leonanime123 said: Psyche_Izaya said: J-dramas are great. Yall just need to choose the right ones. but on the other hand, i agree that animanga that turned into live action are really bad. Jdrama is the opposite of great. Its popularity, even in Asia, has declined leonanime123 said: Psyche_Izaya said: J-dramas are great. Yall just need to choose the right ones. but on the other hand, i agree that animanga that turned into live action are really bad. Jdrama is the opposite of great. Its popularity, even in Asia, has declined We are getting few J-Drama subbed in recent years as well. |
 |
Just because it ain't popular doesn't make it less great. Finding a good J-drama is like finding a hidden gem to me. If we have to compare asian dramas, i'd take J-dramas over k-drama/c-drama anyday |
| I will not take J-Drama with it, because of the low budget they produce. |
|
leonanime123 said: Psyche_Izaya said: Just because it ain't popular doesn't make it less great. Finding a good J-drama is like finding a hidden gem to me. If we have to compare asian dramas, i'd take J-dramas over k-drama/c-drama anyday I mean decline in popularity as well as the quality. Another problem of J TV drama is its limited selections of genres. mdo7 knows about this, you might wanna talk to him. |
|
leonanime123 said: Psyche_Izaya said: Just because it ain't popular doesn't make it less great. Finding a good J-drama is like finding a hidden gem to me. If we have to compare asian dramas, i'd take J-dramas over k-drama/c-drama anyday I have to clarify that J TV drama is still the in the higher rank, but its popularity has mostly been replaced by the fanbase of US/UK TV drama due to its much more diverse theme and contents. Is C-Drama broadcasting to your country as well? What about K-Drama as well? By the way, do you own WakuWaku Japan? |
|
About limited fewer J-Drama on your TV, have you ever talked to mdo7? I guess he is the only person who know about few j-drama available on your TV? |
|
leonanime123 said: CHC said: I personally love Japanese cinema because I'm an arthouse fan, but from the perspective of the industry as a whole I completely agree that Japanese cinema in general is in decline for more than 20 years as they are not producing good genre-films. (btw, the film industry in Hong Kong is actually getting even worse than Japan for the past decade. There isn't much in Hong Kong cinema after Infernal Affairs, except one or two Wong Kar-wei's arthouse.) But it doesn't mean Japanese cinema have always been homogeneous. Indeed, there's a lot of japanese cult classic from late 70s - early 2000s: Suicide Club (2001), Ichi the Killer (2001), Tetsuo the Iron Man (1989), Postman Blues (1997), House (1977) Noir and Crime are the big things in 60s: Branded to Kill (1967), Tokyo Drifter (1966), Pale Flower (1964), A Fugitive from the Past (1965) The Japanese 60s is also know for its avant-garde mindfuckery dealing provocatively with themes like sex, violence, politics and identity: The Face of Another (1966), Blind Beast (1969), Woman of the Dunes (1964) And then we have big-budget historical/samurai classics from the 50s: Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Yojimbo (1961) As to why the Japanese cinema has been in decline since the 90s, I've no clue. But it probably has to do with the burst of the economic bubble in the 90s. Sponsors and producers perhaps have become less willing to take risk. That's probably why they keep making anime/manga rip-off which is commercially safe. But the reality is definitely gonna be more complicated than my uninformed postulate. If you love arthouse films, I would recommend you to watch Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang's works. Hirokazu Kore-eda himself said Hou inspired him to be a director, and you can see the similarity between his and Hou's works. Speaking of Hou Hsiao-hsien..., Taiwan was also the top dog in Asian cinema... This is a reason why I don't consider Japan's dominance of human drama films anything special, because what they are doing now, Taiwanese had done that long before and done it better. Yes I love Hou and Yang. Indeed Yang's Yi Yi and The Terrorizers belong to my top 20 of all films. Btw some of the films by Tsai Ming-liang are pretty good too. I wouldn't say Japan has a "dominance" on human drama. Western cinema has also produced a huge amount of great films centred around the drama of ordinary people without heavily plot-driven elements. Bergman, Rohmer, Truffaut, Antonioni... just to name a few directors. It's just that they are usually overshadowed by Hollywood blockbuster. But what makes the Japanese cinema a special one is perhaps the style through which they film human drama: quiet, slow, a lot of long takes with static camera, attention to mundane people doing mundane activities, emphasis on the environment. This style of filming melodrama began with Ozu in the 30s. Contemporary Asian "slow cinema" (or "Asian minimalism", a term used by David Bordwell) indeed owes a huge debt to Ozu. Hou himself admires Ozu a lot and talk about him a lot in lectures and interviews. It's not to diminish Hou's achievement in contemporary cinema. After all, he has the most direct influence on the younger generation of Asian arthouse directors like Kore-eda, Jia Zhangke, Hong Sangsoo, and Weerasethakul. |
