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The Magic Hour
Normal Saturday. Had classes pretty much straight from 11am to 8pm with an hour or so in the middle break. Technically I didn't have a 7pm class but instead I had two students and a visitor asking me questions for that time. Whee.
After work I went up to Saitama Shintoshin and ate a BLT sandwich at Kua'Aina and then went to see a movie called The Magic Hour, which is Koki Mitani's newest comedy and stars like half the famous people in Japan. Okay, not really, but I recognized pretty much everyone in the main cast from various other stuff.
Satoshi Tsumabuki plays a... gangster of sorts, who gets caught fooling around with Eri Fukatsu, the girlfriend of a major mafia boss. (Somehow, despite that this is Japan, and the city is called "Sukago", the entire thing reeks of a weird combination of Guys And Dolls and well, Chicago.) The boss and his gang are out to kill Satoshi, aka Bingo, until Bingo says that he knows this hit man that they've been looking for. Or something. Anyway, Bingo has 5 days to find the hit man. And he fails. Until he comes up with this brilliant plan...
...enter Koichi Sato, who is an actor named Murata who has been reduced to bit parts and such, and isn't even doing so well at that. Bingo decides to hire Murata to be the "star" of this "mafia film" that he is making. Murata's character will be the legendary hit man Della Togashi. With the help of a bartender and waitress from a local club, who pretend to be the film crew, and various other random people, they start pretending to "film" this movie.
And well, then it becomes funny. Because, I mean, you can imagine what happens -- the actor goes in there and talks to all of the mob guys, armed with nothing but a rubber gun... but since he thinks they're other actors too, and that he's the major hero of this movie, he completely stuns and intimidates them. Then of course the mob guys think that he's the real hit man, so they "hire" him to off someone. Which naturally, Bingo convinces him is part of the movie plot. (There are these great scenes where Bingo just yells "CUT!!" and for whatever reason, all the mob guys actually let him just drag Murata out of there.)
Oh yeah, and in the meantime you have Eri Fukatsu playing pretty much the most annoying character I have ever ever ever seen her play. I mean, the entire movie comes down to the fact that she's a pain in the ass and makes trouble for everyone, essentially. On the other hand she does this great stage performance of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", while sitting in a suspended crescent moon that looks like it's right out of some 1930's movie.
But anyway, really, this movie is incredibly funny, mostly just because of the way that nobody knows who is acting and who is real and who is what and all. Like at one point, after one of those "CUT!!" scenes, one of the gangsters (played by Susumu Terajima, one of my favorite supporting actors ever) is like "why did you yell 'Cut'?" Bingo explains, "Oh, it's a nickname I have for him... you saw how he was with that knife, right?" So later when Terajima's character tries to call him Cut, Murata goes mad like "WHY ARE YOU SAYING CUT? ONLY HE IS ALLOWED TO SAY CUT. DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW THIS WORKS?" Which is just hilarious because I mean, you know he means that it's a movie and only the director is allowed to cut the scene, but of course the mobsters all think that it means that this Della Togashi guy is asserting that only his good friend Bingo can call him by a nickname.
Or the best is probably when the mobsters put Bingo and Murata in the basement and put their feet in cement, and Murata keeps taking his feet out, and the mobster is like "Dude, put your feet back in," and Murata says "But uh, this prop seems to be made out of cement, and it's going to harden and our feet are going to be stuck here," and the mobster's like "What kind of fucking moron are you? Of COURSE they are, that's the idea!" and punches him. And then Murata turns to Bingo like "Uh... director... THAT was NOT in the script..."
Anyway, I swear it does have a happy ending. And a funny one. Really, a pretty good movie. Go see it and stuff.
(I will go see the Hana Yori Dango movie, but it opened today and there's just NO way I was going to see it on opening weekend. Maybe next week.)
After work I went up to Saitama Shintoshin and ate a BLT sandwich at Kua'Aina and then went to see a movie called The Magic Hour, which is Koki Mitani's newest comedy and stars like half the famous people in Japan. Okay, not really, but I recognized pretty much everyone in the main cast from various other stuff.
Satoshi Tsumabuki plays a... gangster of sorts, who gets caught fooling around with Eri Fukatsu, the girlfriend of a major mafia boss. (Somehow, despite that this is Japan, and the city is called "Sukago", the entire thing reeks of a weird combination of Guys And Dolls and well, Chicago.) The boss and his gang are out to kill Satoshi, aka Bingo, until Bingo says that he knows this hit man that they've been looking for. Or something. Anyway, Bingo has 5 days to find the hit man. And he fails. Until he comes up with this brilliant plan...
...enter Koichi Sato, who is an actor named Murata who has been reduced to bit parts and such, and isn't even doing so well at that. Bingo decides to hire Murata to be the "star" of this "mafia film" that he is making. Murata's character will be the legendary hit man Della Togashi. With the help of a bartender and waitress from a local club, who pretend to be the film crew, and various other random people, they start pretending to "film" this movie.
And well, then it becomes funny. Because, I mean, you can imagine what happens -- the actor goes in there and talks to all of the mob guys, armed with nothing but a rubber gun... but since he thinks they're other actors too, and that he's the major hero of this movie, he completely stuns and intimidates them. Then of course the mob guys think that he's the real hit man, so they "hire" him to off someone. Which naturally, Bingo convinces him is part of the movie plot. (There are these great scenes where Bingo just yells "CUT!!" and for whatever reason, all the mob guys actually let him just drag Murata out of there.)
Oh yeah, and in the meantime you have Eri Fukatsu playing pretty much the most annoying character I have ever ever ever seen her play. I mean, the entire movie comes down to the fact that she's a pain in the ass and makes trouble for everyone, essentially. On the other hand she does this great stage performance of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", while sitting in a suspended crescent moon that looks like it's right out of some 1930's movie.
But anyway, really, this movie is incredibly funny, mostly just because of the way that nobody knows who is acting and who is real and who is what and all. Like at one point, after one of those "CUT!!" scenes, one of the gangsters (played by Susumu Terajima, one of my favorite supporting actors ever) is like "why did you yell 'Cut'?" Bingo explains, "Oh, it's a nickname I have for him... you saw how he was with that knife, right?" So later when Terajima's character tries to call him Cut, Murata goes mad like "WHY ARE YOU SAYING CUT? ONLY HE IS ALLOWED TO SAY CUT. DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW THIS WORKS?" Which is just hilarious because I mean, you know he means that it's a movie and only the director is allowed to cut the scene, but of course the mobsters all think that it means that this Della Togashi guy is asserting that only his good friend Bingo can call him by a nickname.
Or the best is probably when the mobsters put Bingo and Murata in the basement and put their feet in cement, and Murata keeps taking his feet out, and the mobster is like "Dude, put your feet back in," and Murata says "But uh, this prop seems to be made out of cement, and it's going to harden and our feet are going to be stuck here," and the mobster's like "What kind of fucking moron are you? Of COURSE they are, that's the idea!" and punches him. And then Murata turns to Bingo like "Uh... director... THAT was NOT in the script..."
Anyway, I swear it does have a happy ending. And a funny one. Really, a pretty good movie. Go see it and stuff.
(I will go see the Hana Yori Dango movie, but it opened today and there's just NO way I was going to see it on opening weekend. Maybe next week.)
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