Archive for the Live Action Category


Live Action: Summer Vacation 1999

July 6th, 2005

Based loosely on Hagio Moto’s Boys’ Love classic, Touma no Shinzo (Heart of Thomas), Summer Vacation has just about something for everyone, except perhaps the hard-core action fan.

The story takes place at an all-boy’s private school during summer vacation. Almost everyone has gone for the summer, with the exception of three boys who are friends and are now living together. Not to long ago a fourth friend of theirs committed suicide, leaving behind a letter to his roommate. In this stereotypical “hothouse” setting several things are driving the boys apart. For one thing, there is more than a little sexual tension between them, as there was between their dead friend and at least one of them.

Into this tense mix comes a new boy, who looks unsettingly like their dead friend. He seems to know all about the likes and dislikes of the dead boy – and to share them – but insists that he knows nothing about him or his history.

Tempers flare, as does sexual attraction and violence, in this unusual and pretty creepy movie.

All the roles in this movie are played by girls. So you get kind of a double-whammy gender bendy thing going, as girls dressed like boys, start to find themselves attracted to each other. They really aren’t good as boys, but they really don’t look like girls either – which *really* works for this movie, let me tell you. The entire story balanced on the edge of life and death, vacation and school, community and isolation, madness and health, and sexual identity and gender. There’s at least one kiss I can remember, maybe more. Nothing explicit, which would have killed the whole story.

I highly recommend this movie for the zOMGWTFBBQ factor – because you really have no idea what’s going to happen through most of it. The end was a little weak, but I have to give it a little credit for not *at all* going where I expected.

Ratings:
Cinematography – 7
Story – 6 (Slow, but creepy and sexy enough to work)
Characters – 8
Yuri – 0 or 8, depending on how you look at it.

Overall – 7

A unique movie and one well worth watching for fans of this classic manga.





Live Action: Saving Face

May 24th, 2005

Last night 7 intrepid friends and staff of Yuricon went to the NYC premier of Saving Face, a “romantic comedy” about Chinese-Americans, lesbians, and mothers and daughters, written and directed by Alice Wu.

It was excellent.

For one thing – it was actually funny. That makes it the only romantic comedy I’ve ever watched that I laughed at.

The plot is simple: Wilhemina is a successful almost 30 years old Chinese-American surgeon in New York City. Her mother lives in hope that she will marry a nice Chinese boy one day. One day, Wil comes home to find her mother on her doorstep, pregnant at 48. As her mother moves in, Wil has to deal with a burgeoning relationship with a nice Chinese girl, Vivian, who is a professional dancer.

Wil desperately searches for a husband for her mother, while balancing Vivian’s increasing desire for their relationship to be publicly acknowledged.

It was very well acted. I genuinely think Joan Chen as Mom and Michelle Kusiec as Wil are way better looking in real life than on the screen, and Joan, particularly looked radiant on screen. (But Michelle was absolutely adorable at the party. I would have liked to had a chance to actually talk to her, but you know how it is – she’s moving around thanking everyone…) But Joan Chen in real life – wow. I want
to look that good when I grow up. Most of the cast was at the premier.

The writer/director, Alice Wu, was so cute! LOL She spent the night importuning people to tell their friends and get them to go to the first weekend openings, because this weekend’s box office takes will influence how heavily Sony markets the movie. So, here I am, telling all the folks in the NYC and LA areas to go see this movie! It’s funny, it’s well done, the girl gets the girl and…did I mention it’s
funny? :-)

Once again, May 27th, this Friday, opening places:

NEW YORK: the ANGELIKA (in Soho) and the AMC 25 (on 42nd Street)

LOS ANGELES: the SUNSET LAEMMLE 5, the WESTSIDE PAVILION, PLAYHOUSE (Pasadena), TOWN CENTER (Encino), and the SOUTH COAST VILLAGE (Costa Mesa)

And

SF BAY AREA: opens the weekend of JUNE 3 at the Landmark EMBARCADERO, the UA STONESTOWN Twin, the Landmark SHATTUCK (Berkeley), PALO ALTO SQUARE, CENTURY 5 (Pleasant Hill), SANTANA ROW (San Jose) and MARIN/ SAUSALITO.

For a glimpse of the trailer visit the Saving Face website.

Ratings:
Cinematography – 7
Characters – 8
Story – 8
Yuri – 10

Overall – 8

A fun night out for any fan of lesbian stories.





Live Action: PGSM/ Beginnings and Endings

January 4th, 2005

A very Happy New Year to all you yuri and shoujoai fans!

