That’s funny because my Japanese teachers liked both movies. In fact, one of them is going to see Kill Bill Volume 2 with us on Friday, so it must not make fun of them like you seem to think. The only negative comment I’ve heard from them is that Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu both didn’t speak Japanese very well, which they didn’t. Big deal.
Kill Bill, from what my Japanese Professors are telling me, throws every Japanese stereotype you can possibly think of (the screaming, insane samurai, etc.) into two hours of nonstop gore. Why would I want to see a movie like this? It does matter what your beliefs are. If you create a movie that depicts insane amounts of gore, you can’t justify it because it can never be meaningful to the plot.
Why would anyone want to see Lost in Translation? I dare anyone to tell me what this movie is about. I watched the special features on the DVD hoping they’d explain to me what it was I “didn’t get” about the plot. Lo and behold, there was none.
points to favorite movie in sig
I wonder how many gallons of fake blood was used in that movie. Anyway it has one of my favorite lines in it. I goes something like this:
“For those of you who are still alive but lost a limb, leave them there. They belong to me now.”
Anyway, Kill Bill was my second online purchase with my new credit card. God, I hope I don’t get addicted. I’ll be getting in in the mail some time next week.
Dude, it isn’t Japanese steriotype- it’s a parody of and HOMAGE to Japanese MOVIES- so of COURSE it’s going to have screaming samurai and the anime scene and all that.
brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
I forgot to post this before. I finished a course called Cultural Dimension of Business last semester (with a B+ thank you very much), and my professor talked about Japan a lot. The one thing in Kill Bill that was actually accurately depicted in the movie was the scene with the Japanese chick (don’t remember her name) was sitting at the head of the table talking to her underlings. When one of the guys rejected her thoughts, she either killed him or hurt him really badly (I don’t remeber which, sorry it’s been a while since I saw the movie). In Japan it is very important to alway agree with your superiors. Speaking you mind is actually almost looked down upon (though death or physical punishment isn’t used like in the movie). Of course in reality, the head of the table would never be woman. I learned in class that Japanese business women won’t be taken seriously unless she has a male spokesperson. Forgive me if I’m wrong about anyting, I’m just going by what was talked about it the above said couse. It was an interesting experiece to say the least.
All this coming from a man in Illinois who goes by the name Ikimasho Zwei. Obviously you have no taste in film, or else you’d notice how much of an homage and combination of old kung-fu and samurai films it is.
Uma Thurman’s suit is directly linkable to Bruce Lee’s outfit (shown below) in Game of Death
<img src=“http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/images/ezine/03.19_KillBill_1.jpg”></img> Uma Thurman, Kill Bill.
<img src=“http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/images/ezine/gameofdeath.jpg”></img> Bruce Lee, Game of Death.
I could go on and on about the similarities, but I will just let you read an article about it yourself:
http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=404
Also, why not actually check the movie out for yourself rather than listen to the seemingly backwards opinion of 2 people when it is compared to the nearly 15 people here that have told you it is quite a beautifully done movie.
No. Just not for me.
Completely understandable, you never liked any of the previous Tarantino movies.
Lost in Translation is supposed to be about Bill Murray feeling alienated by Japanese culture. Its SUPPOSED to make Japanese culture seem strange. Its about culture shock.
You say how it insutls Japanese culture Ikimasho, I don’t think so, but you could also say that it embraces women since women are very powerful in the movie. Women are generally thought of as weak. Such as in one of the end scenes, Uma Thurman’s character kills hundreds of guys by herself, however, each of the logn fights she did were against women. In fact, the women got her pretty good. So even it insults Japanese culture, which I dont’ think so and Steve even shows good evidence of it supporting it, it embraces and shows women (half the population of the world) in good light. One portion insulted vs half embraces, gee it’s so terrible. Also, you are speaking without seeing the movie, which is stupid since you have a weak bases of support. Also, the Japanese stuff is only about half the movie. In the first half it is…well it’s hard to describe.
I didn’t even really grasp how Lost in Translation came into this conversation. I actually really enjoyed the movie. Shinobi had it right - an important part of the movie is showing how alien a culture can be to a person typically living outside of it. The other part is about how people feeling completely lost in the weirdness around them (regardless of whether they have anything else in common, which in all likelihood they don’t) can find each other and confront it together. Maybe I understood it like that because I’ve been in similar situations before.
I’m considering renting Kill Bill… I’m almost kinda sorta working past the gory stuff issue, since it’s been said it’s anime-like in rendering and I’ve seen some nasty anime… but still, it’s people, not pictures. We’ll see.
Oh, I see. And I suppose where you come from is intellectually superior to the entire world. In case you didn’t get my implication because you were too busy being high and mighty, I’ll spell it out for you: you sound like a giant elitist. If you can’t handle my opinions feel free to disagree with me, but if you’re going to insult me based on something trivial (i.e. where I live), be prepared for retribution in kind.
