Letters from Iwo Jima

Letters from Iwo Jima is a retelling of the Battle for Iwo Jima during WW2. The island is a volcanic rocky island that hold the strategic location being the door leading into the heart of the Japanese home islands, and thus became the prime target for US forces.
The film is based partially on 2 Japanese novels of that battle and partly fictionalised.

Produced by Clink Eastwood as a two-parter WW2 opus telling the battle from both the US and the Japanese perspectives. Although it is an American director's effort I decided to put this review into my Japanese-Korean movie review blog as the language of that film is in Japanese.

Where Flags was a great disappointment, Letters hit the jackpot.Eastwood did not bring any western emotional baggage into his story telling of Letters from Iwo Jima, but was able to look at the battle from the Japanese perspective. No one, US nor Japanese, was perfect but so very human; capable of great bravery in the face of withering gun fire, as well as utter cruelty
Ken Watanabe as General Kuribayashi is the perfect General, able to command the respect of the lowly infantryman, as well as a masterly tactician and strategist. His plan was not to stop the invading US forces from landing, which he considered impossible to achieve. Therefore, his plan was to stop the US forces from moving inland away from the beaches, making the landing zone a death trap where his artillery and mortars were zeroed in.
He also abandoned the past infantry tactics that the Japanese forces had used, namely the senseless banzai charges that causes needless deaths in the face of machinegun fire. He also forbiddened his soldiers from committing suicide.

Letters from Iso Jima is a sensitive story from the point of view of a young Japanese drafted to defend the island.
He left behind his wife and does not want to die. His fellow soldiers were similarly like him and caught in a situation beyond their control and want nothing more than to get out of it with their lives intact.



Cast:

Ken Watanabe	Army Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi
Kazunari Ninomiya	Army Private First Class Saigo
Tsuyoshi Ihara	Army Lt. Colonel/Baron Takeichi Nishi
Ryo Kase	Army Superior Private Shimizu
Shido Nakamura	Navy Lieutenant Ito
Hiroshi Watanabe	Army Lieutenant Fujita
Takumi Bando	Army Captain Tanida
Yuki Matsuzaki	Army Private First Class Nozaki
Nae Yuuki	Hanako (Saigo's wife)
Nobumasa Sakagami	Admiral Ohsugi
Akiko Shima	Lead Woman (Patriotic Women's Assoc.)
Lucas Elliott	Sam (wounded American Marine)
Mark Moses	American Officer (in a flash back)
Roxanne Hart	Officer's Wife

More info.......

Links:
Wikipedia - About Iwo Jima
Wikipedia - The Battle for Iwo Jima in WW2
Wikipedia - Letters from Iwo Jima

Rating: 4 out of 5
Clint Eastwood did not make a mess of this movie. It is sensitive and moving film of young men caught in a war not of their making and wanting nothing more than to live. Instead they were forced to fight; kill or be killed. Most of them died......

Shinobi (Japanese Movie)

A ninja movie about how the Shogun made use of 2 ninja clans to fight and destroy each other in that act by making promises that whichever clan succeeds would influence which of his sons would succeed him as Shogun.
He views these ninjas as a serious threat to his rule now that he has unified all Japan under him. He feared their special skills and thus seek to turn them against each other to their own destruction.

Unknowing of his true intentions, the Iga and Koga clans picked their own 5 best warriors to fight the other clan to the death.

Gennosuke of the Koga clan had earlier met and fallen in love with Oboro of the Iga clan earlier and when he learned of this duel, he refused to fight and insist on going to see the Shogun to find out the real reason for this duel.

Oboro is forced by her group to chase after Gennosuke and thus, the fight takes place despite Gennosuke's refusal to fight.

More info......

Cast:
Nakama Yukie as Oboro of the Iga clan
Odagiri Jo as Gennosuke of the Koga clan

What is a Shinobi?

Rating: 2 out of 5
I love a ninja movie as much as the next guy but I do so hate sad endings. This movie has pretty good CGIs as well as unusual ninja characters and their special skills.

Jumong (Korean Series)

I've long looked for a worthy successor to the great Korean tv epic Dae Jang Geum and found it in Ju Mong.

