Posted by kevin at 9:10am EDT on Friday, May 2, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Future releases, New trailers
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
Posted by kevin at 11:03am EDT on Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Filed under: Comedy, Horror, Future releases
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
Posted by kevin at 10:42am EDT on Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Filed under: Fantasy, Future releases
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.
Posted by kevin at 11:01am EDT on Thursday, April 24, 2008
Filed under: Comedy, Future releases
A press conference was held by Toei Company in Nerimaku Tokyo on Sunday for Kankuro Kudo’s upcoming rock ‘n’ roll comedy Shonen Merikensack. Kudo was in attendance along with stars Aoi Miyazaki, Yuichi Kimura, Tomorowo Taguchi, Hiroki Miyake, Yusuke Santamaria, and Koichi Sato. The press conference covered fairly typical promotional fluff. Kudo expressed his appreciation of Toei’s trust in him, Sato talked about the energy of the film and his love of rock music, and Miyazaki talked about how she was initially tentative because she doesn’t like loud music but when she finally saw the band together she though it was really cool. She also said if she was ever in a band she’d want to play the drums.
Posted by kevin at 5:53am EDT on Saturday, April 19, 2008
Filed under: Drama
Okay, chances are this one will be of interest to me and about 4 other people, but the trailer for Oku Shuntaro’s Death of Domomata (Domomata no Shi) was recently posted on its official website. I’ve been keeping tabs on this one for months now because I really like the cast, but I must admit I really don’t know all that much about it other than it revolves around a bunch of emotionally-volatile drug-addicted girls putting on a production of Takeo Arishima’s 1922 stage play “Domomato no Shi,” which itself was based on Mark Twain’s short story “Is He Living or Is He Dead?”
