Product Description: Winner of 2007 Japanese Academy Awards for Best Film Best Director Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress; Winner of 2007 Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Film Best Actress Best Supporting Actress; Winner of 2007 Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Film and Best Supporting Actress; Winner of 2006 Hochi Film Awards for Best Film and Best Supporting Actress.2-disc set loaded with special features!Includes:* The Making of Hula Girls* How To Be a Hula Girl* Hula Girls: The Real Story* An Interview with Jake Shimabukuro (music)* Original Japanese TrailersBased on a true story HULA GIRLS is a heartwarming comedy about coal miners daughters who took a once-in-a-lifetime chance to escape their monotonous lives only to become unwitting heroes to their depressed mining town as well as the whole of Japan.System Requirements:Run Time: 200 minutes Genre: COMEDY UPC: 896911001072
Girls Have All the Fun! Yes! This is a great movie about some tough Japanese girls - they have to fight prejudice, hard economic times and male chauvinism - who would have thought the shortest path out would be to do the ...hula! Japan`s long time love affair with Hawaiiana must have started in a nowheresville coal mining town - who knew. For those of you that remember the `good old days` of Japan in the 1960`s, Hula Girl will bring back fond memories. A far cry from today.... One of the interesting under currents of the movie is the well known hardiness of Japanese girls once they set their minds to get out there and do something for themselves. These are not the silly Japanese girls we read about on designer shopping sprees in in Europe - these girls in Hula Girl are on a mission and this true story is pretty inspiring. So much so that you find yourself rooting for them at the climactic end when they make their explosive debut as Hawaiian dancers.It is a big bag of popcorn movie for family and friends!
Hula Girls Very interesting story based upon real events in Japan during the late 60's. I bought the DVD in order to practice Japanese listening comphrehension, but my parents, who do not understand Japanese at all found the story and the characters very compelling. Western people continue to adhere to a {Madame Butterfly} concept of Japanese women(i.e Memoirs of a Geisha etc.) but this film gives a more accurate portrayl. I enjoyed it profoundly and the film even has a "Happy Ending"
Lost in translation I haven't seen the U.S. version (with English subtitles) yet, but just watched the Japanese version again. The fact that this is a true story, and that I happen to have been to both Iwaki and Joban Hawaiian Center, makes it ring all the more authentic for me. And being from Hawaii, of course, I'm proud to know that this project (the center, not the film) actually accomplished what it set out to do.
The only thing I feel bad about for viewers who don't understand Japanese is that the Iwaki dialect is probably completely lost in translation for foreign audiences. It would be like watching "Fargo" with Japanese subtitles (and I have), where a lot of the subtlety comes as much from the local accent as from the words themselves; the Iwaki accent is easily as distinctive, and carries the same sense of rural innocence, as the exaggerated Minnesota accent employed by the Cohen brothers. Key is a scene on the bus, as the troupe is heading towards a performance. The teacher, who is from Tokyo (and resolutely so), says a few words in what is clearly an Iwaki accent, indicating both the passage of time since she arrived, and her newfound willingness to let go of her urban identity and get closer to the girls she teaches.
Unfortunately, there is just no effective way of communicating the dialect in subtitles...
A little derivative, but very satisfying Hula Girls (2006) owes a bit more than a nod to A League of Their Own (1992), starting with the Dad who gives his ugly daughter to the cause, the mom with the obnoxious brat, the friends/sisters who are eager or talented but not both, the arrival of the drunken master, the rule about No Crying In Baseb...err...Hula Dancing, the life and death news from the coal mine (or the war).... All that, maybe more. But just like the plot worked for A.L.o.T.O., it works for H.G., and the Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell characters are conspicuous by their absence. The bones are fleshed out with Japanese sentiments ("gambatte yo"), conflicts, shockingly non-Western ways of thinking and doing, and a very, very wet and tearful happy ending that reminds me of an Iowa Girls' State Basketball Tournament as much as anything else. There are a lot of universal values in this movie, and it deserves more recognition that its Japan Academy Award for Best Picture.
An Inspirational Story Of The Hula Girls Of Japan. This film is based on a true story about a group of young Japanese women who looking for a way to help out their families, so they saw an ad for a Japanese Hawai'ian dance troupe and decided to become hula dancers. The special features includes the actual story of the Japanese Hula Girls, a step-by-step course on hula dance, and an interview(subtitled in Japanese)with famous Hawai'ian ukelele performer Jake Shimabukuro. Hula Girls is a must for anyone who believes in the little guys(or girls in this case)who can make a difference for everybody.
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