 |
leonanime123 said: CHC said: Yes I love Hou and Yang. Indeed Yang's Yi Yi and The Terrorizers belong to my top 20 of all films. Btw some of the films by Tsai Ming-liang are pretty good too. I wouldn't say Japan has a "dominance" on human drama. Western cinema has also produced a huge amount of great films centred around the drama of ordinary people without heavily plot-driven elements. Bergman, Rohmer, Truffaut, Antonioni... just to name a few directors. It's just that they are usually overshadowed by Hollywood blockbuster. But what makes the Japanese cinema a special one is perhaps the style through which they film human drama: quiet, slow, a lot of long takes with static camera, attention to mundane people doing mundane activities, emphasis on the environment. This style of filming melodrama began with Ozu in the 30s. Contemporary Asian "slow cinema" (or "Asian minimalism", a term used by David Bordwell) indeed owes a huge debt to Ozu. Hou himself admires Ozu a lot and talk about him a lot in lectures and interviews. It's not to diminish Hou's achievement in contemporary cinema. After all, he has the most direct influence on the younger generation of Asian arthouse directors like Kore-eda, Jia Zhangke, Hong Sangsoo, and Weerasethakul. I used the word dominance because Japan could hardly create films outside of the "mundane-but-relatable" drama films. They cannot venture to other territory of films like how their anime industry expand to every genre like sci-fi, fantasy, action, thriller,... They can't do hollywood-like blockbuster because they can't compete with hollywood in terms of CG technology and budget. It's true of all film industries outside the US. You don't often see the French or the Italian making action thriller either. The bar of making blockbuster film has been raised significantly since the 90s with Steven Spielberg. Before that the Japanese cinema was actually more diverse. Noir, crime, yakuza, detective thriller, horror and period films were big genre from 50s to 80s. (As I have already listed a bunch of them in the previous reply.) Don't forget that the first Godzilla was made in 1954 and it was a success in Japan. Today you can't make a new Godzilla film without people poking fun at your bad CG compared to Hollywood blockbuster. Not to mention that the Japanese economy have been in trouble since the 90s, and the government is so in debt that you can't expect them to subsidise the film industry like the Korean is doing. Time has changed and the industry adapts to the new circumstances. In Ran (1985) they literally burned the whole castle to ground for filming one epic scene. Producers today can't afford such a risky investment. btw, if you want to see some contemporary japanese films that's not mundane melodrama, please check out Sion Sono's films. Love Exposure, Cold FIsh, Noriko's Dinner Table, Suicide Club and Himizu are some of his best. They're very fast-paced, over-the-top, cultish and provocative. They're not genre-film though. |
CHCOct 1, 2018 2:43 AM
|
| A lot of the complaint on japanese industry comes from the perspective of the "geek culture". Japanese can't make Star Wars, can't make GoT, can't make Avengers, so Japanese sucks at making live-action. In reality the best Japanese films usually target a quite different audience. Anime spin-off live-action films are usually not the most respectable thing within the industry and the best directors, actors and actresses rarely allow themselves to land on such projects. The intention behind live-action remade is usually cynical anyway: it's safe investment to make a film which already has a fandom. Those live-action remade only seem big to Westerners because the only Japanese thing most Westerners care about is anime. If you want to know what are the respectable production in Japan, check out Kinema Junpo (キネマ旬報, a sort of Japanese OSCAR): https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AD%E3%83%8D%E3%83%9E%E6%97%AC%E5%A0%B1 Don't look for the same thing in Japanese films as you would look for in anime. |
|
| It sucks man but hey, we've accepted it (at least most of us do). |
 |
