An experience of sorts: Japanese Film Festival 2016 opening ceremony & 'After the Storm' thoughts

Hello, there! This time around, I'm giving a throwback of me saying things about what happened that I think matters to me: writing a long-ass post about it! And also, why not throw in a new banner for my blog, right? Oh yeah, those are totally characters from The Boy and the Beast, one of the films that will be screened at Japanese Film Festival Malaysia 2016, and I'm keeping it! It's not just a promotional thing! NARNIA is long gone!

Fret not though. I know this is supposed to be a blog dedicated to reviewing films (and other things). It's here because a film was indeed screened after the opening ceremony attended by PRESS members for this year's edition of Japanese Film Festival organised by Japan Foundation, Kuala Lumpur in association with Golden Screen Cinemas. A brief review of that film, titled After the Storm, will follow suit.

My gut-feeling as one of the few guests of honour

Which begs me to this question; how the HELL did this wild invitation appear in my inbox while I was doing my job? And why, oh why, did it have to clash with the screening for a free movie which I won tickets to thanks to Movie Addict? World is cruel.

The mysterious email in question. That person in the screenshot of this screenshot is Kiki Kilin, one of the actors for the film I watched that night, and she is KILIN' it with her role! More on that later. And sorry not sorry for the lame pun.

How the heck did he get my email? And how am I a press member now? What kind of credibility do I have? Is it because of THIS article?

My review is the third one. Not lying mah!

Yeah. One of my reviews got featured at The Daily Seni - AGAIN! This time around, it's sandwiched between THE Fadli al-Akiti (a renowned film critic and owner of TontonFilem) and New Straits Times' review excerpts, and it's for a film currently showing in local cinemas right now, Pekak. And yes, this is totally a legit article.

Whatever the case is, since I already went to a few screenings with the awesome group, I decided to give up my tickets and pass it to my siblings instead, so I can take up this invitation, to see where things would go from here. The unfortunate thing was, I was stuck in traffic when the press conference was commencing. It was then I would have the chance to maybe get closer to the aforementioned veteran actress whom I think was indeed very likeable both on-screen and off-screen judging from a video tribute played before her speech during the festival's opening ceremony and the speech itself, through the way she conveyed her message.

Here she is, straight from the red carpets draped under her feet just outside the theater hall. I was too hungry munching on the finger foods to even care about her, 'cause a brother's gotta eat. Gomenasai!

Photo by Japan Foundation, Kuala Lumpur.

While it was awkward and all, with me being just an ordinary guy being thrown into a world of press screenings (with this one being the totally official one), I guess it was a pleasant one, even if I talked to only very few of them, introducing myself like the amateur that I am (and I rue the day that I didn't get the chance to drop my non-existent contact card!). This occurrence might seem normal to some people, but for a socially awkward human like myself who just happens to write film reviews for fun, this is a huge deal. It gives people like me, the low self-esteem guy, a high purpose. Which means people still need guidance on what is or what is not a good film, and I am stamped as that kind of guy who does just that. And me getting recognised as an ACTUAL member of the press by being invited to this kind of event was kind of something. Ookay. Not much else I can say about the event. On with the film review.

A film review: The swagger of 'Tokyo Tribe' is second to none!

Origin: Japan · Language: Japanese, English
Director & writer: Sono Sion
Release: August 30, 2014 · Genres: Musical, crime, comedy

Casts: YOUNG DAIS, Ryohei Suzuki, Nana Seino,
Riki Takeuchi, Shota Sometani

More info: IMDb

Happy new year, my fellow readers (if there are any)!

Um, yes. That's about it. I know I'm draggy when I type things, but I don't know how to cheese it up. It's amazing how people are able to pull off that shit. Really!

Okay, moving on to my very first review of the year.

I first heard of Tokyo Tribe / TT from a local entertainment/comics magazine, at a time where I think everything hyped in that magazine is a must-catch; however, that was a very, very long time ago when only its manga existed. So far, they were right about Kill Bill being awesome (and as I am writing right now about that magazine that introduced me to Kill Bill, I just realised that this film actually references the movie... er, I mean... references Kill Bill's reference!). But somehow, I never bothered to read the manga, since I was put off by the manga-ka's drawing style and the seriousness of the plot that just doesn't add up after a glimpse of it. Its front cover managed to fool me, alright.

Then, I previewed the first episode of its anime series. It looks nothing like the manga at all; the art style is way better, and borrow heavy cues from the hip-hop culture. Reminds me of good old Samurai Champloo a bit, but the hip-hop influence made more sense in TT's anime series.

