Ippoippo

I was reading an interesting article (and the associated comments afterwards) over at Japan Today, about how US films are marketed and released in Japan. It discussed why for example, Star Wars Episode 3 is not being shown until July.

To summerise, basically its because

• In Japan there are less cinemas (theaters in good old US English), and scheduling domestic films, together with US films, and other foreign films is difficult
• There are 3 peak release times in Japan, one being summer (basically, coincides with the few main holiday seasons). Star Wars is always released during the summer

This was all pretty interesting, but one thing that caught my mind was about translations by Natsuko Toda, for the subtitles, and the backlash it got in the comments. Indeed, her comment

Sometimes, for security reasons, the pictures are masked or blacked out so we cannot see what is happening, or who is talking to whom! Can you imagine how difficult that makes our work?

was also discussed in this other article, and again slated.

At first, I thought it was just a bunch of foreigners being anti-Japanese (there are a lot of them over at the Japan Today site), but digging around reveals that a lot of Japanese are not impressed by her subtitle work. These are the Japanese foreigners who have experienced the outside world as it were.
Apparently, her work on Lord of the Rings:Fellowship of the Ring, left a lot to be desired and she was reported replaced (partially anyway). It seemed that a lot of Japanese Tolkien fans (there are relatively few of them though) spotted some rather big errors. Some were just mistakes, some were caused by her ‘Japanising’ things that did not really require to be Japanised.

It’s interesting actually, because I remember when I was watching Star Wars Episodes 4, 5 and 6 with Yuko on DVD, she commented that some of the subtitles seemed strange. She’d ask me to rewind something because she wanted to double check the English. Basically, what was happening was she was taking some English collequiel phrases she understood, and was wondering why the Japanese subtitle didn’t seem to match with what she thought was correct.

Been watching some of the extra’s on my Lord of the Rings:Return of the King Extended Edition DVD.

As much as I like the Star Wars films, the presentation and information provided in the LOTR DVD’s is far superior to the stuff put out from LucasFilm.
There is just so much emotion in it as well.
Two days ago, I was watching one of the extras (on Disc 4 I think), about Filming ROTK. The end of it, when they were filming the last scene during the last set of pickups was amazing to watch, and I found myself getting quite emotional.
If you haven’t got the DVD, first…. GET IT!!! But anyway, to describe what I saw.
Basically, it was amazing to see them film this last scene, and you could sense the atmosphere as everyone knew it was over after that scene. Peter Jackson (the Director) in a way just didn’t want it to end, as he had put so much work into it. It was like he didn’t want it to end, as if he felt it would be the end of ‘his family’ of actors and crew. He repeatedly kept asking the actors to do the scene again.
My description just cannot do justice to what I saw.

I still haven’t got around to watching the extended cut yet of the film. I’m watching the extra’s first. Plus, it was only two weeks ago that I finally got around to watching The Two Towers Extended Cut anyway!!!!! (I’ve seen the extra’s already, over a year ago).