Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 29, 2010 in Japanese TV
This very strange Kirin Green Tea ad from 2003 features Nanako Matsushima (松嶋菜々子). Apparently the young lad is getting his romantic advice from a manga, so our fashion model hero knocks him to the floor and then gives him tea tips with the help of her panda puppet. The entire sequence is very strange to say the least, and yet making it even odder is that we never see the panda puppet or the tea in the establishing shot with Nanako: Read more…
What makes for good literature? Now, this is only an opinion, but the best stories… the ones that really make you squirm with delight, are never about the guns, the gadgets, or the girls, its about how these objects move our characters. Was the “Final Frontier” about uncharted space, or was it really about how exploring the last unknown effected our heroes? In The Time Traveler’s Wife we see how an all too overused plot device, time travel, is used to stretch a conventional romance to the brink and back. Read more…
Oldboy (올드보이) was a popular 2003 revenge film from Korea which was based on a Japanese manga by the same (オールド・ボーイ) written by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya which ran from 1996 until 1998. Now normally I’m 100% against Hollywood remakes, but in this case I’ll make an exception. I think if Spielberg tackles Oldboy that it might popularize and open the door for more Asian cinema to come to the United States. And if he can get a popular actor like Will Smith involved that would be a real cherry on top:
“Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are in early discussions to collaborate on a remake of Chan Wook-park’s “Oldboy.” DreamWorks is in the process of securing the remake rights, and the new pic will be distributed by Universal. In the 2003 Korean original, a man gets kidnapped and held in a shabby cell for 15 years without explanation. Suddenly, he’s released and given money, a cell phone and clothes and is set on a path to discover who destroyed his life so he can take revenge.”