Enter 2014. Outta nowhere, some dude named Sono Sion, the director of that 4-hour long film Love Exposure (which I have yet to watch, but is in my list nonetheless) decided to adapt the manganime to a live-action film format. But instead of a straight gangster approach like its source materials, Sono-san instead fully embraced all things hip-hop by making this a feature-length, literal rap battle between the conflicting tribes. You read that right; it's a musical gangster film! Take that, Tim Burton and your musical horror! Sono-san right here is the REAL DJ! Hit it!

A film review: What the 'Tampopo' is going on here?!

Original title: タンポポ (Dandelion)
Origin: Japan · Language: Japanese
Director & writer: Juzo Itami
Genre: Comedy · Release: November 23, 1985

Casts: Ken Watanabe, Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Koji Yakusho

More info: IMDb

Ookay. The title of this post does NOT make sense at all; and so are some bits and pieces of the film I'm about to review!

See, our dear friends at Pusat Kajian dan Apresiasi Filem [Centre of Film Research and Appreciation] (one of these fellow is a lecturer of mine) on specified periods (usually in 2 months) would usually hold a screening on a variety of films from around the globe. For the entirety of these determined screening periods, a theme would be assigned.

For this September till October, they have chosen films revolving food... and boy what a starter they served as the opening!

HOW COINCIDENTAL IS THIS?! I honestly didn't even bother to check on the screenings' schedule, when suddenly... POOF! The first food movie is a Japanese movie! Which is exactly a day before the 38th edition of the Malaysian Bon Odori Festival in Shah Alam! Hot dawg! Ain't destiny's a beautiful bitch!

After lurking around the webs for some info I could use to give this review some credibility, to my surprise, this film also features Ken Watanabe, all young and noobish, in his early heyday in Japanese cinema!

It's also a no-brainer to know that I'm surprised... well, shocked to be exact, on the style of execution in both its main storyline and many unrelated subplots. Which makes this film... unmistakably Japanese!

A film review: 'Godzilla (2014)'

Origin: USA, Japan
Language: English, Japanese
Director: Gareth Edwards
Producers: Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Mary Parent, Brian Rogers
Writer: Max Borenstein, Travis Beacham, Guillermo del Toro
Genre: Science fiction
Casts: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins,
David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston
Release: May 16, 2014
Studio: Legendary Pictures
Distributors: Warner Bros. (International), Toho (Japan)

Before I went to see this new American rendition, I had the intention of watching Ishiro Honda-directed first film Gojira and the God-awful Roland Emmerich-directed reimagining (which we actually watch when we were little as this is one of the film that local TV channel TV3 keeps on replaying) back-to-back with my brother. Unfortunately, we didn't get to watch the former due to time constraints or something, but we did somehow make time to watch the latter... and boy was that a bad decision. We tried really hard to watch Emmerich's rendition with serious intent on the third attempt at watching it... but after realising that it was so badly made about half-way through the movie, we ditched it AGAIN and decided that it should be immediately removed from my external hard drive and to never be mentioned, heard of or remembered by EVER AGAIN. It was just WAY too unbearable to watch OR comprehend.

Thankfully, Bryan Cranston, one of the casts of the film of this new version of the iconic kaiju (who is also Malcom's dad, Skyler's husband... you know the drill), once said in an interview somewhere (I saw this in Wikipedia, of course... not like the actual interview) that this year's Godzilla by Gareth Edwards (a new British director who made an impressive debut with Monsters [which I haven't seen yet]) might just be so powerful enough, it can totally wipe out the memory of having seen the 1998 'masterful disaster' film ironically directed the former 'master of disaster films.'

You know what? I agree with him wholeheartedly, no questions asked. Le genius Heisenberg can never go wrong. NEVER! More sentences are coming your way, so bear with me.

A video game review: 'DmC: Devil May Cry'

Origin: Japan, United Kingdom
Language: English
Genre: Hack-and-slash
Platforms: PlaySation 3 / Xbox 360 / Windows
Release:
PS3 & X360 - January 15 (USA) & 17 (JP), 2013
Windows - January 24 (AUS) & 25 (USA), 2013
Developers: Ninja Theory (PS3 & X360), QLOC (Windows)
Publisher: Capcom

Thanks a lot, Dante. Thanks a lot for making my life unproductive again after I've finished exploring this new rendition of your personality and back story! Fuck you (in the words of Dante and one of the bosses in the game)!

It looks like this game had started things off for a slew of upcoming 2013 releases, and it is none other than a reboot of the most badass action franchise to date which pretty much started the whole 'one guy looking super-cool while killing loads of baddies' kind of games weirdly titled DmC: Devil May Cry / DmC.