On February 23rd, 2009, the Oscar for the foreign language film went to the movie Okuribito (english title: Departures), by director Takita Yojiro.
At the time, I was studying in Tokyo at Sendagaya Japanese Institute (千駄ヶ谷日本語教育研究所) and one of our teachers, Heya-sensei, told us about the Oscar and suggested to go see the movie in theaters as a school activity. Being a movie lover as I am the idea pleased me immediately, also because it would be my first time in a japanese theater seeing a movie in japanese language, and I was honestly curious about my ability to understand it. Read the rest of this entry »

Some movies are made for success, and no matter what’s your opinion about it, Avatar is indeed a success.
According to The Money Times the movie’s total income is now well over $650 milion, which makes it the top selling film of all times (more than Cameron’s own Titanic).

Naturally, a movie’s success is not only in money it makes, and Avatar has its big share of critics, concerning mainly the script which to many is way too similar to movies like Pocahontas, Dance with Wolves, The Last Samurai, The New World, FernGully or the italian Aida degli Alberi. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that people just name the first movie they saw whose story is close to Avatar’s. Don’t get me wrong, personally I saw Dance with Wolves and The Last Samurai and I gotta agree, they both are similar to Cameron’s last work, but still, they are also different.
Every filmmaker is by definition someone who loves movies, and every one of them, if asked, will tell stories about how he got into the idea of becoming what he is by seeing some old movie he still loves. Cameron himself was so amazed after seeing Star Wars in 1977 that he decided to enter the film industry.
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