The story starts around 50BC in the Korean peninsula dominated by a economically large and technologically advance China. At that time Korea was divided into many small kingdoms at odds with each other.

A princeling of the state of Buyeo was trying to rescue citizens from Buyeo and other Korean states from the grasp of a Chinese-allied kingdom which had annexed some of their territories. The princeling was assisted by an able and skilled tactician by the name of Hae Mosu who led his own elite soldiers.
Both the princeling and Hae Mosu fell in love with the same woman but she chose to return the affection of the tactician and became pregnant with his child. Before the child is born, the father was ambushed and taken prisoner by the enemy. He was tortured and blinded.
His child, Jumong and his wife, Yuhwa, was taken in by the princeling as his family. Soon, the princeling became king of Buyeo and Jumong as raised as a prince.

As Jumong was the favoured of the king, his step brothers plotted his "accidental" deaths many times. Unwilling and unable to step up against these elder princelings due to his lack of martial skills and his more pacifistic mindset.
Jumong was left to die by the princelings on one mission and he was saved by the daughter of a commercial house.

Jumong met his father and was taught swordsmanship and archery by him who'd suspected Jumong's true identity early on. Jumong was unaware of his father's identity until it was too late and his father was ambushed and killed by the princelings.

Realising his true identity at last, Jumong was determined to leave Buyeo and found his own kingdom, Goguryeo. This sets the stage for conflict with his adopted father who viewed Jumong and his new kingdom as a direct threat to him.

Cast:

• Song Il Gook(송일국) as Prince Jumong(주몽)
• Han Hye-jin(한혜진) as Lady Soseono(소서노)
• Kim Seung-soo(김성수) as Prince Daeso(대소)
• Jeon Gwang-ryeol(전광렬) as King Geumwa(금와)
• Oh Yeon-soo(오연수) as Lady Yuhwa(유화)
• Kyeon Mi-ri(견미리) as Queen Wonhu(원후)
• Kim Byeong-ki (김병기) as Yeontabal(연타발)
• Jin Hee-kyeong(진희경) as Sorceress Yeomieul(여미을)
• Lee Jae-yong(이재용) as Prime Minister Budeukbul(부득불)
• Heo Joon-ho(허준호) as General Haemosu(해모수)
• Song Ji-hyo(송지효) as Lady Yesoya(예소야)
• Won Ki-joon(원기준) as Prince Yeongpo (영포)
• Bae Soo-bin(배수빈) as Sayong (사용)
• Park Tam-hee(박탐희) as Lady Yangseolran (양설란)
• Lim So-yeong(임소영) as Buyeong (부영)
• Yoon Dong-hwan(윤동환) as Yangjeong (양정)
• Ahn Jeong-hoon(안정훈) as Mari (마리)
• Lim Dae-ho(임대호) as Hyeopbo (협보)
• Yeo Ho-min(여호민) as Oyi (오이)
• Jeong Ho-bin(정호빈) as Wootae (우태)
• An Young Jun as Yuri

More info......
(This is an edition with English subtitles)

Video Caps:
Opening Theme
Battle for the Han-allied Korean city
Fight to clear ambush point
Defeating the pro-Han forces on the battlefield

Links:
Jumong the tv series
Jumong the wikipedia

Forum:
SPCNet Forum

Rating: 4.5 out of 5
I chose not to watch Song of the Prince nor Goong as they are nothing more than soap operas appealing to the fanboyz and fangirls. I prefer something more substantial and meaty like Dae Jang Geum.
This Jumong is a very long series of 82 chapters but I can assure you that each chapter is not boring as it has good storyline as well as action.

Sympathy for Lady Vengence (Korean Movie)

This Korean movie is by Director Park Chan Wook and concludes his Vengeance trilogy. It stars Lee Young Ae as Geum Ja, a fun-loving student who became pregnant and left home to seek shelter with her teacher Mr. Baek acted by Choi Min Sik of Old Boy fame.

