DVD Review: The Ramen Girl (2008)

An American in Japan:
To Noodles With Love
Arriving on DVD
5/26/09

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A.K.A. The Ramen girl

Simultaneously able to break your heart (a la Girl Interrupted) and melt it at the exact same time simply by being her free-spirited and spunky self (yes, even in Love and Other Disasters and Uptown Girls)-- it's always been a wonder to me why Brittany Murphy has never managed to become a big box office star.

Yet, in the same token, it's most likely to her benefit and credit that she's that talented of an actress that we often forget that the same (then) girl who learns the joys of shopping in Amy Heckerling's refreshingly sophisticated teen movie Clueless is the same actress who eerily cooed "I'll never tell" to Michael Douglas in Don't Say A Word before the petite pixie stood up to Benicio Del Toro as her abusive married police officer boyfriend in Robert Rodriguez's Sin City.

And now she's adding the role of producer to her resume with this unusual tale from Media 8 Entertainment and Digital Site Corporation that's hitting DVD shelves from Image Entertainment. Murphy-- the woman who once beat out an impressive bevy of A-list stars for the hotly coveted lead role in the now forgotten biopic about Janis Joplin-- crops up this week in the Japanese/American production The Ramen Girl.

Having worked steadily over the years primarily in the independent and offbeat realm and usually in romantic roles that showcase her innate sweetness-- it seems apparent that Murphy obviously latched onto the five-time Emmy nominated television director Robert Allan Ackerman's debut feature film The Ramen Girl for all the right reasons.

Working from newcomer Becca Topol's original screenplay, Ramen takes the framework of a romantic comedy but leaves those two requisite ingredients (of romance and comedy) on the counter in lieu of a female empowerment screenplay. At its core, Topol's Ramen is about a young woman trying to "find" herself after being dumped in Tokyo and it's a fetching Under the Tuscan Sun paradigm that must have appealed to Murphy since it reveals its true nature shortly into a movie that on the surface is decorated like a typical rom-com.

Although the press release describes the film as "Tampopo meets Lost in Translation," and it aims more for drama than the promised "hilarious culture clash" described in the introduction, the film will strike an instantly familiar chord with those who've experienced Like Water for Chocolate, Waitress, Last Holiday, Chocolat, Simply Irresistible, The Mistress of Spices, and Woman on Top.

Unfortunately and despite Murphy's considerable charm, it's nowhere near as successful as Water, Last Holiday, Waitress, Chocolat, and Spices as Topol crafts one of the most unlikable "mentors" in recent memory to serve as the film's anti-Mr. Miyagi in the role that poor Toshiyuki Nishida is saddled with as the angry and often drunk, fond of hitting, ruthless curmudgeon.

When the bright and bubbly Abby journeys to Japan to be with her techie boyfriend Ethan (Gabriel Mann) in a move we soon gather that was more her idea than Ethan's, she's stunned to find herself on the receiving end of a cliched "I'm a traveler," I need space styled break-up.

Leaving her stranded in a strange city where she knows only two of his friends (the obligatory gay guy and a dramatic diva) and can barely make small talk with the aid of a Japanese to English dictionary-- instead of getting on the next plane back to the states, Abby's denial continues. And in a painful to watch series of events, she optimistically continues phoning Ethan until one night, she finds herself strangely drawn into a ramen noodle shop run by the ornery Maezumi (Nishida).

Wandering in after hours and greeted with his angry drunken shouts in Japanese, the fragile Abby breaks down into helpless tears but is soon transformed when Maezumi and his wife serve her his own special bowl of ramen noodles. Ignoring the airline ticket her parents have purchased for her return-- seemingly illogically and still in shock from the departure of Ethan-- Abby begins to return to the ramen shop regularly, helping out when she can until she makes a seemingly impulsive decision that she wants to become a ramen chef to make people smile and laugh the way that the chef does (when he isn't drunk or hitting people that is).

Going as far as to lock Abby out of the restaurant, trying to scare her off with endless countless of dirty dishes to clean, toilet bowls to scrub by hand on her knees, and an increasingly humiliating set of tasks-- the chef is as amazed by Abby's persistence as we are that she remains in the shop.

Topol's script and Ackerman's film starts with potential as an amusingly offbeat tale about a young woman who starts to find her true self in a place where the only thing she's able to translate is emotion and feels that perhaps ramen noodles are far superior to mispronounced phrases and crying jags. However, soon it becomes a patience testing study of just how much punishment Muphy's character will take from a man who regularly hits and rough-handles her.

