noshadowkick.com - reviews: Lost in Translation (2003) Sophia Coppola, Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi

MOVIE REVIEW: LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003)

This is a decent film. I liked it. It's got Scarlett Johansson hanging around in a hotel room in her underwear for a good chunk of the movie. You know I was gonna mention it, so I figured I might as well get that out of the way. I mean, the movie opens - first scene, first shot - on her bum and her mostly see-thru underwear. This is why movies are cool.

Bill Murray delivers his best performance since Groundhog Day.

Just kidding. He does a good job, re-delivering the same essentially Bill Murray-ish character that he delivered in Rushmore, and even the Royal Tenenbaums. Minus the cool beard. Murray has finally latched on to the sit-looking-dejected persona, accepting the fact that that's how the people want to see him. Beaten. Down-but-not-out. He's good at it, he really is. You want the sad bastard to make it out of whatever situation he's in.

Direction-wise, this movie is borderline too "independent" for my tastes. Some shakey camera work, some questionable focusing prowess, and I SWEAR HOW MANY TIMES DID I SEE A BOOM MIC IN THE SHOT? LIKE, FOUR TIMES? FIVE? It seemed less of a stylistic approach and more just kinda sloppy. The casting was well-done: Giovanni Ribisi is a good choice for the husband role - slightly greasy, yet likeable enough that you don't cast him as a "bad guy" in your brain. That blonde chick as a Keanu Reeves action movie co-star fit the role well. All those Japanese people playing Japanese people did so flawlessly and brilliantly. All the sets/settings were great. Even the hospital looked cool. All the monastary stuff was beautiful. A fine tour of a nutty city I'll probably never visit. Private karaoke rooms? Excellent. - Tom, Nov 2003

AT A GLANCE: LOST IN TRANSLATION

# OF TIMES I LAUGHED: a bunch

MIDGETS? Well, there was one in a Coming Attraction, and I suppose one could make a comment about Japanese people being on the shortish side.

SOUNDTRACK: Decent. Especially since bill Murray sings. Cos when Bill Murray sings, uh, you definitely know it.

POSTER/COVER ART: Decent.

BEST LINE: Whatever the Japanese Johnny Carson was saying, I'm sure. Definitely not "Lip my stockings".

SEE ALSO: Rushmore, Virgin Suicides

FEEDBACK

If you see the boom mike in a shot, it's almost always the fault of a projectionist who's failed to properly frame the picture. (Roger Ebert has written extensively about this.)

I saw LIT at the Academy and don't recall any boom mikes (though I may have been distracted by all the scenes of Scarlett Johansson hanging around hotel rooms in her underwear).

- by GregoryT, 11/18/03

Yes, it was the projectionists fault. I saw it at the Showcase West Springfield and there were no boom mikes in the film (which I loved).

It happens sometimes that they get it misframed. I remember seeing DAZED AND CONFUSED at the Showcase where the projectionist cleary was dazed and confused. At one shot toward the end, the framing was all off so you saw boom mikes, lighting filters, even a couple of midgets having a party-

- by moviezzz, 11/18/03

huh. Listen, I understand the concept of "bleed space" on a frame of film. I've dealt with "video safe" stuff and understand the concept insofar as it applies to printing etc. But screw Ebert or whoever, man. Don't blame the projectionist for THAT. Microphone technology is INCREDIBLY good. There is NO NEED to have the mic that close, and then if it teeters into the shot to just be like "oh, it's up there in the bleed/gutter space... don't worry about it" seems pretty lame. I mean, a director or a cameraman.. their only job is to properly frame the shot, right? They should be aiming for a certain degree of perfection... ditto the boom mic dude.

I still say it counts as sloppy and unprofessional. Whether it's the projectionist's job to deal with/cover up that sloppiness seems like a slightly different subject... there's no REASON the mics are there in the first place other than lax standards.

- by tomNSK, 11/18/03

The thing is, you aren't supposed to see that space anyway.

I can see Sofia having the framing so important for that film. She doesn't want to have an open matte video transfer. She wants to make that area of the frame unusable, hence the putting of the mikes there.

On home video, in many cases rather than doing a letterbox transfer, they would just release it open matte. They would show all that used space. She doesn't want this to happen so she put the boom mikes in there making it impossible to release open matte.

So, as a filmmaker, it is smarter to have those mikes where they were.

- by moviezzz, 11/18/03

I suppose I'm talking out of my butt since it sounds like you know more than i do on this topic. it just seems silly.

we can go back to blaming the cursed projectionist then.

- by tomNSK, 11/18/03

I'm a fan of independent films and can tolerate slim production values as long as there's a good story and character development. "Lost in Translation" had neither of these redeeming qualities. Sure, Bill Murray plays the jaded and defeated Everyman role well, but I thought he did a better job of it in "Rushford." As for the rest of it...

This movie felt more like a film student's heavyhanded and self-consciously astute senior thesis. Assignment: Visually and thematically depict "contrasts".

(oh, and the boom mike was in the opening scene when the camera zoomed out from her butt-crack to the rest of the room, right there near the ceiling. obviously, GregoryT wasn't the only one distracted by this hackneyed tease.)

- by henrietta, 11/18/03

I loved Lost in Translation. As a person who once spent some time in another country from which I was yearning to escape, I could understand how Bill Murray felt. His acting in this was the best I've seen him do, and hope he gets an Oscar for it. Superb!

- Patricia C, Australia