Archive for the Live Action Category


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.)





Live Action: Sennen no Koi

August 25th, 2004

Sennen no Koi: Hikaru Genji Monogatari, (A Thousand Years of Love: The Tale of Genji,) pretty much came and went without anyone noticing it much. Which is a real shame, because as far as gender-bending and yuri go, this movie kind of rolls it all into one neat silly little fun package.

The novel, The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu, is the oldest written tale in the world of a pretty boy and his clothes. The novel portrays his romantic pursuits over the course of his life in amazing, and to my mind, excruciating, detail. lol (There’s just something overwhelming about page after page that describe individual layers of robes, and scents from incense-smelling games.) Not only is it the first novel to be written, period, and by a woman at that, but it’s also the first shoujo novel, which means you can bet that Murasaki is to blame for the flowers and bubble-filled backgrounds of so many shoujo stories throughout the years.

The movie Sennen no Koi is in no way a literal interpretation of the Tale of Genji. It’s liberally sprinkled with the addition of action, plot, special effects, and, uh, ghosts. And gender-bending. Because, you see, the original novel is the story of a pretty boy pursuing women. But Sennen no Koi is a movie of a pretty boy, played by a lovely young woman, pursuing women. ^_^

Aside from the cosmetic change of Amami Yuki’s (very pleasant to look at) portrayal of Genji, a second story is interwoven into Sennen no Koi. This is the (also freely interpreted) life of the author Murasaki Shikibu, and her adventures at court. These seem to be drawn almost whole from the novel Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby, so it was pretty easy for me to follow. From my perspective, the movie includes an awful lot of affection between Murasaki and her royal charge, the Princess to whom she is telling Genji’s story. So, if you *really* wanted to, you could make a whole subtexty thing between them, as well. The role of Murasaki is absolutely *nailed* by Yoshinaga Sayuri – she might have been drawn directly from some painting of Murasaki…everything about her was exactly as I’d imagine it to be.

As I mentioned, there is a lot more action and s/fx than Murasaki ever dreamed Genji would have to deal with, but as loose interpretations of great classics go, this one was pretty fun. And Yuki could write me morning poems any day… ;-)

One amusing yuri manga tie-in here. One of the supporting cast of Sennen no Koi is Minamoto Youko, who, waaaay back in 1987, played Asamiya Saki, the heroine of Shinji Wada’s girl-gang epic Sukeban Deka on TV.

Ratings:

Story – 8, it’s fun and easy to follow even raw.
Characters – 10. I mean, these characters are timeless….
Cinematography – 8

Overall – 8.

It’s not as slow as the real Genji and not as real as Murasaki’s life, but the movie, and Yuki as Genji, was cute. ^_^





Live Action: Peony Pavilion

August 23rd, 2004

This movie is not new…in fact, I remember showing it at the Yuricon party at Anime Expo 2002. So, it’s been around for some time. But as I’ve never reviewed it here before, I thought it might be of interest. Before I even begin to talk about the movie, let me tell you the story of how we found it:

I, the wife, and friend and Yuricon staffer, Kun, were walking along the street in New York’s Chinatown one winter night. We were passing all sorts of video places, not really paying attention, when we all came to a crashing halt at the same time. We took five paces back and stared with open desire at the color poster of some really hot chick in a tux looking very ready to kiss another woman. So, we popped into the video store and asked for a copy of whatever that poster was for – not really even caring what it was. ^_^ The owner told us that it was sold out. Sold out? We wandered to another store – same deal. At store number three we learned that it was like the number one import at the moment, so no wonder! And we *finally* got our own copy of Peony Pavilion.

Let me honest here – we had NO expectations for this movie. We didn’t think it would be really Yuri at all, in fact, we were content with the postcards that came inside of Joey Wang looking hunky in a tux. But when we finally got the disk in the player, we were totally wowed.

Of course, nothing ever happens between the women in this movie – it’s all long glances and open, yet unfulfilled, desire, etc. etc. But it doesn’t matter. Joey Wong (who came out of retirement to play this role) and Rie Miyazawa absolutely curl the edges of the film with their heat in the first half of the film.

The first half sets the scene in an affluent Chinese household of the 1930s. While the master of the house loses himself in bad business deals and opium, his wives are left to fend for themselves. Joey Wong plays a singer who tends towards cross-dressing in men’s clothes (and does it *very* well indeed!) Rie Miyazawa is the youngest wife, for whom Wong has an open passion. The two of them play around the edges of their desire for one another, while life seems glorious and carefree. But underneath the play, there’s a dark undertone of rot, which sets in quickly enough after Miyazawa’s character sleeps with a young traveling performer.

The second half of the movie begins with such an abrupt change of setting, tone and sensibility, we actually questioned whether it was the same movie at all.

Wong turns out to be a lonely spinster teacher. Into her life comes an (admittedly attractive) inspector, played by Daniel Wu. With her longing for her friend unfulfilled, she turns to Wu as a replacement and again, the heat between them is very intense. In the meantime, her cousin’s household is starting to crash – as if she were a piece of furniture, Miyazawa and the daughter she has conceived with the entertainer, are thrown out as unneeded, unwanted and unsupportable.

She comes to live with Wong, where they settle into a life of domesticated bliss. The child is remarkably not irritating – which is a wonder, since film children are always too cute and clever for their own good.

Because this is a Chinese movie, there’s really no way for it to have a happy happy ending. BUT…as it’s not 100% positive that Miyazawa’s character is dead at the end, and Wong is still alive, this wins as the happiest Chinese movie I’ve ever seen. ^_^

So – in one sense the girl gets the girl, but in several other ways, she does not. Balance that against Joey Wong in a tux, and this movie still wins points with me as a must-see.

Ratings:
Story – 7 It’s a little inconsistent.
Cinematography – 10 Absolutely breathtaking.
Characters – 9
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

Peony Pavilion is definitely a “chick movie”. Boys will be bored out of their skulls, but girls will sigh with longing…a GREAT date movie. ^_^