And similar to a military picture, we gather it's all "part of the training" to see if Abby has what it takes but Topol's attempts to humanize the cruel chef are few and far between making our heroine seem a bit weaker and unheroic in her willingness to continue to serve as a masochistic glutton for punishment.

While perhaps some greater glimpse into her home-life would help us better understand the reason she remains in the shop-- (and indeed on the DVD's extra features, you do catch a phone conversation with her nagging never seen mother that does assist in this process)-- nonetheless, it still makes a trying feature to sit through clocking in at a mere 102 minutes.

Although a minor romantic subplot is added in for good measure and perhaps to try and make us smile every once in awhile-- ultimately by its halfway point, we realize that like a recipe that needs some adjusting, Topol's script wasn't quite ready for the oven by the time Ramen Girl went into production.

And while I do love her premise and much like Love and Other Disasters Murphy is the right choice to elevate weak material-- in the end, Abby's character arc was in desperate need of little more spunk a la Queen Latifah's ambitious yet also emotionally tested foodie in Last Holiday or Keri Russell's spirited turn in Waitress which would've strengthened Ackerman's picture.

Moreover, there's so much wasted potential that-- if strung together tighter and played upon-- would've augmented it considerably in the form of a great "girl power" under-utilized alliance Murphy has with the chef's wife and Tammy Blanchard's dramatic diva. The friendships-- if handled correctly-- could've done for Ramen what the Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, and Judi Dench friendship did for Chocolat and likewise, Topol's direct magic realist Like Water for Chocolate homage (including one alternate ending) feel like they were so cribbed from Esquivel and Arau's source material that there could be a lawsuit on Topol's hands. But luckily as evidenced in the weak but amusing Sarah Michelle Gellar film Simply Irresistible, the idea of a cook's emotional state somehow passing through to the food and into those who digest it has already been utilized before.

While far from a complete disaster and instead, one of those movies that's so maddeningly close to having been something so special that it's worth exploring on that level alone-- in the end, Ramen reminds women and writers that the addition of a romance or a handsome "prince" isn't an arc that should be used to ever define a main female character.

Gorgeously transferred to digital form for its debut on DVD to the highest of widescreen quality, the disc offers the addition of the film's trailer, the alternate ending (that REALLY gave off a Like Water for Chocolate vibe that would've greatly altered the tone of the movie) and a few deleted scenes. Ultimately, Murphy's first effort as a producer fails to nourish or satisfy the way a delicious bowl of ramen noodles should but it makes great food for thought as we examine the ingredients and imagine the concoction it should've been if the timing had been right before it hit the oven.

Brittany Murphy

Blu-ray Review: Sin City (2005) -- Recut, Extended, Unrated 2-Disc Edition

Now Available on Blu-ray

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A.K.A. Frank Miller's Sin City

To hear Frank Miller explain it, the creation of Sin City was one he undertook for the most selfish reasons in deciding to build a comic book around all of the things he enjoyed drawing the most such as fast cars, hot babes, and more. And of course, to match the images with the tone, it would all be carried out in the style of film noir complete with a Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane feel of hard-boiled insanity lurking around every dark corner.

Although, truth be told—we’re all united by taste and art is the greatest bridge upon which to build a relationship-- so with the unrelenting passion of super fan and digital filmmaking genius Robert Rodriguez who damn near stalked Miller down (contacting his editor, agent, and lawyer Godfather style), Miller realized he’d found a like-minded artist who was turned on by and tuned into the exact same things.



Flash-forward more than a decade and—eager to prove his worth and mettle for the material—Rodriguez invited Miller out to his very own Troublemaker Studios in Texas for one day to run a “test.” Humoring Rodriguez by obliging to visit-- all the while wondering what on Earth a filmmaker could accomplish in a single day—Rodriguez managed to round up A-list talent like Josh Hartnett with the plea of “I don’t have the rights; help me convince Miller” to shoot what is now the opening sequence of the film as the old-fashioned, handsome Hartnett startles a beautiful blonde on a rooftop, mistakes her into trusting him for a smoke and embrace before she’s left dead for reasons unknown.

