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Swing Girls
May. 7th, 2008 11:26 pmTaking a hint from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elwhyenen, I had Swing Girls playing in the background as I did homework. Which means I haven't properly watched it, but what I did see was cute and funny and full of distracting dialect. But what really shocked me was discovering that not only did the actors actually perform the music, which I had known, but that the three main brass-instrument-playing actresses--Ueno Juri as tenor sax, Kanjiya Shihori on trumpet, and Motokariya Yuika on trombone--all had to be taught... from scratch? It certainly seems that way from Ueno's triumphant yell when she got the sax's mouthpiece to make a sound. =D Suddenly I understand how they could shoot the film with all the "bad" playing in it... and am all the more amazed that they got the girls playing at a level to perform their final set. My poor Japanese thinks that Ueno mentioned 4 months of training? Damn. That must have taken some dedication on everyone's part. And, as if to prove that they could really play, movie promoting was all about having the cast perform live (this performance doesn't have Motokariya in it, who must have been busy with new work or something; the trombone solo is played by one of the secondary actresses).
The movie may take some serious suspension of disbelief, but some parts are so random that it put a big grin of silly incredulity on my face.
As an aside, Ueno looks so baby-faced in the movie. With the pigtails, it's hard to picture her every growing up into playing Ruka. In a move of retro-femmeslashing, my mind keeps trying to put Ueno's character, who's got a subtle thing with the male lead, together with the boy-crazy trumpeter. It's all the little things that subtext feeds on--the camaraderie over getting into jazz, the throwing snowballs at each other, the bento-stealing. What? It works in my head.
elwhyenen, I had Swing Girls playing in the background as I did homework. Which means I haven't properly watched it, but what I did see was cute and funny and full of distracting dialect. But what really shocked me was discovering that not only did the actors actually perform the music, which I had known, but that the three main brass-instrument-playing actresses--Ueno Juri as tenor sax, Kanjiya Shihori on trumpet, and Motokariya Yuika on trombone--all had to be taught... from scratch? It certainly seems that way from Ueno's triumphant yell when she got the sax's mouthpiece to make a sound. =D Suddenly I understand how they could shoot the film with all the "bad" playing in it... and am all the more amazed that they got the girls playing at a level to perform their final set. My poor Japanese thinks that Ueno mentioned 4 months of training? Damn. That must have taken some dedication on everyone's part. And, as if to prove that they could really play, movie promoting was all about having the cast perform live (this performance doesn't have Motokariya in it, who must have been busy with new work or something; the trombone solo is played by one of the secondary actresses).The movie may take some serious suspension of disbelief, but some parts are so random that it put a big grin of silly incredulity on my face.
As an aside, Ueno looks so baby-faced in the movie. With the pigtails, it's hard to picture her every growing up into playing Ruka. In a move of retro-femmeslashing, my mind keeps trying to put Ueno's character, who's got a subtle thing with the male lead, together with the boy-crazy trumpeter. It's all the little things that subtext feeds on--the camaraderie over getting into jazz, the throwing snowballs at each other, the bento-stealing. What? It works in my head.
