I have been known amongst my friends and relatives to enjoy the Japanese pop culture. As my previous posts points out, video games and animes from Japan are usually the stuff I enjoy, but recently I was introduced to Japanese Cinema and I have been hooked to say the least. Since then I have come to despise Indian movies with a passion while English and Japanese movies have become my go to for movie watching.
Land of the Rising Sun.
It was around June last year when a really good friend of mine (see the blog ciklife.wordpress.com) came over, and brought a Japanese movie about baseball called Touch (no not that Touch!). Before then I had watched (or tried to watch) a couple of movies like the famous Seven Samurai or the horror classic, Dark Water. But that was about it. So anyways I really got into the movie which was replete with drama and tragedy, and of course baseball and by the time it ended was exhilarated to put bluntly.
A few days later I had a dental appointment, and was told that a couple of my teeth will required extraction. I was pissed. When I came home and booted my PC, my mind was a buzz. And for some odd reason the aforementioned Japanese movie was playing in my head, so I said to myself “Hey lets see if I can watch another good Japanese movie”. So I googled “Japanese movies streaming”, and a huge list of sites appeared all providing free streaming. “HHHEEEYYYY! THIS is going to be awesome” was my reaction as I started scourging a few sites. The name which looked like it could be worth a watch was Rainbow Song and as it turned out the streaming quality was really top-notch. Needless to say I really enjoyed the movie and thought about watching another one. Cut 5 hours later I was still going on with the now marathon of Japanese movies.
Akira Kurosawa: The father of modern Japanese Cinema
And so the following day I visited loads of movies sites trying to find out more good Japanese movies to watch and got around 10 names. I was dead set on watching these and in the following 5 days I did exactly that. It was really awesome. I mean these movies were really high-class stuff and although these were Asian movies, they were not one bit like the Indian movies crap which comes out from our neighbor. Here I was in my room the whole day, streaming one Japanese movies after another. Sure I did stumble on a couple of bad ones, but now I had started to form a pattern on which movies to watch right down to which directors and actors.
So in around 15 days I had watched around 18 movies, and still I was not done. I wanted more!!. As Ramadan were quickly approaching in 10 more days I was desperate to watch a few more ( I try not to watch any movies during Ramadan). So my plan was to watch at least 7 more movies, but they had to be really awesome. So for a day or two I listed 7 good movies (this list also included the Academy Awards 2009 Best Foreign film Departures). So the last 5 days were a blur and watched the last movie of the list a day before Ramadan. And to be sure it was damn awesome. So in the space of 22-23 days I had managed to watched 25 Japanese movies. Yes, THAT IS CRAZY!!!
Juri Ueno: My favorite Japanese actress.
I did notice a few things during the 20+ days marathon: Japanese movies don’t have any songs. Unlike Indian movies and their fetish of having at least 6 hundred million songs a movie!!!, Japanese movie stood away from that. Presented were some really provocative stories with really strong acting. Some of the movies were so powerful that they moved me right down to my core.
Another thing I noticed was how the Japanese society functioned, how they were so different from us Pakistanis yet there was something which made them similar to us. Sure we have seen in documentaries and analysis that how the Japan society was changing, moving to become like the American but there are still elements which makes them totally different from the Americans.
It not to say that I only watched heavy stuff, far from it. Japanese movies know their comedy and real life drama (light stuff of course). Some movies were really funny and creative. Some of the situations they depict were very comical in their nature while a few movies showed school life in Japan in the urban and rural setting. The school life in Japan is quite different in comparison with Pakistan. Their school provide academic studies along with extra-curricular activities in the form of clubs. I wish we had clubs when we were in school!. In Pakistan it is usually frowned upon by the schools themselves. Such activities are not encouraged at all, they considered to be time wasting. It’s a shame really.
Twilight Samurai: My favorite Japanese movie.
So the reason I got to writing this long post was that since those heady summer days I had stopped watching any Japanese movies. Mark it as too many movies too quickly. But last week or so I was hankering to watch a samurai movie. So I remembered the drill: looking in movie sites, getting the name and streaming it. The movie I got a hold was called Twilight Samurai, a tale of a petty samurai at the cusp of the start of the Meiji Restoration era. It was a brilliant movie along with the acting of Hiroyuki Sanada. This movie was a much better movie than Tom Cruise’s Last Samurai and I totally loved it. IT WAS GREAT TO BE BACK!!!
In conclusion I will say this: Indian movies REALLY suck and if any body wants to watch Asian Cinema, Japanese movies should be opted for.
Oh yeah I also found at least 4 movies which were blatantly copied by Indian movies. Like they ALWAYS do!
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