad guy.
- While poking around for something to post about, I ended up watching some trailers on the quicktime website, one of which was the latest and by far most disappointing trailer for Batman Begins. This is one of those times where the trailer actually succeeds in doing the opposite of what it's supposed to do--I actually had much less desire to see the movie after I was done watching it. I was hoping that Christopher Nolan could save the Batman movie franchise with this flick, but this trailer is full of crappy dialogue and horrible cliches. Bloginator pointed out to me that Liam Neeson is now type-cast as a wise old teacher, and after watching this trailer I realized he's totally right. Apparently Batman was also Padawan to Qui-Gon Jinn.
- But hey, at least there's some new zombie movies coming out! This Australian one called Undead doesn't really look all that great, but I'm kind of excited about Romero's Land of the Dead.
- By now you've probably noticed the countdown timer on the main page of my blog, but I thought I'd mention it here anyway. The revenge of the Sith approacheth, my friends! Though obviously not fast enough for me.
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