| I watch some Bleach's live-action preview and the character designs, cgi and others are completely ridiclious, Rukia's hair isn't good as in anime has, while CGI are pretty somewhat terrible, Japan isn't really good making CGI stuff, even for CGI anime, a lot of anime they produce are in 2D, which is Japan's well known they produce. I stilll hope Japan can have some of its renaissance when Japan has decided to adopt better things. (sorry for my poor English) |
|
leonanime123 said: @CHC "You don't often see the French or the Italian making action thriller either." China did often produced action thrillers that combine elements from arthouse genre. Basically movies that blur the line between action, drama, and artistic. The Chinese and Korean industry is huge and supported by the state. That's why they can have hollywood-like budget and have an industry scale large enough to host a variety of talents. That's the crucial difference between them and other smaller industries in Japan, France, Italy, where their survival depends on specialising in something different from hollywood and yet cheaper in terms of budget. And to be honest, I think the best Chinese films since the 80s are mostly melodrama (Shower (1999), In the Heat of the Sun (1994), The Blue Kite (1993), Zhantai (2000), etc), whereas huge budget action thriller are usually trainwreck (House of Flying Daggers (2004), Painted Skin (2008), etc.) My point is that people shouldn't measure the Japanese cinema by the Hollywood standard. It is not realistic economically. Moreover, do we really need so desperately for another Hollywood? I think it is more fair and productive to judge Japanese cinema on its own terms, particularly on whether it has something original to offer to the world and whether its industrial model is healthy and sustainable. (My answers to them are "yes" and "probably no" respectively.) |
|
leonanime123 said: CHC said: The Chinese and Korean industry is huge and supported by the state. That's why they can have hollywood-like budget and have an industry scale large enough to host a variety of talents. That's the crucial difference between them and other smaller industries in Japan, France, Italy, where their survival depends on specialising in something different from hollywood and yet cheaper in terms of budget. And to be honest, I think the best Chinese films since the 80s are mostly melodrama (Shower (1999), In the Heat of the Sun (1994), The Blue Kite (1993), Zhantai (2000), etc), whereas huge budget action thriller are usually trainwreck (House of Flying Daggers (2004), Painted Skin (2008), etc.) My point is that people shouldn't measure the Japanese cinema by the Hollywood standard. It is not realistic economically. Moreover, do we really need so desperately for another Hollywood? I think it is more fair and productive to judge Japanese cinema on its own terms, particularly on whether it has something original to offer to the world and whether its industrial model is healthy and sustainable. (My answers to them are "yes" and "probably no" respectively.) France and Italy have been doing really good in the 90s, way better than their Japanese counterpart, but now it seems that they both face the same issues Japan faces. "whereas huge budget action thriller are usually trainwreck" Not really. It's like saying Japanese films usually are terrible... Crouching Tiger (One of the most iconic movies ever.), Dragon Inn (both films), Hero (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeYbHMssXQI), Fearless, Ip-Man, Grand Master... You are missing a lot of good stuff... "Moreover, do we really need so desperately for another Hollywood?" Never did I say this... "I think it is more fair and productive to judge Japanese cinema on its own terms" A shrinking industry is a shrinking industry. Crouching Tiger was co-produced with US, Hong Kong and Taiwan, directed by a Taiwanese director. Dragon Inn is a taiwanese film form the 60s. Hero, Fearless, Ip-Man are average by the standard of the history of Chinese movies. (Even the popular reception of them were ambivalent.) And most people who have also seen Zhang Yimou's earlier films would agree that his earlier films are much better. Grand Master is a Hong Kong film and the same I said about Zhang Yimou also applies to Wong Kar-wai. And I'm judging them by the standard of the best Chinese films, not by the commercial standard. Not to mention to fact that there're countless other trainwrecks that never get to attract international attention. Just search "国产烂片" on Douban (the Chinese imdb) you'll get a huge list of trash: https://movie.douban.com/tag/%E5%9B%BD%E4%BA%A7%E7%83%82%E7%89%87 Some of them stand out only because the rest is shit. Even the popular rating prefers earlier non-blockbusters. A quick look of Zhang Yimou's page on Douban tells you that the majority of