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Showing posts with the label japan

FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST - REVIEW

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Based on the popular anime series, Fullmetal Alchemist is a 2017 live-action adaptation from Japan following Alchemist brothers Elric and Alphonse as they encounter a range of powerful enemies and search for the Philosopher's Stone. The film was recently released on Netflix. We first meet the two brothers as children when an alchemy experiment aiming to bring their dead mother back to life goes wrong. Cut to years later and we learn that Alphonse's body somehow vanished after the botched experiment and he now inhabits a knight's empty armour indefinitely, hence the nickname "Fullmetal Alchemist". Unless Elric, who has himself lost limbs, can somehow recover the Philosopher's Stone, he might not be able to ever summon his brother's body back. A big action sequence early on depicts the brothers fighting against a man whom, they believe, is using the Stone nefariously and the scene boasts some big CGI effects, something the film fails to match before it

TASTIN'... MINI COLA

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I try some cola-flavoured candy from Japan.

TASTIN'... SNICKERS PORRIDGE

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I try some cereal Snickers from Japan.

TASTIN'... JAPANESE KIT-KATS

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I try a few interesting Japanese Kit-Kat flavours.

TASTIN'... WONKA EDIBLE GARDEN

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I try a Japanese Wonka bar.

1941 - REVIEW

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Following the runaway success of both Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind , Steven Spielberg directed war-themed comedy 1941 back in 1979 and, although it wasn't technically a box-office bomb, it wasn't exactly a hit and it's only years later that it gained a cult following. The film is very loosely based on a mix of real yet mostly disconnected events as it explores the growing paranoia post-Pearl Harbor with US citizens fearing that Japan would attempt another attack and dealing with it in various ways. As an enemy submarine slowly tries to make its way to Los Angeles with the unlikely goal of destroying Hollywood, chaos builds in the city and we follow a variety of characters, each of them doing their own thing, with everything culminating in a cartoonish battle around Santa Monica pier. This is very much an ensemble piece in the vein of Dr Strangelove or American Graffiti with some characters having a very clear goal and others just kind of wandering i

TASTIN'... SANGARIA

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I try a couple of Japanese sodas in this episode of Tastin' . Expect memory and lighting issues.

TASTIN'... CALPICO SODA

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I try some Calpico Soda in this new episode of Tastin'.

THE LAST SAMURAI - REVIEW

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Back in 2003, Tom Cruise starred in Edward Zwick's The Last Samurai , a film chronicling the fall of the samurai at the hands of a tactical collaboration between an increasingly modern Japanese government, its Emperor and the US. If you can get past the idea of Tom Cruise as a samurai and the fact that this is basically Dances With Wolves in a different setting, then The Last Samurai is actually a very good film. Cruise plays disillusioned, alcoholic former US Army Captain Nathan Algren, who is haunted by the memories of massacres involving Native American civilians, as he is hired to help train the Japanese army. He reluctantly agrees to travel to Japan and teach the Japanese soldiers how to use modern weaponry but he is captured after an impromptu battle against the samurai and is brought back to a village where he gets to know Ken Watanabe's Lord Mastumoto, the leader of the samurai rebellion, and learns the ways of the samurai. Realising how much of an underdog the sa

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES III - REVIEW

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Following the success of the first two films, it was obvious the turtles trilogy would soon be completed and, sure enough, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III was released in 1993 and it did well enough at the box-office despite receiving mostly negative reviews. The plot this time sees April O'Neil (Paige Turco) get sent back in time to feudal Japan because of some magical sceptre she found in a flea market. The turtles soon go after her but they find themselves quickly separated and in the middle of a local conflict between Lord Norinaga (Sab Shimono) and his own children who disagree with his desire for war and his dealings with shady English trader Walker (Stuart Wilson). Meanwhile, back in the New York sewers, Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) returns to babysit Splinter (now voiced by James Murray) and the Japanese warriors who have exchanged places with April and the turtles. The time travel aspect of the story is promising and yet you get the feeling right off the bat that it c

J.J. & JEFF - RANT N' PLAY

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I rant and play a bit of the very bizarre and scatological J.J. & Jeff for the TurboGrafx 16.

