Arts Unlimited 1.1
Text © 2000-2005 Nina Wilhelmina

RYU DAISUKE

Oda Nobunaga is interpreted best by Japanese actor Ryu Daisuke in the larger-than-life Kurosawa Akira's movie about the twilight of the Takeda clan of Kai, Kagemusha ('Shadow Warrior', 1980), in which Ryu is perfect in every way -- he gives us the most believable portrayal of that lean and mean and fast and furious warlord of 1570's: intimidatingly good-looking, breathlessly with a crackling glee at odds with the rest of the world; Oda was, as far as history goes, like that.

'Ryu' means 'style', as in swordsplay. 'Daisuke' means 'great help'. Somehow this you can dig throughout his performance.

What makes it a real treat is that the movie is about Oda Nobunaga's arch-enemy at the time; the script and the actor conspired so wonderfully to drag forth the complete Oda in every li'l shot sandwiched between long narratives about the Takedas. Ryu sings and dances the 'Atsumori', too, Oda's favorite warrior-hymn.

That Ryu Daisuke is normally classed with some higher-ranked silverscreen citizens is validated by facts such as that he belongs to a generation unsaturated by J-Pop, and that he stars in other Kurosawa epics, for instance Ran ('Chaos', 1991) -- it's a better movie than this one, by the way. The classical-traditional tome Kagemusha has been English-subtitled and released in the U.S. by, surprisingly, Star Wars' George Lucas.

JOHNNY DEPP

Nothing can kick this man out of my head; the Johnny Depp of my candy days has been digging on to some greater depth at the start of 21st-century. All the neverending trails of fashion statements aside (he's responsible for making every actor to wear bluey suits, and attended the 2005 Academy Award with gold teeth), and though his escapist notions are rather archaic (buying a land in the Pacific and moving to France), here is a man who does his job so well you'd never notice where he left you the last time at.

See, for instance, my most favorite Depp movie, Secret Window (2002), itself a soulless shell of one of Stephen King's flicks, but Depp alone sleepwalks it to life, magnificently teaming up with his real co-star, silence. Or the Disneyan Pirates of the Caribbeans (2003), where Depp cruises on effortlessly in a role that anyone else would have ruined (and ruined by). Or Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2001); a Roberto Rodriguez tome tailored to suit a guitar-playing-gun-slinging Antonio Banderas, in which Depp is nevertheless the only one animating his role to perfection. Or where heaps of picture-postcards are, Finding Neverland (2004), as he portrays the Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie in his own way, even as this way isn't how I see Barrie all my life. Even the movie that he directed, The Brave (1999), is of some high watchability.

Johnny Depp is the adjective 'cool' on two legs -- but it's not the beautiful dark eyes or the neverlander's smile that he scoops up a million bucks with. I almost believe that if Johnny Depp plays a character that is you, he would be a more convincing you than yourself. It isn't his fault that it also will be a much better-looking you that he plays as.

So -- Johnny Depp has been around me for what seems like two centuries. And today I'm still as happy as I was when watching him in Tim Burton's exquisite fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1986), whenever the screen got Depped. No one gives life to any character like he does. Every time he gets up in another movie, I shriek like Frankenstein, "It's alive!".

KANESHIRO TAKESHI

If you ask me to whom the Eastern counterpart of Johnny Depp's inherent coolness belongs, I have to say Kaneshiro Takeshi. See The Returner (2004), where he singlehandedly rescues his role from being an irredeemable cliche; and the Sony Playstation thing Onimusha 3: Demon Siege where he is supposed to be you, assuming that you really have absolutely no laundry to do and there isn't any good movie around. In this average but visually blasting role-playing game, Kaneshiro is entirely modelled-after, putting all his looks and voice for hire, pairing with the French veteran Jean Reno.

