Falling Stars

It was a manga, then an anime, and now a live action movie! (Well, made in 2024, and now on Netflix.)

Live action adaptations can be a mixed bag. This one totally nails it. Filmed on location in Hokkaido, with gorgeous snowy landscapes and sweeping mountain vistas. Beautiful cinematography, great pacing, dramatic action, and even the bits of humour. (Still violent and gory, but more sporadic than in the manga.)

The casting totally worked for me. I loved that every time a character was introduced, we got a dramatic pause, and a title card with their name and role. It felt like if you were in the theatre and you got to applaud their entrance.

(It was mildly amusing every time someone called Asirpa "the Ainu child", because her actress fully looks like she's 20. But I was happy to suspend my disbelief.)

( Spoilers )

The movie covers just the first part of the story, but it ends in a reasonably satisfying place. The story continues in a live action TV series, also now on Netflix.

I watched this movie just a week ago, and I am kind of enamoured with it? I love vampire stories, but I did not expect it to take up residence in my head like this.

I'm late to the party, so we've already blown past the science fiction future of this movie. Made in 2009, and set in 2019, after a worldwide plague (!!) has transformed the majority of the population into vampires. Humans are on the brink of extinction, either farmed for blood or hunted as fugitives. And if humans die out, that's bad news for everyone. Vampirism is always symbolic of something. Here, according to one reviewer, it's a metaphor for late stage capitalism and rampant resource consumption.

Edward (played by Ethan Hawke) is a vampire haematologist, desperately researching a blood substitute, when he runs across a human resistance group with an answer that could change everything. Edward is one of my favourite character types: beautifully angsty, but with an edge. He didn't want to become a vampire! He's working to change things even while he's working for The Man! In the course of the movie, he gets whumped a lot. He suffers very prettily, but he also has a steely core of resolve.

It's also entertaining to see Sam Neill play a bad guy (the ruthless vampire CEO) and Willem Dafoe play a good guy (one of the human resistance leaders). And it's always great to see Claudia Karvan being excellent (as another human resistance leader). Turns out this was filmed in Australia, as an Australian and United States co-production, and a lot of Australian and New Zealand actors show up in it.

The running time is a sleek 94 minutes: tightly scripted, beautifully paced, not a beat wasted. More movies need to learn this. The aesthetic is gorgeous, lots of blue light for the cold vampire world and gold light for the warm human world. I love the blend of futuristic technology and classic noir.

Some of the scenes, though, are very bloody and gory. I usually have a low tolerance for this, but they're so cartoonish it wasn't that disturbing to me? And they're pretty well telegraphed, like, "Hmmmm, I'm getting a bad feeling about where this is going... Oh no. Oh dear."

The science is kind of implausible, and some of the action is kind of ridiculous. But I'm not here for your earth logic, I'm here for rule of cool and all the feelings.

If you would like to experience this movie in three minutes, I recommend checking out mithborien's excellent vid. (Note: Contains spoilers and gore.)

VID: Me & Lazarus (40 words) by mithborien
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Daybreakers (2009)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Fanvids
Summary: Movie recap (most uninspired summary ever)

Posted 4 July 2010:

THIS IS IRON FIST

ITEM 1: The trailer for the live action Tekken movie.

ITEM 2: A poll: The live action Tekken movie looks:
good / bad / so bad it's good / other (in comments)

ITEM 3: Some choice quotes from the Tekken Zaibatsu forums:

"whoever said this is going to be another Dragonball Evolution, i agree with him."

"Why couldn't James Cameron direct this?!"

"I really hope they add a bowling scene, I would totally lose it if they did."

"the budget for this was like more then 30 million!? and they couldnt afford some good hair gel to make jin's trademark hair?!?!"

"Honestly when has Kazuya ever had a mustache in any game, minus customizations."

"Hmm, Jin seems kind of like... what's the opposite of a badass? Why is he some scrawny noob? Do they mention in the movie that this guy kicked ass in every previous tekken tournament since 3?"

