The Official Miyavi Thread

[Yilei]

2 days pass and the thread is only 9 down. crying

ALL THE TEARS.

Merry Christmas all.

Apparently Angelina Jolie had to miss the premiere of "Unbroken" on Monday due to chicken pox. I wonder if Miyavi caught it too and that's why his live was postponed.

[Kaidan]

That would suck. I've never had chicken pox, but working with kids makes me SCARED TO DEATH OF IT!

[Yilei]

My co-worker mentioned to me that getting chicken pox as an adult is actually more troublesome healthwise than if you got it when you were a kid. =/ A bit worrisome there, but they're probably fine considering they're public figures.

[Yilei]

Went to go see "Unbroken" today and it was really good! I just went to support as a loyal Co-Miyavi and all, but it was a great story and Miyavi did a great job as an antagonist.

One thing I'd want to say is that a lot of people hold a bunch of different kind of bitterness and stuff about war time and one take away I got from the film was that although of course there was beatings and absolute traumatic cruelty that follow along the lines of some of the negative war stories that we typically hear, there were also aspects of the POW experience that seemed relatively fair and humane in certain ways. Like I can understand having a pervasive feeling of fear in the situation, but it was interesting to see what they were also allowed to do despite being prisoners. It kind of shows how there's no black and white and even in some ways shows the humanity on both sides.

I also rather enjoyed seeing a glimpse of war-time Tokyo because living in America, those are images we really don't get to see in terms of cultural history unless you actively seek it by signing up for a university course about that time period. In the case of a main stream Hollywood film, I think that's also an interesting portrayal because I feel like most of regular America imagines Japan to only be about the kimonos and traditional culture, but you get to see a bit of the effects of Japan's rapid modernization. I enjoyed seeing scenes from that part of the film just as much as I like watching Legend of Korra story bits in Republic City for the very same reasons.

And yeah, kind of a superficial re-cap, but I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone else out there who wants to see it.

[Pugnacious Banana]

i want to go see it this weekend but i'm not sure where it would be showing anywhere near here sad
i know the nearest movie place is over an hour away from me on the bus but i don't know if they'll even have the movie..

[Yilei]

I usually check movie listings before I go, but I also live in a pretty dense area so there's kind of a guarantee something will be showing it.

Even if you don't buy though, Fandango or MovieTickets.com are usually a good place to check for listings of where something is playing.

[Pugnacious Banana]

those sites don't have a page for my country sad

i found a site that lists movie times here here but according to them it's only playing at one cinema in the country and it's in a place that would cost me a $50 bus journey and a night in a hotel

and it isn't released in japan yet (if they're going to release it there after it pissed people off) so i can't see it there emo

so i guess i can't see it

[Yilei]

Aww, well, I don't know how to help you there then. =/

Yeah, I don't know. They might not release it in Japan, but at the same time it's not exactly one-sided like a lot of war stories about that time. A lot of people get upset about depictions of the war on both sides and there are factions in Japan that are kind of still in denial that any of the war atrocities happened, so I understand that there might be some opposition to it.

However, I feel like it was done well because it was very even handed and at the core it isn't Japanese-hating at all because Zamperini wasn't. It just depicts a difficult situation that he went through and shows it as something that happened. The end message of the film is that of forgiveness and there are times where Zamperini himself actually expresses interest in Japan because he was set to participate in the Tokyo Olympics before they were cancelled because of the war and they included that in the film. It doesn't at all particularly slant Japan in a necessarily good or bad light. There's one part that's a *little* dicey, but most of the narrative is about human individual choice and not representative of the country as a whole.

As I also mentioned there are some parts that you would really be surprised about in terms of opportunities they had in a POW camp. I think most people would think that those camps are complete and absolute misery, but it's also a prime example of how the war experience was really different depending on time and where someone was held captive and I think more than anything, Zamperini's story particularly focuses its antagonist more on his personal choices and circumstances than him being a representative of Japan. The danger with these narratives is always the illusion and tendency to frame the enemy as homogeneous rather than factoring in where personal choice came into account.

