Hachiko: A Dog's Story Goes Straight To DVD
According to posts in IMDB forum here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1028532/board , the movie is going straight to DVD.
Blessing in disguise?
Blessing in disguise?
Comments
We all discover breeds of dogs in different ways, so I dont object to new people discovering nihon ken. But the difference between a holiday release and people going to see SOMETHING, ANYTHING kid friendly at the theatre over vacation week is a whole different exposure experience than people choosing it on DVD for viewing in their own home.
just thinking:
I had never heard of akitas until the OJ Simpson trial.
I had never heard of Shibas until Reilly's 1st obedience class when her classmate was one.
Never heard of kai until rescue told me Sage was a kai dog mix. then I bought the Japanese Dogs books and found out about the rest.
We just had a major raid of a pet store in Dixon, CA (Northern CA). Many smaller breed puppies, including Shibas, were confiscated by the authorities due to health issues with the dogs. The local Solano County District Attorney is pressing charges for animal cruelty, etc., with the couple who were selling the puppies. Solano County SPCA took in 100 puppies from this raid.
Here is the SPCA website: http://www.solanospca.com/
I bet lots of breeders are sighing in relief at the news. I'm sure it is difficult enough to weigh if you think someone is right for your pups. Let alone if you started getting all these calls of "I want a Hachiko!"...
It always get to me how people are so irresponsible in getting a pet and not take care of it the next minute.
The last scene when Hachiko and Professor reunite after Hachiko dies moves me deeply every time because there is a special place where only two friends can understand the love for each other.
I've seen it 3 weeks ago in Amsterdam and it's a nice movie..
and for the people that can't wait you can download it allreaddy in spanish or rusian hahahah...doesen't matter you know the story hihihh
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the movie. I admit the original version touched me much more than the American one; plus, it bothered me that they used a Shiba as Akita puppy and female akita to play Hachiko (at least part of his life). It's no rough collie, the differences between males and females are really visible.
In case there are some people that haven't seen the Japanese one, here is a 'trailer' (caution, handkerchief needed). I think the new version is really romanticized, the Japanese one puts much more emphasis on the pain of the dog and the difficulties he had to face. In the original version the professor's family didn't want him and they passed him from one to another. The scene with the funeral at least is heartbreaking, there are no words to express the pain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3s11acb7Z8&feature=fvst
The eyes are killing me, they are the eyes of my akita, the eyes of every JA.
However, the new version can be seen by a normal person without crying (too much?) and I am sure the dogs on the set were better treated and I think the new Hachi has a more expressive face.
later edit: the song, Bittersweet, is one of my favs, definitely in my Top 10. It suits the story so well...
I was disturbed in the american version that the after the professor has died and his kids take Hachi, they just open up the gate and let him go--apparently that's the way they explain how it was that he was able to go back to the station again and again. I did think, yeah, great, now people are going to think that's ok....(Really, it amazes me how people can't figure out the difference between a movie and real life!)
anyway, last night I dreamed of a red JA in every dream....sigh....I'm in the throes of serious puppy lust, but this is not the time for me, so I'll just have to endure it!
JA owners have a saying about shibas - for us they are little akita; apparently shiba owners think of akita as big shibas LOL
I think you need to be a JA owner for the movie to really hit you. I don't know exactly how to explain it. It's not the same even with AA. I've spent a lot of time with both breeds and there are different expressions, different reactions. An AA's eyes don't move me, they are different. I don't know how and why but all JA have the exact movements, expressions as the Hachi in the movie. You cry mostly because you put your dog in Hachi's shoes and you just can't help it. And it's not that women are marshmellows, we even made men admit it LOL It's a powerful movie. (I think it's like 8 below with husky owners - although I suppose you know it was a remake after a japanese movie and real story - again, the american version is much more popular; in the japanese version only 2 dogs survived because they hunted each other down for lack of food :-( ; or that movie with a golden retriever - or labrador I can't remember, it was last year - each has a special meaning for the owners of those breeds).