his best rated films are earlier melodrama: https://movie.douban.com/celebrity/1054398/movies?sortby=vote&format=pic Zhang is not the only highly reputed Chinese director who got criticised a lot for the falling artistic standard of his recent films. Chen Kaige is another representative of the generation of directors corrupted by big money: The Promise (2005), Sacrifice (2010), Monk Comes Down the Mountain (2015). It is not to say that everything big-budget in China is now trashy or there are not gonna be a couple of great films produced occasionally, but the industry as a whole is just no where near the artistic height of Chinese cinema of the 90s, the time when talented director focused on the characters, not just flashy action to attract box office. The Chinese film industry today is still alive only because the state imposes import quota on foreign films. And I don't think the direction it's leading to is helping it to prepare itself for international competition in near future. Industry-wise, I don't think the Chinese industry is better than the Japanese. It's a huge bubble now. At least Japan has a number of working directors who have stable output of good films: Kore-eda, Yoji Yamada, Shunji Iwai, Takeshi Kitano, Miwa Nishikawa, Yuya Ishii, Masayuki Suo, Ryosuke Hashiguchi. They have reputation amongst critics and sophisticated film buffs. They have a very secure place in international arthouse market (even if it doesn't involve some trillions yen -- it doesn't have to.) Some of them are probably going to be remembered for the next 50 years or so. Whereas in China, talented directors are constantly at risk either being corrupted by big money or censored by the state, which is pretty sad. |
CHCOct 9, 2018 5:11 AM
|
| Japanese cinema is between one the best of the world (or was, at least, in the last century), but sadly, there just ain't any more great japanese directors as there was in the past, and nowadays Japan is way too obsessed with cheap entertainment to change that reality, I'm afraid. However, I'd say that the real deal with live action adaptations is mostly the stiff adaptation, and the tradition of overacting. The problem with adaptation is that you can never reproduce the same work twice. You have to adapt it to a whole new medium, because if you don't, the chances of failing miserably are high. The problem with japanese adaptations is that they are way too much "anime-ish", which does not translate well to live action. Even 20th Century Boys, which is a fairly serious manga, got waaaay over the top in the live action. That's why the best adaptations of all time, like Apocalypse Now or Fight Club, weren't the ones that remade the original source as faithful to it as possible, but the ones that adapted well to the form of cinema. The problem of overacting is that, well, it is deeply ingrained into japanese cinema, but it takes a talented director to work with that aspect, which anime adaptations often do not have. I'd even say that the japanese overacting is the only one that sounds most close to natural, since their language is naturally eloquent and they make it part of their artistic culture instead of an element in a movie. I think this is why Rurouni Kenshin worked so well: it took a lot from classic samurai movies, instead of just adapting the anime. Lone Wolf and Cub is another good example. |
| I found the Bleach live action pretty tolerable lol. |
MomoSinX said: I found the Bleach live action pretty tolerable lol. Me too, Rukia's hair is really terrible. |
|
| tokyo ghoul!! = awesome tokyo ghoul live action = wut |
| Signature removed. Please follow the signature rules, as defined in the Site & Forum Guidelines. |
| realistically i think its because of low budget and hollywood just has a big budget so it all comes down to that |
| Signature removed. Please follow the signature rules, as defined in the Site & Forum Guidelines. |
| Question: Why are the Japanese so bad at live action but good at anime? "Helios will speak: Objectively true answer: 2D > 3d" |
| Japanese celebrities are bad at acting. I kinda liked Death Note's live action though. |
 |