Needless to say, Miller was dazzled and honored by just how incredibly faithful Rodriguez was to his material as the two collaborated as co-directors on one of the most surprisingly visceral, visually spectacular cinematic works of 2005—complete with one mini-macabre comedy sequence filmed by guest director Quentin Tarantino-- whom Rodriguez hoped to seduce with technology as a gateway drug to encourage QT to move from film stock to all-digital filmmaking. It didn't work but boy, did Tarantino have fun as he's all over the Blu-ray and commentary tracks.

Joking that despite the enormity of the three men’s egos they were still able to get along, Miller stated that he wouldn’t have relinquished the rights to Sin City if he hadn’t had the opportunity to help direct. Throwing out the idea of a screenwriting credit and even alienating the Director’s Guild of America by Rodriguez’s incredible vision and determination to bring Miller in on the same level, he decided he didn’t want to simply make a movie of the comic but instead use the medium of cinema and turn that into the comic since at their core, he argues that they’re very similar mediums that both use still images.

The best evidence of this theorem you can see below in the aforementioned rooftop scene beginning with Miller’s drawing, the use of the green screen during production, only to digitally transform the background in the post-process to the startling and riveting finished product.





Relishing in every opportunity to be as deliciously twisted or lurid as possible—watching the film again today on Blu-ray, a few years after seeing it for a paper I wrote on modern day neo-noirs in film school—it dawned on me that for those who were disappointed by the Grindhouse film undertaken by Rodriguez and Tarantino with their respective contributions-- Planet Terror and Death Proof respectively--Sin City is the answer.

Moreover, you can see how well all the time spent watching "grindhouse" movies in the ‘70s was put to use in this alternatively exploitative and disturbing yet compelling and mesmerizing contradiction of a trashy masterpiece.

Although the second disc of this astounding Blu-ray transfer gives the filmmakers the opportunity to present the complete unrated, recut and extended version of the film which adds on a little more than twenty minutes and gives you the opportunity to watch the individual stories unfold one at a time with four specific breakdowns—aside from the Hartnett cameo that opens and closes the work-- essentially the film can be broken down into three distinct stories all directly pulled from Miller’s series of graphic novels.

A cross between vintage film noir with a bit of the old west spirit thrown into the mix (and not simply just in the scene with exotic dancer Jessica Alba whipping up the crowd with her lasso)-- the film’s characters who populate the eponymous Sin City aren’t presented to us in the traditional white hat/black hat or good guy/bad guy Hollywood standard, instead showing us the evil and the good side by side and on both sides of the law as in the case of the film’s standout storyline.

This finds Bruce Willis’ dedicated cop John Hartigan ignoring his doctor’s orders and warnings about angina in order to save eleven year old Nancy Callahan from the clutches of a sadistic pedophile, who is incidentally the son of a powerful politician. When his partner turns on Hartigan and leaves him for dead-- pinning all crimes involved on Hartigan-- he gets locked up for eight years trading his freedom to save the beautiful little girl he’d rescued who sends him weekly letters under the pen-name of “Cordelia” until one day they suddenly stop.

Fearful that she’s either grown too old to write pen pal letters to the cop that had saved her life or that something has happened to Nancy—and not knowing which thought is worse to Hartigan who states that her written words were the only thing that kept him from killing himself—he confesses to the crimes he didn’t commit and ventures back into the dimly lit, dicey streets to hopefully rescue Nancy once again.

Of course, by this point in the nonlinear narrative that jumps around with characters and storylines that overlap and blend together unexpectedly, we’ve realized that Nancy is none other than the beautiful Jessica Alba who has fallen in love with her childhood hero. But, unfortunately endings are never traditionally happy in the world of noir and especially not in the realm of Miller’s Sin City as the same themes of love, loss, and revenge are woven throughout the other tales.




Featuring a nearly unrecognizable Mickey Rourke as the battered Marv who falls in love with the angelic “perfect woman” Goldie-- a one night stand to whom he awakens to find dead,-- he tears throughout the city in order to avenge the woman he considers his true love, enlisting the help of others including his tough but tender lesbian parole officer Carla Gugino who maternally reminds him to take his anti-psychotic medication without which he has a tendency to hallucinate.

Worried that he’s been led down the wrong path by his own mind playing tricks on him, Rourke’s Marv gets far more than he bargained for when he starts down a horrifying maze of bloodshed, insanity, cannibalism, conspiracy, and mad science that are far beyond his worst nightmares.

