47 ronin

Man, it's been so long since I last posted a review here that the entire dashboard has changed and I am confused. What's with these new buttons? What is this thing you call "Publish"? I'm pretty sure when I last posted the option was "Chisel into stone". Anyway, with my beloved on school holidays we have manipulated many of our relations into babysitting for us and seen quite a few movies ("quite a few" in the way that parents of young children see nothing new unless they illegally download it and then watch it over three days over the periods where said kids are not throwing cornflakes on the floor or finding glasses of water to knock over.)

47 Ronin has received many terrible reviews. On Metacritic, its score was 29 (out of 100, for those sensible people who don't care about review sites that aren't, obviously, this amazing one right here.) I assumed it was going to be so awful that I would spend most of it composing mean tweets in my head, should I ever see it. And then I scored some free tickets, which meant that I could see it, with no guilt. Score!

Keanu Reeves plays Kai, a "half-breed" found almost dead in a river as a youth and brought up by the compassionate Lord Asano (Min Tanaka), though all around him treat him badly apart from Asano's daughter, Mika (Ko Shibasaki). The town they live in is visited by the Shogun, who is accompanied by a rival lord, the constantly smarmy Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano). Kira has dire plans for the town, however, along with the magical, nameless shapeshifter played with absolute alarming creepiness by Rinko Kikuchi, whom I will love forever after being in Pacific Rim. After manipulating the event and causing Lord Asano to commit seppuku to restore his now-bad name, the town's army, left as ronin--masterless samurai--decide to fight for Asano's honour, despite the quest meaning certain death.

About halfway through I leaned over and whispered to Chris, "What is everyone talking about? This is a perfectly serviceable movie!" At the end, I cried. (Don't read the Wikipedia entry on the true story of the forty-seven ronin, it is spoiler central.) This is a movie that had a good pace, knew how long to make the action scenes without giving the viewer fight fatigue, was populated by a large amount of handsome male actors with long hair (swoon), and never once made me look impatiently at my watch. The acting was all marvellous--Keanu wooden as per usual but it works as a stoic samurai-type--and it even passed the Bechdel test, with both Rinko Kikuchi's witch and Ko Shibasaki's Mika princess tough as nails.

Of course it has flaws: it's a Japanese myth made by Hollywood, with Reeves as a half-breed when there was no such person in the original story. It's frustrating, because Hollywood is so obsessed with white people saving the day in every nation, and Reeves' closest tie with Asia is being one-quarter Chinese-Hawaiian (Hawaii having a large Japanese influence, however.) At least the rest of the cast were Japanese and not from a variety of unrelated Asian countries *cough*Crouching Tiger*cough*; also, Asano's 2IC, Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada, my boyfriend from Sunshine) is just as much the hero, and mostly more useful, than Kai. The one ronin who is more big-boned than the rest supplies comic relief through his weight alone, which also feels out of place. The Japanese witchcraft doesn't add much to the tale, so could be done without; one frighteningly large silver samurai is mysterious right until it is unmysteriously dispatched but without an explanation for its origins. Also, that all-over-tattoo dude from the posters has like one line and ten seconds of screen time, would it have killed advertisers to put Sanada or Shibasaki on it? Jeez.

But kudos to the filmmakers for staying fairly close to the bones of the original story, for totally surpassing my low expectations, and for the most un-Hollywood ending I've seen in a long time. I give this 47 out of 70 Ronin.

lisa dempster, neon pilgrim

I have to confess here that I have ulterior motives for reading this book. I’ve never been a big reader of travel literature, mostly because it makes me bitter that I am not there with them. I’ve read some, like Sarah Turnbull’s Almost French, which I enjoyed (despite wanting the author to break up with her French boyfriend who seemed like a pain), and Peter Carey’s Wrong About Japan, which should be called Wrong About Thinking This Was Interesting Enough To Be Published. Otherwise, it just upsets me, thinking of all these people with their abilities to a) save enough to travel, b) deal with unexpected circumstances, c) learn life lessons and d) not get murdered. Full disclosure: I have been to Japan myself for three weeks and had an absolute blast, and I did bang on about it in my blog and to anyone who walked near me even years afterwards, but not enough happened to write an entire book about. Unless you all want to read about all the different vending machine locations we found Dr Pepper in, or how many arcade games we played while waiting for the torrential rain to stop.

Back to my motivation: Lisa Dempster, the author of Neon Pilgrim, is a friend of a friend of a friend, and she is closely involved with independent publishers. So through local-author karma, interest in helping out a pal (of a pal of a pal), and the fact I’d actually been to the country she was talking about, I thought I’d break my anti-travel-lit stance and read it.

