Word: hollywoodism
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...stormed Hollywood at 25 in the soaper A Bill of Divorcement. All elbows, and eyes that raked the screen, Hepburn managed to upstage John Barrymore and was immediately a star. Her studio, RKO, put her straight to work: 14 films in the next six years. A year after Divorcement, she played the headstrong, stagestruck ingenue in Morning Glory and won her first Oscar...
...scene begins like any number of classic Hollywood crime dramas as maverick detective Shunsaku Aoshima swaggers along Tokyo's glittering waterfront, headed for action. With disheveled hair, necktie loosened rakishly and a cigarette dangling from his lips, he looks every bit the renegade cop. But when Aoshima reaches his destination, he hesitates and looks around sheepishly?there's no place for him to flick his cigarette! It's not nice to litter. What if someone sees him? Or complains? He sighs, pulls an ashtray from his coat, stabs out the butt, rolls his eyes and heads inside...
...Given the film's modest (by Hollywood standards) $8.5 million budget, Kameyama's lighthearted sequel would seem woefully overmatched by the summertime competition. But he's betting on an underdog formula that has worked magic before. Based on an 11-part TV series, the original Bayside Shakedown?which cost just $3 million to produce?premiered in 1998 and went on to become the most popular live-action Japanese movie in more than a decade. It ran in theaters for six months (most movies in Japan last about a month) and posted a box-office take of $84 million, becoming...
...first glance, it all seemed like conventional movie fare. But about half an hour into the film, anyone anticipating a Hollywood-style thriller began to notice something was amiss. Despite the superslick credits, snappy editing, witty dialogue and driving soundtrack, the expected adrenaline-pumping scenes failed to materialize. Where were the car chases, fight scenes, stunts, gun battles and helicopter crashes? There were none. Throughout the movie's entire 119 minutes, none of the five main characters even held a gun. When a lunatic actually pulled a pistol in the station house, the whole joint?of cops, mind you?practically...
...Fuji TV producer and Bayside creator Kameyama argues that Japanese viewers already get plenty of fantasy from Hollywood and are hungry for domestic productions in which they can see reflections of their own lives and experiences. That's why the whole Bayside Shakedown universe was designed as a metaphor for Japan, Inc. "We wanted to depict the daily struggles that average salarymen and office ladies face every day," he says. "We simply transferred it to a police setting." This approach also makes abundant financial sense, adds leading man Oda: "There is no way we can compete with Hollywood budgets...