An actor worth watching

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I feel I must once again bring attention to Japanese actor Ken'ichi Matsuyama.  He's like the Johnny Depp of Japan:  he just disappears into his roles and makes them live.  It's kind of amazing . . .
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Hayate what?!

I kind of can't comprehend this.  I mean, I love Hayate way more than the next person (how many volumes in one month?!), but, still, a live action version?  Really?

"Next week’s issue of Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine will formally announce the development of a feature film adaptation of Kenjiro Hata’s popular Hayate no Gotoku ~ Hayate the Combat Butler manga series. Manglobe (Samurai Champloo, KamiNomi) will animate with experienced Manglobe animation director Hideto Komori taking charge. The comedy has previously been adapted into two anime television series and three OVAs. A Taiwanese live action TV series adaptation is also presently in development."

For those of you who don't know what it is, I liked this reviewer's thoughts.

"Hayate is truly meta-anime. It is anime comedy for the advanced anime enthusiast. The show's better jokes don't stand on their own very well but hinge on the viewer's prerequisite knowledge of anime and manga series going back several decades. I am simultaneously impressed, depressed, and disgusted with myself when I get the jokes because oh my god I have watched so much anime. When I laugh, I'm never sure if I should feel proud or if I've wasted my life."

Um, pretty much true.  Especially now that I'm into the newer stuff, which has jokes I actually get too many of . . .

Detroit Metal City Live Action

Dear Viz,

Thank you for listening!

Sincerely,
TMIA

Dear Viz

Dear Viz,

I know it's unlikely, but could you please license the live action Bunny Drop?  You have a connection to it: the actor who played L in Deathnote (you licensed the live action movies of that) plays the main adult character in Bunny Drop.  If that does well for you, could you also license the live action Detroit Metal City?  Yeah, I know they're pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum, but that guy is one heck of an actor, and I'd like to legally see him in more roles.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
The Moon in Autumn

Live Action Bunny Drop?!

So we know I like Bunny Drop. A lot. But a live action version? Eh . . .

A live action with Matsuyama in it? Okay, now I'm interested. I'm not sure why because it will likely never reach our shores. (Detroit Metal City, I'd love to see you, too.) Hope springs eternal? And with a resume consisting of characters from Deathnote, Detroit Metal City, and Gantz, how will Matsuyama be able to pull off an unattractive but somewhat loveable loser bachelor character who's several years older than Matsuyama is? Honestly, I do wish he pulls it off as well as those other roles. And that the child actress is good. I hope they're faithful to the manga; I'd hate it to be all schmoopey.

Hey, Viz Pictures, um, could I make a request . . . ?

The Post Last Airbender Post: A Sort-of Tag-Team Review

ST: *sad face* it sucked. Horribly. HORRIBLY. A and her friends and I stood in the parking lot for over an hour after it was done at 2 am and ripped it apart. And we could have done it for longer. What an utter, utter piece of crap. Go to the cheapest theatre possible to see it. Crapity crap crap crap. I had faith in Shamalan and his directing ability - I wasn't a hater going into it. But he took something great and made it something not great.  And Iroh's name changed body parts. It's now pronounced "ear-roh". Apparently the old pronunciation of "eye-roh" wasn't good enough of a body part? Maybe in the next movie he'll be "nose-roh" or perhaps "mouth-roh"?  Stink. And I so wanted to like this movie.

TMIA: Since I had ST's less than positive review (above) combined with the movie's rather putrid score on rottentomatoes.com and my ability to read enough pathos into a commercial to make me cry, I thought that maybe my expectations were low enough that I wouldn't feel I had totally wasted my money, even though I had to pay more to (accidentally) see it in 3-D.  Right.  Well, I really enjoyed the music.  And I did get choked up a few times.  And . . .  Yeah, the movie was bad.  It was just misfiring on all cylinders.  What did you think about the acting?