In the fascinating but a bit overly long and meandering middle storyline that boasts a ridiculous number of gifted actors including Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Alexis Bledel and others—the tone changes from darkly comic to terrifying as the talkative, flirtatious barmaid, Shellie (Brittany Murphy) tries to stop her married, old abusive boyfriend (Del Toro) from busting down her door where she’s presently with her new one (Owen).

And despite the fact that Del Toro has brought along a group of heavy-hitters with weapons, we all know that the man who should’ve been James Bond can easily take ‘em down as Owen chases them off into the night, venturing into Old Town which is coincidentally run by the women of the night who look after their own and exact their own brand of justice.

When things get out of hand and Del Toro’s character is killed before they discover his profession as a police officer, Owen and his ex—the dominatrix styled Rosario Dawson—begin preparing for an all-out war. Not willing to let the mafia or the cops take Old Town from the women, Dawson and her motley crew of nubile, scantily clad but deadly divas strap on guns, ropes, and ammo in a standoff that lasts far too long when a double-cross enters the equation and too much time is spent explaining what we’re seeing in a way that would’ve benefited from tighter editing.

While the men are mostly out for the kill whether it’s in the name of love, revenge, or insanity (and sure enough the second disc boasts an interactive "killing" game) and the women are either damsels in distress or vixens—essentially, the work is a depiction of violence at its most primal and carnal. Additionally, it's one that never shies away from its exploitative tendency (repeatedly on display throughout the oeuvre of Robert Rodriguez from the most over-the-top sex scene in Desperado and beyond) but despite this, the film keeps you watching for the sheer audacious aesthetic appreciation of the groundbreaking techniques employed in its creation.

Primarily filmed in black and white with flashes of color whether it’s in a woman’s blue eyes, red lips, a dress, blonde hair, blood, or the personification of evil in the form of the monstrous “Yellow Bastard"-- Sin City is that rare film you find yourself wanting to turn away from but realize you’re unable to do so since you’re riveted by this wholly creative, free-wheeling, yet painstakingly precise world concocted by Miller and Rodriguez.

While Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Miramax have managed to nail down the Blu-ray format to an exact science with recent releases, they’ve truly outdone themselves in what has to be the second most impressive Blu-ray of the year, closely following their amazing restoration and multi-disc presentation of Pinocchio.

The level of clarity in the sound and picture makes Sin City honestly a film that looks much richer on Blu-ray than it did in the theatre as it was originally filmed with high-definition Sony cameras, so its move right into 1080 pixels helps reaffirm that for Sin City’s origins as a digital picture, “there’s no place like home” on Blu-ray.

While in these economic times, I’m usually pretty cautious in recommending readers upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray unless there’s a marked difference in quality or features viewers truly want-- I have zero hesitation this time around in advising you to move directly to Blu without passing go.

Having fun with the format itself and equipping the film with D-Box motion control along with three different audio tracks (including commentary and one Austin Audience Reaction track), you’re also given the opportunity on the first disc alone of utilizing the “Cine-Explore” feature that incorporates behind the scenes extras into the viewing experience itself.

Giving viewers the freedom to watch the individual stories separately on the second Blu-ray in their longer, uncut forms—Rodriguez continues with his grand tradition of loading discs with some truly first rate bonus features such as his short “15-Minute Film School,” along with a surprising inclusion of a “10-Minute Cooking School.”

While some of the extras are fun but not quite necessary like the cooking lesson and Willis rocking with his band—the making-of-featurettes are all quite interesting breaking down the film from the costumes, special effects, props, to interviews and play-by-play recollections with Miller, Rodriguez and Tarantino such as in the one I cited at the start of this review, “How It Went Down: Convincing Frank Miller To Make The Film.”

Although unfortunately as filmgoers master the art of digital technology and that irresistible green screen that makes anything and everything possible and unfortunately sometimes making films feel a bit cooler, artificial, and uninvolving like the beautiful but vacuous recent Miller release The Spirit-- in Sin City it feels absolutely essential in transferring the comic to the screen.

Therefore, it makes one even more excited for the 2010 announced sequel as surely Rodriguez’s wizardry and penchant for digital invention will have the opportunity to climb even greater heights five years after the first film was made.

Love and Other Disasters

Director: Alek Keshishian

In order to try and battle what Breakfast at Tiffany’s heroine Holly Golightly would call “the mean reds” of writing traditional romantic comedy, writer/director Alek Keshishian borrows heavily from not only Tiffany’s but also British romantic comedies of the past for the David Fincher and Luc Besson produced Love and Other Disasters.

