Jul 16, '08 1:37 AM
for everyone
On July 12, 2008, a bunch of us J-Club members
went to see one of the films being shown on Eiga
Sai 2008 and indulged in some girly-girl activites outside of the office.
We agreed to meet up between 11 to 11:30 am at Shangrila mall. I
ended up taking a taxi because I thought I would be last however it is good not
to rush too much.
Chelle and I met up the graphic novels section of National
Bookstore.
Luckily she came in before I could be tempted to buy more books
or graphic novels. After we queued for the tickets, and the other girls Grace,
Hannah and Alyson arrived, off we went to have lunch at Green Tomato.
Trying to decide among the many dishes of pasta and pizza and
the other dishes on the menu, the lunch talk was full of teasing and stories.
Pasta and its sauces and ingredients were varied, with plain OO,
tomato-based, pesto, brandied shrimp, spaghetti, penne, fetuccine etc.
while the pizza was for meat-lovers.
Too bad no dessert was on the plate :-(
We had enough time before the 2 pm movie and ended up
comfortably ensconced in the middle aisle though we at first kept on moving
around due to the "Reserved" signs (which turned out to be
disregarded).
Humming "Linda
Linda Linda" after the movie was finished, we proceeded to walk around
and do some shopping. Some of them apparently were going to go on a run the
next day, therefore new running shoes were a must.
Of course, when one walks around with fellow girls, one gets
sucked into buying some things too, even if it wasn't on the agenda at the
start *looks at credit card dolefully*
Before splitting up and heading home, we also decided to go to Glorietta and
have coffee at Gloria Jean's...there was an ulterior motive for that, which I
shall not disclose here *wink* but the conversation during that coffee break
was like an interview for each of us girls...hehehe...plus some other perks
*sticks tongue out*
The Film: Linda Linda
Linda
Japanese Title: Rinda Rinda Rinda
Director: Yamashita Nobuhiro
Cast: Bae Doo-na as Song, Maeda Aki as Yamada Kyoko, Kashii Yu as Tachibana
Kei, Sekine, Shiori as Shirakawa Nozomi, Mimura Takayo as Marumoto Rinko,
Komoto Masahiro
as Teacher Koyama
Synopsis partially taken from the brochure:
This film about youth is
set in modern-day high school just outside of Tokyo. A couple of days just
before the school’s culture festival, a girl’s music group is facing a
dilemma. They planned on playing an original piece of music but, three
days before the festival,
the guitarist appears to
have broken her finger and an argument breaks out among the two band members
who founded it. They need to find a new guitarist and a new vocalist. While the
remaining three girls are pondering who to ask to be the new vocalist, they
hear the song, “Linda Linda Linda” by the famous Japanese rock band Blue Hearts
and decide they want to sing it instead of an original song.
A Korean exchange student, Song, misunderstood and said yes when
they ask her to be their vocalist. Her Japanese is not perfect, and she’s
never sung in front of an audience, but she listens to the song and says yes.
The girls practice a lot but they don’t seem to be improving much. They spend a
lot of time at Kei’s ex-boyfriend’s studio and at the school practicing late
into the night..and with all these practicing a deep friendship develops among
the four girls.
The night before the festival, they practice late into the night
and exhaust themselves. They suddenly wake up the next morning and realize
that they are late for the festival. They arrive at the school just as the
festival is finishing and perform as the last act. The audience loves them
and the four girls play their hearts out.
Linda Linda Linda was ranked as the 6th best film on the 79th
Kinema Junpo best ten list for 2005. Director Yamashita Nobuhiro’s other
films, Hazy Life (“Donten Seikatsu,” 2001), No One’s Ark (“Baka no
Hakobune, 2002) and Ramblers (“Riarizumu no Yado,” 2003) also deal with
the lives of youths.
In Linda Linda Linda, the film uses minimalism and a level-headed
approach to convey his ideas to the audience. The Korean character in the
film, Song, is played by a Korean actor, Bae Doo-na. She has starred in such
Korean films as Park Chan-Wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and
Hyeon Nam-Seob’s Saving My Hubby (2002). The actress who plays the role of
the bassist, Nozomi, is a real-life musician.
Well, I enjoyed the film. I am not really into drama and I
honestly was dreading seeing the films being featured this year as some of the
girls had attended the first night of the festival and according to Hannah it
was "bloody" (aka dumugo ilong nya or maybe there were bloody
scenes?). hehehe...
But this one film was light, youth-oriented, feel-good,
enjoyable.
It's simple, direct approach to telling the story is refreshing
and the song's tunes and lyrics were catchy too. Makes me wanna see what other
Blue Hearts songs are out there.
The film reminds me of "Stand by Me" but on a lesser
scale. It is more of a tale of friendship developing between these girls who
worked hard so that they could perform in the festival. There are no tricks to
how its presented and its strangely fun to see this kind of film these days
when those marked as good or blockbuster films (not necessarily exclusive
descriptions) we queue for feature either camera tricks, CGI or a bunch of
confusing turns in the story. I had a good time watching it with the company I
was with.
There were hilarious moments in the film - and when I least
expected it! I emitted a couple of giggles in some scenes even if I was busy
reading the subtitles. One was when this Japanese boy who apparently had a
crush on Song arranged for them to meet so that he could tell her his feelings.
Aside from the girls and the boy's friend spying on them, the guy was trying
his best to speak in Korean to Song (with matching script or kodigs or cheat
sheet pa ha!) of how he felt, and the oblivious Song was answering in her
not-so-fluent Japanese.
Another unexpected (somewhat icky!) scene was when Kei was
gifted with a hand. Yes, a hand! I thought at first maybe the film had some
horror twist when I saw the hand inside a box and being gifted to her on her
birthday (?).
It looked real, big and hairy. Urgh!! Enough said. Apparently
its because she needs help because her hand was small and she needed a bigger
hand to play her guitar. WTF?
Though it was a somewhat rainy day in the end, this Saturday was
a nice break from routine.
Instead of having classes, we had played hooky *grin* and
watched a movie instead, and got to know each other a little bit more. I felt
like a young woman again...este..correction much younger woman..again.
