"The heart dies a slow death,
shedding each hope like leaves.
Until one day there are none.
No hopes.
Nothing remains."

Anyway.
I've watched The Memoirs of a Geisha. It left me wanting. To kill someone.

I'm not an otaku, or at least I don't think I am. I know little details of other cultures, so it's not like I have a select country I'm too much into. (And I know much more about English-speaking countries, so it's a moot point.) But what they did to geisha... it's a bloody massacre.

First and foremost the geisha, most of the pretty ones were played by Chinese actresses. WTF?! Geisha are Japanese and should be played by Japanese. I do not care how pretty and awesome the Chinese actresses are, this is a movie about Japan and geisha for god's sake! No offense, but I believe that was one of the two biggest, most horrid of flaws of this abomination of a movie.

Second: Geisha are not whores. They don't sell their virginity. They don't sell sex. With this ritual of selling a geisha's virginity to the highest bidder in the abomination, they made the geisha look like common prostitutes. In Japanese culture there is a definite distinction between the geisha and the prostitutes. Geisha are companions, they are educated in many things, music, literature, dance, etc. They are not to be slept with, ever. Prostitutes (well, some of them) do doll themselves up to look like geisha, but they do sleep with the customers. Also, their obi is tied on the front, and for the geisha it's tied on the back.

I do not have a geisha fetish. I think their make-up looks silly and the hairstyles are not to my liking either, but I do have a sort of "wow, that's nice" feeling for them. They are educated women and not whores. That I do like. And that is what the movie sullied and got dead wrong.

Therefore I understand completely why the Asian reception was so bad. Not to mention, that the protagonist geisha had such a sour expression on her face most of the time I have no idea why the scarred faced guy even bothered with the wench. Customers do not like a sour face, ever. This would have been the worst disaster if it really happened. Personally, I'd have slapped her a few times just to make sure she had something to be sour-faced about. Jesus, what horrid customer-service!

What else... Oh yeah. I wonder how the "Mother" had such fine hair at that age. They kinda forgot that geisha, due to that amount of wax and hair twisting and pulling develop a bald spot after a while, so older geisha are bald at the top of their head. I sure as hell wouldn't be able to make such fine and elaborate bun for the retired geisha from the hair that would have remained at her age.

Also, visuals could have been much better. It lacked in both visuals and storyline, not to mention the big pile of crap it deposited on Japan and geisha in general. It was the American Dream rearing its ugly head in Japan of all places. Shoot that movie dead to get it out of it's misery.