For his own version of Golightly, Keshishian casts the charismatically affable, brunette beauty Brittany Murphy as “Jacks” (real name Emily Jackson) in a role that demands his actress channel both Golightly as well as the woman who personified her, the legendary Audrey Hepburn. While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, initially, Murphy’s characterization feels like an academic acting school exercise (at best) and a blithe parody (at worst) but soon enough, she wins us over. Much like the Clueless heroine Cher, played by Murphy’s costar Alicia Silverstone in director Amy Heckerling’s modern version of Jane Austen’s Emma, Murphy’s Jacks is a matchmaker gone wild.

Trying her best to keep everything running swimmingly, the perpetually rushed Jacks treats life as a never-ending party where as the “hostess” she must always ensure the guests are having the most wonderful time. And in doing so she often places the self-created dramas and romantic complications of her friends far above taking stock of things in her own chaotically fast-paced life where there’s barley enough hours in the day.

When she isn’t shagging James (Elliot Cowan), her formerly long-term, currently ex-boyfriend who just can’t seem to rebound from the fact that his love is one-sided, Jacks bonds with-- as Kathy Griffin would call-- her “main gay,” a.k.a. her endlessly supportive roommate Peter Simon (Matthew Rhys). Although aside from Peter, Jacks’ stable of friends are more irritating than winning. This is especially apparent in an extremely annoying and cringe-worthy performance by Catherine Tate as the Sylvia Plath wannabe Talullah who seems to have wandered in after being rejected from the set of either Notting Hill or Love Actually.

However, amidst juggling all of friends’ romantic subplots, Jacks is surprised to find herself enchanted by a new Argentinean colleague, Paolo (Santiago Cabrera). After confidently declaring that she has the best gaydar in the city, Jacks erroneously decides to fix her new acquaintance up with Peter. Of course, all the while the audience realizes she's mistaken Paolo’s intense looks, flirtatious compliments, and attentiveness as merely friendly when in fact Paolo has fallen in love with our flighty heroine.

If it all sounds complicated it is, and the ambitious Lebanese born, Harvard-educated filmmaker Keshishian (most famous for helming Madonna: Truth or Dare) naively tries to squeeze in far too many characters and situations into his film’s brief running time. And while at times the Tiffany’s homage feels overly forced as he unsuccessfully gives Jacks a misguided Golightly-esque catchphrase of calling cherished friends “babies,” it’s an interesting take on the original material.

In fact, it gamely acknowledges that the film version of Tiffany’s took the homosexual male character from the book and repacked him for straight audiences as a heterosexual in traditional romantic comedy fashion. Thereby, Keshishian uses his own lighthearted romp as an unlikely commentary on the decision by having loads of fun with sexual orientation misunderstandings in our contemporary era.

A beautiful and harmless trifle, Love’s carefree blend of sass and soap suds calls to mind the guilty pleasure of watching the superior CW soap Gossip Girl, but much like Gossip, it’s one of those experiences you may plead the fifth on if asked if you're a fan when in snobbish society.

Unfortunately, Keshishian’s attempt is muddled by superfluity as one feels a strong urge to reach for the “fast-forward” button whenever the obnoxious Talullah along with a few other annoying characters appear onscreen. However the chaos does serve an important purpose in augmenting Jacks and inviting viewers to identify with her a bit more than we could with Hepburn’s Golightly.

For instead of Tiffany’s diamonds, in the twenty-first century, multi-tasking is a girl’s best friend and it serves Jacks well in her self-described position as “a superficial assistant at a major fashion magazine,” namely the London branch of Vogue. Although, unlike Anne Hathaway’s discovery that in the fashion world, The Devil Wears Prada, Jacks puts her work—much like her own needs—on the back burner. And instead navigating the Golightly terrain of “rats and super-rats,” she predictably discovers that ultimately she must stop hiding behind luxury products, eccentric “artist” friends, and haute couture to let down her own guard long enough to fall in love.

Wrapping up the work utilizing the rarely beneficial screenwriting favorite "film-within-a-film" approach, much like Jacks, Keshishian called on the support of friends by serving up Gwyneth Paltrow and Orlando Bloom in an unnecessary concluding cameo that jars the whimsical tone and calls far too much attention to itself. Still, with an irresistible turn by Murphy, uniformly excellent work by Rhys, and a nice change of pace for gorgeous Heroes star Santiago Cabrera, one finds that in the end this Love is far from a total disaster.