ryuganji: film news from japan

And now for another instalment in Ichise Taka’s regular blog feature “Biting the Hands That Feed Me”*, this time from his account of showing “Heroes” star Masi Oka around during his recent promotional sojourn in Japan:

I invited him to visit some Japanese film sets with me, so we went to the currently shooting “Goemon” and Nakata Hideo’s “L”. He was surprised by Japan’s lack of a union [for film workers], the run-down condition of the studios, the crappiness of craft services, and the fact that the average production cost for a Japanese film is less than a single episode of “Heroes”, but he was amazed by the crews’ energy and the speed of setups, and was impressed by the unmistakable fact that it’s all thanks to Japanese film workers’ great love of cinema. It’s sad to think that love is exploited by film and television companies who only think about making money. (source: Ichise Taka blog)

* Not really, but it’s fairly apt.