I'm in a kind of Asian Cultures 101 phase right now. It's actually been going on for some time, propped along by video games, Pokemon, and whatever Cartoon Network runs after midnight. Somehow, this weekend managed to turn into a nexus point... we bought Lost in Translation earlier this week, more or less an impulse pick. And I've been secretly planning a Ringu purchase for a couple weeks now, and the time just seemed right.

Rhonda loves watching a good movie, lately I usually don't. My hatred of physically entering a movie theater has bled over into our home life over the past few years. It's not that I don't like movies, it's just that I resent the time they occupy. Rhon brought home Pirates of the Caribbean one night, and I really resisted watching it. Yes, I was skeptical of the content, cynic that I am. But moreover I just didn't like knowing that I was about to lose two+ hours to an untested product. I actually set myself up with something to do while the movie ran - playing with my new Xevoz toys - as a silly effort to duplicate my time. It's a burden; I'm working through it... if only to avoid becoming a total prick about future movie events.

Lord of the Rings was a notable exception, but in that case I already had a vested interest in the film(s). And in the end, Pirates wasn't bad at all! I'm tempted to blame this attitude problem on video games... I mean, they're essentially movies you get to control, at least, the ones I prefer are. I'd rather be the main character than watch the main character. Even a game with a sucky, cliched plot >*Beyond Good & Evil*< at least gives me the ability to interact with it. And control when and how I experience it.

So these movies were a good opportunity to bridge the divide. Lost in Translation was a nice warm-up, a study of Americans adrift in Tokyo. It was much more subdued than I expected, which was great. It also has an ending that isn't 100% explained, which I always like. (Again, you might see that as me preferring to interact with the movie rather than just absorbing it... even if the interaction is as low-key as just thinking about what it means.)

We watched a portion of Lost in Translation with subtitles on - if you've seen it, you probably know what we were trying to do - and we agreed that neither of us are very good at watching movies with subtitles. (I long ago discovered this when I started working in TV and first saw extensive use of closed captioning.) I always read it more than I watch it, so the text becomes distracting and I miss the nuances of the video. And I read fast like a motherfucker, too.

So what did I do? Move us over into a Japanese film with English subtitles!

The nice thing is that Japanese is a very easy language to watch with subtitles. It seems like the average sentence is much longer in Japanese than in English, so you have plenty of time to grab the text at the bottom and still catch the faces, the inflection, the acting of the people onscreen. I'm surprised this DVD wasn't dubbed with English voices, but I'm really glad it wasn't.

Me choosing Ringu is a direct result of playing Fatal Frame 2. I had read some sites that talked about the similarities, and I found the Ringu manga at the bookstore shortly thereafter, so the film had to come right behind. I quickly decided against the American version, and a look at the trailer seems to bear that out. The US remake looks like more of the same overbaked horror, which I almost never watch. I like subtlety and suspense, not shock and effects. In terms of horror, Ringu builds up to exactly one scene... while the US trailer indicated gore and blood and ghosts every few minutes.

It was pretty cool to see elements in Ringu that I recognized from Fatal Frame. Not to say that FF2 was derivative, but I realize now that it definitely has some homage moments. (And who knows, maybe Ringu is an homage to something else. I'm no film student.) I had never seen a genuine, modern Japanese movie before, so the general similarities to Japanese video games was striking. I imagine I shouldn't be surprised at that, given how closely the two media cross over, and how highly the Japanese respect video games. I'm probably talking out of my ass and making more of it than it really is, but the pacing, the effects, the editing, the style said "game cutscene" to me. Which in actuality means the reverse is true: the video game scenes say "movie."

A couple months ago, before I had even heard of Ringu, I happened upon a great little Flash cartoon featuring tons of fan art of Sadako set to music. I can't believe I can't locate it now so I can link to it. Maybe Sadako herself had it removed.