Onmyoji/recent japanese cinema

[Don Brown]

>Will someone please explain to me why such a cliched, uninspiring movie
>like Onmyoji did so well in Japan? 

I think we're all well aware that the quality of a film often has nothing 
to do with its box office success. In Onmyoji's case, I think there were 
several reasons for its popularity, such as: the so-called Onmyoji boom at 
the time, which mainly consisted of television specials featuring 
supposedly "real" exorcisms; the intensive marketing campaign, featuring 
special effects-laden trailers and media saturation, especially on the 
television networks; and the subsequent rise in popularity of films 
produced by television networks which are essentially identical in tone and 
execution to your bog-standard television drama series, perhaps rendering 
them more accessible to the mass audience that views most Japanese cinema 
as "kurai"(dark and depressing); and the number of screens the film opened 
on (it played in the multiplexes for months, rather than in the smaller 
independent theaters where more "worthy" releases usually end up running 
for a few weeks at best).
Take Odoru Daisosasen 2, itself an adaptation of a TV series, which became 
the highest grossing Japanese live action film ever last year for many of 
the same reasons that made Onmyoji a hit. In one way it's good to see a 
domestic release putting so many bums on seats, and it will no doubt sell 
in copious quantities when the DVD comes out, but it's obviously not the 
sort of film that is going to change people's attitudes to their own 
cinema. In fact, can you actually classify something that is so indebted 
both stylistically and financially to television, as cinema?
Don Brown

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