Bunshun Raspberry Awards: the year in dasaku (crap movies)
Posted on Saturday, 23 February 2008 at 12:48 am
Shukan Bunshun, one of Japan’s oldest weekly news magazines, prides itself on covering the stories that television and newspapers shy away from. It’s also a bit like your geriatric uncle who wears the same smelly moth-eaten navy blue smoking jacket for days on end and won’t shut up about “those bloody liberals”. Top story in the latest issue dated February 28th features the headline “He won’t let me see Princess Aiko: The Emperor’s anger toward the Crown Prince”.
Flipping forward to pages 48 to 49 finds the announcement of the annual “Bunshun Kiichigo (Raspberry) Awards”, where 37 anonymous film journalists and critics rank their worst films of the past year, and this time it’s a list of some of 2007’s biggest box office hits for the Japanese film industry. So is it pointed commentary or just out-of-touch elitism?
Worst 10:
1: Blue Wolf: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea (Aoki Okami: Chi Hate Umi Tsukiru made)
2: Koizora
3: Last Love
4: Love Never to End (Ai no Rukeichi)
5: Glory to the Filmmaker! (Kantoku Banzai!)
6: Dororo
7: Monkey Magic (Saiyuki)
8: For Those We Love (Ore wa, Kimi no Tame ni Koso Shini ni Iku)
8: Hero
10: Inland Empire
10: The Mourning Forest (Mogari no Mori)
A lot of easy targets there: “For Those We Love” was doomed to ridicule right from the day Ishihara Shintaro announced he was making a movie about kamikaze, and Kadokawa Haruki’s sketchy past and movie mogul behaviour cast a shadow of doubt over “Blue Wolf”. Then there’s the mobile phone novel adaptation “Koizora” and star-driven big screen TV shows like “Monkey Magic’ and “Hero” which the very idea of makes cinema purists froth at the mouth. Here’s what the nameless cowards who voted had to say:
On “The Mourning Forest”:
“Who cares how it did at Cannes? What’s boring is boring.”
“It emphasises the kind of Japanese tableaus and indigenity that foreigners go for. Its bleedingly obvious that it was made for Cannes.”
On “For Those We Love”:
“Like a documentary narrated by Kishi Keiko. It has zero scale.”
On “Hero”:
“It’s well-made in the sense of pleasing the fans. Thanks to that, non-fans can’t enjoy it at all. For a newcomer like myself, it was impossible to figure out what roles Nakai Kiichi and Ayase Haruka were supposed to be playing.”
On “Monkey Magic”: similar complaint to “Hero” - strictly for fans of the TV series.
On “Dororo”:
“Even though it was filmed on location in New Zealand like “Lord of the Rings” and recruited action director Ching Siu-Tung from “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers”, why did they only bother to show us “Kamen Rider”-grade effects and actors standing around in fields having half-arsed sword fights?”
On “Glory to the Filmmaker!”:
“It was painful to see the pacing that’s the lifeblood of Kitano’s films so out of step.”
On “Love Never To End”:
“I wonder if the producers were aware of the difficulty of depicting sex. If you go too far you’ve got a comedy, and the more earnest you make it the more contrived it becomes. You can get away with that in print, but with moving images it feels strangely artificial. An inability to understand that was why the film failed.”
“I don’t know what they were thinking having [Hasegawa Kyoko playing a public prosecutor] interrogate a suspect while wearing a cleavage-exposing suit. Despite the fact the love scenes were all done fully-clothed.”
On “Last Love”:
“The set-up was really pushing it. New York, terminal illness, an affair with a beautiful woman… it’s just some old fart’s pipe dream. It was so embarrassing up there on the big screen I couldn’t bear to watch.”
On “Koizora”:
“A rape in a field of flowers. Library sex and subsequent pregnancy. Taking a fall and miscarrying. Just a cavalcade of ridiculousness like some old Daiei TV drama. Idol movies are only watchable when veteran actors prop them up in supporting roles, but Takahashi Joji and Asano Yuko’s awful performances flushed it even further down the shitter.”
“What were they playing at, trying to film rape in an aesthetically pleasing way? The way her family acted like nothing happened afterwards was similarly gob-smacking.”
On “Blue Wolf: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea”:
“There’s no realism in having Japanese act out a Mongolian story. Especially talentless hacks like Sorimachi Takashi and Kikukawa Rei.”
The prevalence of Japanese films in the worst list drove one despairing critic to surmise:
“I can’t figure out why such flimsy, imagination-deficient stories have such an impact. Maybe it’s because kids can’t read books properly anymore, so movies have to be made easier for them to understand.”