Lisa travels to Japan in need of a change of health and harmony, to take on the henro michi, a 1200 hike through southern Japan and to the 88 temples that a ninth century Buddhist monk and all-round awesome dude named Kobo Daishi traipsed back in the day. Determined to get all the pilgrimage has to offer, Lisa goes on foot and nojuku—which basically means sleeping rough. Instead of staying in the hotels, ryokans and the like, she intends to sleep at temples or wherever she can find. At the first temple, stocked up with all of the accruements of a pilgrim: white vest, incense, name slips, and the staff (an embodiment of the Daishi himself), she begins.

It’s a vivid journey, and she doesn’t spare us any of its beauty or horror. The heat is oppressive, the landscape glorious, the blisters numerous and the mochi tasty. We learn how to thread blisters and how many times you could throw up in one day from hiking alone; we learn how wonderful the top of a mountain can feel and the astonishing generosity of the people. That affected me more than anything, the amount of everyday Japanese people willing to give settai, gifts to pilgrims without any expectation of return. People offer Lisa rides and food, drinks and advice, anything they can. They drive by and pass a cucumber through the window, wave and take off. It’s incredible, and completely unlike anything I could imagine happening here. The people Lisa meets along the hike, as well, are a varied and fascinating bunch; veterans who spend their time looping the circuit and have almost too much advice to offer, gaijin (foreigners) like Lisa, young attractive Japanese men whose casual confidence makes me—ahem, Lisa—weak at the knees.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t go as planned for Lisa. It’s a tough hike, and it wears her down, and leaves her alone with her thoughts. Her physical endurance is amazing, along with her bravery in sleeping alone on benches and in temples, even though she does occasionally find herself in need of proper accommodation to gather her thoughts and health. Not that I’m not in awe of what she did, as you wouldn’t find me hiking a) alone, b) with nowt but a sleeping mat as a bed, or c) at all. She fears bears and boars and her own capabilities, and what made me enjoy the book was how honest it is. She doesn’t fake enlightenment when it doesn’t happen, but she admits to her cynical self feeling astonished at how spiritual some places made her feel. We are there when her feet hurt and the stars shine brightly, when she makes good decisions or bad ones, when she refuses assistance or accepts it. And we are there, with her, at the end. Except not physically, obviously. Some people travel the henro michi by helicopter, and that sounds just dandy to me.

ponyo

It’s no secret that I’m a big, giddy fan of Studio Ghibli. I’ve even been to the Ghibli museum in Japan, where I squeaked over the giant Laputa robot, understood nothing of the short film that was entirely in Japanese, and was proclaimed too big to jump all over the giant My Neighbour Totoro catbus. So I was a big arm-flap of excitement over the release of Ponyo.

From what I can gather plot-wise, Ponyo is the name of a “goldfish” that five-year-old Sosuke discovers washed up on the beach near his clifftop home. In taking care of her, he unleashes the anger of Ponyo’s father, a human who lives under the sea after giving up on humanity, continuing his existence in a variety of air-bubble type houses and vehicles. Sosuke and Ponyo become very attached to each other, and when Ponyo’s father retrieves her, breaking Sosuke’s heart, Ponyo decides she’s sick of being a fish with a semi-human face (which only one person seems to actually notice) and become a human, aided by the magic her father is storing away to save the ocean. Her attempts to do so unwittingly create utter chaos, because, as we all know, Magic Can Occasionally Be a Bad Idea. Can Ponyo and Sosuke’s friendship fix this problem?

It’s gorgeous. It really is. The colours are beautiful, the moments of happy family familiarity are touching, and unsurprisingly the backgrounds and action scenes are absolutely divine. Like a few of the other Ghibli movies, it doesn’t always make a whole lot of sense (as one of our fellow watchers said, “It’s like there was about ten minutes in the middle that they just forgot to put in”) and there’s a few parenting choices that make you want to move to the back of the cinema and discreetly dial Child Protection Services. But to counter that last point, it’s always lovely in a way to see a world in which children are much wiser and braver than we give them credit for, and the adults are happy to believe in them. Still, I doubt I’d leave my five-year-old alone in a cliff house during a storm and while a crazy old man is possibly out to find him. But then, I’ve always been the kind of person who worries over silly little things like that.

I can’t say there’s much in the way of plot, and it possibly has the least amount of conflict that I have ever witnessed in a movie. But it’s a kid’s movie, and a sweet one at that. Everyone is endearing, even the bad guys, there’s a whole bunch of smooching and magic, and frankly you’re best leaving the logic part of your brain at the door, where it’s already been battered by convincing yourself that six dollars for popcorn is in any way reasonable.

I adored this. I can’t say enough how lovely the whole movie is. It’s no Totoro, but it’s a great antidote to the brilliant but depressing Ghibli movie Grave of the Fireflies, and frankly it’s one of my favourites. Disney may now have their fingers in the Ghibli pie, but clearly they don’t have a lot of pull, otherwise this movie would have had a narrator explaining what the hell was going on with the father and his magic, and a disclaimer at the end about Always Wear Your Seatbelt, Kids. As it is, we’re not always sure of the reasoning behind Ponyo, but I’m more than willing to abandon myself to Ghibli once more.