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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
'Survey' would be a better title, sometimes inaccurate., 2 Jan 1999
By A Customer
There is _alot_ in this book that can (and will!) captivate you about Japanese cinema. While the Weissers, like most critics dwell a lot on their personal favorites, the bulk of the book is left with brief 2 and 3- paragraph summaries I found all too brief for the movie(s) in question. Occasionally I also ran into outright errors. Here's one of those that I would not expect in a 4th edition. Example: Entry for NIGHTHEAD: Actor Toyokawa Etsushi's name is misspelled, the summary and analysis are _totally_ wrong. NIGHTHEAD: The Trial was a sequel/conclusion to the TV series, NOT re-edited snippets as they say in the review. The brothers are NOT therapists, they are working with the research group that trained them and fighting a corporation that wants to enslave psychics, the girl is not retarded, et cetera). I would have to say that 10% of the book contains these 'drive by' reviews that have very little to do with the movie in question, or that contain significant translation/spelling errors. I have to wonder if this book really is a 4th edition, or if it is the fourth time that it went to press.... Second beef: If you pick up this book, and then obtain one of the Weissers' 'Japanese Cinema Encyclopedias,' be prepared for redundancy. Basically, the movie reviews found in _Essential_ copied and pasted verbatim. (I found this to be true in the JCE of Horror, Fantasy, and SF). Errors (when present) and all. To be fair though this book does cover a lot of ground, and for those of us who are either first timers or old hands, it is great for introducing movies that would perhaps remain unseen to the general (non-Japanese-speaking) public. However, in my humble opinion the title should have been 'A Survey of Japanese Cinema.' For the sheer volume of movies surveyed, this book is (probably) unique, and worth a look.
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