Gaijin makes stunning J-Arthouse Flicks

[mr. sparkle]

Anyone here ever see "Firefly Dreams" by John Williams? I guess the novelty is that he's a gaijin that makes films about Japanese subject matter. Who cares? This film is really lovely. Looks decent on DVD.

Plotline: Bitchy teenage girl from Nagoya gets thrown into the countryside to rough it with her Aunt and Uncle. She's given the duty to taking care of an old lady who has alzheimers and after a tragedy--finds that "Koide-san" and she have a lot in common. It's one of those slow and beautiful films that I like so much.

Mr. Sparkle says, "Check it out!"


naomi and koide-san share firefly dreams

more at http://www.100meterfilms.com/firefly/

[emperor]

The plot of this film reminded me of "On Golden Pond." ... The pace of the film is slow, but the scenery is spectacularly beautiful, which most of us would not have expected from Japan as most films there are set in the big cities. The sounds of the cicadas made my wife very homesick for the country where she grew up.
The film tied for the audience award for best dramatic feature at Cinequest (the San Jose, CA film festival), which is where I saw it on 2/26/2002.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292004

I guess this in available in Tsutaya?

[Unspoken]

I saw it, but I wouldn't watch it again.

Not that it was a bad flick, but the whole movie didn't really amount to anything. The scenery was quite nice (and I really appreciated the fact that I wasn't being forced to watch shots of blossoming Sakura trees every five minutes), but it was also its sole highlight. The interplay between the characters wasn't anything special, and some of it seemed rather pointless and forced on (like Naomi's brief romance that ended practically as soon as it began). In fact, the only exception to this was Naomi's interaction with her grandfather, and I kind of regret that that relationship wasn't the movie's focal point.

As for the ending, it was rather predictable, but also fairly abrupt and inconclusive.

It's worth a see-through just for the setting, but it's definitely nothing more than a rental for me.

[Ptyx]

the movie itself is not that good. It's one of those seconde rate j-drama, the interesting stuff is that there's no way to guess it was made by a gaijin.
I saw a similar attempt by french filmaker Jean Pierre Limousin(Tokyo Eyes) and it had gaijin written all over it.
This Williams guy is the true henna gaijin filmaker.

[Jack]

I liked the trailer. How can you buy this movie, is it online?