This trailer is disgustingly beautiful.
And oh-they know it~
Archives For Books
Seriously, time is flying.
We probably need someone to translate – cough, queue Nina xD
Does anyone know if a fansub group is taking this? And… are you guys watching this?
I got some Shokuzai pics used on the official WOWOW site.
It seems like only the first episode is going to have Yu-chan in, or at least that’s what I got unless all this “First chapter” business on Yu’s photo means nothing.
I hope everyone is as excited as I am.
First… of course, I love Yu-chan. It seems like when my fandom is faltering, she throws a bone at me. LOL
Then… it’s a Minato Kanae revenge story. Kokuhaku wasn’t mind-blowingly amazing but it was pretty good, so I can’t complain from a revenge story about a woman who’s lost her kid and tries to get her now-grown friends to remember and seek atonement.
There’s also Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who directed Tokyo Sonata — which, you know… I wasn’t really as blown as everyone seemed to be with him. But it’s always exciting to see new people coming together to make projects. Especially since WOWOW is involved. I tend to like their off-beat dramas that get a lot of indie J-film flare.
Kyoko Koizumi — who has actually worked with Yu-chan in the play Gakuya — stars as the mom, and the four friends of her dead child are Yu Aoi, Chizuru Ikewaki (Josee, the Tiger and the Fish), Eiko Koike (Paco and the Magical Picture Book, Wool 100%) and freaking Sakura Ando (Love Exposure, 1).
The four women are being played by Aoi, Koike, Ando, and Ikewaki. 15 years earlier, when they were elementary school students, they had been playing with Emiri up until just before her death. They were the first to discover her body, and although they saw the culprit’s face, they were unable to remember it well enough to identify the person. As a result, Emiri’s mother (Koizumi) demanded that they find the killer, or else find a way to atone for themselves to her satisfaction. Now grown up, those women find her words coming back to haunt them as tragedy begins to befall them.
via BionicBong.com
Lasting only five episodes, the drama starts on January 8th, 2012.
Hope a fansub group subs this as soon as possible.
Jul 15
The Harmony Evil Kiss
I know this is wrong.
SOOOOOO wrong, but all this Harry Potter talk has stirred my Shipper brain which had been laying dormant since… the better part of the Order of the Phoenix movie and the release of the last book.
I suffered so much with the last book, it felt like being mocked. Especially in the Evil Kiss part, it felt like tainting all those hours reading those long and thought out essays. It was like all those who supported Harry/Hermione were… well, evil. LOL We were like the Horcrux, tainting a pure friendship with those dark bits in the Evil Kiss.
I’ve made peace with that, in my own way.
So says the girl that wrote an essay on Numerology and a certain Harry Potter subject. *cough* LOL Anyway… moving on! You know I’ve got fandoms… I’ve gotten into shipping fandoms, but never got as “bad” as those HP days.
I was browsing the web, and ended up in LiveJournal — the place where all fandoms seem to end — and I found Rachel/Quinn shippers? How did that happen? Well, you need not to wonder. They will explain to you episode by episode… in a rather very detailed and impressive way.
I’m even a little converted. Though, I attribute many of those moments to Diana Agron letting go off Quinn’s bitchiness in a musical number — some may call those character inconsistencies — but they work in a very ironic kind of way.
I love love love Ryan Murphy with all my heart because of Popular, but he’s really not the King of Subtleties… if you must know. How can you not know that? It must have hit you in the face by now that Murphy likes it big and loud. Those Quinn/Rachel moments are too subtle to be meant to. Attribute those to happy accidents.
But they work. My gawd, Quinn/Dianna stares a lot at Rachel/Lea. And it had never crossed my mind that all of Quinn’s musical numbers, real or in her imagination, have her surrounded by females. Plus, the number with the cheerleaders in football uniforms.
If slowly developed, I can totally buy it.
—
The dedication of that post, however, is what made me write this post. I miss that crazy passion that fandom can create. I don’t know if that crazy passion should come with the crazy disappointment, though. I don’t think I can take another fandom heartbreak.
Natalie Portman’s Where the Heart Is is probably the least favorite film amongst the fans, a list that includes the Star Wars prequels, Free Zone, Mr. Mangorium’s Wonder Emporium, Mars Attacks and Anywhere but Here. However, Where the Heart Is, as well as Anywhere but Here are the only of those films that pretty much were completely fronted by Portman.
Now, compare that to Leon… or Black Swan. Mmmkay~
As a teenage Portman fan, I obviously watched those AND enjoyed them~~~ but we’re here to talk about Where the Heart Is now, so let’s talk about it.
Where the Heart Is, for what it’s worth, marks Portman’s step into womanhood, as she played a 17-year-old pregnant Novalee Nation, giving birth in a Walmart. In short, she’s pretty tacky but with a lot of heart… and what’s even more ironic, the first time I saw Portman in that fake pregnant suit in slippers (and then barefoot), I thought of Britney Spears whom later ended up stepping on a public bathroom barefoot.
But I digress. Where the Heart Is is sappy, and over-the-top acting drama… it ends up being funny. Portman looks so awkward as Novalee… skinny and so overly-fake-pregnant, plus the hair. Add to that Novalee’s white trash mother who abandoned her family for a man whose name she can’t even remember played by Sally Field, hot-peen-hungry mother of multiple children named after junk food Nurse Lexie played by Ashley Judd, cut-throat music producer Ruth Meyers played by Joan Cusack, and AA-member fornicating Sister Husband played by Stockard Channing — all over-acting. Pure amazingness.
Let’s not even begin to discuss the love-making scene, which marks a first for Natalie Portman on screen, which she shared with UK actor James Frain who’s like 15 years older than her and plays a character named Forney. Novalee doesn’t have sex with Forney, she makes love to him after his sister passes away. There’s sweet love-making pop-country crossover music as his hand entwines with hers.
But despite it all, I couldn’t take my eyes off the film… except maybe the bits without Natalie Portman on screen, in which we focus on Novalee’s baby daddy Willy Jack Pickens played by Dylan Bruno. His storyline seems a bit pointless, since we’re not supposed to feel sympathy for him and it just makes the story go slower. But then again, without him… we wouldn’t have the amazingness of Joan Cusack.
Natalie Portman as a “reformed” Novalee, mother of Americus and photographer, holding her camera shooting the fat baseball team, or with her Xmas/winter gear, and looking for Forney are probably the most gorgeous Portman could be on film.
Where the Heart Is might be cheesy, and actually pretty bad — and shame on you if you think it’s the best movie ever made — but it’s one of those films teenage girls have to watch. We were all probably 14 when we saw it, and I guess 14-year-olds watch much more crass films nowadays. However, I still think 12 or 13-year-old girls would be able to appreciate it.
I don’t think Anywhere but Here is worse than Where the Heart Is, but IMDb seems to disagree.
3/5 (2.75 without the sentimental value LOL)
First, let me just say that when the trailer for Dawn Treader came out, I thought it looked terrible. The CGI work in the film looked positively subpar in comparison to what you thought of Lion and Caspian when they came out. I also wondered why I couldn’t remember any details in regards of the book, since I’ve only read the series once. Except for the annoying cousin, I was blank.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader tells the story of Edmund and Lucy Pevensie who stayed over at their cousin Eustace’s place as they’re separated from their family… including Susan and Peter. Eustace is annoying, played very convincingly by Will Poulter (Son of Rambow), he’s loud, whiny, a complete pain. Then one day as the cousins are arguing in a room that includes a painting of a ship at sea, water starts dripping from the painting. The room fills with water, and they’re transported to Narnia.
Edmund, Lucy and Eustace — who’s freaking out by now — get rescued by Prince (now King) Caspian and his crew, plus Reepicheep, on board of the Dawn Treader in search for the 7 allies of Caspian’s kingdom who were betrayed by his uncle when he took power. Stopping in the first kingdom/island, they discovered a group that’s been taking people away to give them as offering to something known as “The Green Mist”.
Aslan’s totally against this Green Mist, so Caspian, the Pevensie bros, Eustace and company must trail the rest of the kingdom’s allies, get their swords together, and vanquish the Green Mist.
Looking at these not-longer-kids makes me feel old. Lucy (Georgie Henley) is even more grown-up that I remember from Caspian. Same thing for Edmund (Skandar Keynes). Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell), however, look ageless. At least they do on the film.
Because my expectations were low in regards to the CG and the conversion, I must say Dawn Treader delivers better than expected. The fakeness of the CG in the 2D trailers was lost in the 3D conversion which made the picture darker and blurry. You can’t have crisp action, that defeats the purpose of action. Also, the shots use in the film work quite fine as “3D” shots, you could even believe they had thought in terms of 3D environment.
The problem with Dawn Treader, however, lies in that it’s pretty thin on story. Even in the book, it seemed to only work as an introduction to Eustace… maybe the reason why that’s all I remember about the actual book. The film also includes some very cringe-worthy dialog, but maybe that’s an issue with the dubbing I had to watch.
But I did enjoy it. What the movie makes better than the book is that it fixes the pacing, there’s a lot of action going on while they’re on their way to search for the allies and their swords. They also make a great build-up for Reepicheep, despite the lack of screen-time he’s had in the movies, to give him a deserving send-off. Actually, it’s probably my favorite scene — despite the blatant Christianity hitting me in the face always on the series, I’m rather fond of how the series ended.
However, I wish they had done something more emotional with Lucy and Edmund’s Narnia farewell, because I felt Susan and Peter’s were much more serious, much more felt… after all, we won’t see Lucy and Edmund! We could see a glimpse of Ben Barns as Caspian on The Silver Chair, but not Keynes and Henley.
I hope they do make it to The Silver Chair, and The Last Battle… even cooler if they make The Magician’s Nephew. I really REALLY hate The Horse and his Boy, though.
3/5
It’s begun. The beginning of the end. After the 7th book came out, and left me unsatisfied — a feeling carried over the 6th book and the 5th film — I swore to never see Harry Potter at the cinema ever again. A promise easy to keep with the 6th film, but then… it was hard to keep it when the first promotional materials for HP7 were released.
Well played, Warner. Well played.
Deathly Hallows is perhaps Yates’ best attempt at a Harry Potter adaption, but considering the other two – it isn’t saying that much. In the greater scale of things, it might follow on Azkaban’s footsteps as an interesting film filled with anguish and desperation… of I guess, the teenage sort. If the book didn’t work for you, the film seems to improve on action and characters. It’s also of great comfort to say that The WB’s decision of splitting the film in two parts was hardly a bad commercial or creative choice… at least for the fans of the books, who will savor each an every detail.
But then again, considering how many chapters were crammed into this first part, one has to wonder what’s left for part two if not only the “last battle” which, in the book, happened off-page… and that epilogue that’s ripped out of the most poorly written fanfiction.
For the non-readers or those who haven’t seen HP6… well, you’re screwed. It really doesn’t work without the background, and you’re better without watching it, if you’re going to start complaining. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows feels like made for the fans of the series only.
