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Tokyo Idols (2017)
A Mistranslated and Misunderstood Documentary
This review is for the 59 minute edit shown on BBC 4, a U.K. TV station. This edit has been uploaded to the internet and it's the one I saw.
Tokyo Idols a.k.a. Tokyo Girls (BBC title) is a documentary made by filmmaker Kyoko Miyake who had grown up in Japan but moved to the U.K. She didn't understand or care for the Japanese idol pop music scene when she was growing up and this film shows that clearly. It seems the director had an agenda from the start and she intended to make a film that demonized the Japanese idol music genre. Worse, according to a bilingual young woman on social media, the English subtitles in this film mistranslated the dialogue actually spoken, at least in part. This made one fan of the music group amorecarina come across worse than he should have. Also, some of the hand-held camera shots were awful. These are reasons why I can only give the movie four stars out of ten.
The bulk of the edit I watched focused on a singer who doesn't even consider herself an idol to begin with, Rio Hiiragi. She is trying hard to win over idol fans with songs titled "Worship Me" and "Banzai! Banzai!", both of which are egomaniacal. Unfortunately this is par for the course for much of the mainstream idol scene in which songwriters, producers and idol groups all try to convince people that their mediocre songs are the greatest songs ever recorded. I assure you, they are not. Only short sections of the film are dedicated to other, far more interesting, idols, including amorecarina and Harajuku Monogatari. The parents of the young idols profiled are the only participants besides the fans that have anything positive to say about the music. The fans interviewed are also among the more extreme fans and not the average type of fan. This makes the idol fan base seem much worse than it actually is. Many fans are fairly normal with average lives who just happen to be a fan of Japanese pop music sung by perky girls. Socialogists chime in with their negative comments about the whole scene, which they are disgusted by. The more positive qualities of idol music are ignored. This is a form of music that is meant to make you happy and feel good about yourself and your life. The smiles from the idols, their cute voices and energetic songs are uplifting to many fans. The idols are trying give you hope.
The director claims in interviews that she looked for ex-idols to interview for her film and found none. I accuse her of not looking hard enough. There are plenty of former idols living in Japan so obviously Miyake-san was not interested in including their views in her film. Also largely ignored in the movie are female idol fans. There are plenty of females throughout the whole world who like Japanese idol music. Again, the director didn't want to present their point of view possibly to keep her negative outlook of the fans throughout the movie. I'm sure an interview with a normal female fan would have made the fans look good, and that would have gone against what she was aiming for. If one thinks Japanese culture is weird it's probably because filmmakers like Kyoko Miyake have no intention of making the culture look good.
Lastly, I want to clear up a few things about the idols. The group amorecarina is spelled exactly the way I typed it, as one word with lower case letters. It's typed this way on the official websites and various social media websites for the three amorecarina groups. Yes, there are now amorecarina groups in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Those who type the name in any other way obviously don't know anything about this group. The member of amorecarina profiled in the film is Yuzuha Oda. Yuzu is her nickname. Yuzuha, and many amorecarina members glimpsed in the film, have now left the group. Yuzuha was in another group named EDMKISS for about six months, but has also left this group. The fan of amorecarina who is interviewed was saying that he was interested in the girls' budding talent and personalities, not their bodies. No sexual implications are actually being said, at least according to the woman who did a podcast of her thoughts on this movie. Harajuku Monogatari is the correct name of this group, who were spawned from the group Millennium Girls. "Story", used in the film, is the translation of "monogatari". All of the footage in this movie was filmed in 2015. The idols in this movie are all two years older.
Power Pack (1991)
Power Pack Gets The Goosebumps Treatment
In 1984 Marvel Comics published the first issue of "Power Pack", a comic written and drawn by women revolving around four siblings that receive powers from a dying alien. I was a huge fan of "Power Pack" when it first was published and bought the series from the first issue. I was not much older than Alex was in the comic, and I was very much a shy, bookish type like Julie. The comic was something I could relate to more than other, adult heroes, and it had a huge impact on me. I consider the this to be my all-time favorite Marvel comic series.
After the comic was canceled this TV pilot was made. The story involves the four Power siblings, Alex, Julie, Jack and Katie, moving into a new home, adjusting to a new school and confronting the ghost of a circus owner.
This TV pilot substantially changes the way the characters look in the comics as well as lessening their powers. Also, the parents are aware of their kids powers, something that wasn't done in the comics until later in the series. The story plays more like a Goosebumps episode (although that series was produced later) than an adaptation of the comic book. It may not please all fans of the comic, but it's still entertaining.
Quest for the Mighty Sword (1990)
The Ator Series Concludes!
Quest For The Mighty Sword is the title used for the version of this movie that I watched. This is the third and rarest film in the Ator trilogy, written and directed by Aristide Massaccesi under the alias David Hills, and photographed using the alias Federiko Slonisko. The first two films in the series were Ator, The Fighting Eagle (1982) and The Blade Master (1984), both starring Miles O'Keeffe. Another movie titled Iron Warrior, directed by Alfonso Brescia, also starred O'Keeffe as Ator; however, he wasn't quite the same character in this movie. Massaccesi wasn't very pleased with Iron Warrior (he wasn't the only one), so he retook his series and made this official sequel with Eric Allan Kramer as Ator. (No surprise that O'Keeffe didn't return as Massaccesi has stated that he can't act!) Kramer makes a decent Ator, and I'm disappointed that he didn't make another Ator movie. Quest For The Mighty Sword has never been released on DVD, and the VHS tape is out of print. The budget is low, the effects aren't so special and the directing and acting are fair-to-middling. Still, I love these types of movies despite their low ambitions as they show that films don't need to have a huge budget or big name stars for me to have a lot of fun watching them!