{"id":2302,"date":"2009-05-19T22:43:38","date_gmt":"2009-05-20T02:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=2302"},"modified":"2012-06-22T02:48:52","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T06:48:52","slug":"mike-yokohama-a-forest-with-no-name-2002-shinji-aoyama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/2302","title":{"rendered":"Mike Yokohama: A Forest with No Name (2002, Shinji Aoyama)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reasonably paced at 70 minutes.  This was part of some made-for-TV or direct-to-video series of Maiku Hama stories.  I think there are 12, written\/directed by the likes of Alex Cox (<em>Repo Man<\/em>) and Tetsuya Nakashima (<em>Kamikaze Girls<\/em>), but this is the only one I can find&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/image09\/mikeyokohama1.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve had Aoyama&#8217;s critically-acclaimed, award-winning <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/4364\">Eureka<\/a><\/em> for years, but instead of finally watching it, I rented this.  I&#8217;ll try not to judge him too harshly by it.  Apparently shot or once presented on film (can see dirt on the print and reel-change marks), Facets proudly presents us a letterboxed, non-anamorphic, hard-subtitled, interlaced video with poor color.  Thanks for that, Facets.<\/p>\n<p>Mike travels to a retreat in the woods to retrieve a rich man&#8217;s daughter who has this weird idea that she&#8217;s free to marry whoever she wants.  He gets slightly mixed up in the tree-worshipping new-ageyness of the place and intimidated by the woman in charge, but hey, it all turns out fine in the end.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/image09\/mikeyokohama3.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t exactly looking for a slam-bang action flick, given the slow strangeness of the last two movies in the series, but I don&#8217;t think watching Mike pad around getting in touch with his inner self is exciting enough to justify watching this.  Mike is the same actor as before, Masatoshi Nagase (additionally of <em>The Hidden Blade<\/em> and <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/981\">Suicide Circle<\/a><\/em>), and we know he can be funny, so I&#8217;m blaming the D.O.A. humor in this one on Aoyama.  Kyoka Suzuki (above left) of <em>Bullet Ballet<\/em> and <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/7261\">Zebraman<\/a><\/em> plays the mysterious camp leader.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/image09\/mikeyokohama2.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reasonably paced at 70 minutes. This was part of some made-for-TV or direct-to-video series of Maiku Hama stories. I think there are 12, written\/directed by the likes of Alex Cox (Repo Man) and Tetsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls), but this is the only one I can find&#8230; I&#8217;ve had Aoyama&#8217;s critically-acclaimed, award-winning Eureka for years, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[36,867,866],"class_list":["post-2302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-japan","tag-mike-hama","tag-shinji-aoyama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2302"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7788,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302\/revisions\/7788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}