Category: Thriller

Today more cast members were announced for Takashi Miike’s upcoming psychological thriller, Aku no Kyoten (Lesson of the Evil).

Most notably, Fumi Nikaido and Shota Sometani will once again appear together as students after co-starring in Shion Sono’s Himizu last year. The pair took home Marcello Mastroianni Awards for Best New Actor and Actress at the 68th Venice International Film Festival back in September for their respective performances.

Other cast additions include fellow Venice veterans Kento Hayashi and Takayuki Yamada.

“Aku no Kyoten” will star Hideaki Ito, who typically plays heroic characters, as an evil teacher named Seiji Hasumi who murders his students to make his life easier.

The roles of the four new cast additions have also all been revealed. Nikaido will play Reika Katagiri, a student who quickly becomes suspicious of Hasumi. Sometani will play Keisuke Hayami, who Reika suspects of being the ringleader of the cheaters in school. Hayashi will play Masahiko Maejima, a homosexual co-worker of Hasumi. And finally, Yamada will play Tetsuro Shibahara, a physical education teacher who sexually harasses a student.

Miike plans to get post-production done quickly after filming is completed so he can get the movie screened at some international film festivals this year. A domestic release is now set for November 10, 2012.

Source: Cinema Today

A 2-minute preview of Kentaro Horikirizono’s Black Dawn has been released. In contrast to typical movie trailers that play like compressed versions of the movie, this is basically the kind of promo you’d normally see featured on a morning variety show, giving a fully narrated run-down of the story and characters.

The movie follows up a 2009 NHK drama and features an original story. Atsuro Watabe stars as Sumimoto, a member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s elite foreign affairs division who’s dubbed the “demon of public safety” for his willingness to employ questionable tactics to get the job done.

When confidential nuclear documents are stolen from a university in the chaos following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and an amount of enriched uranium goes missing in the Korean peninsula, Sumimoto and Matsuzawa (Machiko Ono) begin surveillance of a civilian named Kaori (Yoko Maki), the wife of a company president they believe to be a foreign spy (Kang-woo Kim).

Sumimoto eventually hauls Kaori in and manipulates her into helping with his investigation at extreme risk to herself.

“Black Dawn” will premiere at Japan Filmfest Hamburg on May 23, 2012 and will be released by Toei in Japan on June 2, 2012.

Source: YouTube

The Japanese pop culture blog Gigazine has posted individual trailers for the trilogy of "Real Onigokko" movies being released in Japan this May.

All three movies are directed by Mari Asato (Ju-on: Black Ghost, Keitai Kanojo) and their events take place at the same time in different locations.

The Real Onigokko franchise is based on a novel by Yusuke Yamada about a parallel world where everyone with the last name "Sato" is hunted by masked men for some mysterious reason. "Onigokko" is the Japanese equivalent of the children's game "tag". The person designated "oni" (demon) tries to catch any of the other players. Appropriately, these movies generally stick to the basic theme of people being chased. Fighting back is rarely an option due to the single-minded determination of the "oni", so survivors end up running for their lives in a series of nonstop action scenes. In a similar vein to Battle Royale, the main characters usually survive longer by teaming up and protecting each other as panicked supporting characters are picked off all around them.

Takuya Ishida starred in the first two movies as an athletic high school student named Tsubasa Sato who was drawn into two different parallel worlds where the game was taking place and spent the majority of both films protecting alternate versions of his younger sister. Ishida is listed in the cast of the fourth movie in what will likely be a cameo appearance.

The new trilogy ditches the "Sato" requirement and widens the game's targets to anyone with B-type blood.

Real Onigokko 3 (in theaters May 12th)

Plot: After quitting the high school track team, Suguru had become friends with Onji. The pair are skipping class on the roof as usual when they see their school being invaded by a group of killers after anyone with B-type blood.

Cast: Kento Yamazaki. Tatsuya Kishida, Kasumi Yamaya, Naoyuki Morita, Kouki Yamamoto, Yuya Endo, Shoko Nakahara, Masahiro Toda, Yuya Takagawa

Real Onigokko 4 (in theaters May 19th)

Plot: Juvenile delinquent Tsukasa is at an all girls' high school when the attackers strike. He escapes with a younger student named Yui and teams up with a high school senior named Masaharu while on the run.

Cast: Atsushi Arai, Itsuki Sagara, Honoka Miki, Nozomi Maeda, Kouki Yamamoto, Tsugumi Shinohara, Reona Kameda, Anna Tachibana, Takeru Ogawa, Yota Kawase, Takuya Ishida, Shiro

Real Onigokko 5 (in theaters May 26th)

Plot: Useless rookie employee Daichi is working overtime when his building is attacked, turning the office into a war zone. In the midst of the chaos, he attempts to rescue a senior co-worker who he's in love with.

Cast: Masahiro Inoue, Lisa Nakama, Yosuke Asari, Ryunosuke Kawai, Kouki Yamamoto, Sei Sato Suzu Natsume, Nagisa Oshima, Nozomi Fukuda, Eiichi Furui, Yuya Takaga, Shiro

Additional details via Eiga.com (2, 3)

The official website for Kentaro Horikirizono’s Black Dawn has been updated with an HD embed of the movie’s new trailer. It was previously streamed exclusively on Yahoo! Japan.

The movie follows up the 2009 NHK drama “Gaiji Keisatsu” and features an original screenplay inspired by Iku Aso’s original novel of the same name.

The story is set after the Tohoku Earthquake of March 11, 2011. During the turmoil and confusion that followed, sensitive data on nuclear components was stolen from a major university facility in the affected area.

Sumimoto (Atsuro Watabe), a member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s elite foreign affairs/anti-terrorism division, is tailing a woman named Kaori (Yoko Maki), the wife of a company president (Kang-woo Kim) who has been involved in illegal foreign exports and is suspected of being a Korean spy. Sumimoto takes Kaori into custody for collaboration and eventually enlists her help to uncover and stop a planned nuclear attack against Japan by any means necessary.

“Black Dawn” will premiere at Japan Filmfest Hamburg on May 23, 2012 and will be released by Toei in Japan on June 2, 2012.