current selection | queen – bohemian rhapsody
feelin’ | toasty
two bdays are coming up this weekend…sallys and my sis’. both are being celebrated on saturday. super. so i went hunting for my sis’ bday present, a shaolin soccer dvd. i stopped by kims video first…but they didnt have it. (i did pick up my friend tutor tho…whups!) so i started treking down towards chinatown. in chinatown i happened to run into liz, dora, anna, and alfred…all waiting around for din. co-eenkeedink. so i join them for din at pho bang after picking the dvd for my sis. it was a dinner gathering of some of the third years that jus graduated (ok, theyre not third years anymore, but in my mind theyre frozen at the year they were in when i graduated). a few of them jus got jobs, while the rest are jus starting their job hunt. so congrats to them. afterwards we walked northwards toward union sq. after grabbing some bubble tea at st. alps me, anna, and dora lounged around in union sq park talking and people watching. very relaxing. afterwards i went home and popped in my tutor friend.
ok, while we’re on the topic of asian cinema…ive been having some discussions of late with a friend about the merits of bringing over a movie like shaolin soccer and dubbing it. we’re both big asian cinema fans…and while i generally watch asian cinema and anime with subtitles, i dont necessarily mind dubs. my friends opinion is that dubbing is archaic, and that it denigrates the original film. on this regard, i feel that its a give and take. dubbing or retaining the original dialogue is dependent on the context of the film. crouching tiger was released with subtitles, and hopefully hero will be too. so what makes them bring over shaolin with dubs? my thought was that while cthd and hero are art-house movies (with the chinese dialogue lending itself to the feel of the movie), shaolin as a comedy has more mass appeal, and as such would be marketed towards as broad a market as possible. which i think would in turn bring more attention to asian cinema. considering that all 3 of these movies dealt with martial arts (which you could say is a narrow cross-section of what asia cinema has to offer) its still pretty premature to say that asian cinemas becoming mainstream here.
in a prior entry i also mentioned roy lee and his industry of marketing asian movies to hollywood for remakes. my friend didnt particularly like remakes, and i would probably share the same thoughts. while i liked the ring alot, and i think it did alot to expose the original to the u.s., i wouldve liked the original ringu to do what it took the remake to do. theres alot of ridiculously good cinema coming out of japan, south korea, and hk. and itd be great if they received more attention in the united states, rather than their (eventual) americanized counterparts. nanako matsushima instead of naomi watts, eun-kyung shin instead of queen latifah, and ji-hyun jun instead of whatever girl takes her place (she’d better be super-cute at least!)
in the meantime, i’ll still go see the dubbed shaolin when it comes out, even tho i have the dvd already. so that hopefully it’ll kick alot of um…grass and they’ll bring over more asian cinema intact.
