A Time of Ghosts

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of watching the original Ghostbusters with the English club at the Japanese junior high school I currently work at. The kids seemed to enjoy it. The club has three boys and four girls, though yesterday we had only three of the girls and two of the boys. I was reminded again that Ghostbusters is one of those rare films that's effective for multiple kinds of audience because the girls could enjoy the dating comedy stuff between Peter and Dana and the boys could enjoy the ghostbusting. The two elements work together organically rather than feeling awkwardly forced into the same movie. And then there's all the stuff about college and business that only adults understand. As some of the kids squirmed in their seats for those scenes, I remembered how I didn't understand them when I was a kid.

During the scene where Rick Moranis is running from the gargoyle, the youngest member of the club said something really funny. When the doorman said, "There's a bear in his apartment," the kid said, "Kumajanai. Akuma." "That's not a bear. It's a devil." It hadn't occurred to me before how much bear, kuma, sounds like devil, Akuma, in Japanese, though they use different kanji.

And then this morning, I see that the trailer for the new Ghostbusters movie is up.

I like that they're trying something new. I guess New York freezing over is kind of creepy. I wish they'd moved away from the Spengler family angle and introduced new hire characters, to get back to the sense of the Ghostbusters being a struggling business. I suppose this movie may have a vibe like the animated series, hopefully like one of the better episodes.

I like Patton Oswalt but he's so omnipresent that he gives things kind of a generic quality now. I hope Paul Rudd isn't box office poison after Ant-Man. Anyway, I'l keep an open mind.