A 16 year old girl suffers from a disease which makes sunlight deadly to her. Every day she stares out her window at a young surfer who waits at the bus stop outside her house for his friends. She develops a crush on him and the two eventually meet. Through his friendship she’s able to experience things she couldn’t have on her own.

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Four musicians start a band in a small town and struggle not to fall apart. For the first teaser, see this link. For the full trailer, see this link.

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Four musicians start a band in a small town and struggle not to fall apart. For the second teaser, see this link. For the full trailer, see this link.

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We could be buried in Yasukuni.

Um, what’s Yasukuni? A supermarket?

The Suicide Song, written by One Missed Call author Yasushi Akimoto and directed by Masato Harada, is a movie that doesn’t just belie expectations; it completely tosses them out the window.  One need look no further than the theatrical trailer to see how this was marketed as a straight-forward horror flick about a cursed song that forces people to commit suicide, but in reality it’s more of a social satire and vehicle for Jpop unit AKB48 that happens to have a horror sub-plot tying it all together. Ultimately this movie is far, far more likely to introduce people to Jpop than it is to appease horror fans. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you. Personally I had no problem with it, other than the fact that they killed off my favorite group member 6 minutes in.

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On Thursday Climber’s High director Masato Harada held a special screening of the film for a group of schoolchildren in Ueno Village, Gunma Prefecture—the area of the tragic 1985 plane crash on which the story is based. Also in attendance were the film’s star Shinichi Tsutsumi and singer Chitose Hajime, who performed the theme song Hotaru Boshi (firefly light) for the kids and offered flowers for the victims enshrined there. The film is based on a novel by Hideo Yokoyama and was first adapted to live-action in a television drama that aired on NTV in 2005 in which lovable helmet-haired Koichi Sato played the lead role. Public release is coming later today in Japan.

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