"Shall We Dance?" is one of my favorite Japanese movies. (Actually, the title is 「Shall we ダンス？」) I saw it in the U.S. maybe 7 years ago in a little theater in Columbus, and thought it was great. These past few years, I've been waiting for it to come out on DVD. It's finally coming out next month, on April 8. Must...preorder....

What really annoys me is how Hollywood has taken several Japanese movies and pissed on them, namely "Ring" and "Shall We Dance?" I haven't seen either American version because the original was fine. Why does the U.S. movie industry have to bastardize everything? Because they want more money and don't have any creativity. That's why we have to make movies out of every comic book character there is.

So far the best one I've seen so far is Spider-Man. Superman is probably 2nd—never was much of a DC Comics guy, as I was more into Marvel's characters. X-Men was good, but it annoyed me because of the portrayal of Wolverine. He's probably my favorite comic book character. And they had to go and make him tall! Part of Logan's character was that he's short, and had to look up at Cyclops when they'd face each other off. If Lord of the Rings can use CG to make all the hobbit actors short, why couldn't they do that for Wolvie? Otherwise, Hugh Jackman did a good job. Of course the plot takes free license with the characters, since there was no Nightcrawler or Colossus, who joined X-Men long before Rogue. I disdain movie adaptations that don't stay true to the original.

Back to the subject at hand, what's wrong with leaving a movie in the original version and subtitling it? Subs can be distracting, but seeing the original is way important. Something always gets screwed up in a remake, even when the content is similar, because of the influence of the actors' presence. For example, the British TV series "Coupling" is hilarious, but the U.S. version sucked so bad it flopped. The dialogue was very similar, but the actors just couldn't come up with the same chemistry that succeeded in the original. Can't we Americans just leave well enough alone and not have to claim everything for ourselves? I enjoy watching foreign movies even if I have to read subtitles. Having a bastardized remake completely and totally sucks. Further, one then gets people thinking the crappy American version was the original, when these days we couldn't think of an original idea to save our lives. Richard Gere can't replace Yakusho Koji, and J. Lo is no Kusakari Tamiyo.

The same goes for older domestic movies. If someone tries to do a remake of "Casablanca", I'm going to track down those responsible and do something to them...something bad. Leave the classics alone!