Asian Beauty Appreciation

Today was one of those Saturday afternoons with an open couple of hours to kill. I was in the mood for a light movie. Having seen Black Swan back in December, then having watched Natalie Portman walk off with the Oscar for Best Performance by a Female - she was in my thoughts. So I consulted her filmography, running down the list until I had come to The Professional. Portman had appeared in that film about hired assassins back in 1994. She was only a kid in 1994, and her costars were Jean Reno and Gary Oldman.

I had just recently watched and reviewed Rain Fall, a contemporary thriller set in Japan, and Oldman had been in that one too. So after a little bit more research I found Wasabi. This was a French film shot mostly in Japan and it played in the theaters in 2001. In this one, Jean Reno played a Parisian detective who had all of Dirty Harry’s style and none of Inspector Clouseau’s pratfalls.

But despite that pedigree, this was mostly – a comedy. Sure, such genre tags as Action, Drama, Crime, and Thriller were attached to Wasabi according to the IMDB. But trust me – this one was played for laughs.

Reno plays Hubert Fiorentini, a cop who would punch your lights out first just to get your attention, then, he’d ask you his questions. But as expected, his rough house techniques frequently got him in trouble with the suits – otherwise known as his bosses. After his latest dust up in a disco, he’s been commanded to visit his victim, the chief of police’s son, in the hospital, apologize, then go somewhere  – as in anywhere – on vacation.

Back in the day, say 19 or 20 years ago (there’s a running joke in the film about that 19 vs 20), he was working as part of a French Intelligence team in Tokyo. He met a local Japanese girl, Miko Kobayashi. One thing led to another, they married, and shortly after that, Miko vanished – never to be seen again.

Read more…

I did a piece about Japanese actress Kyoko Hasegawa back in August of 2009. That’s when I became aware of the film Rain Fall. This is a political conspiracy and a thriller combined, and the setting is in Tokyo. Kippei Shiina stars in the role of John Rain, an America with a Japanese father. He’s an ex-CIA covert operative, a trainer of US Navy Seals, and an assassin. In short, he’s one bad dude that you won’t want to mess with.

Gary Oldman stars as the head of the CIA’s Tokyo office. He chews up the scenery in an over-the-top performance. Oldman’s character, William Holtzer, is mostly office-bound where he commands his men from a state-of-the-electronic-arts war room. When he’s not barking orders like ‘Take the shot, TAKE THE  SHOT!, he’s cussing up a storm or bemoaning (Jesus Christ!) yet another missed opportunity.

The gorgeous Kyoko Hasegawa is on hand portraying the daughter of a Japanese whistle-blower. It will be Rain’s job to protect her.

Also on hand are a few Japanese police detectives, and the Yakuza. The detective is a wise and savvy veteran who gets a good handle on the case, but he can’t prove squat. The Yakuza are a shadowy presence. We will see the head guy a few times, but will meet some of his street soldiers on more than a few occasions.

The film was written and directed by Max Mannix. This was just his second time at directing a film. Names with two X’s are pretty rare; Xerxes, anyone?

Read more…

The Japanese Fall TV Drama Season was in full swing last month, and is now winding down at this time of the year. The Winter Season will soon begin. There are a number of shows currently being broadcast, or just recently concluded shows that featured some of Japan’s best actresses, former gravure idols, and women that are just beautiful. I’ll give you a few images from many of these shows with a small plot synopsis for each.

Face-Maker began on October 7th. It the story of Kirishima played by Masaru Nagai, , a skilled plastic surgeon. Before returning home to Japan, Kirishima was affiliated with the US Federal Witness Protection Program. Kirishima’s nickname is Face Maker. His practice helps those in need of an identity change as well as a need to look completely different. This doctor doesn’t work for cash. His payment for these surgeries is that he gets to keep someone’s previous face.

One such patient is the beautiful former gravure idol, Hiroko Sato, who has a featured double role in Episode Three. She first appears as one of the ‘before’ patients – Emiko Masubuchi.

Read more…

I’ve been following the career of a particular Japanese actress for a few years. Her name is Yuko Takeuchi. She was born on April 1st, 1980 so she’s 30 years old now. Her career in acting may have started before 1996, but that was the year she appeared in her first Japanese TV Drama Series which was called Saibougu. Her first film appearance was in 1998 in a film called Innocent World. Those were 14 and 12 years ago. I wasn’t able to find anything on Saibougu, but here is a clip from Yuko’s first film appearance.

http://s625.photobucket.com/albums/tt332/toyohara_fan/Video%20Clips/?action=view&current=InnocentWorld.mp4

From that beginning role, Yuko has gone on to win a number of awards for acting in both films and TV, so I thought I’d present a look back at Yuko on both the big screen and the small screen. From this point, I’m going to limit the presentations to those shows that I’ve actually seen. We will follow these chronologically so you so you get to watch as Yuko seemingly has grown more beautiful with the passing of years.

