Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

I went to see the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha." Here in Japan the title was changed to "SAYURI."

The movie was kind of strange but also very interesting.

The characters in the movie speak in English. The hairstyle of the Geishas were appearently different from real Geishas walking on the streets in Kyoto.

The story was good in first half but the latter half was kind of difficult to understand. I actually did not like the story.

Some of Japanese argue Japan portrayed in that film was too strange to see. But how many of Japanese know the old time Japan, especially the life of Geisha? How many of us know how to wear traditional kimono?

So in that sense Hollywood made the best of their efforts.

One thing I find they are better than Japanese films is the scenes of the evening party. Usually those scenes are very bright like today's party room with fluor lamps on the ceiling. That never happened in 1930's. But in the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha," the room was not very bright and the Geisha's face was lit by orange paper lantern. That should be real scenes of those days, I think.

The thing I was kind of disturbed by was the main character was played by Chinese actress, Zhi Zhang. She is a great actress, but the point is the character she played might aggravate Chinese people. The story took place in 1930's Japan. It was a time Japan was invading China. The Geisha fell in love with Japanese rich man who once fought in Manchuria. Then after the war she helped him with reconstructing his business sleeping with American military man.

Today is the time the relationship between China and Japan has become worst in post-war time. It is due to our stupid prime minister and his uneducated conservative supporters.   

As one of Japanese citizen who is very aware of how apologetic Japan should be to China, I could not enjoy this movie although the Chinese actress did played that role as Hollywood actress.

I bought a DVD of the story behind America's one of the most popular show in history "Charlie's Angels."

It was almost like a story of the most popular Angel, Farrah Fewsett-Majors.

Since Farrah became the angel, her marriage life with Lee Majors, who was very popular as "6 million dollar man" in those days got in a big trouble. Then she decided to quit the show.

That was a big trouble for the production. The interesting thing was the contract between the production and Farrah was basically oral. You can't imagine this thing can happen in today's Hollywood. The actors there now have to sign on piles of contract papers in order to be in the show. In those days, oral agreement was common. 

In 1970's America, women's action drama was considered to be very unique. But there was feminist movement in those days, so their sexy detective characters were very criticised. I thought it was highly accepted by feminists because they act as independent strong women, not just being sexy. It seemed feminist women in those days expected too much from entertainment industry.

Anyway, it was a nice story. It is not documentary. It is a drama based on the book written by a former manager of Farrah. The actress who acted Farrah resembles real Farrah so much. However, I like Cheryl Ladd best among real 6 Angels. I hate the Angels in the movies.

Please also read http://dearamericans.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/04/30/ch...

I rent the DVD of this movie. I did not like this movie.

Yes, it was gorgeous but there was no story in it. Especially the ending was not so good. It was like documentary film.

The worst of all is DiCaprio did not fit into that Howard Hughes character.

I went to see the movie "Shall We Dance?" starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez.

It was released in US last October. Then now it is shown in Japan. Actually the movie was remake of Japanese movie of the same title.

A middle age man who was bored with his routine work happened to be a student of dance school and then participated in amateur ballroom dance contest.

The story was almost the same as original. I have seen the original many times. I like that movie. I like American version, too.

But what surprised me was someone's learning to dance is subject to tease even in USA. Here in our society, dancing is not as common as in US, so if a middle aged man is found learning to dance, some people might look at him as strange lewd guy.

How do you consider ballroom dancing? How do you see a middle aged man who is learning walz or latin?

Do you learn social dance in high school or before as compulsory curriculum?

Anyway, I feel like learning to dance.