[Pugnacious Banana]

i haven't seen it but from what i've heard it sounds like it's realistic enough.
if it starts being shown somewhere closer to me than seoul i'd go see it but i'm not going all the way there just to watch a movie when i can just wait and buy the movie later.
i'll be in seoul anyway for a few days near the end of january so if it's still showing then maybe i can see it.
really i don't have much interest in war/historical movies (or any movies, i'm just really not into movies) and i'd only be going to see it to support miyavi.

[Yilei]

Supporting Miyavi is really the best way to see a movie. xd

Honestly though, you're not missing much by skipping war movies. A lot of them are usually propaganda films that paint the originating country as a victim or completely in the right and triumphant and there's like a select handful that are fairly even handed. The more interesting ones though I feel are about the war in the Pacific though that aren't made by America just because most American war films are all like "Yeah, America is the best and we pwn all!" without giving like consideration to the historical complexities and cultural considerations of both sides. It's hard to come away from films like that remembering that the enemy still consists of human beings who just happen to have a different way of thinking and you fall into a trap of black and white logic.

If you like this film though, the only other one or rather ones in a similar vein would be Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima just because they were meant to be viewed together as each film shows one side of the war. Letters has gotten some complaints from vets who were all like "I don't remember any Japanese that were that nice!" which kind of isn't the point. Yeah, there's a certain amount of creative license in placing that many soldiers who weren't all gung-ho about the government in one place, but the point of the film is that it's a human story and no matter what side you're on, EVERYONE has a family and other reasons for them being there. It's about remembering that no one person is an island and is completely pure evil as much as war propaganda and being in the trenches might make you believe.

I mean, for sure it is an incredibly stressful experience to be the person in the trenches and out on the front lines and it isn't fun to stare down your enemy and think that for SURE they *ARE* going to kill you, but in peace time it's definitely time to take a step back and not let that paranoia get to you. Wartime experiences aren't uniform and the myth of all Japanese being willing to die for the Emperor is just that -- a myth. Letters does a good job of showing that which is a huge misconception that was touted about the Japanese for decades during the war and into the post-war era and it's a mistake that really derails understanding of not only Japan, but Japanese Americans that live in the U.S. It's about taking a step back and remembering that the people we were fighting *were* people and had varying reasons for their actions regardless of whether they were right or wrong.

Other than that though, for sure I can say you should really stay away from most Chinese films about the time. I watched one of the films made about the fictional hero Chen Zhen with my Uncle one and man, that was super Japanese-hating. It's not like the actions they depicted in the film *didn't* happen because there's record to show that they did, but the drama of the film really kind of builds up the propaganda that makes you want to not like them. I had to spend a good hour after that crying by myself in a room and coming back to reality and remembering that people really aren't quite *that* skewed because it was a very pro-China film.

Ip Man is another one to be careful of, but it's not quite *as* bad because it's also itself about a historical martial arts figure who was the teacher of Bruce Lee. Japanese involvement in the narrative is more of a side note, but it definitely gets skewed toward the uglier part of the history.

The Jet Li movie "Hero" is another one that doesn't exactly show the war itself, but some of the preceding years where China itself was being divided up by Western powers and to a smaller extent Japan as it was establishing itself as an Imperial Power. There is a somewhat negative depiction of Japan in that film as well, but at the same time there's a certain amount of mutual respect displayed in it as well toward Jet Li's character at least because of his actual skill, which is kind of an important note because of the reasons behind Japan's decisions to become an Imperial Power. There's the propaganda that regular people saw and the recorded deeds that their soldiers did, and then there's the original ambitions that set all that in motion that really is a lot similar to Sozin of the Fire Nation from Avatar: The Last Airbender. So there's some hints of that.

Also, I did rather enjoy 1911 about the Kuomintang. It's billed to surround the exploits of Huang Xing who is played by Jackie Chan and is the general under the person who I really feel is the real main character of the film - Sun Yat-sen, who is one of the most universally respected revolutionary figures in Asia. A lot of the work he did was about peace and reviving China as a great nation and kicking out the Western powers that were crippling the country. He was exiled for a time and lived and studied in Japan and also grew up in Hawaii for awhile, so he was a very worldly and intelligent person. There's also a whole lot of conflict in Asia now between all Asian countries and of course between mainland China and Taiwan, but one of the only things that they can actually agree on was that Sun Yat-sen was an inspirational and important figure. The film really ends before World War I, but as far as films about war goes it's a pretty fair assessment of what the world was like in Asia going into the World Wars, which is a history they totally don't teach you in American schools unless you take a University class.

