Having a blast at the Gatchaman (G-force) live action movie premiere

I have written in an earlier post about the trailer for the new live-action Gatchaman (G-force) movie that I was hoping to catch it at next year’s Fantasia. Well, Christmas came early when the Fantasia Montreal 2013 schedule announced that the movie will be premiering at this year’s festival. And I mean a real, honest-to-goodness international premiere, weeks before the movie opens in Japan at the end of the month. There was one catch, though – we were planning to head back home in the morning before the screening. There are, however, no laws of time and space that can stop a fangirl on a mission. A quick Airbnb search secured a crash pad for an extra night, frequent flyer miles provided a ticket back home and it was goodbye Sporty Sis and Bro-in-Law and “Bird Go!” for yours truly. If you look closely at the picture above, you’ll see Bro-in-Law’s sad face in the background, he was a big G-force fan as well.

Fantasia Montreal Review: The Great Passage Defines the Word “Uncool”

This weekend Sporty Sis, Bro-in-Law and I came up to Montreal to catch some films at the Fantasia Film Festival. This is Sporty’s and mine third year at Fantasia, so it’s kind of becoming a tradition. Alongside your creature feature and slasher flick fare, Fantasia serves up a good selection of Asian films, not all of them sci-fi or fantasy. I honestly don’t understand what role the Asian films are supposed to play here, but those are usually our favorite films anyway, so no complaints. As an aside, I hope someone can explain why the audience miaous whenever the lights go down before the film. Just one of those quirky Fantasia things, I guess. The first Japanese film we saw as Ishii Yuya’s The Great Passage:

Dorama review: Why I hate romance dramas but love Long Vacation

Note: A dorama or j-dorama is a Japanese TV series, usually 9–11 45-minute episodes. Long Vacation is a renzoku ren’ai, a romantic drama. It is not my favorite dorama, but I wanted to write about it for this blog because of the title. All names are in the Japanese order, family name first.

Yep, I’ve got a heart of stone. Ordinary romantic movies and dramas bore me to tears. As soon as I see the opening credits, I know that the characters played by the top-billed actor and actress will end up together, either after a tedious hour and a half or, in case of dramas, a tedious ten hours or so. Asian romantic dramas, particularly Korean ones, are some of the worst offenders. The action, and I use that term broadly, revolves around four main characters:

– main boy, a rich, insufferable jerk
– main girl, a poor, insufferable idiot
– other boy, smart, nice, good looking, well mannered, in love with the main girl
– other girl, a rich, insufferable bitch, usually the main boy’s ex-girlfriend