"What's with Christie hooking up with Jin? Doesn't she hate his guts?! Why is she even white?"

"I feel a drinking game coming on!"

---

Ten years on, I still have not actually seen this movie. It was screened in Japan, Singapore, and the Philippines, but went straight to video in the UK and US. It might not ever have come out in Australia. The limited release meant a box office of $1.7 million, against a budget of $30 million.

According to Wikipedia, "Tekken holds no critical score, but has a 31% approval rating by audiences on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 2.68/10."

The trailer in my original post is lost to time. However, I found a newer and longer trailer on YouTube. It still looks kind of bad, but it also looks dramatic and fun:

Tekken: Official Movie Trailer

Astonishingly, they made a follow up movie, which is actually a prequel. I have no idea why. This one just looks terrible:

Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge Official Trailer

I saw it a few days after release, but the past month has been so hectic. This is nothing so coherent as a review. I just want to get down my impressions, before I finally go read all the other reactions.

( Spoilers )

When I think about it, it's kind of amazing that these movies exist. When I was growing up, there were the three original movies, and George Lucas's pipe dream of a prequel trilogy and a sequel trilogy. Now all nine are complete. The Star Wars universe is continuing to expand in all directions, but this feels like it should be a milestone to mark the end of an era.

What if Jesus and Buddha were roommates in modern day Tokyo?

The annual Japanese Film Festival is a great opportunity to catch elusive movies. Saint Young Men 2nd Century is based on the popular slice-of-life manga by Hikaru Nakamura. This live action movie is actually the compilation of a web series, consisting of 10 episodes, each 6 minutes long.

I heard about the manga a while back, and loved the premise, but execution is everything. I was mostly hoping the movie would be funny and heartwarming, and not awkward and uncomfortable.

( Mild spoilers )

I've been away from Dreamwidth for a few weeks, and I've got quite a bit to catch up on. But I just watched Avengers: Endgame, and I wanted to get my thoughts down before reading everyone else's reactions and reviews.

I have a lot of feelings about it.

( SPOILERS BELOW )

I saw it a week after release and was lucky enough to avoid spoilers. I liked it a lot! It delivered everything I wanted from a Star Wars movie.

( Spoilers )

I meant to post about this right after I saw it, but it probably would have mostly consisted of wild flailing.

( Spoilers )

Bonus feature: X-Men Apocalypse Group Therapy Session (spoilers for the movie).

Hugh Jackman is wasted in action movies.

I saw his show last Monday at the Entertainment Centre, and he totally owned the stage. Such a fantastic singer, dancer, and performer. So friendly and down to earth and funny. He really is the nicest guy!

Many of his friends and family were in the audience, and he did lots of shoutouts to them. He made jokes ragging on them and jokes at his own expense. He got ten thousand people to join in singing "Happy Birthday" to his wife. He flirted shamelessly with audience members and security guards. He tapdanced to "Singin' in the Rain". He sang "I Still Call Australia Home" backed by an entire children's choir.

He talked about how he auditioned for X-Men while he was in the musical Oklahoma! and actually did the audition between the matinee and evening performances.

He told the story of getting a phone call late at night from Steven Spielberg, who he didn't believe it was at first. And then telling his wife, "You're about to go to bed with the host of the 81st Oscars," and her saying, "What, is Billy Crystal here?"

He told a great story about his dad flying to New York and back over a weekend to see him perform at Carnegie Hall, and him telling his dad, "It's business casual, not black tie," and his dad showing up all dressed up anyway, and Hugh saying, "Didn't you get my message?" and his dad answering, "My son is singing at Carnegie Hall. It's black tie."

One of the highlights was the Les Miserables medley, including "One Day More" sung by the whole ensemble. Another highlight was getting to hear the song "This Is Me" from his new movie musical, The Greatest Showman on Earth, about the life of PT Barnum. I for one cannot wait.

And here we are, at the end of all things.

( Spoilers )

It's hard to believe it's finally over. I've complained about various aspects of the films, but all in all, it's an epic I'd never imagined I would ever get to see on screen.