Lunch Queen Cover

In 2002, Yuko was the female lead in a TV series called Lunch no Joou or Lunch Queen. Yuko had top billing as Natsumi Nagita, a girl for who lunch was the highlight of the day. Through some rather unique circumstances, Natsumi ends up working at this restaurant called The Macaroni Kitchen. The restaurant was famous for it’s Rice Omellette with a demi-glaze sauce as shown in the image.

Read more…

Today I watched the film called The Japanese Wife. This film had some it of shot in Japan, but it is not a Japanese film. This was, surprisingly, a film directed by Indian film director Aparna Sen. Before becoming a director, Sen was a noted film actress in India. This film was shot in 2007 and was supposed to be released in 2008. But it wasn’t finally released until April, 2010.

The story’s lead character is a school teacher named Snehamoy Chatterjee. He is located in the Sundarbans area of West Bengal, India. His home is in a remote area mostly noted for being the largest tiger refuge in the world as well as the world’s largest tidal mangrove forest. His life is lonely. His parents were killed in a flood when he was a boy, and he has been raised by his maternal aunt. The role of Snehamoy was played by Indian actor Rahul Bose.

One day, he finds an advert for pen-pals in a magazine. On a whim he writes to this Japanese woman named Miyage. She’s also lonely. She runs a shop out of her home with her ailing mother. She is painfully shy, and hasn’t any friends, nor has she ever been in love. Her role is played by the Japanese actress Chigusa Takaku.

Their relationship begins with a series of letters written in English with both of them using a dictionary. These are narrated in part (also in English) by both Snehamoy and Miyage. From these letters, the bonds of love emerge. In fact, via letters, they exchange vows, and considered themselves married. All without ever having a face to face meeting. Letters and an occasional phone conversations are the extent of their physical relationship.

Read more…

Did you notice that the title is not Girl + s, instead it is Girl + $ as in Girl$. They call it Paid Dating and according to Hong Kong film Director Kenneth Bi, who helmed this film, the girls following this pursuit do not think of themselves as prostitutes. Instead they see themselves as having fun with pay.

This is a brand new film. It just opened two days ago on the 2nd of September. It attracted a lot of attention at the Hong Kong Internation Film Festival last March. And there’s plenty of buzz about it now.

While this film isn’t really about The Social Network or even social networking – chat, text, and email is how the girls do their business. Plenty of personal info is divulged and before you can say How much? or gei doh chin a?, which is Cantonese for how much, the old barter system comes into play. Cash is traded for sex.

There are four female leads and each of them are in the business for different reasons.  Three of the girl are in it for the money and more, but Bonnie Xian’s character Ronnie is actually a bored rich girl. She doesn’t do it for money. In fact, she pays the john. This Xian’s 5th film.

Bonnie (straight on view) and Michelle (half-profile)

Read more…

The China Lover is the 2008 novel by Ian Buruma, a Dutchman  now living in New York and teaching at Bard College. I’ve included the novel as the introduction to this article because the book jackets cover art are really eye catching.

The subject of the novel, or maybe it should be called a historical-fiction book based on real life events, is Yoshiko Yamaguchi who was also known as Shirley Yamaguchi, Li Xianglan, and Ri Kouran. Yoshiko was born in Manchuria in 1920 to Japanese parents.

Following the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese had set up a puppet Manchurian government. By the late 1930′s, she’d grown into a very pretty and talented young woman who soon caught the eyes of the Japanese working there. Yamaguchi wanted more than anything else to be a singer and a movie star.  The Japanese believed they had struck gold with this talented young woman, because she was fluent in both Mandarin and Japanese. Her movie career began and her career seemed to be fast tracked. But there was a problem.

Yamaguchi, was asked to pose as a Chinese girl by her Japanese handlers. Though born in China, and raised in China, she was Japanese. She was even given a Chinese name, Li Xianglan, to attract the Chinese audiences.

The agent makes a pitch to the director

Read more…

Five people, all twenty-somethings, are active in the workplace as well as members of the digital world. Somehow, via Twitter, or some other social network which they’ve used to communicate, they ultimately agree to meet. This is how the 11 week Japanese TV series called Sunao ni Narenakute begins. I’m not sure what the title actually means – but the tag-line of the series is -  It’s hard to say I love you, and that is a pretty good description about what will follow.

Basically, over the life of the series, which ran this year from mid-April through June 24th, we will learn some in depth info about the five lead characters. We watch as they struggle with their problems like: their aversion to commitments, their lack of confidence, their unwillingness to either express the truth or to face it.

If that sounds kind of grim and disturbing to you, you can rest assured that the series is not completely or only about bumps in the road, it only seems that way. The cast is youthful, attractive, and their problems/issues are not too remote for most of us to identify with or relate to. As they’ve agreed to meet for the first time in the opening Episode, I’ll give you a little thumbnail sketch about each of them to help you decide if you’d like to watch this series.

Read more…