My Neighbors the Yamadas

My Neighbors the Yamadas is the 12th movie put out by Studio Ghibli. Based on a Yonkoma manga (Yonkoma manga consists of funny comic strips with 4 panels) called Nono-chan, the movie brings to life the Yamada family; a typical Japanese working family.

It's a totally different style to the other movies. Instead of anime the movie looks like the original manga and is brought to life. The backgrounds are mostly left black and white, while the characters are coloured as if painted. Despite the simplicity of the drawings the animation and attention to real world detail makes it all come to life convincingly.

Rather than one long story, the movie is split into a series of individial events in the Yamada's family, most ending with a haiku in calligraphy by a famous Japanese poet. Examples would be losing your child in the mall, or trying to get your son to study. I can also relate to the scene where the father wants his family to come and have their picture taken in the first snow of the year, but they are watching TV, so he puts the camera on the TV and takes the picture anyway.

There is a real warmth in the humour; the characters love each other and that shows through even when they are tired and irritable. This is something like a Japanese version of the Simpsons, where families are not always looking out for each other, children do not want to study, and the father does not love his job.

This is now one of my favourites SG movies; it's not only very funny and full of observations on life that cross over from Japanese culture to Western, it is also deep on occasion, and explores what it really means to be a family.

You can read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbors_the_Yamadas

Whisper of the Heart

I'm on a mission to watch and review all 19 movies from Studio Ghibli. This weekend I watched 'Whisper of the Heart', their 10th movie.

This is probably the SG movie with the least actual magic in it; the animals don't talk (but they do ride trains!). But it is a really nice coming of age or first love story about a school girl called Shizuki. The theme song of the movie is John Denver's "Country Roads", which Shizuki translates into Japanese for a school project, and also writes her own lyrics for based on her own life in a Tokyo suburb.

A sad fact about the movie I found on the wikipedia page, linked below, is that the director of this movie died just a few years later from an aneurism. He was expected to be a successor to the directors Miyazaki and Takahata.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_of_the_Heart_(film)

Like most of the other movies the children are the main characters of the story, and are left to roam the streets of a Tokyo suburb late at night. The parents expect the kids to take care of themselves and also make the dinner and do a lot of house work; I hope my son takes notes on how lucky he is!

One thing that struck me about this movie is how beautiful and detailed the interiors are; for example this scene in Shizuki's kitchen.

The city scenes are also incredibly rich, with subtle details bringing everything to life. The animation of cars, trains and especially the bike riding of Shizuki's friend Seiji is extremely convincing.

Whilst there is no actual magic in this movie, there are some really beautiful moments. It's not just a story of high school sweet hearts; it's about ambition, artistic endeavour and whether to risk it all for your dreams or take the safer path.

Chili soup

Didn't have a lot of time or ingredients, but this turned out quite well since we made some fresh bread to go with it.

Ingredients

6 cups water

1 tsp ground cumin

4 tbsp chilli powder

salt and black pepper

12 oz can of crushed tomatoes

3 bulbs of garlic, thickly slice and crushed

12 oz can of red kidney beans

1 cup of white long grain rice

1 cup frozen peas or corn

Splash of cooking white wine

Method

Pretty much stick it all in the pot; bring it to the boil and simmer for 40 minutes.

Except the rice is best cooked separately then added near the end to stop it getting too soggy.

I made this in the morning with the bread, so that it could be just reheated when we got home after our day out.

Jamie (age 8) wasn't too keen but my wife, Corbey loved it, at least after I had dumped a fistful of shredded cheddar cheese on the top.

Making ginger beer

Having never made ginger beer, and casually mentioning to my friend that I was going to "make ginger beer" at the weekend, last Saturday I decided to give a go. The first google hit for "making ginger beer" is here:

http://thehowzone.com/how/making_ginger_beer

Well the website is awesome; it had all the info I needed. I did intend to read the web page, then go out shopping for the ingredients and any equipment I didn't have. In fact I was able to put everything together that I needed with a couple of modifications.

I've also changed the ingredient measurements to be metric, since I'm up in Canada. eh.

What on Earth is Ginger Beer?

It's a drink made from ginger; yeast is added to make it fizzy. It's about 1% alcoholic; so not at all really.

How long does it take?

Only a couple of days, you can do it one day if you get up early.

What are the ingredients?

2 cups of white granulated sugar
1 piece of ginger size of an apple core (probably needed twice as much really, I added a tbsp of powdered ginger)
1/2 tbsp Bread machine yeast
4 litres of water
Few drops of lemon juice
1/2 tsp of cream of tarar (this is a powder you'll find in the spices section in the grocery store)

What equipment do you need?