leonanime123 said: CHC said: Yes I love Hou and Yang. Indeed Yang's Yi Yi and The Terrorizers belong to my top 20 of all films. Btw some of the films by Tsai Ming-liang are pretty good too. I wouldn't say Japan has a "dominance" on human drama. Western cinema has also produced a huge amount of great films centred around the drama of ordinary people without heavily plot-driven elements. Bergman, Rohmer, Truffaut, Antonioni... just to name a few directors. It's just that they are usually overshadowed by Hollywood blockbuster. But what makes the Japanese cinema a special one is perhaps the style through which they film human drama: quiet, slow, a lot of long takes with static camera, attention to mundane people doing mundane activities, emphasis on the environment. This style of filming melodrama began with Ozu in the 30s. Contemporary Asian "slow cinema" (or "Asian minimalism", a term used by David Bordwell) indeed owes a huge debt to Ozu. Hou himself admires Ozu a lot and talk about him a lot in lectures and interviews. It's not to diminish Hou's achievement in contemporary cinema. After all, he has the most direct influence on the younger generation of Asian arthouse directors like Kore-eda, Jia Zhangke, Hong Sangsoo, and Weerasethakul. What are your other favorite films? Persona, Cries and Whispers, Autumn Sonata, Scenes from a Marriage and most of the other Ingmar Bergman's films that I've watched. Nostalghia, Solaris, and basically everything Tarkovsky made. Tokyo Story by Ozu Synecdoche, New York (I love most of the film scripted by Charlie Kaufman too) Landscape in the Mist, and most Angelopoulos' works. Playtime by Tati Throne of Blood, and most Akira Kurosawa's works A Short Film about Love, and most Kieslowski's works. Woman in the Dunes by Hiroshi Teshigahara Happy Together, In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-Wai Dogville, Nymphomaniac by von Trier The Trial (1962) by Orson Welles Tokyo Sonata by Kiyoshi Kurosawa Cold Fish by Sion Sono Spirited Away There's a lot of other masterpieces I deeply admire but those listed above are the ones that connect with me on a deep personal level, on top of being great in artistic terms. To be honest I'm more of a film buff than an anime fan. An ironic thing to say on MAL. |
|
leonanime123 said: CHC said: Persona, Cries and Whispers, Autumn Sonata, Scenes from a Marriage and most of the other Ingmar Bergman's films that I've watched. Nostalghia, Solaris, and basically everything Tarkovsky made. Tokyo Story by Ozu Synecdoche, New York (I love most of the film scripted by Charlie Kaufman too) Landscape in the Mist, and most Angelopoulos' works. Playtime by Tati Throne of Blood, and most Akira Kurosawa's works A Short Film about Love, and most Kieslowski's works. Woman in the Dunes by Hiroshi Teshigahara Happy Together, In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-Wai Dogville, Nymphomaniac by von Trier The Trial (1962) by Orson Welles Tokyo Sonata by Kiyoshi Kurosawa Cold Fish by Sion Sono Spirited Away There's a lot of other masterpieces I deeply admire but those listed above are the ones that connect with me on a deep personal level, on top of being great in artistic terms. To be honest I'm more of a film buff than an anime fan. An ironic thing to say on MAL. Finally, you respond... If you are a fan of Tarkovsky and the movie Solaris, then you must like Kubrik's artworks like 2001. Seriously, 2001 and Orange are the two most futuristic looking movies I've seen, the cinematography, cutting, set designs, and colors; both movies, visually, surpass nearly, if not all, contemporary movies. Even Cameron, Ridley Scott, old 張藝謀, and Denis Villeneuve cannot match Kubrick in cinematic aesthetics. I am surprised you mentioned Orson Welles but didn't include his most influential work, Citizen Kane, the movie which, IIRC, influenced French and the world cinema with its ahead-of-its-time visuals, non-linear narrative structures (Ironically, French critics initially hated the movie), and character development. Sorry I didn't reply because I thought the discussion on Japanese v. Chinese cinema has come to a closure. I'm not a big fan of Kubrick, but generally I enjoyed most of his works. 2001 is a great film, though I think it's a very different one than Solaris. While 2001 looks into the future, Solaris is essentially a film that deals with the past. I have to admit I don't appreciate Citizen Kane as much as I probably should. The Trial is far more interesting from my point of view because they are formally much more experimental and I got to see what the director was thinking while making his artistic decisions. Citizen Kane on the other hand, looks more like a work of craft than a work of art, and I happen to prefer unique artistic vision than well-crafted perfection. |
|
More topics from this board
» Do you like "so bad it's good" content?RobertBobert - 2 hours ago |
15 |
by ForgotEyeWasHere
»»
18 seconds ago |
|
» Are people just projecting their own insecurities onto anime girls?Dragevard - 18 minutes ago |
1 |
by Zarutaku
»»
7 minutes ago |
|
» 🎃 Halloween Special: Crown of Eternal Night 🌙 ( 1 2 )nirererin - 12 hours ago |
75 |
by thewiru
»»
7 minutes ago |
|
» Which anime do you wish had a dub and why?Rally- - 4 hours ago |
12 |
by MinakoBestGirl
»»
11 minutes ago |
|
» Is killing taken lightly in anime?thewiru - Yesterday |
18 |
by rohan121
»»
13 minutes ago |