Posted by kevin at 2:17pm EDT on Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Filed under: Horror, Future releases
The official website for Yudai Yamaguchi’s Akanbo Shoujo is up. The movie was screened at Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival 2008 on March 21st and will be released publicly on August 2, 2008.
Based on the 1967 Kazuo Umezu manga, the story of Akanbo Shoujo (literally “baby girl") involves a murderous girl stuck in a mutated baby’s body. Having spent most of her childhood in an orphanage after being separated from her family during an air raid, a beautiful 15-year-old girl named Yoko (Nako Mizusawa) finally returns home to meet them. When she arrives she discovers they live in a creepy western-style mansion surrounded by a vast forest. One night Yoko is alone in a room when she’s suddenly grabbed by a strange creature. It’s Tamami, Yoko’s jealous sister who’s hideously deformed and incapable of growing larger than a baby.
Links:
Official Website
Article - Crazy + crazy = Akanbo Shoujo at Kaiju Shakedown
Eigapedia
Posted by kevin at 4:50pm EDT on Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Sci-Fi, Future releases, New trailers
The live-action movie based on Takafumi Mizuguchi’s light novel Ren, directed by Sadakazu Hori, has had a few preview screenings and will be coming out sometime later in the year. The story revolves around a girl named Ren (Rei Okamoto) who’s banished from the future and is now trapped in modern-day Tokyo as punishment. Akihito (Toru Baba) returns to school to find that all his classmates apparently know this girl and he quickly develops a rapport with her. She tells him her secret but things get complicated when a transfer student named Shu (Masei Nakayama) arrives with a message from the future.
Don’t expect any special effects or complex explanations of quantum physics in this one. Judging from the trailer (see below), the whole time-travelers from the future element will just be a plot device leading up to typical teenage romance and human drama.
Posted by kevin at 4:10pm EDT on Sunday, May 25, 2008
Filed under: Drama, No US distribution
It’s really weird to me that a movie starring two mega J-pop idols and one of the most popular young actresses in Japan could possibly fall out of DVD distribution for months at a time and get all but ignored in the west, but that’s exactly the case with Yukio Ninagawa’s 2003 film, The Blue Light (Ao no Hono). I always assumed this was a pretty good indication that the movie was awful, but having recently gotten my hands on a copy I now know that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Posted by kevin at 9:19am EDT on Friday, May 23, 2008
Filed under: Horror, Future releases
Japanese video game company Spike will be releasing a new Twilight Syndrome game called Twilight Syndrome: The Forbidden Urban Legend for Nintendo DS on July 24, 2008 which will be a precursor to two live-action movies continuing the series.
This will not be the first time Twilight Syndrome has been adapted to a live-action film. In 2000 Kenzou Maihara directed Twilight Syndrome: Sotsugyou, starring a young Wakana Sakai. In that film Sakai played one of a group of girls who attempt a ritual to summon ghosts as a goof. Of course it works, and she ends up having to figure out how to get rid of the evil spirits that show up to kidnap her friends.
As you can probably tell this is not a series that hangs its hat on new or unique ideas. Each story is self-contained and involves some sort of supernatural dabbling by teenagers who quickly get in over their heads by messing with things they don’t understand. The new films will continue that trend, but with the complete drought of cheesy teen idol J-horror in the past few years it’s nice to see something come out that may hearken back to the glory days of the late 90s/early 00s when fodder like this was being released on a weekly basis. I suppose it was too much of a good thing at the time - but J-horror kept western DVD-buyers interested in Asian cinema like nothing else has since, and anything that helps get back to that level of interest would be a good thing.
Posted by kevin at 7:31pm EDT on Thursday, May 22, 2008
Filed under: Events, Movie people
Film Forum will be holding a four-week, 24-film retrospective of prolific Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai from June 20th to July 24th in New York City. Nakadai will also be in the US from June 20th to June 24th for various events in New York and Washington DC. For full information on the event check out the newsletter here and the event’s homepage here.
Nakadai is a veteran of over 130 films in a career spanning over 50 years, making him arguably the most prominent living actor from the golden age of Japanese cinema. Aside from screenings of some of his more well-known films like Yojimbo and Harakiri Film Forum also has imported a few rare 35mm prints for the retrospective, including the late Kon Ichikawa’s Conflagration, Odd Obsession, and I Am Cat.
Update: More movies were added and the retrospective will now end on August 7.