ACTING

ST: WHAT acting? And yes, it was utter, utter crap. But it was fun to tear apart in the parking lot at 2 am. And if you were one of those idiot 12-year-olds in the parking lot complaining about the name pronunciations, then you are far behind the curve. That was just the tip of the crap iceberg (crapberg?).

The only character that I felt they captured the spirit of was Iroh; everyone else was so far removed from their character in the TV show that I was shocked. Seriously. We think that they spent so much on the special effects that they realized, "Oh, crap, we've only got $10 left for the script. Let's find the cheapest, worst screenwriter on the planet."

SCRIPT

TMIA: And the special effects left a lot to be desired, too.  You do realize that Shyamalan wrote it (along with producing and directing), right?

ST: Yes, I realize he wrote it. Perhaps he was wearing too many hates (Freudian slip? I meant hats) and so it all turned out badly? Also, he didn't write it all on his own. A script goes through many hands before it's finalized, and even then there's improv and changes made on the set.

It wasn’t just the script that stunk – lots of stuff did. It’s just the script is the most immediately easy thing to criticize. The sheer amount of information dumps in each segment of the movie was ridiculous. The dialogue was almost entirely a series of information dumps that would have been a challenge for even the most amazing of actors to deliver in a realistic manner.

I think one of my favorite amateur line was when they get to the Northern Water Tribe and Katara’s voice over information dump says, “And my brother and Princess Yue became good friends right away.”  As my friends and I discussed afterwards, that is a totally unnecessary line. You can either accomplish that in a 3 second shot where Yue and Sokka look meaningfully at each other (which I actually think they had, anyways) or you can just leave it alone and let the viewers see that, as there are scenes later where Yue and Sokka are together. They seem to have cut A LOT out of this movie, so why waste 20 seconds on a stupid line (and this wasn’t the only one. I think they wasted A LOT more time on stupid lines than should be legally allowed).

CHARACTERS

ST: Getting away from the script, I just hate how he had the children actors act. The script/directing/editing made them so that they were little adults, not children. Part of the charm of the cartoon is that Aang is twelve. He’s a kid. He realizes he has this immense task before him, but he gets sidetracked on fun quests quite easily. And Sokka is a dork. He’s a guy with a boomerang. They started him out in a promising manner – when he says Appa’s trying to eat him, when he dents a guy’s family jewels, etc.; but then it was like they thought, “No, what this movie about kids REALLY needs is a handsome, romantic lead.” So Sokka suddenly becomes this serious guy. And Katara lost her role as the wet blanket who always spurred Aang on. Suddenly, Aang was making the serious motivational speeches instead of Katara. Weird.

TMIA: It's true; there was a lot of ACTING in this movie, but I'd agree that they really didn't have anything to work with.  That's why I'm so impressed with the job Iroh's actor did. And my greatest fear wasn't realized: Aang didn't have a Texas accent.  Also, even if he looked different, Oppa was pretty great.  Momo was awful, as was Aang's interaction with him. (One of those scenes made me laugh so hard I cried a little.)  I actually thought Sokka did pretty well considering what he had, and he and Yue could have worked a bit better given more time. Literally and figuratively.

ST: Yeah, the whole scene with the fish in the spirit pond was crappy.  The fact that he's a firebender, and there's fire all around him, and he stabs it, and he's all stabby stabby, and I'm like, seriously? When you already have a script that's gold, why mess with it?  I wouldn't have minded if they changed lines or scenes, but when they change personalities, they're making different characters and a different story, and pretty soon . . .

TMIA: It's Avatar in name only.  Literally.

EFFECTS AND ACTION

ST: Do you remember all those scenes in the cartoon in the Fire Lord's throne room where it was fire and pillars and curtains of fire and scary doom?  Do you remember what it was like in the movie?  There were two lamps.

TMIA: And a nice embroidered pillow, I think.  So, what did you think of the other special effects?

ST: If the action sequences were better, it would have helped.  But they weren't.  That scene with the Blue Spirit in the ring of stones?  It made me nauseous. 

