Brotherhood

In light of the fact

I watch so many J-films

a change is needed

 

Of course, I don`t mean to say I ONLY watch Japanese films.  Not at all. I try to mix it up a bit – both in library loans, dvd rentals (yep some of us still do that) and what I buy.  But this haiku comment is mostly because of the neighbours over in South Korea (I confess I have not seen many South Korean films).  An article in an on-line newspaper from Japan about the success of a recent film in Korea which celebrates a Korean naval victory over Japan has prompted this particular post.  This victory was a few centuries ago now but it seems it has stirred up patriotic sentiment in South Korea recently.   Anyway, one of the commenters (and boy do pro-Japan commenters, not necessarily Japanese, get bees in their bonnets!!) mentioned another film from a few years back called Brotherhood (the name in Korean, using roman script, is Taegukgi).   I had forgotten about it until I found it by chance in my library again (libraries are great, no matter how small, but again the staff in this particular library could try to be a bit friendly!!).

I have not watched many Korean films, especially anything that relates to the  the Korean war (Letters from Iwo Jima about the battle for Iwo Jima in WWII, however much I like it, was a film made from the Japanese point of view but directed by an American director, Eastwood!!).   I saw a really sweet film a couple of years about a little boy who is sent to a remote village for the summer to live with his grandmother.    I can`t remember the name of it right now but it was an absolutely lovely film.  If anyone knows it, pray tell!! I`ve also watched Old Boy.   There`s apparently an American remake of that in the pipeline. I can`t imagine it.

By the way, one certain on-line newspaper in Japan only lets you read articles once you sign up and then you only get so many articles a month.  I have not signed up to this nonsense so I`ve been getting messages on-screen saying `You have reached your limit as a non-registered user (blah blah blah)`.   It really puts me off reading that paper which is otherwise really good and has very good articles about learning Japanese (as well as other good articles on other topics) and so I usually just go over to the newspaper I mention above which is not AS good so they should realize it is not really good for business to be doing this.   Let people read your news free people!!  One of my national newspapers used to do this as well and it`s a really good newspaper so it really annoyed me and even disappointed me when I saw this as I was living abroad at the time and it was the only way to read this newspaper (and because I did not expect them to do something like that).  Luckily, they stopped this.

Anyway, off to watch that film now.   It looks really good.