Balsa666 comments

@bass4funk

as if the American public was ready to welcome Asian artists such as Boa or Utada Hikaru, those two and others just lost time and energy in BritneyLand, that was the big mistake. Hopefully when she comes back she'll do something great for educated Asians or Europeans.

@Gurukun

you member of the Trollin' Stones?

Sore demo boku ha yatte nai" ("I didn't do it")

ah yes, that film with Ryo Kase right? I forgot mentioning him, he's one of my fave male J-actors though. On second thoughts I should have mentioned Joe Odagiri as well and Hiroshi Abe, Masatoshi Nagase, Ittoku Kishibe, Ken Watanabe, legendary actors such as Ken Ogata or Tsutomu Yamazaki, young actresses like Yû Aoi or Ryoko Hirosue. There are so many talents.

It seems that since Master Akira Kurosawa passed away, the Japanese film industry has not made serious efforts to promote Nippon cinema overseas and this is a shame cause there are so many good films and looking at the number of French, Spanish, Italian forums that try to sub them, there IS a demand !!!

To conclude, I've watched over 300 Japanese movies that were released after 2000 and I've seldom been disappointed, over a third were utterly enjoyable gems.

If I'm allowed to suggest one as a starter, try "Kiraware Matsuko no Isshō": twisted humor, drama, emotion, parody, it has everything and acting-wise, well, Miki Nakatani is pure gold!

I can't believe some of the comments. Probably not pig-ignorance but deliberate attempts to smash a whole industry. Or maybe some of those guys live in countries where films are marvels of the universe,yet, no one knows, wow, waiting to watch some.

Has anyone heard of remarkable filmmakers like Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Shunji Iwai, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hideo Nakata, Naomi Kawase, Takeshi Kitano, Tetsuya Nakashima, Yoji Yamada... just a handful in a long list of talented filmmakers.

I'm French and I've been a movie lover for decades. Now, I must say than both Hollywood and France have reached rock bottom in terms of vulgarity, stupidity and lack of creativity. Like in any other country, Japanese films can sometimes be bad or average or cheezy but on the whole, I see more intelligence, poetry, thought-provoking or emotional content in a considerable number of Jmovies !!

As to the acting kills, I wonder if some of the slammers ever saw people like Tadanobu Asano, Miki Nakatani, Etsushi Toyokawa, Teruyuki Kagawa, Kanako Higuchi, once again a few names in a list of talent galore.