"Memoirs of a Geisha" ** (out of four): Director Rob Marshall's ill-conceived adaptation of the Arthur Golden novel is as beautiful as it is passionless.

There has been a lot of controversy over the casting of Chinese actresses in the film “Memoirs of a Geisha”, but it’s not the mixed ethnicities of the cast that makes Rob Marshall’s stilted adaptation of Arthur Golden’s celebrated novel such a bore. The most jarring part of “Memoirs” is the fact that a movie so intrinsically Japanese is being performed in English with Asian accents. Is it so verboten to imagine a movie about the life of a Geisha done in Japanese with English subtitles?

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