The official website for Tokyo! was updated yesterday with a few new sections and a short production footage teaser trailer. The film features 3 short films taking place in Tokyo but directed by non-natives. Joon-ho Bong's film, "Shaking Tokyo" is about a 10-year recluse (Teruyuki Kagawa) who works up the courage to go out and find the pizza delivery girl he's fallen in love with (Yu Aoi) only to be caught in an earthquake. Michel Gondry directs the highly metaphorical "Interior Design" in which Ayako Fujitani plays a girl who moves to Tokyo to live with her boyfriend (Ryo Kase), but when she feels useless she begins to slowly transform into a wooden chair - a condition that oddly causes her great relief from her recent frustration. Finally Leos Carax directs "Merde", a story about a strange man (Denis Lavant) who appears from the sewers, horrifying nearby citizens like a phantom. However, when an incident occurs and he gets arrested, his trial sparks mixed feelings about what should happen to him.

Still no solid release date but it should be sometime in 2008.

Links:
Official Website
Eigapedia

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On the April 26th episode of the Fuji TV comedy show Mecha-Mecha Iketeru! Takashi Okamura endured several instances of "sudden boiling water" in exchange for the right to promote Shaolin Girl, in which he had fight scene with the film's star, Kou Shibasaki. The gag was an ode to the long-running Takeshi Kitano variety show "Super Jockey" which consisted of bikini-clad models sitting in baths of hot water while being basted with giant soup ladles. In exchange they'd be allowed to plug whatever they wanted for the amount of time they were able to stay submerged. And of course, if anyone deviated from the show's guidelines they'd get smacked in the head by a giant hand on a stick wielded by Kitano. The twist in the Mecha-Mecha Iketeru! version is that the water is a surprise and the sudden shock of being dumped into boiling water usually made Okamura leap out as fast as he could, resulting in a pitiful 4 or 5 second promo.

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The official website for Wang Ye-ming's Taiwan/Japan co-produced movie Tea Fight added a trailer earlier today. The film involves an ancient "tea curse" passed down through generations of the Yagi family. When the wife of a tea shop owner (Teruyuki Kagawa) dies, he believes she was a victim of this curse and decides to shut down his business. His daughter (Erika Toda) takes it upon herself to research the curse on the Internet, and discovers a special tea in Taiwan that can counteract her family's misfortune. Her father follows her, thinking that she's falling into some sort of trap set up by Taiwanese tea makers. Eventually, this all leads to a rematch of a "tea fight" which originally took place nearly 1,000 years ago. Confused? Me too. The trailer won't particularly help matters, but it looks pretty interesting anyway.

Links:
Official website - The trailer auto-plays when you load the page
Kaiju Shakedown's take
TokyoGraph announces Toda's involvement

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Not really a story per se, as I probably don't follow Fever Dreams releases as closely as the extreme cinema set, but I just noticed Noboru Iguchi stuck this new Japanese poster art for The Machine Girl on his blog. It's nice and big - *really* big in fact, so click the image below for a full-sized version.



Source: Noboru Iguchi's blog

Links:
Eigapedia
Trailer at Twitch

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Minoru Kawasaki has been getting a lot of attention here and around the web for The Monster X Strikes Back / Attack the G8 Summit, his big-budget sci-fi comedy due out in July. But slightly under the radar right now is his upcoming hair-styling fantasy Kamigakari. The story of Kamigakari involves a hair stylist (Mari Natsuki) with seemingly magical powers who welcomes customers into her shop, only to have them fall asleep in her chair. When they wake up they discover their hair has been completely transformed into a bizarre new style. They're initially shocked when they see themselves, but she tells them how amazing they look with complete self-confidence and her approving smile somehow causes them to accept the change, and even change their lives.

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