Going From Ring To Grudge
TOKYO—Amber Tamblyn, who stars in the upcoming supernatural horror sequel The Grudge 2, told SCI FI Wire that it's different starring in the English-language, Japanese-flavored movie after her experience in a small role in The Ring, an American remake of a Japanese film. "There is a major difference," Tamblyn said in an interview on the film's set at the famous Toho Studios here, "obviously with what gets lost in translation with working with a Japanese crew and set and working in America. Even though you're ... remaking a horror film that is very big in Japan, there is a difference as far as the actual working-on-set experience. Trying to communicate things, or things that you normally take for granted that you never think about, like asking the cameraman if he wants you to stand on your mark so he can ... check focus: things ... which you generally just do without even thinking about it. Now I have to be, like, 'Help!'"

Like its predecessor film, The Grudge 2 is an American movie produced by Sam Raimi and his Ghost House Pictures, but is being shot entirely in Japan with a Japanese crew and Japanese director Takashi Shimizu, who created the Grudge franchise. "The major difference was that The Ring was a very small part [for me]," Tamblyn said. "It was just an opener. And obviously, ... on this film, we have Shimizu-san, who was the originator of all of these films."

But Tamblyn is no stranger to Japanese horror films. "I'm a huge fan of, like, Daimon, like, The Demon, which is a great film ... [and] which is actually something that Shimizu-san and I talked about when I first got here, because that was a film that he told me to watch, but I had already seen it. That affected him as a child. ... He saw that around the same age as the little boy in the film."

In The Grudge 2, Tamblyn plays a young woman who travels to Tokyo to investigate what happened to her older sister, Karen, who is the character played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in the first movie. Tamblyn is learning Japanese while she's in Tokyo for about two months to shoot The Grudge 2. And she'll soon be able to compare notes with Gellar, who had a similar experience when she shot the first film in Tokyo two years ago. "Sarah's coming next week [to shoot a few scenes]," Tamblyn said. "But I've been told she's got some advice for me, so I don't know what that'll do at this point. I've had to learn it the hard way [laughs]." —Patrick Lee, News Editor 

www.scifi.com  4/7/06