Total waste of film

When I reviewed "Arimura Kasumi no Satsukyu" I wrote that they had managed to touch some deep issues, all while "giving the superficial impression that nothing's really going on".
Unfortunately, in this "Penshion: Koi wa Momoiro", they don't just *give the impression* that nothing's going on....the problem is indeed that nothing's going on, period! (ok, *almost* nothing...but honestly, the little that actually happens could've barely filled a 5' short - so little it is!)
Adding insult to injury, the dialogues are as unappealing and bland as they come (like a conversation between dumb, shallow people who actually have nothing to say - sorry to be so blunt, but that's the way it felt!) and the characters horribly undeveloped.
Total waste of film and time.

Lire davantage

I've always loved boxing, so I just *had to* watch this "Mirai e no 10 Count". Upon watching, I have to say it was OK but nothing worth calling home about. But the worst thing is, it could've been so much better!
The script indulges too much on PC and too little on substance (I'm comparing this to "Engine" which I'm watching ATM - same ML, similar premises and settings - and "Engine" wins hands down, seriously!); most of the characters are not really developed but just bidimensionally sketched (for example, I wish the SML and SFL had had much more screentime and relevance!) and I'm not really satisfied with several of the writer's choices (for example - SPOILERS AHEAD!!! Jump to the next paragraph if you wanna avoid them! - I would've shipped the ML with the SFL and the FL with the SML; I wouldn't have had the ML meet his late wife's double - that was some totally unnecesary cruelty from the writer!!! As was Momosuke's life-threatening injury! - and I would've given much more room to the boxing club and the torunament!!!)
The acting was ok, as were the music and the "packaging".
I thought I was gonna give this a "7", but the "missed opportunity" factor made me lower my rating in the end.

Lire davantage

Despite the fact that I'm not a big fan of office-themed series (I've tried office work in the past and totally hated it...the unpleasant working atmosphere, the moronic bosses/colleagues, the constant backstabbing...really not my thing!), still I was drawn in by Yoshitaka Yuriko (who's always excellent imho, and this series is no exception) and by the very interesting premise.
Unfortunately, the series really couldn't live up to it, due to a shallow, poorly-written script. Now, that the complexity of real life must be simplified in order to produce fiction, that's something to be expected of course; but this doesn't mean that oversimplicity is okay! Whoever wrote this totally forgot nuances: everything here is either black or white, and the episodic structure (which would have been totally fine in a, say, crime series, but is instead tremendously out of place in a series which is supposed to be focused on characters' development!) doesn't help at all, quite the opposite. Characters are depicted as bad until the main character / deus ex machina intervenes, and *BANG!*, they're not bad anymore and they can join the forces of Good against the Axis of Evil - made of whoever doesn't agree. I found in this series the shallow, dichotomic, idiotic approach which is so typical of our current Western society (and which I can't stand at all), and that *deeply* annoyed me.

Lire davantage

Trash TV at its worst

OK y'all, let's cut to the chase, shall we?
This show is trash. And I mean it, real trash. Utter trash. I'd say "pure trash" but "pure" ain't the kind of adjective one can in all fairness use to describe this, sorry.
I know there are millions of people who'll disagree, what can I say, good for them, but in my review I can only share *my* opinion, so bear with it. If you adored the original show and think that Kitano Takeshi's a freaking genious, by all means, watch this, you're gonna love it.
But if you, instead, always considered the original 80's show a disgrace only useful to those "gaijin" who *love* to diss Japan day in and day out ('cause, hey, "them Japs are all weirdos" as this show "showed") and if you think that the only real weirdo is Kitano (hey, I dunno him personally, he might be the best guy in the world....but in my book, if you look like you're demented, speak like you're demented, behave like you're demented and produce stuff that seems like it's been written by someone who's demented, well...chances are you might be demented, sorry)...well, in that case steer clear of this and watch something less trashy. "Sasuke", for example.

Lire davantage