Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Stroup
Yes, Watanabe is somewhat known, but he's also barely in the movie.
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Oh, heheh, I was referring to Watanabe in
Lettters from Iwo Jima, forgetting that he was also in
Memoirs of a Geisha. The latter was a frothy piece of period soap opera, so I competely forgive it for being in English. It was a confection. The war movie required much more realism.
And so...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Stroup
those are precisely the artistic balls that Rob Marshall lacks
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... I don't think Marshall lacked balls at all. He (or the studio) simply knew the audience for
Geisha ... quite different from the audience for a bitter war film.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Stroup
When you say stereotypical, do you mean stereotypical war movie or stereotyping of the Japanese?
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I mean the characters, actually. Though I grant their reality, for purportedly being based on actual letters, the Watanabe character could hardly have been more stereotypically noble samurai, and the humble Baker similarly so for the lowly infantryman with whom the audience is meant to identify.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Stroup
Haven't seen Flags yet so I have no problem with the thought that it is better than Letters (though you're the first person I know that has seen both that thinks so) and has been overlooked.
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I don't want to insult anybody by insisting they were wrong and I am right when it comes to "better," but
Flags was far more ambitious and audacious in its storytelling, and I grant it more props for perhaps falling short of a loftier goal than I do
Letters for nailing a more pedestrian goal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Stroup
Personally, I'm still somewhat burned out on war movies...
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Which is why I can wholeheartedly recommend
Flags of our Fathers (
now available on DVD). It's not really a war movie, per se. It's NOT merely the American side of the battle depicted in
Letters from Iwo Jima. The war scenes and battle stuff are sparing, shown fleetingly in flashback. Rather, it's the story of a happy, peppy war bonds tour, its ironies and creepiness in relation to the war it supported, and the toll both the tour and the public relations fraud of the iconic flag-raising image took on the men who participated.
.