I saw Lost in Translation today, I was quite proud of myself for being able to catch bits and pieces of the untranslated Japanese. See, watching all that anime recently has paid off! Although it isn’t too hard to translate basic stuff, like “How many years have you been in Japan” when the little old man was yelling at Bill Murray in the hospital.
Really, I felt all nostalgic, and I wished I could walk into a Pachinko parlor. And then I remembered that Pachinko parlors are noisy, lame, and annoying.
When I was walking home today, I noticed that the Korean/Japanese restaurant in my neighborhood has carefully saran wrapped the plastic food displays in its window. Which is good, I suppose, you don’t want your plastic food to get all dusty.
10:27 am on October 6th, 2003 1
Yes, when D the Elder and I saw it with Mom, we were commenting on how nice it would be if you were there so we could know what the heck they were saying.
12:08 am on October 7th, 2003 2
I think one of the reviewers of Lost in Translation said that it did not portray Japan in a very positive way because it seemed kind of cold. But wasn’t that supposed to be an analogy in terms of the alienated characters (they felt unhappy and disconnected from their lives)? Wasn’t it a pretty accurate portrayal of certain segments of Japanese society? On the American side, I thought that the young American movie star was really funny (awful), and the two main characters were portrayed in a very sensitive manner.
11:04 am on October 9th, 2003 3
I thought that the characters were relating to Japan in a realistic way, considering that they were staying there for a few days and didn’t know the language.