Archive for the Live Action Category


Takarazuka: Elizabeth

July 8th, 2005

Yay! Imagine my happy-happiness to not only receive this awesome DVD from Japan about a week after I ordered it, but to find that it plays on my DVD player!

(Special Note: I’m getting alot of interest in this post, mostly because of YouTube. I purchased this DVD from the regular Japanese Takarazuka website through a buying service. It is not a cheap process – you will be paying for the DVD, the buyer’s commission, the shipping to buyer and the shipping to you. I don’t have a special source or website to offer you, I just threw money at the problem.)

And before I say anything else, I want you to know that the virgin watching of this DVD was done with my wife and parents – and Mom was drooling over Death’s clothes too, so it’s NOT just geeks, goths and lesbians. ^_^

You may remember back in April, just as the Yuri Revolution tour was getting underway, I, Serge, Donna and Bruce bailed to go see a Takarazuka show at their Tokyo Theater. If you do not remember, please feel free to read my original gushing report.

Clearly the plot, characters, cool clothes and Deathlings have not significantly changed since I saw this show three months ago, so the original review will stand unaltered.

I was very impressed by the DVD itself though. Not only did it unexpectedly work on my R1 DVD player (I knew it would work on my computer, of course, but this was an added bonus) but it was exceptionally high quality, with a nice little “Program” inside that included cast, crew, synopsis, scenes, songs, and history. All in Japanese of course, but that is hardly an obstacle to fangirly-dom. Even more important was the picture card of Nao looking hunky as Der Tod. Yum. It now lives on my desk at work. ^_^

Every scene/song comes with a title on the screen, so you know what song you’re listening to. I was amazed that I could read about 80% of the song titles. I guess they keep those pretty simple.

The number one win in my book was that the tango between Nao Ayaki and Jun Sena at the very end of the revue portion of the show, was just as sexy as I remember it being. I know this is really fanservice Yuri and not really even that, because we’re supposed to see Death as a guy, but you know – Nao is gorgeous and doesn’t look remotely like a guy, so to my Yuri-goggles-on-low eyes, what you have is two women dancing. And I like it a lot. ^_^

I still want one of those Hapsburg shield mirror things from the finale, too. ^_^

Ratings:
Cinematography – 6 (like all stage shows we have too many close ups and often lose what’s actually going on on the stage)
Music – 7 (sticky Broadway theme stuff)
Story – 10 (If this doesn’t make you love history, NOTHING can)
Characters – 9 (With the exception of Rudolph who is a total pussy)
Yuri – 9

Overall – 8, objectively, but for me and those of my androgynous-women-in-uniform-loving ilk, 10, really.





Live Action: Kekkou Kamen Movie

July 7th, 2005

I was so happy to find a copy of the new Kekkou Kamen live-action movie, even though I was pretty sure that there was going to be no yuri in it.

I have reviewed the Kekkou Kamen anime, manga, and three truly horrible live-action movies, previously.

I had high hopes for the new live-action KK, if only because the new movie version of Cutie Honey had been so decent. Oh well. I guess it was too much to ask that this really trashy series ever be “decent.” ^_^

It wasn’t just that the scenes of Kekkou Kamen on a motorcycle were obviously filmed in front of a bluescreen – or that the “lascivious” behavior of the teachers and their henchmen were of the boring “slavering over a bra” kind. It was more like, it just got gross instead of tacky. Let’s put it this way – this movie actually *stole* the laxative schtick from Weather Woman. Does it really get lower than that?

The plot, such as it was, was not really enough for a real movie, so the middle bit gets kind of unfocused. I thought it was just me, but about 2/3 of the way though the movie, Mayumi breaks the fourth wall and actually speaks to Go Nagai, who pops up in a little bubble on the screen and answers. Clearly they’d lost all momentum by then. I didn’t feel too bad about only half paying attention.

Now – here was the one good thing – the actress playing Mayumi. She was *perfect.* In this version, Mayumi is a transfer student from New Zealand – not too bright, but not stupid; really bad at kanji – but with excellent English, which surprised the hell out of me. She’s not particularly cute, either, but really grows on you. Honestly, she was totally wasted in this movie, which wasn’t even particularly creative with its sort-of-sadistic, quasi-sexual tortures. Nothing even remotely as good as Gestapoko from the anime.

I was definitely bummed at the lack of yuri. There’s plenty of room for it – and its just about the one fetish the movie manages to miss – which, if you think about it could either be good, or bad. lol

The one last major bummer was the crappiness of the theme. In the anime Kekkou Kamen’s theme is sung by Shinohara Emi and is really great. The remake of the Cutie Honey theme for the movie was SO good that I was really hoping for a cool remake for KK’s theme. No dice. The new version is scratchy and whiny and generally suckariffic. Boo hooooo.

Ratings:
Cinematography – hahaha
Music – eh
Characters – Mayumi – wow; Everyone else – shrug
Story – bleh
Yuri – snort

Overall, a resounding noseblow of a movie. If you want to see it, you can borrow my copy.





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”.