This year, for a bit of superficial balance, they also threw in a best 10:
1: Pan’s Labyrinth
2: The Bourne Ultimatum
3: Death Proof
4: Blood Diamond
5: Funuke: Show Some Love, You Losers! (Funuke-domo, Kanashimi no Ai o Misero)
5: Hairspray
5: Once
5: Kisaragi
5: A Gentle Breeze in the Village (Tennen Kokekko)
5: Summer Days With Coo (Kappa no Ku to Natsuyasumi)
Some odder choices here, notably the unremarkable “Hairspray” and “Blood Diamond”. “Planet Terror” gets my vote over “Death Proof” (Tarantino’s came across as self-satisfyingly pretentious, whereas Rodriguez’s was a purer and more celebratory distillation of B-movie gratification), and no best of 2007 list is complete without “Zodiac” and “Secret Sunshine” as far as I’m concerned. Fortunately the Bunshun contributors found something to like in a few local efforts, and not surprisingly the hype-free but widely-liked “Summer Days With Coo” is among them. The general consensus seemed to be that this was a lock for best animated film at the Japanese Oscars, which instead went to “Tekkon Kinkreet”. “Funuke” also played Cannes as part of Critics Week but didn’t receive the same chilly reception as “The Mourning Forest”, which I imagine has more to do with attitudes toward Kawase Naomi and the presence of recognised actors such as Nagase Masatoshi and Nagasaku Hiromi in its cast. As for the other two:
On “A Gentle Breeze in the Village”:
“Unlike the inadequate but overexposed Aragaki Yui, Naho blossomed in her role, and in her kiss scenes. “Koizora”’s entire cast and crew should watch this film and beg for forgiveness.”
On “Kisaragi”:
“A superb match of an entertaining script and fine performances from a cast who were fully aware of how good it was. You could really feel that they were having a blast acting it out.”
So, not a definitive review of last year’s crop by any means, but at least it fills up a couple of pages worth of cheap newsprint.
comment by logboy
posted on Saturday, February 23 2008 at 12:48 am
in a way i can see what that quote about it being obvious ‘the mourning forest’ was made for cannes… it’s part of what i fear about film festivals, that they attract and often most obviously can draw a lot of reinforcement towards stuff historically selected for festivals… the kinds of films i actually most appreciate the intensity of - still waiting to see this particular one though - that’s easy to see as some kind of equivalent on the old “oscar fodder” arguments about personal struggles, political battles and other such cliches in american cinema.
when i look at listings - very rarely - for festival screenings, despite the range, diversity, originality that’s varyingly on display, it’s easy to see certain kinds of things deemed more worthwile, and some critics often unknowingly or intentionally gravitate towards those films that feel worthy in order to then have to spend time trying to put into words why they think it’s worthy. their instinct may not be at their own control, if you see what i mean, but subconciously influenced.
just as likely though, is stuff that’s easy to write-off as filler or novelty or trash entertainment looking for a likely foreign audience, being misunderstood too. i like all these things - the trashy, the potentially calculating, the obvious and the not-so - but i can still see there’s something about the confines of a festival that attracts certain productions, and (who knows) may even instigate the financing of certain projects despite there being similar stuff in abundance that barely gets noticed by anyone anywhere and may have taken years to get through to being shot, that gives a repeating narrow portrayal (from a distance, not necessarily in everyone or any number who attend) of what’s good, what’s out there, and how there’s a certain way things need to work in order to get attention drawn to things which it’s hard to naturally get the opportunity to navigate your way towards in your own time, on your own terms.
comment by Nicholas Rucka
posted on Saturday, February 23 2008 at 12:48 am
An interesting read. Thanks for typing this up, Don.
comment by Chris
posted on Saturday, February 23 2008 at 12:48 am
out of touch elitism on Dororo. I thought it was a lot of fun, exactly because of those Kamen Rider sfx. Last third was a bit blah, but on the whole it was satisfying.
Blood Diamond and Death Proof….not seeing those. BD fell apart worse than Dororo at the end.
comment by Aceface
posted on Saturday, February 23 2008 at 12:48 am
“Blue Wolf” wasn’t that bad.After all it’s Sawai Shinichiro’s film.My wife thought Sorimachi doesn’t look like Chinghis an inch(Another Japanese-turning-Chinghis-Khan movie,Sergei Bodorov’s “Mongol” looks OK,but still she thinks Asada Tadanobu looks Japanese..)
I was actually a bit dissapointed with “Zodiac”.
I just saw too many similarity with “Memory of Murder”
and I thought Bong Joon ho was doing much better.
David Fincher certainly has style in his film making,but he always lose control of the narrative in the middle of the picture.