Long before all those were done and done with, Kaneshiro used to gravitate around Hong Kong while being rather hard to nail down in Tokyo -- superman Jet Li (who has been an RPG himself, too; checkout Rise to Honor, 2004) enlisted him to be a sidekick in quasi-comedy flicks such as the Indiana-Jones-meets-James-Bond King of Adventure and Scripture With No Words, all with Master Li's favorite co-star, the inimitably sweet Rosamund Kwan who always looks exactly like honey.

But Kaneshiro, whose first name means 'brave', isn't just such-and-such of J-Pop (this is an official term to call Japanese popular culture's takeouts). He really can pick up any role and act like it's been himself all his life -- a talent that might ensure some permanent damage to screen-image, if unvaried. Kaneshiro is as believable as a Chinese stumblebum with absolutely no kungfu to get around with in King of Adventure, as he is when playing an equally heroic, more beautiful and totally human Japanese Keanu Reeves (as in the global-ensnaring The Matrix), long coat included, in The Returner. And there's nothing like Kaneshiro with sharp objects at hand, as in the fully-gilded visual marvel, the Oscar-nominee House of Flying Daggers (2004), in which he is coupled with Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi and Hong Kong actor Andy Lau. It's a very Chinese story, yet the leading part is taken up by a Japanese -- that must mean something, doesn't it?

There is always this Johhny-Deppian inner smile that says "Nothing's gonna get screwed-up, for I'm doing it my way. Savvy?" And then he gives you much better stuff than you ever expected him to.

That he is so goddamned handsome is a mere biological accident. You would even forget that he is. That's how good Kaneshiro Takeshi is.

JOHN CORBETT

I saw him for the first time in a TV series co-starring action-flopper Janine Turner, Northern Exposure (1996), a stubbornly laid-back show about a backwater habitat and its diminutive sum of denizens, somewhere in Alaska. Just my kind of show. I saw him walking down the believably small-townish lane as last night's snow melted at the roadside, and I thought: God is good. God must be, if a man like John Corbett is let to roam the same rickety planet and breathe the same clunky air and got the same messy glasshouse-effect as I do; he's so heavenly graceful that the gorgeous anime heroes seem all of a sudden as square as evil.

That Corbett is a good actor is sometimes irrelevant to me. Nevermind that he even did My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Sex and the City admirably. Doesn't matter whatever no-no stuff lightyears away from my taste that Corbett will continue to star in. He in himself is surely poetry.

SORIMACHI TAKASHI

That Sorimachi Takashi sings and stringwhanging is a fact that came to me rather too late -- I already got hooked on the visual feast he's been dishing out since 1994, the year of his silver-screening debut in Tokyo.

Sorimachi isn't everybody's cup of tea, neither are his movies. He, of course, can be other things, but the best of him blasts through your eyes and leave your brain overdone in roles such as a streetfighting High School teacher (Onizuka in G.T.O -- acronym for Great Teacher Onizuka, 2000, a Japanese film) and a perpetually clamming-up urban soldier of fortune whose name is just one letter out of the alphabet ('O' in Fulltime Killer, 2002, Hong Kong, Andy Lau's movie, also featuring the subtlest performance of the actress Kelly Lin). Sorimachi also happens to have picked up roles in my sort of movies, such as Ryoma (based on the real-life Meiji samurai Sakamoto Ryoma's bio) and -- this is one heck of a treat -- he starred as Oda Nobunaga in Toshiie and Matsu.

Sorimachi Takashi (the first name means 'gentleman') is not what you might dub 'handsome', but whatever he is made of shakes every female fiber in one's physical structure -- I've had a myriad of erotic nightmares because of (and starring who else but) him. He nearly sends all my atoms into irrepairable chaos. It's very different from the sort of unspeakables incited by Hugh Jackman (upon the very same atoms); Sorimachi's appeal is fast rather than strong, sharp rather than heavy, a lightning stab rather than a thunderous blow, some steely cold magnetism rather than a sweaty burning promise of an amorous rampage. It's not a male animal that you see there; it's a male genie.

This, doesn't matter how it seems to sound, is a compliment.