I thought I’d start the new year off by posting some wrap-up comments on last years’s anime, mostly to kill some time while the new season takes shape. ;-) But also, there were very many good thing and bad from last year that deserve final wrap-up comments.

Let’s start with one of the most fun things that 2004 brought us, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, the live-action Sailor Moon television series.

As you may remember from my July entries on this fabulous show, there was tons of yuri potential and implicit yuri – enough to start a wave of fan-created works for another ten years.

But to wrap up I really wanted to focus on one relationship…the one that subsumed all others by the end. Rei and Minako. The screen started to curl at the edges when they starred into each other’s eyes, and by 2/3 of the way through the series, I was not the only one screaming “Get a room!” everytme they interacted. But it was in the ridiculously predictable, completely implausible and really silly finale of this series that drove home the Rei x Minako thing.

Because, you see…Minako died. Our beloved pop idol and hearthrob to everyone in my household, succumbs to whatever mysterious disease she had, and dies. They did an entire epsiode where the Senshi deal with nothing else but this single fact. And boy did Rei grieve, just exactly like a woman who has lost her lover grieves. Not like a good friend (Ami and Makoto did that), but definitely as a lover.

And in the end, Rei goes postal. And damn she did it well. But when she returns to herself, and fights one last time to save the earth (and dies…of course, because the Senshi dying comes as regularly as Old Faithful) when she calls her weapon into her hand…there in her other hand, is Minako’s weapon.

(A quick aside – all of the Senshi get weapons in PGSM. Sailor Jupiter gets the long-handled weapon, so that fits nicely with her planet really being an Outer planet, not one of the little wimpy Inner ones….)

So, in the end, there’s Rei, fighting not only with her own power, but with Minako’s too, and there we are, two 40 year old women crying like babies because we’re complete losers. LOL Waaaah!!!!

Oh, of course everyone comes back to life, but you knew that. And we’re all reunited and live happily ever after, because this is Sailor Moon and that’s what we do.

But let me tell you – Rei and Minako were SO the item. It really made alot of the stupider parts of the end worth it. And I was really glad to see that the folks who brought us PGSM didn’t leave the yuri fans out in the cold. :-)

So, if you’ve been putting off watching PGSM because it looks cheesy and predictable, well…it is, but it’s also yuri-riffic, which is always a good reason to get recommended daily supply of Senshi. :-)

Final Ratings for PGSM:

Story – 8
Character – 10
S/fx – Hahaha
Costumes – 8
Yuri – 8

Overall – 9

If you didn’t watch PGSM before, really….do. It’s quite wonderful. Then put your hands together and repeat after me, “Please gods, let us get to the Outers”.





Live Action: Cutie Honey Movie

November 8th, 2004

All hail Go Nagai!

Everything about the previews for the Cutie Honey movie, had me squirming with embarrassment. It looked like it was going to be a travesty of immense proportion, much along the lines of the Kekkou Kamen live action (if you can really call them that…) movies.

Instead, I was amazed at the translation of the cheesy, yet charming, anime into an equally cheesy and perhaps even more charming live action movie. Right off the bat, the bad guys rocked. Their costumes were amazing, they actually acted the parts like they cared, and the special effects were exactly the right level of screamingly bad/amusingly good.

Satou Eriko was stellar as Honey. She was cute, she was enthusiastic and genki…she was an irritating bubble-head, and you couldn’t help but smile at her antics. And while the opening scenes had a fair amount of Eriko in underwear fanservice, that was basically it for the movie. As the plot progessed the fanservice sort of tails off into dress-up scenes, and then completely disappears. Refreshing and a bit puzzling, since in the beginning there’s so much energy, and by the end of the movie everyone looks ready to call it a day and go home.

The opening sequence was a *perfect* reproduction of the Cutey Honey Flash anime, while the rest of the movie has more in common with the new Re Cutie Honey anime that I reviewed last week. (Although, quite inexplicably Sister Jill has been turned into an ugly guy. In fact, the portrayal of Jill was significant in the lack of energy in the ending. Sister Jill wasn’t just draining the people of Townsville’s energy – she was sucking mine away too. But I digress.) Unlike the anime, we got to enjoy the wacky capers of the Panther Claw hench-dudes, who are always, erm, yeah.

Aki Natsuko was played to a tee by Ichikawa Mikako (who looks alot more like Na-chan than any real human should…). There was a bit too much Seiji – played with vim, vigor and the appropriate arrogance by Murakami Jun – especially at the end, where his exceptional competence annoyed the hell out of me.

