Bulbasaurus Rex

I spent the day's online time making a big push to get the Nakamura Eigeki poster identification project completed. I made a pretty good dent in it, getting up to the last poster (#1399) but I have to go back and pick up a few pages of posters that didn't have text linked to them, which will make their identification much more difficult. The next step, after finishing with these numerical listings, will be to go through the alphabetic listings and swap out any posters that have better resolution. The alphabetic lists also sometimes have better identifying text-- including plot summaries.
I also downloaded the new batch of 15 large posters from the same site today. I found quite a few new films and posters. A highlight of the day's work was a new poster to the 2006 film Hadaka no sanshimai: Inkô in its 2010 re-release as Tonari no sanshimai yari kurabe (隣の三姉妹　やりくらべ; seen above left). Starring the lovely Sakurako Kaoru (right) and picking up awards for Best Film (10th), Best New Director (Yasufumi Tanaka) at the Pink Taishô, and Pearl Prize at the Pinky Ribbon Awards, it sounds like one worth looking for.


In anticipation of the announced Cheech & Chong reunion film my son has been interested in seeing one of their old films. I found a cheap copy of Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams (1981), made an Easter gift of it and watched it with him (with Korean subtitles on for the wife). It was the first time for my wife to see one of these-- They were no doubt banned in Korea at the time of release, drug humor being off-limits. She laughed at times, but after the film claimed not to be at all favorably impressed. Come to think of it, even in the wilder Japanese cinema-- as extreme as it can go into sex and violence-- I can't think of any film genre there comparable to our own esteemed drug comedies. As I remember from the old days, Cheech and Chong's films usually started out with a few mildly funny little bits, then drifted off into dull aimlessness. Actually I think this is the first time I ever made it through to the end of one of their films. I wonder if the reunion film is going to be of the same low quality as these old brain-dead comedies, or if the ensuing decades will bring some improvement to their work together... Stupid, gross-out comedies can be fun, of course. They don't need to be god-awful. In fact I enjoy a good one now and then. We'll probably go and see the new one when it comes out no matter the reviews. I'll be prepared for the worst, but hold out dim hopes for better. As far as the old one we saw today: Got a couple real laughs out of it in the first half hour, then was bored for an hour. Six out of Ten. My son's at the age where he's a little too old for an Easter egg hunt, but he's still young enough to be disappointed not to have the Easter egg hunt, so the Cheech and Chong DVD made a good compromise. They now join his other not-to-be-emulated role models Harold and Kumar. Meanwhile, in these pics from her blog, the gorgeous LUU dons a Pokémon get-up to remind dear old Dad of innocent days not so long past. The thought of spending time playing with a couple Bulbasaurs never looked so tempting...