Unknown to her, Mr Baek is a serial kidnapper and murderer of young children, for ransom and for thrill. Geum Ja was caught by the police and took the blame after a young boy was kidnapped and killed, and she was found guilty of the crime . As a result she spent 13 years in prison. She survived those years by being nice to all the inmates, even to the biggest bully in her cell block. She made friends with all and as a result, made many friends there wiling to help her at a later stage.

Released from prison, she was no longer the same naive girl of her younger days nor was she the sweet helpful girl her prison mates knew. Geum Ja became cold and calculating, plotting her revenge on Mr Baek who'd left her in prison.
Calling in the debts owed her, she managed to obtain plans for a gun, got it made, tracked down Mr Baek.
Geum Ja was reunited with her daughter who was adopted while she was in prison.
The end justified the means, and justice from Geum Ja's view was served. The parents of all the children that Mr Baek had kidnapped and murdered were able to be part of that justice.

More info....

Cast:
Lee Young Ae as Geum Ja
Choi Min Sik as Mr Baek

Rating: 4/5
This is a side of Lee Young Ae that is totally new. No more the sweet innocence but the cold, calculating and vengeful demon woman. This, alone, makes Sympathy for Lady Vengeance a definite must-see. Young Ae showed why she is so highly regarded in the Korean entertainment scene. When Korean movies are good, Korean movies are very good.
They don't believe in half measures.

Typhoon (Korean Movie)

This is touted as the most expensive Korean movie ever made. It tells a tale of a Korean terrorist, Jang Dong Gun, bend on exacting revenge on both North and South Koreas.
As a young boy, he and his family defected to South Korea. Through trickery, they were returned by the South Koreans to the North. In attempting to escape the whole family were slaughtered except for the young boy and his sister, but even then they became separated.

Falling into the hands of SEA bandits he grew up with them and gained leadership of a pirate group. The movie starts with this group hijacking a covert US ship transporting nuclear weapon kits. Jang Dong Gun intended to sell these kits to Pakistan but the deal fell through and he had to do a deal with a Russian general in a black-market trade.

This is where Lee Jeong Jae comes in as a South Korean agent tasked with preventing Jang Dong Gun from using these weapons of mass destruction.
The chase leads to Jang Dong Gun's long lost sister who became his bait to trap Dong Gun. Jeong Jae learned Dong Gun's past from the sister and felt sympathy for them.

The sister was shot when Dong Gun escaped from Jeong Jae's men and he implemented his plan to destroy both the North and South Koreas with contaminated nuclear waste material he'd gotten from the Russian general. His plan was to hide in a typhoon and release balloons lifting drums of these materials and detonating them when they are over the Korean peninsula.
The fight between these 2 men climaxed onboard the ship in the midst of the typhoon, with a US submarine waiting to sink it.

More info....

Cast:
Jang Dong Gun
Lee Jeong Jae

Rating: 2/5
Nothing original here. My personal opinion is that this movie doesn't show where all the money went to. The ending was cliche as the villain became a good guy at the end and never set the load to auto-detonate in the first place. It's a cop-out ending. When Korean movies are bad, they are very bad and this one is no exception. Most expensive but I really don't see where the money went.

Daisy (Korean Movie)

This is the 4th and latest movie of the Korean actress Jeon Ji Hyun of My Sassy Girl and Windstruck fame. In this movie she has moved away from her cutsie characters in the 2 earlier movies and into a serious dramatic role here.

In Daisy, Jeong Ji Hyun is a side walk sketch artist in Amsterdam. She lives above her gallery and often wanders the countryside doing impressionist styled paintings of it and dreams of being able to have an exhibition show of her own one day.

While crossing a log bridge one day she fell off and into a shallow stream. Unknown to her, she was watched by a Korean man, Jung Woo Sung, who was living nearby and he retrieved her satchel which was washed away. Besotted with her innocent beauty, he began sending a pot of daisy to her gallery every afternoon. He also replaced the crude log bridge with a more wider and safer bridge for her to cross.
Touched by this mysterious admirer, Ji Hyun left a painting of a field of daisy behind on the bridge for him.

Every morning, he watches her from afar as she does her morning round of sketching for customers in the square. Due to his work as an international professional killer he kept his distance from Ji Hyun.