TMIA: What the heck was with all the slo-mo?  All the fight scenes lost their momentum because they kept being interrupted by slow-motion at utterly inappropriate times.  The pacing overall was terrible, but to have bad pacing in the action scenes is kind of inexplicable.  The action had no action.

ST: And the bending?! A and I were cracking up at really inappropriate moments.  The action . . . it was just pathetic.

TMIA: I don't know how they could possibly make bending not cool!

ST: It just blew my mind how horrible it was.  Zuko and Aang were always fighting hand to hand.  Why?!

TMIA: The bending took so long, I wouldn't want to wait to do it either.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT 

TMIA: So what would you have wanted the big S to do? 

ST: He could have done a 5-minute montage at the beginning that covered the whole first season.  The whole point of the first season is that he's a kid.  He gets side-tracked easily, and that's why there are all the side stories. 

TMIA: I'm a writer, and I think in stories when I'm getting serious about things. ST, who has seen the series many more times than I have, mentioned that the part at the end with the northern waterbending tribe was all of two episodes in the series.  We allowed it to have some shorthand in the cartoon because it had all the other episodes of character development backing it up.  This movie did not. 

If I were creating this movie, I think I would have talked to fans of all ages and asked them about their favorite scenes from earlier in the series.  Then I would have structured the whole movie to start when they arrived in the Northern tribe.  I would have expanded to include what happened in those two episodes that we didn't get to see in the series.  I would have tried to work as many of those fan favorite bits in as I could as flashbacks.  There would be an organic reason for compressed summaries/explanations/info dumps and short vignette scenes and voiceovers and cutting to the good parts of the conflicts/road trip moments.  Could you imagine the fun they could have had playing the scenes as Sokka described them to Yue with commentary by Aang and Katara?  But flashbacks are evil to real filmmakers, so this is why I am not a film-maker.  (One of the many reasons.)

Anyway, I figure this strategy would allow for the present development of Aang's water-bending troubles and Sokka's relationship with Yue (they were really the only two young actors who were competent--possibly because they had something to grab onto--and had some sort of chemistry) while giving viewers live action versions of scenes they loved/the best that the series had to offer without the whiplash.  It would have allowed Sokka and the others time to shine in humorous and other ways while avoiding the Cliff's Notes of a Road Trip movie syndrome. 

But the director wanted to make an epic.  I would just want to make it fun and good and hopefully profitable.

ST: It already was an epic.  All he had to do was make it shorter.

SILVER LINING?

TMIA:  It does make me want to watch the show again, if only to wipe the taste of the movie out of my brain. That's usually how I feel about movie adaptations of books, so I shouldn't be so disappointed except that I feel like they had even less of an excuse to suck because the plot and tons of great character development were already there for the taking, along with ready-made action scenes and an incredible fighting style.  And a child actor who could do the bending, for the love of Pete!

ST: It seems like his philosophy was if I don't have to spend money on it, and I can change it, I'm going to.

TMIA: I feel like I should say that the single actual child in the theater when I saw this enthusiastically thought the movie was cool.  Any closing comments?

ST: FART.  How's that for airbending?  And it didn't take me 20 minutes to ramp it up.

TMIA:  I still blame James Cameron.  If only we'd been allowed to have the real name, this never would have happened.  :)

A Little Air Bending about Avatar before the movie comes out

So, the (Avatar) The Last Airbender movie is coming out in a week, and we're a tad excited.  More than a tad.  We are ecstatic but trying to keep our deisre for an awesome movie from creating impossible expectations.  We talked a little bit about it and thought we'd share our geeking out here with you.  We love you that much.

TMIA: I'm going to take this opportunity to grouse that this movie should have been the one that got to be called Avatar, and the other one should have had to change its name.

