On August 24, 2005 Japanese movie and PV director Toshiaki Toyoda (Blue Spring, 9 Souls) was arrested for having 5 packets (about 3.9g) of stimulants in his home. The incident almost derailed the release of “Hanging Garden” (Kuchu Teien) and he eventually received a 3-year suspended sentence for possession. The lack of new film projects after the incident coupled with an obvious language barrier has led to rumors in the west that he’s being blackballed by the Japanese movie industry. Now, I have no idea if that’s the case and I wouldn’t even begin to speculate on something like that here, but I did come across a bit of news involving him today for anyone that’s been worried he might have dropped off the face of the planet. Apparently he’s the producer for an instrumental rock band called Twin Tail. They’ve been together since ‘05 and will be releasing their first album on July 7, 2008 entitled “Subete ha Yurusarete Iru”. The band consists of only a violinist, a drummer, a bassist, and a video guy (Toyoda). Their live shows have a huge screen with lots of funky visuals which he’s responsible for creating. Check out a clip below to experience the weirdness.

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Katsuhito Ishii, the man behind films like Funky Forest: The First Contact, The Taste of Tea, and the recently-released “Yama no Anata” has spent 2 years working on a project called “U-BEE”. With the help of Tohokushinsha Film Corporation, he used HD cameras to capture footage of natural scenery in Japan and Hawaii which will be featured on a set of 3 DVDs entitled “Scenery” (135min.). The footage will be accompanied by customizable piano background music and natural sound effects in 5.1ch surround sound. The point of the project is to turn TVs into pieces of furniture that can be enjoyed without actually having to watch them intently, instead of just being a useless black square when not in use.

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When I saw the first teaser for Jersey no Futari a few months back, which basically consisted of Sheena & The Rokkets guitarist Makoto Ayukawa being completely baffled by his convenience store B.L.T. sandwich, it seemed quirky enough that it had to be something worth paying attention to. But the fact that it was written and directed by the notoriously “twisty” director Yoshihiro Nakamura made me a little bit hesitant to write about it yet for fear that there would be some major twist that changes the whole plot. Well, there’s a full trailer now that gives a clearer impression of the film’s tone. And since it’s based on a novel by Yu Nagashima (author of Dog in a Sidecar), chances are nobody will be getting trapped in any alternate dimensions or anything, so here goes.

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In preparation for the upcoming New York Asian Film Festival a new subtitled trailer was posted yesterday for Yudai Yamaguchi’s Tamami: The Baby’s Curse (Akanbo Shojo). I first wrote about the movie here about two weeks ago. It was screened at Yubari Fanta back in March and will get its international premiere at NYAFF 2008 (click here for full details of the screening) before being released publicly in Japan on August 2, 2008. See the trailer embedded below.

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Originally included as a bonus feature on the French DVD release of Shinya Tsukamoto’s “Nightmare Detective”, you can now watch Eric Dinkian’s short film Kaojikara in its entirety on the film’s official website. Set up as as a metaphor for loneliness and alienation, it stars Karin Shibata as a young Japanese woman living in a western country who wakes up one morning to discover the faces of everyone around her (including her boyfriend) have become strangely deformed. Here’s the link to the film with English subtitles (not work safe—French tatas).

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