One day, a young Korean man, Lee Seong Jae, approached Ji Hyun for a sketch but he left before she could complete but promised to be back the next day. Ji Hyun completed it based on her memory so was able to hand it to him the next day. He was smittened by her and was soon at her shop with a pot of flowers. Ji Hyun mistakened him for her mysterious admirer and he did not want her to know he is not the man she was waiting for.
Soon, they became close and he often visited her in the square but one day, some men started walking quickly towards him. Lee Seong Jae was in actual fact an undercover Interpol agent and he was their target now.
Jung Woo Sung was, as usual, watching and he saw these armed men approaching Ji Hyun and Seong Jae who were unaware of their danger. Woo Sung fired at these gunmen and soon the square turned into a battlefield. Ji Hyun was shot in the throat in the cross fire.

Seong Jae was devastated that she was injured because of him but because he undercover status was exposed he could not remain in Holland and must leave Ji Hyun, who had lost her speech as a result of her injury.
Heart broken that Seong Jae had left her, she went through her days in a daze.
Unable to look at her constant lonely pain, Jung Woo Sung approached her daily and tried to fill the gap in her life left vacant when Seong Jae left her.
Despite the kindness of Woo Sung, Ji Hyun could not get over her love for Seong Jae and told him so in writing.
Still, Woo Sung continued to keep her company but one day Seong Jae turned up suddenly at her apartment while Woo Sung was there.

Thus, the stage was set for the girl caught in between the killer and the hunter. There can be only one end result.

While this is a fresh side of Jeon Ji Hyun, perhaps she chose the wrong vehicle to extend her dramatic range as the formula is pretty cliche. Still, pretty watchable because Jeon Ji Hyun is very pretty and watchable.
More info....

MV from Daisy

Cast:
Jeon Ji Hyun as Hye Young
Jung Woo Sung as Park Yi the assassin
Lee Seong Jae as Jeong Woo the Interpol agent
David Chiang as head of the assassin guild

Rating: 3/5
I had originally wanted to rate this show at 2 as it's not original in anyway but a ripoff off many Hongkong movies that cloned each other. But, as I'd mentioned, Jeon Ji Hyun is really very very sweet and pretty so giving in to this weakness, I revised my opinion of Daisy to 3/5

Jewel in the Palace aka Dae Jang Geum (Korean Series)

This is a truly epic Korean production that took Asia by storm conquering every country and making everyone sit through the story of a young apprentice palace cook, Jang Guem, who worked her way up to the never heard of position of a female personal physician to the emporer of Korea.
"Dae" was the special personal title that the emporer conferred on her.

Told in 70 chapters was the story of her mother who rose to become a supervisor in the imperial kitchen who had witnessed an act of high treason committed in the kitchen itself and whom told the wrong person. As a result she was poisoned to keep the scandal from being revealed.
Surviving the attempt she started a new life with a palace guardman who, unfortunately, was a party to a power struggle between courtiers and a young emporer which ended in the poisoning of the young emporer's mother. After coming into power, he was determined to punish everyone who was involved in causing his mother's death. As a result, young Jang Geum and her family was forced to uproot constantly to escape from his pursuers.

Losing her father and then her mother's last breathe urging her to attain the position of Matron of the Imperial kitchen, young Jang Geum''s story unfold. We are treated to spectacular and colourful images of an ancient imperial Korean court, the sumptuous food and the detailed preparation of each dish.

Young Jang Geum showed an incredible inner source of strength that helped her overcome great adversities and near tragic encounters. Along the way, her determination enabled her to master not only the art of good cooking but married it with the understanding of how to use various food and herbs to nourish the body. She mastered the arts of cookery and healing.
There is a sweet love story woven into this epic story between her and a senior guardsman who stood by her side constantly.
There is simply too much to put into words here in this short synopsis. All I can say is, "get this show". You simply can't go wrong with it. You will laugh and you will cry as you follow the story of Dae Jang Geum.
More info.....

Cast:
Lee Young Ae as Dae Jang Geum


Opening Theme

Onara MV1

Onara MV2
Forum:
SPCNet

Rating: 5/5
Get it now!! What are you waiting for?