James Bond

My husband and I went to see the newest James Bond movie, complete with Japanese subtitles. Recently I was informed by a friend that the only English movies appearing in theaters that are ever dubbed are the ones that mainly target children. This pleases us, as it’s one less accident waiting to happen the one time we want to give our brains a break from puzzling out the meaning of Japanese sentences.

Right now a badly cut James Bond movie (The World is Not Enough) is being shown on television to “encourage” the public to go see the latest installment. The funny thing is, I can’t do much of anything but cringe at the cheese-factor. Casino Royale is by far one of the best Bond flicks I’ve seen; Daniel Craig played a truer-to-the-book Bond, the director kept things tasteful, and the script was well-written. Best of all, I can’t recall any corny innuendo-laden lines that made me writhe in silent agony at the assault on my ears. Most of the other Bond movies (mostly the latest ones) are hard for me to watch, and I am being painfully reminded why.

Nevertheless, the movie companies have a pretty sweet set-up going on with Japan’s government-run television network when it comes to new picture promotion, since every single household in Japan who has a television is honor-bound to watch NHK. We’d probably fall for it more often if paying the equivalent of $15 per person to soak in the movie theater atmosphere didn’t make our wallets weep.

Luckily, only Harry Potter and Bond have proven splurge-worthy since our arrival.

We can only hope the current trend of mostly mediocre, uninspired motion pictures continues until we are on our native soil once again. The less temptation, the better.