Movies

I'm not sure how big it is in the States, but anyone who's been living here for the past few months has been bombarded with Ponyo ads, and that catchy catchy song in particular. "Gake no Ue no Ponyo" is Hayao Miyazaki's take on the Little Mermaid story (and if you've ever done karaoke with me, you know how much I like that movie) and was so sweet it made my teeth hurt. I tagged along with a buddy and his friends and wasn't surprised when the theatre was full of little kids. I WAS surprised that at least some movie theatres in Japan are assigned seating, which is why we bought our tickets a full 3 hours before the show. Either way, it was a cute movie, with catchy music and some typically beautiful Studio Ghibli artwork. If you're like me, you've seen a fair number of Ghibli films, and I probably wouldn't recommend this over titles like Laputa or Grave of the Fireflies, but it's good nonetheless.

Last night I stayed up past my planned bedtime to watch Nada Sousou (translated as Tears for You in the US, apparently), a story about parentless step-siblings living in Okinawa. The title translates to "never-ending tears" in the Okinawan dialect, but I couldn't figure out if this was supposed to apply to the audience as well. There's a ton of drama and some really sad parts, but the abruptness of certain events, a couple of fairly pointless scenes, and a rather unfulfilling ending left me wondering what just happened as opposed to getting anywhere near to crying. I suppose my occasional inability to understand what was happening may have helped my eyes stay dry, but I'm not particularly prone to crying from movies anyway. What normally happens is I internalize it and just kind of feel crappy for a bit, but this film fell short on that as well.

That said, I still liked it. I thought it was an interesting story, with some decent acting and a very cute lead female in Masami Nagasawa (plus she's a fine actress, and amazing compared to the acting on TV). The title song has been on my mp3 player since I studied abroad here in 2003, a remake by Rimi Natsukawa. Apparently this movie is partially inspired by the song, but I don't necessarily associate the two. I wouldn't be surprised if I end up renting it to see if I missed something from watching it on TV, but I doubt I'd buy it.