KING KONG ESCAPES - REVIEW

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Not content with churning out tons of Godzilla movies, legendary Japanese studio Toho followed a King Kong vs. Godzilla crossover movie with a straight-up King Kong movie entitled King Kong Escapes which saw poor old Kong not only get kidnapped (again) but get hypnotized and eventually fight a robot version of himself. The film opens with the baddie, amusingly named Dr. Who, setting his Mecha-Kong (or Mechani-Kong) loose in order to use him as part of some kind of bizarre mining operation where a rare element would be uncovered. Unfortunately, Mecha-Kong turns out to be useless and nowhere near as powerful as the real Kong. So, you've guessed it, Dr. Who goes to find the iconic beast and, with the help of some well-delivered ether bombs, Kong is soon put to sleep and taken back to Who's lair where he is hypnotized by a glowing lamp and sent out to do the job Mecha-Kong couldn't. As with every single plan Dr. Who's ever had in this movie, this all backfires and King

JIN-ROH: THE WOLF BRIGADE - REVIEW

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Based on a manga by Mamoru Oshii ( Ghost In The Shell , Patlabor ), Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is set in an alternate universe Japan where Germany has conquered the country and things look bleak to say the least: the cops are scary as hell, women and children have turned to suicide bombing... It's not looking good. The film opens on a little girl nicknamed "Little Red Riding Hood", some member of a guerilla group called The Sect, who is running through the sewers trying to escape the Panzer Cops, a bunch of armed cops with elephant-style gas masks. One of them, Kazuki, finds himself facing the little girl who reveals a bomb strapped to her chest. He is ordered to shoot her but doesn't and she sets off the bomb. He somehow survives but an enquiry is made into why he didn't carry out his orders and he is made to go back to training. After visiting the little girl's grave, he meets her sister Kei and develops a sort of friendship/relationship with her. The

THE WOLVERINE - REVIEW

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A new trend is born. Reboots of unpopular comic-book movies are treated as superior when really they're just as bad or as flawed as the films they're rebooting. Was The Amazing Spider-Man really miles better than Spider-Man ? Nope. Is The Wolverine really that much more watchable than X-Men Origins: Wolverine ? I know you're saying "yes" right now but... come on. The difference in quality is negligible. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an unpopular Marvel outing. Why? With the exception of Hugh Jackman's ever reliable Wolverine, it got almost every secondary character wrong and went for mindless action rather than dark, raw, gritty yet heartfelt edge. Which is exactly what Darren Aronofsky's The Wolverine promised! So for a studio-friendly, 12A-rated film like THIS to come along and feel just as flawed as that other Wolvie pic did and, in fact, fail to bring anything new and different to the table, I gotta say, that's quite a slap in the f

JAMES BOND'S MAKEOVER

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YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE - REVIEW

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Hey, remember when James Bond was about as PC as Speedy Gonzales? Sean Connery being the John Wayne of the franchise, you can imagine how a little trip to Japan in the 1960's turned out... You Only Live Twice sees 007 fake his own death before travelling to Japan where he's hoping to find out who has been sending a mysterious Pacman -style space bullet to gobble up the US and Soviet Union's satellites, almost kick-starting a nuclear war between both countries. Kind of like the plot to Tomorrow Never Dies in a way but instead of China it's Russia, instead of a media mogul it's a cat-strokin' menace and instead of boats... it's SPACE. On location, Bond meets the usual mix of bad guys, sultry gals and sumo wrestlers. It's all a bit hit-and-miss plot wise with Bond not actually doing much besides letting himself be bathed by half-naked ladies, flying an ever so slightly absurd-looking foldable helicopter and... getting an "Oriental make-over&q

RINGU - REVIEW

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Gloomy, unsettling, creepy as hell, Ringu was real landmark in horror cinema. Imitated countless times but never equaled, it reinvented Japanese horror and spawned countless ripoffs, sequels, remakes right up until the genre quietly died with retarded fare like Korean horror film The Wig ...about a killer wig. Not that a VHS is much scarier than a wig but if some gnarled monster woman came out of my TV, I would happily shit myself. So why did Ringu work and fare like The Grudge or Premonition didn't...not really? Well, for one thing Ringu was a concept movie: it introduced a new idea, a new template and built a suitably creepy and unsettling atmosphere around it in order to create something fresh and genuinely scary. Other similar films struggled to find something which would match the VHS tape as a starting point: phones, websites...wigs. None of it really worked. Only certain films like Dark Water , The Eye or A Tale of Two Sisters which put more effort into th