Posted by kevin at 1:39pm EDT on Saturday, July 12, 2008
Filed under: Action, Future releases
Any sort of info on Takashi Miike‘s Crows Zero II has been slow to trickle out because it’s still so early in the production process, but a casting call was recently posted which gives away at least one tiny aspect of the plot. The production is looking for a large number of 18-35 year-old skinhead extras to play students of Housen Gakuen; one of the rival schools featured in Hiroshi Takahashi‘s Crows manga spinoff, “Worst”. Filming starts in August and will wrap in October. They’re also looking for “big-boned” tough-looking dudes to play Serizawa’s army, GPS (Genji’s Perfect Succession), and spectators during the fight scenes. Hey this movie sounds kinda violent…
Posted by kevin at 10:06pm EDT on Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Future releases, New trailers
Talk about coming out of nowhere. Today we present you with Gachi-ban, a movie that seems to have appeared out of thin air and yet already has a trailer and is primed for a limited 1-week showing starting July 19 at Cinemart Roppongi. Does this lack of prior PR mean it sucks? Quite possibly, but judging from the trailer it will at least give the kids some over-the-top delinquent schoolboy ass-kicking to tide them over until Crows Zero 2 comes out next year.
Created by long-time pinku director Hideo Jyoujyou and co-written by Masao Iketani (Yakuza’s Kindergarten), the film is pretty much a direct spoof that makes no effort to hide that fact that it’s trying to capitalize on the success of Takashi Miike‘s Crows Zero with a quickly-produced “high-tension yankee movie”. The difference, however, is that they’re replacing Miike with Jyoujyou and Shun Oguri with Shunsuke Kubozuka (Saikano, Yo-Yo Girl Cop). Something tells me they won’t be hitting the 2.4 billion yen mark that “Crows” reached.
Posted by kevin at 3:09pm EDT on Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Filed under: Action, Thriller, Future releases, New trailers
When I wrote up this wiki article on Takanori Tsujimoto’s Hard Revenge, Milly last month it seemed odd that it had a run-time of only 44 minutes. Well, it all makes sense now, because it’s actually being packaged with Isao Kaneko’s The Masked Girl as part of the Neo Action double bill premiering at Q-AX on Saturday August 9, 2008. It’s pretty good timing, considering The Machine Girl will be going public in Japan on the previous Saturday and they might be able to piggyback on whatever new found interest in senseless violence that generates.
Posted by kevin at 1:12am EDT on Saturday, June 21, 2008
Japanese distributor Pony Canyon will be releasing Norihiro Koizumi’s Gachi Boy on DVD with English subtitles on September 17, 2008. For those who haven’t heard of it, the story revolves around a genius college student in Hokkaido named Ryoichi Igarashi (Ryuta Sato) who joins professional wrestling school. During his training he carries around a little notebook in which he takes copious notes of every little thing he learns. Still, he seems to have problems remembering important details. When he completely forgets that his debut match at a local shopping mall is rigged he treats it like a real life or death challenge. Surprisingly, his enthusiasm gets the crowd on his side and he becomes a popular character with the fans. His little sister (Riisa Naka) witnesses the match and clues his fellow wrestlers in on the real reason he acted the way he did: he suffered a severe head injury the year before and now has a higher brain function disorder that renders him incapable of retaining new information for more than one day. That’s why he takes so many notes.
Posted by kevin at 2:33am EDT on Friday, June 20, 2008
According to director Ryuhei Kitamura, he first met Tak Sakaguchi after witnessing him beat some guy up in a street fight. Since Kitamura didn’t really know any real actors at the time, he offered Sakaguchi a role in Versus—the frenetically-paced action film that would launch both their careers as well as the career of his co-star, Hideo Sakaki. Given his humble beginnings, the idea that less than decade later Sakaguchi would be directing veteran actors like Akaji Maro and Shun Sugata in his own movie is frankly hard to believe. Even so, the final product of his directorial debut: Be a Man! Samurai School, ended up being both absurdly funny and oddly charming.
