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TIFF: Princess Buttercup digs on DETROIT METAL CITY!

Published at:  Sep 06, 2008 3:57:03 PM CDT

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to introduce Princess Buttercup once again, this time here with her thoughts on DETROIT METAL CITY, based on the popular Manga. Her review is definitely positive, but not as enthusiastic as Anton's. Gene Simmons sounds like he makes this movie with his appearance. Fun is all I ask for in a movie like this. Here's the Princess.



Hi AICN,

Princess Buttercup again - I saw DMC tonight, didn't know anything about it until TIFF. It's currently a big hit in Japan, based on the first two volumes of a popular manga series. Negishi is the main character, a massively shy, uncool guy who just wants to sing trendy, happy, saccharine J-pop. He heads off to the big city of Tokyo (there's a pretty funny sequence here when Negishi gets to Tokyo... it's kind of like a Japanese twist on Mary Tyler Moore) to follow his dream of making music. But instead of making the gooey, trendy pop he loves, he winds up in DMC - a death metal band rapidly climbing in popularity. Negishi is completely horrified by his job and tries to keep his dream alive by playing pop whenever he can. He runs into the love of his life, the ultra-sweet, sparkly-eyed Aikawa whom he met in university; but Aikawa now works for a trendy, fashionable magazine and is horrified being anywhere near death metal. So, Negishi tries to keep DMC a secret but faces a dilemma when faced with the choice of quitting DMC or fronting the band in its face-off against Jack II Dark (king of Death Metal, played by Gene Simmons).

This was a fun movie. Ken'ichi Matsuyama is excellent as both the intensely uncool Negishi and as DMC's charismatic frontman, Johannes Krauser. Rosa Kato is an ultra-super-cute Aikawa. Yasuko Matsuyuki is entertaining as the boss you never want to have. And Gene Simmons isn't in the movie for very long; most of his screen time is spent performing on-stage in a hulking death metal outfit (if late-night memory serves me correctly, I think it involved both horns and fur). Oh, and there's a great line about Negishi's hairstyle when he returns home and discovers that his little brother has become a die-hard DMC fan (this entire section of the movie was quite fun actually - the little brother has blown off all his chores in the name of DMC, but Negishi teaches him a lesson). DMC has lots of good, fun moments but I don't think I would go out of my way to see it. It's simply good, loud fun.



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    Readers Talkback

  • Sep 06, 2008 6:25:15 PM CDT

    DMC=Dredging My Cornhole

    by phantom spandex

    I watched this with my wife in Nagoya when it opened (I live in Japan). This movie sucked (which is polite). Generally, I am not a big fan of Japanese film, ESPECIALLY when they try to emulate western things..the few times they try to do seriuous period work (or contemporary, for that matter) is usually better...the acting is so horrid! Everything is shot like a bad TV drama with little originality in the shots...this was much the same. It's sad that the sappy J-Pop stuff wasn't handled as cheese, becasue that's the average person's idea of great music. The "death metal" was equally atyrocious, as a fan of it mysaelf it was almost humourous but then, I understood that it wasn't intended to be. It is supposed to be a kind of modern day romance, so all the silly and ignorant entertaining stuff loses it's lustre when you realize..Oh, by gods! They are SERIOUS!
    The crowds cheering KILL!KILL! and F`CK!F`CK! were mildly amusing.
    But what is most terrible, I'm sad to say, is that this was one of teh better recent manga-film adaptations in Japan of late.

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  • Sep 06, 2008 9:02:26 PM CDT

    I have yet to see a non-anime manga

    by grammaton cleric binks

    adaptation that didn't let me down. Anime came straight from manga. I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying I'm surprised for all the quality of anime, that when it comes to the live action adaptations the Japanese don't put as much into it. As someone who owns the whole 28-volume Dark Horse English language adaptation of Kozure Okami aka Lone Wolf and Cub, I would love to see it done in anime, but it's just too long, and too good to be made into live action. Even Shogun Assassin, the Japanese live action of this great piece of art, left me wanting so much more.

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  • Sep 07, 2008 12:41:55 AM CDT

    The DMC soundtrack kicks ass

    by disfigurehead

    I bought it when I was in Fukuoka 2 weeks ago.

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  • Sep 07, 2008 5:45:13 AM CDT

    Mangarbage? Oh, dear.

    by stalin vs predator

    Clicking it, I was expecting to see "Detroit Rock City" and "sequel". Pshaw.

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