Hollywood's Asian Romance

Our exclusive, behind-the-scenes report on the making of Memoirs of a Geisha, the first big-budget Hollywood movie with an all-Asian cast of superstars, prompted readers to share their observations on the repression of women and the relative merits of Chinese and Japanese actors

Richard Corliss's article on the filming of Memoirs of a Geisha was very well written [Jan. 9]. Although this depiction of the geisha tradition of Japan will surely become a worldwide hit, the fact that the "main geishas are played by Chinese women speaking English, which they were taught to intone in a lightly Japanese accent," will make the movie, for me, completely unwatchable.
Dan Bloom
Chiayi City, Taiwan

Memoirs Of A Geisha may be a good film, but any culture that uses women in a patronizing way deserves to be criticized. Societies that respect women will progress; the rest will degenerate.
Krishna Raman
Chennai, India

Corliss says China is rich in top actresses and Japan isn't. But there are wonderful Japanese actresses in The Last Samurai (2003) and The Twilight Samurai (2002), and the latter was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Movie. Just because Chinese films are better marketed than those made in Japan doesn't mean Chinese actors are more talented.
Kazuho Baba
Anaheim, California, U.S.

Memoirs Of A Geisha is most definitely not, as Corliss claimed, "a living work of art that entertains us for a few hours, then vanishes into the night, taking our beguiled hearts with it." It bored me to tears. The film doesn't come close to capturing the haunting story that Arthur Golden created in his best-selling book. It is strange to think this campy film was made by the same man, director Rob Marshall, who turned the Broadway show Chicago into such a dazzling cinematic work. As your story noted, Geisha opened in the U.S. to mixed reviews. And deservedly so.
Ward Verrijcken
Leuven, Belgium

Latin American Leftists
As a Dominican immigrant getting a master's degree in the U.S., I appreciated your report on the growth of left-leaning governments in Latin America [Jan. 9]. You accurately reflected the views of millions of immigrants here in the U.S.: that it is high time Latin American countries faced up to the U.S. and rejected its unfair policies. The spirit of the poor will never die. More and more of us young professionals are here in the U.S. getting an education so that we can go back to our home countries and work for change. We will return with not only our expertise but also the awareness of what fuels unfair American policies: hypocrisy, social inequality and an arrogant materialism. Thank you for shedding light on a political movement that has clawed its way out of a time of repression and assassinations. The voice of poor people will finally be heard.
Manuel David Matos
Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.

The newly elected leftist governments in South America should be a cause for concern by the Bush Administration for obvious reasons. President Bush and the cia, however, should take note that the world is watching like a hawk. No meddling and cia-sponsored attempts to overthrow legitimately elected governments will be tolerated. It is not the '70s or '80s anymore. Play fair.
Coenie Kukkuk
Pretoria

The Abode of Souls
David van Biema's essay on the roman Catholic Church's changing its teaching on limbo took me back to the '50s, when I grew up attending a Catholic school [Jan. 9]. As described by the nuns, limbo [the afterlife for infants who die before being baptized] was similar to life on earth but without sickness, death, unhappiness or failure. I was absolutely furious that I had been baptized and was therefore ineligible for limbo. Heaven, on the other hand, involved endless God worshipping and constant harp strumming. It struck me as terribly boring. The only thing heaven had going for it was that it was not so painful as purgatory or hell.
Judith A. Merrill
Wethersfield, Connecticut, U.S.

Secret Snooping
Time reported on the controversy over President George W. Bush's secret directive to allow the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone conversations in the U.S. without a court-ordered warrant [Jan. 9]. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Those who are up in arms about the secret spying on people with known links to al-Qaeda would be the first to blame the President for not preventing another attack. I am not an apologist for Bush, but he did get this one right. Terrorists need to know they can't use our eavesdropping laws against us. The President took an oath to protect the American people, and I am glad he is doing it.
Gabe Grote
Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.

You quoted Dick Cheney, who said, "if you're calling Aunt Sadie in Paris, we're probably not really interested." How about listening in on what a political rival is up to or Time's next big story about the Administration? If there is no judicial oversight of eavesdropping, how can the President be prevented from using it for personal gain? Do the American people truly have that much trust in the Bush Administration after the lies about the reasons for the war in Iraq? It is not news that the U.S. has no respect for civil liberties outside the U.S., but what comes as a surprise is that there is no respect for them inside the U.S. either. Wiretaps without warrants and a President who clearly breaks the law are things that would never be accepted in Europe. I hope the American people know what they have got themselves into. History has shown that men do not easily give up power once they have it.
Henrik Segersven
Espoo, Finland

Sure, the domestic-surveillance program makes sense for protecting Americans. But what if it results in throwing even more people into the prison at Guantánamo or perhaps the invasion of yet another Middle Eastern country? Then we might discover that such U.S. actions were also based on faulty intelligence.
Aly Marei
London

I have no issue with anyone listening to my phone calls or reading my mail if it means I will be safe when I take the subway or a plane. The only people who don't support Bush's move to monitor communications are people with things to hide.
Deborah Cozeolino
New York City

Bush has bypassed and ignored the laws set forth by Congress requiring warrants for wiretaps. You could even say he has decided to make his own laws. Although Bush's intentions may be good, it is the precedent being set that we should be worried about. Twenty years from now we may have a President whose intentions are not so creditable. It is obvious that Americans need to fight terrorism, but in doing so, we are eroding the basic tenets our democracy is built on. History is filled with tyrants and dictators. Let's not leave room for one to come to power in the U.S.
Ryan Fortman
Denver

The president should be more re-spectful of individual rights and the separation of powers. Any important wiretap needs to be approved by the appropriate court, a simple but vital check on the authority of public officials. We're sacrificing too much because of the Bush Administration's lust for unchecked power.
Jerry Borrowman
Sandy, Utah, U.S.

I have no problem with the authorities' rooting out terrorists by legal means, but Americans should remember the kind of information collected by fbi chief J. Edgar Hoover and how he used it to threaten his personal enemies. One of Hoover's targets was Martin Luther King Jr. I would like to think that Canadian jurists would make quick work of any official who wiretapped without the approval of the court.
Maurice A. Rhodes
Nelson, Canada