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What a disappointing interview! Despite the time constraint and the request to ask only Speed Racer related questions, I expected better things to come out of Rain’s mouth but I guess I was expecting too much from the Engrish speaking star.

After being told that Rain wants to hold the interview in English, I asked him about his character in the movie and why we should fall in love with him. I expected some in-depth analysis of his character, Taejo, but instead he went on about how he signed on with the movie because he trusted the Wachowski brothers among some other things that weren’t interesting.

Not what I wanted to hear, so I asked again. Rain started to say something about his character being strong, sad and after having a hard time expressing himself in English, he went on to say that Taejo holds the key in the movie in Korean.

During that segment, he said one good coherent line in English. “Whatever you expect, you’ll see more” and that’s probably memorized.

I’m no film expert, but if you spent months filming it - shouldn’t you have more to say? Just a thought.

Then I confirmed that he’ll be appearing on the Colbert show. Based on his English skills or lack thereof, I’m guessing it’ll just be a dance-off.

Just when I wanted to sneak in some juicy questions, such as “did you sleep with Lee Hyori”, “when’s your next hair appointment”, etc, the coordinator jumped on the line to tell us that our time is up.

Before we ended the interview, I asked him which nickname he preferred. Initially Rain wanted to be called the dancing machine instead of Pinky, ESL student and shrimp-eyed star, then he had a eureka moment and said “Magic Feet”. Apparently that’s what Time had called him back in the days.

Talking to the Magic Feet confirmed that his English is no where near where it should be after many years of studying and that he’s pretty clueless about his character Taejo. Nothing new here, but at least I now have a new nickname.

Although Magic Feet failed at selling me Speed Racer, I plan on checking it out, just to see those Magic Feet in action, so watch out for our review when it hits the theaters on May 9th, 2008.

Lastly, we would like to thank Warner Brothers & Rain for participating in this interview.

Check out the eight minutes of interview below.

 
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Rain at the Los Angeles world premiere of Speed Racer at the Nokia Theater on April 26th, 2008.
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Rain will fly to New York on April 28th for the Colbert Report.

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