Japanese movies in america (limited engagements).

[The Weakest Suit]

For anyone who cares, the first live action Death Note movie and the first Bleach movie will each play for two nights only in selected theatres across the country.
Death Note is, i believe, on May 20 and 21 (tickets go on sale monday).
Bleach is, i believe, around June 11 somewhere (tickets go on sale first week in may).
Each will show two nights at 7:30 p.m. with a 20 min short afterward about the production of the movie.
There are 700 theatres taking part. I'm sure google will help anyone with particulars.
Last year my girlfriend and I went to the Naruto movie showing. It was sold out, and we had a blast because the crowd was totally into it.
I'm not sure if this kind of thing interests anyone here, but i thought i'd throw it out there.

[HeuristicsInc]

You might say something about the movies. What kind of movies are they? Are they any good? Subbed or dubbed?
-bill

[The Weakest Suit]

i have seen neither of these movies, but i am a fan of both tv shows.
they are on every saturday night on cartoon network at around midnight.
you could wiki either "death note movie" or "bleach movie" to get info about the particular movies, or just wiki "death note" or "bleach" to get general info about each series.
basically they are both about shinigami (gods of death/soul reapers).
in death note a boy gets a notebook that allows him to kill people by writing their names in it (and picturing their face at the same time). he quickly goes mad with power and begins to kill all criminals shown on tv. the story revolves around this character and the brilliant and equally young super-detective trying to capture him. this story is finite and told in one big arc and the movie playing is an adaptation of the first half of the story. this is a "live action" adaptation of an anime.
in bleach, a boy accidentally gets the powers of a soul reaper and routinely battles hollows (or souls that have been corrupted). this story is more episodic and very long running (100 or 200 eps?), so i'm sure the movie is a "stand alone" story that does not greatly effect the continuity of the show. this is an animated movie.
hope this helps. i'll trying not to learn too much about the movies before i see them.

edit: the star of Death Note is the actor who was the lead in Battle Royale.

[john m]

Pity I didn't get to this thread sooner, but:

The Death Note movie sucked, don't bother. Death Note should only be enjoyed as a manga. 90% of the series is internal thought; who the hell thought that series would work as anything but manga?

I have not seen (nor will I see, probably) the Bleach movie, but the Bleach anime series is a fairly accurate adaptation of a very stereotypical, predictable manga. It's template shonen fare, which can be cool if that's your thing. As for anime filler movies, I've seen many, and the vast majority are patently terrible (the Naruto movies and One Piece movie 6 being the worst offenders).

I'm a little curious about the buzz surrounding Vexille. Standalone anime films are hard to gauge; there are some real classics (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Millenium Actress) and some real pieces of garbage (holy shit Blood: the Last Vampire sucked).

[The Weakest Suit]

Pity I didn't get to this thread sooner, but:

The Death Note movie sucked, don't bother. Death Note should only be enjoyed as a manga. 90% of the series is internal thought; who the hell thought that series would work as anything but manga?

I have not seen (nor will I see, probably) the Bleach movie, but the Bleach anime series is a fairly accurate adaptation of a very stereotypical, predictable manga. It's template shonen fare, which can be cool if that's your thing. As for anime filler movies, I've seen many, and the vast majority are patently terrible (the Naruto movies and One Piece movie 6 being the worst offenders).

I'm a little curious about the buzz surrounding Vexille. Standalone anime films are hard to gauge; there are some real classics (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Millenium Actress) and some real pieces of garbage (holy shit Blood: the Last Vampire sucked).

Yeah, I read a bunch of reviews of people like you (who can't seem to enjoy anything that isn't the original manga) before I saw the movie and was expecting it to be horrible...but it wasn't. It was pretty fun to see in the theatres. It was dubbed with the English actors from the dub on Cartoon Network, which was good and bad. The only real shame was that there were no subtitles for all the text (and there was a fair amount of it). The crowd was very diverse, from teenagers to senior citizens and lots of people laughed and cheered throughout. It was very similar to the experience I had at the Naruto movie last summer. It wasn't the best thing ever, but the crowd made it more fun. I am looking forward to Bleach to see something other than the "Soul Society Arc" which is just about the worst constructed story ever in the history of the world (see, I can be overly dramatic too). And it is very nice to see a movie in the theatre that isn't the same Hollywood bullshit formula.

[Adam!]

Deathnote movie was crappy, but had a more clever ending than the show. I was mostly disappointed that the dad never bit into a bell pepper and mugged for the camera.

[The Weakest Suit]

The Bleach movie was very boring. I literally started falling asleep in the middle of it.