Large pan
Plastic drink bottles (enough to hold 4 liters. In my case I used two 2l bottles, but I think 6 330ml would be better)

Method:

Fill your bottles to the top then pour them into the pan, add an extra cup of two of water to allow for what gets boiled away.
Chop the ginger up into 1mm thick slices, including the skin, then mash it up with a fork and stick it in the pot to boil
Add the cream of tartar and lemon juice, and the sugar

Put the yeast in a 1/4 cup of lukewarm water. Sprinkle it on the top and let it fizz happily. Added a few grains of sugar too.

Boil it for about 15 minutes to get all the flavour out of the ginger root.

Then I took the pot and stuck it in my kitchen sink filled with cold water and big ice packs, so it cooled down quick.

Once the water is just warm again, throw the yeast in there and stir it around. I put a loose fitting lid on the pot.

Come back in about 2-3 hours. You should have the start of 'activity' on the top. Froth basically. Now you can pour the liquid from the pot into another pot through a sieve to get the big bits of root ginger and so on out.

Then pour the liquid into the bottles. Don't fill them all the way, you need 6-7 cm at the top.

The ginger beer can now brew overnight. In the morning stick it in the fridge. Once chilled you can drink it!

In my case it turned out really tasty and fizzy. Apparently the bottles can explode, so when brewing I would make sure they are somewhere you will find easy to clean up. Also check the pressure every 20 minutes or so by squeezing the bottles.

Save the Green Planet

I always love watching Japanese movies because the stories are so utterly bizarre. Well 'Save the Green Planet' is not at all Japanese, it's Korean, but it is a pretty weird story!

You're never quite sure whether this is an horrific psycho torture movie, a sci-fi movie, or a psychological thriller. In fact it's a bit of all these genres and perhaps a cop drama too.

To do the movie a great injustice by trying to capture it in a nut shell, this is about a young couple who kidnap the executive of a large corporation, because they believe he is a member of an alien race. Keeping him locked up and subjecting him to various horrible tortures (which are not shown in any kind of graphic detail, but are still unpleasant), they try to determine if he really is who they think he is.

In the meantime borderline-cliche rookie cop and disgraced veteran cop duo, team up and try to track down and rescue the executive.

Never boring; fast paced but quite long, and filled with that brilliant Korean mix of warm humour and shocking violence.

Conclusion: Another brilliant Korean movie, definitely enjoyed this one a lot.

JSA

Brief movie review. Just watched Korean movie "Joint Security Area". From the box art I was expecting an action movie for some reason, but although this does contain short scenes of graphic violence and gun fighting, the story is told with a lot of humour and the characters share some very warm and touching scenes.

Set on the border of the two Korea's, the story is based on a true story where two North Korean border guards were killed. Investigating what happened is a member of the verbosely titled "Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission" , who is a woman, and very cute (Lee Young Ae).

The characters are utterly convincing, the cinematography is quite arty in places, but never indulgent. The story is told in a typical Tarantino (start at the end and then flashback to figure it out) style, and unsurprisingly is supposed to be one of his favourite movies.

Definitely worth watching, although I did find it a little hard to follow in places. You can probably blame that on my inattention, or the subtitle quality of the version I watched.

My Sassy Girl

I don't think I've reviewed a movie before but I really enjoyed this movie from Korea called My Sassy Girl (trailer).

Apparently in Korean it means That Bizarre Girl, and there is a hollywood remake of the same name which I will touch on briefly also (and a Japanese one which I haven't seen yet),

In order to avoid repeating the wikipedia page I'll simply link to it now so you will know if I do.

The movie is about a guy (called Gyeon-woo) who sees a drunk girl swaying about on a train platform and saves her from possibly falling into the track a train comes. Following that he ends up taking care of her all night, including helping her into a hotel bed. In somewhat conservative Seoul you can't just drag a drunk girl into a motel at night, and soon the police show up and Gyeon-woo is arrested. Soon after she calls him, and arranges to meet him to find out what happened. They end up in a relationship where the girl is clearly in charge, bossing him about, yet he is soon head over heals in love with her.

There's no need for me to rehash the plot or the wikipedia page, but personally I can't recommend this movie highly enough. The music is fantastic (ok I like jazz) and the production standards are very high. The movie is very moving but also very funny. Even watching the movie with poorly translated English subtitles you can see it's a very well written script.

In Asian this movie was huge in the early 2000's, comparable to Titanic in the West, but I only came across it recently when a buddy recommended it, so hopefully if anyone reads this blog I will get a few more people to watch it.



It's a 10/10, you have to see it!

On the Hollywood remake of the same name... well it's the same story, the script is similar, the casting is, well, it's not bad. But really the movie is a pale imitation of a work of art. Probably not worth watching at all. In fact I was physically cringing at some of the most beautiful moments of the story, as the lines from the original were replayed without any of the life and truth.