I picked up the 2-disc edition of NANA 2 (2006) at Lai Ying in Chinatown last night. The bonus disc of special features includes one labeled “New York.” Well, that segment turns out to be coverage of the special screening of the film at the IFC Center last December (12/18/06), the one where Grady Hendrix got to introduce the film’s stars, Mika Nakashima and Yui Ichikawa, to a crowd that included many young Mika fans. Grady is seen in one shot where he introduces the girls. Most of it is just the post-screening Q&A, with the girls' Japanese-language answers to English-language questions subtitled in Chinese only! Well I was at the screening, too, and I’m visible in two shots, in the first of which (a speedy shot of the line outside the theater) I had to put the DVD on pause and go through it frame by frame to see myself, and the second of which I'm standing in the audience several rows behind the girls as they pose for photos and I decide to be a wiseass by sticking my fingers up in the "V" sign that Japanese girls traditionally make when posing for pix.

It’s quite a new thrill for me to pick up a DVD in Chinatown and learn that I'm actually IN it!

I also picked up DVDs for several films that played the recent festivals, New York Asian Film Festival and Japanese Cuts, in New York: DEATH NOTE 1 & 2, GAMERA THE BRAVE and MEMORIES OF MATSUKO. I also picked up the Studio Ghibli anime, TALES FROM EARTHSEA.

Congratulations! It must be such a thrill! Thank you for sharing it with us.

Also I really hope that you'll like The Tales of the Earthsea a lot better than I did. Son doesn't have neither the talent nor the patience and attention to detail his father has. Too bad an actually good story is wasted.