The real story (I am not sure how real it is, but it's the original version so I stick to it) is that the daughter insists keeping the dog although the mother didn't want him at all, she was jealous and didn't like the dog; plus, not all people in the household were nice to him (the help I mean). Then the daughter no longer takes care of him, starts going out rather than taking care of Hachi; she gets married, has a baby and moves to another city. Then the professor dies and his wife no longer wants to keep the dog. The daughter doesn't want to take him. It's so heartbreaking. He goes from one person to another, escapes every time, he returns to his home but the new owners are not friendly and they want to hit him, he gets into dog fights, starves himself, some people are nasty to him. At the end he is just a shadow of what he once was, I don't even want to imagine what the dog actor went through but the last images with him - right before he dies - they are horrible.
To my mind the story of Hachi shows people how much better dogs are in comparison to some humans. I am sure his life would have been different if the professor's family had loved him 1/2 as much as the professor loved him.
PS: Hachi wasn't red at all, he was white/creamish and looked different than what we see today as JA. I think you can find the original version on torrents too. I know I found it a couple of years back but I can't remember where. There are some Japanese torrents, you should try there first.
later edit: the 'trailer' is not official, I'm not sure there was an official one, it was made by a fan but it's so unbelievable, it really moves you.
I managed to find the movie on youtube! There is a really good version with spanish subtitles!
I will say that the part in the US movie that made me so sad was seeing the old Hachi....clearly a different dog actor, but that old Akita did make me tear up a bit....
It is just heartbreaking, both what the real Hachi went through, and what so many dogs do....I've been reading a rescue site (Blue Moon) that has several old Akitas that people abandoned after 10 or 11 or 12 years....it is just awful, and does show how much better dogs can be than some people...
Pretty good movie overall.
It has more Akita screentime than the original version.
The message is different in both versions. Japanese version is more about responsibility to owning a pet (I guessing most Japanese are familiar with Hachiko story already), whereas US version IS about Hachiko's loyalty story.
The common theme I find in both is that the bond between man and pet is something that cannot be understood or felt unless they experience it themselves first hand.
Not a bad movie at all. I think the family will have an enjoyable movie night watching Hachiko.
I'd love to meet an Akita up close one day JA or AA I don't mind which both are cool looking dogs, but I think I like the look of Japanese Akita better.
I loved the whole thing it made me cry it seems every movie about a dog made me cry for different reasons Marley and me since I went through that with my two boxers, Mari and her puppies made me cry seeing Mari going through her hardships made me sad, same goes for Hachiko I loved the happy parts and once it got to the sad parts I was sobbing It was so sad to see Hachi like that.
I'd like to ask if anyone has noticed an increase in JA, or "tweenies", after the release of the DVD? I saw a "tweenie" for the first time in NJ last summer and was so excited to see, what I thought was JA, in U.S. for the first time.
Jesse
The town where I live in has 237.579 people living there. Before the movie there was a Shiba-breeder (not very active though) with two or three dogs here, a family with two Shiba-girls and me. This year there are at least three or four (very young) Shibas more in town... I really hope, that their familys did NOT take a Shiba without informing about the character traits...
I didn't see any Akitas here though. Neither before the movie nor afterwards.
To be honest... I cried the whole second half of the movie... ;)
It's simple from the first minutes of the Japanese version I started to cry like a baby and that during almost the entire film.
I was mostly just watching the dogs....and I gotta admit even though it was totally "wrong" I loved the Shiba pups in the beginning, Shiba lover that I am! (But they were so clearly Shibas!) I loved reading about the Shibas they used too, and how Richard Gere said "you really can't get them to do anything they don't want to do!" *lol* I did think sometimes, hmm...that is just a Shiba being a Shiba and they captured it on film....
and this one
are the saddest parts of the movie. I did cry when i saw the original..