[Pugnacious Banana]

i'm really not interested in learning about history and don't plan to see any other war movies. sweatdrop

i don't know a huge deal about my own country's history or anywhere else's and i'm okay with not knowing a lot. i never took history class in highschool because it was a choice between history, geography and modern studies and geography is way more interesting/useful to me. like yeah history is interesting and good for understanding why things are how they are but unless it's relevant to your personal hobbies/interests learning about history isn't as useful as other things i could be spending time on.
last week i was hanging out with some people from the same country (sort of) as me and they were having a conversation about which countries/leaders etc had ruled at certain times in the past and other similar topics and i was just sitting there like god this is so boring to me.

a lot of people here are really japanese-hating so every time anyone tells me about history it's like "the japanese came here and killed people" and that's about it pretty much. every time i visit japan people are like "don't go there, it's a bad place!" "why would you want to go there?" etc.

anyway
on topic
what did you think of let go ?
i'm not loving it all that much so far (sometimes his songs are like i don't love them at first but then i get really into them after a while) but i like it more than the previous single

[Yilei]

Ah, yeah, sorry then. sweatdrop I just personally find it fascinating and you never really know what people are into. History films are generally hit and miss, but you can find a grain of understanding in them.

But yeah, there's a lot of places that are still Japanese-hating because of that wartime bitterness...but I don't know what can really be done with that. You can't really change people and their traumatic experiences are valid because what was done was a horrible injustice, but in the end it kind of just takes a bigger person that maybe they cannot become themselves to understand that not all people are the same and maybe the Japanese they met were quite different from Japanese in other parts of the army or even in the home country. I digressed a lot into summaries, but the basic point is that there are films out there that do purposely put in "good" Japanese characters to balance out the perception that all are evil.

"Let Go" I'm somewhat fond of in that I have it and I liked it when I listened to it and it has a great rock sound to it, but at the same time I don't feel myself craving to listen to it all the time. It will probably be fun to listen to it performed live and I kind of feel like it's a song that he wrote that was about his experiences and lessons he learned from working on the film.

[Kaidan]

I will constantly be amazed by the fact that the smartest thread in the forum is consistently the Miyavi thread. I love you guys.

EDIT: Also, he just popped up on Kohaku Uta Gassen guitaring for SMAP. That was a surprise.

[Yilei]

Kaidan

I will constantly be amazed by the fact that the smartest thread in the forum is consistently the Miyavi thread. I love you guys.

EDIT: Also, he just popped up on Kohaku Uta Gassen guitaring for SMAP. That was a surprise.

XD Depends on who occupies the threads.

And yeah, actually this past year Miyavi has been acting as composer for other artists. He apparently wrote one of SMAP's singles this year? It was called "On Top of the World". His Kouhaku collab with SMAP though was announced a couple of days ago, but a lot of people don't like to be spoilered by Kouhaku including myself so I didn't even look it up what exactly happened last night. Getting ready for my viewing of this year's now though with the songlist.

He also did some kind of collaboration with Yamapi too, which I guess means he's tight with Johnny's? If he is, I just want him to do a collab with Arashi because I love Arashi and I would be very happy if Nino sang something Miyavi wrote.

[Kaidan]

Yilei

XD Depends on who occupies the threads.

And yeah, actually this past year Miyavi has been acting as composer for other artists. He apparently wrote one of SMAP's singles this year? It was called "On Top of the World". His Kouhaku collab with SMAP though was announced a couple of days ago, but a lot of people don't like to be spoilered by Kouhaku including myself so I didn't even look it up what exactly happened last night. Getting ready for my viewing of this year's now though with the songlist.

He also did some kind of collaboration with Yamapi too, which I guess means he's tight with Johnny's? If he is, I just want him to do a collab with Arashi because I love Arashi and I would be very happy if Nino sang something Miyavi wrote.

There are some WEIRD Johnny's collaborations going on right now! Like Mineta from Ging Nang Boyz wrote a song for Kanjani8. I still don't know how to feel about that. What is this world? D: