question on 2 films
Don Brown
the8thsamurai
Sun Jun 10 09:04:03 EDT 2001
I saw Owl's Castle at the movies when it came out here in Japan, and
without subtitles I found it quite a hard slog. I guess that's usually the
case with jidaigeki though. A lot was made of the CG work, but most of the
shots ended up in the trailer. Not a bad film by any means, but perhaps
could have used a bit more action. No point in having ninja in your film
if you're not going to use them.
Gojoe I liked a lot, although I had been looking forward to it for a long
time. From an objective point of view, it was lacking a certain something.
The design, action, costumes, and performances were wonderful (especially
Ryu Daisuke), but many of the characters were peripheral and underdeveloped
(such as Nagase Masatoshi's sword collector). For an Ishii Sogo fan
though, it was great and I'd strongly recommend it. Sogo has suggested
that he felt as if the Wachowski brothers had beaten him to the punch with
The Matrix, considering his affiliations with William Gibson, so it could
be said that Gojoe is his reaction to that film. Never mind all the "cyber
action" hype surrounding the film though, because it's quite misleading.
It's an action film with a nice dose of metaphysics to go with the
swordplay. By the way, the promotional material for Gojoe claimed it had
more cuts than Star Wars Episode One, but it had far from an MTV look to it
(as employed in Samurai Fiction). Didn't look like your run-of-the-mill
jidaigeki either. In short, it's good. Go see it.
Don Brown
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