ST: Indeed. I'm not one to impugn James Cameron's character, but what a jerk. His movie could have been called any of a dozen names, but no, he had to insist on Avatar. But Avatar was already a TV show called "Avatar" when he started making his movie. But he has the "Intellectual Property Rights" to the name because he registered for it as a movie name first. What a jerk. I just hope the Avatar movie blows the Avatar movie out of the water...

TMIA: I hope so too, though I think it unlikely. (I think I'm glad book titles can't be copyrighted.) Then again, family-friendly can surprise the box office out of left field sometimes. (Crossing fingers.) Have you seen much of the promo stuff? What is your gut reaction to what you know or have seen or read about the movie so far?

ST: Well, I'm sure the action will be very cool, but some things I've read about the movie have disturbed me. For one, they're changing the way they pronounce Aang's name to make it more "accurate." I don't think it can be inaccurate if that's the way the series creators wanted it pronounced. Also, Shamalan (totally spelled that COMPLETELY wrong) said he took a lot of the humor out because there wasn't time for it. Sorry, but the point of the series is that it's HILARIOUS first, an action show second. And what purpose will Sokka serve if they take a lot of the humor out? He's the guy with the boomerang and the sense of humor. If you take the humor away, he's just the guy with the boomerang.

TMIA: Yeah, I'm a tad worried about Sokka, too. The director said he's a more grounded character from the beginning. I have no idea what that means, but apparently it means he's very useful. Useful is nice, but we need Sokka's goofiness to balance out the seriousness. (It was one of the genius things the orignal creators built in, all of these characters and set-ups that balanced each other out.) And we need that progression from comic relief character to maturing and responsible tactical genius because without it, how will his character change and grow? Apparently, the director also wanted to axe Oppa and Momo, but his kids basically told him NO. Way to go, kids.

ST: I was SO WORRIED about that. I kept searching the previews in vain for Appa and Momo (they are really important characters, as they are Aang's only living link to the Airbenders), but when I went to Iron Man, I FINALLY saw Appa briefly in one of the previews. Yay for the director's kids!

TMIA: What do you think about the "controversy" around the director changing the ethnicities of the characters?

ST: I'm not really bothered by the ethnicity changes. Aang always looked white anyways; Sokka and Katara's actors could stand to get a tan, but I never understood why they were so dark in the cartoon if they lived on the South Pole, which is not noted for its sunny weather. I miss the fact that it appears that Iroh is not a jolly fat man. He looks much more serious and worse, skinny, in the previews. How can we relate to a skinny Iroh? I'm not sure we can, especially if he's not a FUNNY skinny Iroh. But I still have high hopes for the movie.

TMIA: I guess I thought Aang was middle Asian. I thought the darker skin tones of Sokka and Katara's tribe was supposed to indicate that they were similar to the Inuit tribes. Also, Iroh's skinny? What in the world? They couldn't just pad him out at the beginning and then, I dunno, follow the story and then let him be skinny at the end?! I'm trying to keep my expectations low, but I really do wish this movie turns out to be great. And that Aang's actor's voice doesn't start to change before the filming is done . . .

Are you a fan of Aang and friends?  Are you going to see the movie in the theaters?  You should.  Hope to see you there.

Crows Zero - pretty boys who can beat the snot out of each other?

Otaku USA did a review of Crows Zero, a movie based on a comic written by the same gentleman who created Worst, a series I got a huge kick out of when DMP released the first three volumes.  I'm glad I checked the movie out because it was pretty great and seemed quite faithful to the original's tone, content, and world view.

Less far-out there than the live action comedy Cromartie High (the only other manga to movie adaptation I've seen), Crows Zero was still funny but contained the violence Cromartie only hinted at.  The sub-plot with the aging, loser yakuza flunky was particularly well-done.  The team-building bits were often amusing, as well. 

All the hints at backstory made me wish this manga were translated, and the special features only made me more interested.  Ah, well, such is life.  Maybe I'll go read my three volumes of Worst again while my capsule toy of Hana watches benevolently.


Can you recommend any fun manga-to-movie adaptations?