Posted by kevin at 8:23pm EDT on Thursday, June 5, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Sci-Fi, Future releases
Takashi Miike‘s new film, God’s Puzzle (Kamisama no Puzzle) opens in Japan this Saturday and I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around what it’s actually about. That puts me in good company, however, because apparently Miike didn’t understand the plot himself when he first read it. The script, based on a novel by Shinji Kimoto, is rife with physics jargon and theoretical science. Knowing how important it is for a director to understand the material he’s trying to interpret, Miike came up with a clever solution - split the original lead role into twins. The thinking behind this decision was that Motokazu (Hayato Ichihara), the new main character that was not in the original novel could explain principles of physics in simple terms that an audience could easily understand. Hopefully that method of simplification combined with a whole lot of CGI-created visual representations will help bridge the gap between entertainment and a 2+ hour science lesson.
Posted by kevin at 9:44pm EDT on Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Future releases, New trailers
Shingo Matsubara’s The Taste of Fish (Tsukiji Uogashi Sandaime) comes out this Saturday after already having premiered at Cannes back on May 15th, and with a sequel already in the works it looks like it will become a franchise of yearly films if it’s even moderately successful. It all seems a bit odd to me, mostly because I can’t picture Takao Osawa ever being known as “that fish dude” in the way Kiyoshi Atsumi became synonymous with Torajiro in the Tora-san series, but I guess time will tell.
The story is based on a 21-part manga series originally published in Big Comic. Osawa plays Shuntaro Akagi, a successful businessman who works in the human resources department of a general trading company. His life is going well both financially and personally, and marriage to his girlfriend Asuka (Rena Tanaka) may be on the horizon. One day Shuntaro’s superiors put him in charge of a large-scale corporate restructuring, and the list of people being axed includes an old boss who taught him the ropes. Shuntaro is extremely conflicted, but his attention is diverted when he has to help out at “Dragon Fish”, the fish trading company normally run by Asuka’s now-ailing father. Shuntaro is initially overwhelmed by both the characters he meets at Tsukiji Fish Market and the traditions that have been passed down through the generations of people that work there, but over time his sense of taste becomes more of an asset than his business savvy ever was and he starts to enjoy the quirkiness of his new job much more than the cutthroat nature of his old one.
Posted by kevin at 4:01am EDT on Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Future releases, New trailers
I realize tearjerkers have been popular lately in Japan, but making another adaptation of Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka) may just be the tipping point. For those who haven’t seen the 1988 Studio Ghibli anime by Isao Takahata, believe me when I tell you that it’s one of the most depressingly sad movies I’ve ever seen in my life. And it’s not that it’s not an amazing film - it is. It’s just that after seeing the original I’m not sure I’d put myself through that again. The fact that a theatrical version has been made just 2+ years after NTV broadcast a live-action adaptation of its own makes me wonder if Japanese moviegoers are just gluttons for emotional punishment.
The story, based on a semi-autobiographical novel written by Akiyuki Nosaka, is about a teenage boy named Seita (Reo Yoshitake) and his 5-year-old sister Setsuko (Rina Hatakeyama). They get separated from their mother (Seiko Matsuda) during an air raid and later find out that she’s been mortally wounded. With their father off fighting in the war as a naval officer Seita and Setsuko are taken in by a distant aunt (Keiko Matsuzaka) and her family. She’s kind at first, but when rationing causes food to become scarce her attitude toward them grows cold. Unable to bear her anymore, the two kids go out on their own and fend for themselves while living in a nearby cave. Setsuko gets increasingly ill due to malnutrition and Seita is forced to steal food from a farm and rob empty houses during air raids.
Posted by kevin at 2:13pm EDT on Monday, June 2, 2008
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Horror, Future releases, New trailers
Even though The Machine Girl will be released on DVD here in the US tomorrow, it won’t be released in Japan until August 2nd. So in preparation for that date Spotted Productions has posted a new trailer on YouTube. It seems a little less stylized than the original and the new music has a 70s vibe. Here it is, followed by the old one after the break:
Posted by kevin at 12:39am EDT on Monday, June 2, 2008
It’s no secret that the Asian extreme cinema wave of the late 90s/early 00s has slowed down quite a bit in recent years. Directors like Takashii Miike and Ryuhei Kitamura have been working on very different projects than the ones they were churning out back then and as a whole the trend seems to be more toward comedy and drama. The recent collapse of Tartan USA can probably be attributed to this, having made its bones in the Asian horror heyday. So one has to wonder how a label geared around these movies can possibly stay afloat when there’s only a tiny pool of appropriate new titles coming out each year and plenty of bigger companies overbidding for distribution rights. The answer, at least for Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters, is to fund some of your own. I have to admit I’ve been pretty ambivalent about the process, but I did enjoy Yuji Shimomura’s Death Trance in a “mindless fun” sort of way. 2008 brings us two of these US-funded corkers - Yoshihiro Nishimura’s Tokyo Gore Police which comes out later this year, and Noboru Iguchi’s The Machine Girl which I’m reviewing here.
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