Good, Weird, no Bad
Tears of the Black Tiger, Sukiyaki Western Django and now Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad and the Weird, starring Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun and Jung Woo-sung. Asian Westerns are where it’s at.
Why Is Miike Smirking?
Takashi Miike smirks, and I shudder.
Battlefield Asia
Looking for movies that combine big battles with the pain of Chinese history? How about: The Warlords, with Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro; the rape-free Mongol, with Tadanobu Asano as Temujin/Genghis Khan; An Empress and the Warriors, with Donnie Yen, Kelly Chen and Leon Lai; and […]
My Mousefinger’s Worn Out
A minimal, clever, innovative videogame… is it redundant to mention it’s Japanese? All hail Cursor*10!
Would You Let Your Daughter Marry Godzilla?
When Godzilla first waded out of the ocean to trample Odo Island in 1954, he was a monster for the times, serious as radiation poisoning. Japan was still rebuilding in the wake of WWII. Wartime traumas were still fresh. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only nine […]
Do You Want Fries With That?
Last year when I heard that Burger King was planning to release a series of video games for the Xbox 360, I thought the game industry was headed for a new low. To me, this went way beyond the shameless hordes of promotional tie-ins to popular movies and […]
The Cultural Gutter 