ITO HIDEAKI

The real-life samurai, though not the last of them; Sanada Hiroyuki (the first name means 'heavy snowfall') is one heck of an actor -- and never needed Tom Cruise to net some fans, too -- the Asian fandom knows better; Sanada has been having his own cultists for 25 years when Cruise cruised in and dragged him into the 2003 Last Samurai.

SANADA HIROYUKI

Odagiri Joe never got anybody to know how good he actually looks; a silverscreen habit after being noticed by no one but the die-hardest teenage boyfans in Masked Rider ('Kamen Rider Kuuga' in Japanese, itself a part of a cult you'd never believe to have existed -- except in Japan). See Odagiri in his 2004 role that is really bewitching, magnificent, fantastic, and all other such adjectives in whichever dic. And he is set against a dazzlingly beautiful 16 years-old ninja girl. There you are.

ODAGIRI JOE

I love this man. I don't know why, and neither will you.

(Filmography included Tokyo Raiders, Humanize, and 2009: Lost Memories -- it is apparent that he never even goes into 'my' genre).

NAKAMURA TORU

I don't know how, but Sato Koichi has been having an XL fandom in Indonesia. I'm not included, but he happens to star in such flicks that got something to do with my field of interest in Japanese history -- such as When the Last Sword is Drawn ('Mibu Gishiden') and Yagyu Jubei -- so he figures rather oftenly in my www pages.

SATO KOICHI

Nakai Kiichi is one heck of an actor, like Sanada Hiroyuki and Watanabe Ken. He has one difference from those other tough guys -- he isn't. Whenever he picks up a role as a samurai, it is a Nakai samurai; it's so un-typical that you wonder whether this guy is an original genius or is he just unable to give us the familiar kind of warriors? The answer is obvious once you see him in, for instance, the Japanese movies When the Last Sword is Drawn and Onmyoji II (The Yin-Yang Master II) and the Chinese flick Warriors of Heaven and Earth. The latter is awesome. I swear.

NAKAI KIICHI

No one can beat Donnie Yen in real-life kung-fu. Really. Yet you have never even heard of him, have you. He's been in the U.S. of A, directing fights in action flix, and left Hong Hong movie biz for so long that everyone forgot who he was. He came back to share the screen with Jet Li for the first time in history since a decade has passed, in Zhang Yimou's masterpiece Hero. I'd say, watch him.

Donnie Yen is the one responsible for the fighting scenes in the Sony Playstation game Onimusha (he's the director there); he acts it out even better himself. Not that it surprises me; Yen used to be a great actor in such close-combats before. Even playing a rather clueless stmblebum against the Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh in Wing Chun, Donnie Yen shines still. This is the same Yeoh that starred in Crouching Cliches, Hidden Talents or whatever the title of your worldwidely favorite movie was, which I never liked.

It is very pardonable if you can't fight like Donnie Yen, but to lose a fake silverscreen fight to Chow Yun-fat means your career lies in soap commercials.

DONNIE YEN

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BEST ASIAN MOVIES

[Pic @ the logo: Yukifumi from Kaikan Phrase © 1999 Studio Unsa, TV Tokyo, designer Nakayama Yumi, animators Shimizu Hiroaki & Sada Kazuhiro, director Tokita Hiroko. Guitar was not in the original picture. An anime based on and fictionalizing about a band named Lucifer. The real band makes music for this series. Most reviewers called it very second-rate: the story is mundanely broody and the animation hardly climbs above average. But the Yuki character -- stringwhanger for the band, and one of its founder, and one who baptized it 'Lucifer' -- could have been a rich raw stuff to mine; heir of a prestigious Noh theater -- an art he is said to have mastered well, too -- he forsook it for a typical youthful utopia of rock music. Oh, if only. In real life, this anime centers on Sakuya, the singer for the band, who sings like just any Japanese male singer does these days, namely you would probably rather mind your laundry. So far there has never been any good anime when the theme is music, despite the chance to make it as manga -- a medium which, of course, dismiss the possibility of hearing anything.]