You’ve described the theme. Movies need theme. Theme is important. However, movies also need a plot. Where is the plot in Lost in Translation? How are either of the main characters dynamic or interesting? What is the boundary between making a movie about culture shock, and making a movie that instead depicts two Americans who are completely uninterested in exploring and understanding another culture? (I understand this last one is the hardest to defend. The proverbial “line” is actually rather thin).
My teachers never said it was particularly insulting, but rather that it was simply ignorant and cliched. You’re not the only person who’s mentioning that I have a weak basis of support because I haven’t seen the movie. This is true, and I have been wrong about movies before, but that was when I had incorrectly accessed the theme of the movie. From what I understand, the theme of Kill Bill is death and gore and violence for the purpose of revenge (IMO, the basest mode of humanity). The story may be wonderful, the camerawork may be masterful and the sets may be gorgeous, but with as weak a core as the one I’ve had described to me over and over again (and which many of the posts in this thread have affirmed), I am without any desire to see this movie, or any other of Quentin Terantino’s “masterpieces” for that matter.
I never said it was masterful, it’s just that saying it needs to mature wtihout seeing it is stupid. In fact, I find the moie pretty humorous. Also, speaking without seeing the movie is beign jsut as ignorant as your are claiming it to be. Cliched? It is very unique and not like many movies. It has excessive violence like some movies, but it is unique in just about every other way.
Ikimasho, Steve’s point is that you have a Japanese name, but are condemning the movie for it’s Japanese influence. Illinois isn’t popular for being a an area with a large Japanese, or even Asian, population, so for you to speak about an American movie on its Japanese stuff is a bit like “where do you get off being saintly about Japanese influence.” He’s not claiming to be better with Japanese culture than you, it is jsut that you have a Japanese name, despite low Japanese population.
lmao, High and mighty… if you didn’t realize it, I do not mind opinions if they’re well founded (hence my understanding sir percival’s staying away from the movie). Two professors isn’t really well founded if you ask me.
Honestly, I don’t think of myself as elitist. Plus, I sure as hell don’t think I’m above anyone, hell I have huge self esteem issues because of the opposite of that 
All I was doing was proving your reasoning for disliking it wrong, you can have any opinion you want
And damn man, the whole point of the first Kill Bill Volume is to look clichéd. It wouldn’t be an homage to an already clichéd set of genres if it wasn’t clichéd itself. If you REALLY want clichéd, then you’d get gratuitous bullet time and other stupid matrix-like effects (namely the slow motion).
Edit: that’s a lotta clichés >>;
Violence and gore- if you see the movie, you’ll understand that the violence and gore is COMPLETELY over the top. It’s not meant to be taken seriously- if Tarintino wanted the violence to be taken seriously, he wouldn’t have made it so cartoony. It’s purposely not supposed to be realistic since the entire movie isn’t supposed to be seen as an entirely serious film.
Japanese stereotypes? In a way, but it’s in homage to all the old samurai and kung fu movies, so it’s just as guilty by association as those. The stereotypes aren’t offensive either- it’s not like he was trying to insult or make fun of Japanese culture in the movie- it’s more of honouring it’s influence on movies in general over time. I talked to my Japanese teachers today, and they’re looking forward to it because of those reasons amongst others. The movie may be “ignorant” due to the fact that the actresses who speak Japanese (with the exception of the girl who played Gogo, who is a Japanese actress) don’t do so very well, but it’s not trying to say that all Japanese culture is is samurai, ninjas, and kung fu type movies. (Kung fu isn’t even Japanese.)
I can understand in a way from where you’re coming from, but until you’ve seen the movie, it’s not something you can entirely comment on like you have. If you just judge it from previews and what you’ve heard, it’ll seem like what you’ve described. But seeing the movie shows that it’s quite different.
I have heard this description of the violence in the movie over and over again in many different ways, and I have a hard time fathoming how it can be at all possible to tolerate it (but then people tolerated Resivoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction just fine too, and those were along the same putrid lines), let alone find it funny.
I understand where you are coming from. You obviously like the movie, and I can understand it would be possible to view my position as absurd with the strange nick and odd location (considering I’m interested in Japanese culture). I will flat out tell you right now that when I leave my college campus and go across the river to Iowa to teach Japanese to junior high school students, half of them can’t tell me the difference between China and Japan. I think this is very representative of the region I live in, and I can think of dozens of examples from my own time in Jr. high and high school that reflect this same problem with the midewest as well. However, on campus, it is possible to have an intelligent discussion with people of many backgrounds. I value the thoughts and opinions of both my Japanese professors, and when someone I respect tells me a movie is culturally illiterate, and my friends are telling me the movie is “cool” because of the megadeath involved, well, that makes it very difficult to go run out and see.
The word “ikimashoo” in Japanese contains the first kanji I learned, because it’s what Ershin says when you use any of his special abilities in BoF4 (he’s my favorite character). Zwei is German for “two.” It’s kind of an inside joke. It’s a reference that only people who know me from my high school german class would understand. Smashing them together into a nickname seemed fun enough though.
I’m sorry about the misunderstanding. Does this help clarify things??