The movie comes in at a lower yuri score than the anime, but still, the vibe between Na-chan and Honey was still recognizably there. If Seiji backed off for a second, I think you’d see some sparks flying. And in the end it was Na-chan and Honey who cry in each other’s arms, while Seiji just sort of looks out of place. So there, Seiji – nyah. ^_^

A few other nice touches – Go Nagai has a cameo as the driver of a car upon which Honey falls, butt first. He looks extra happy to be looking up at the view. ^_^; And the remix of the Cutey Honey theme by Koda Kumi absolutely *rocks.* Her voice is a little deeper and breathier than the anime versions. The video for the theme is refreshingly awful and I highly recommend everyone watch it until, you, like me, sing the damn theme for weeks on end, non-stop. Can you say “sticky”? I knew you could.

The movie did have some weak areas, especially the lackluster ending. I don’t know why, but Japanese live-action movies really suck the life out of bad guys. The live action Hana no Asuka-gumi movie had the same problem – Hibari was turned into the same kind of non-presence as Sister Jill in this movie. When the bad guy is supposed to be the motivation for the heroine’s actions, you’d *think* they’d give us an energetic and charismatic baddie…but instead, we tend to get colorless non-entities who barely even move their mouths. Drives me crazy. Especially when Sister Jill was so great in the anime. Oh well.

In every other way, however, this movie is a must-see for fans of yuri, classic anime, inutterable cheesiness or all of the above. It looked like everyone on the set was having a really, really good time making this movie, something that they communicated through their acting. It left me with a really good feeling about the whole thing.

Ratings:
Story – 8
Character – 9
Cinematography – 8
Costumes – 9
Music – 9
Yuri – 5

Overall – A really strong 8.

This was one of the most enjoyable movies I’ve seen all year, bar none. I can’t recommend it enough. If I had seen this in the theater I would have been shouting and cheering through the entire first half like a lunatic. ^_^





Live Action: Naked Killer

August 27th, 2004

I thought I’d end “live-action” week with one of my all-time favorite cheesy movies. Note the two different covers above. The one on the left is the original, the one on the right must be new packaging…but it doesn’t change the fact that this movie is cheeseball heaven. Here’s the original tagline for the movie: “There Are Two Things On Their Minds… One’s Killing!” ^_^

Naked Killer is the story of Kitty, a young woman whose father is brutally and quite stupdily killed, when his new, young, sexy wife is caught having an affair with a local studly, powerful businessman. Kitty walks into the guy’s office and shoots his henchmen up, but is caught and is about to be raped when mysterious “Sister Cindy” saves her, with some hysterically funny mad martial skillz.

It turns out that Sister Cindy is actually a professional assassin – she offers to teach Kitty everything she knows, but Kitty must follow her instructions without question. Thus Kitty embarks upon a very luxurious and successful life as a high-end assassin.

In the meantime, two people are trying to track Kitty down: A hunky detective, Tinam, with post-traumatic stress disorder that makes him unable to shoot a gun (he vomits every time he tries, which is actually alot funnier than it sounds) and Princess, Sister Cindy’s former protege’. Tinam, played by Simon Yam, is really wonderful and funny (intentionally.) He and Kitty actually make a cute couple.

But the real prize for yuri fans here is Princess, the psychotic lesbian ex-student. She is absolutely *brilliant*. Played by Carrie Ng with an over-the-top swaggering, cigar-smoking, dominatrix attitude, she comes complete with love-slave, “Baby.” They never have any real sex on screen, but there’s a lot of groping, which is okay too. Despite all of the above, Princess is as femmy as all get out, with a sort of faux-butch thing in her attire which actually is pretty hot. ^_^

It comes to a showdown, of course, between Kitty and Princess, and I won’t give away the end, but it’s spectacular. And here’s why:

One of the absolute finest thing about this movie is the horrendous subtitling job. In fact, this movie is famous for insanely bad subtitles, which add serious points to the amusing cheesy value. Lines like, “You almost shot one of my balls off!” and the greatest line ever to be written into any movie – “I still have time to take the gastric lavage.” These lines really catapult this movie from funny cheesy into brilliant, timeless kitsch.

The lesbian scenes between Sister Cindy and Kitty and *everything* about Princess really helps, too. ^_^

Ratings:

Story – Please, you have got to be kidding
Characters – 9
Cinematography – ??
Martial Arts – hee hee
Yuri – 9

Overall, this movie gets a 9, because it is so wonderfully awful.

This movie is an kitsch/Yuri/Hong Kong fan flick must-see.

Important Note: Avoid the not-really sequel, “Naked Weapon” like the plague it is. There’s a *teeny* bit of Yuri subtext, but the “hero” is the biggest nebbish ever and it’s insulting that the lead heroine sleeps with him…even drugged as she was.)