Earlier today renowned Japanese photographer Kazumi Kurigami held a press conference at Cinema Jack & Betty movie theater to announce production of his directorial debut entitled Gelatin Silver, Love. Also in attendance were the film’s stars, Masatoshi Nagase, Rie Miyazawa, and Koji Yakusho. “Gelatin silver” is a reference to the process of developing black and white photographs. In the film, Rie Miyazawa wears various wigs, one of which she showed off at the press conference.

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Phantom Film released the poster art and a new trailer for the live-action adaptation of Shrill Cries of Summer (Higurashi no Naku Koro ni) today. The movie, which will be released on May 10th, is a murder mystery based on a visual novel which was later adapted to a manga and anime series. In the story a boy named Keiichi (Goki Maeda) moves to the small village of Hinamizawa in 1983 and quickly fits in with his new peers. However, after the annual Watanagashi Festival some of his friends start to act weird and it’s revealed through conversations with a veteran police officer (Tetta Sugimoto) that every year around this time mysterious murders and disappearances occur. Judging from the characters involved the movie is most likely limited to the first visual novel, Onikakushi-hen.

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Because I just haven’t written enough about Kaho this year, here’s the trailer for her upcoming teen romance drama, Tokyo Girl, aka Tokyo Shojo. She plays Miho, an aspiring science fiction writer and high school student who drops her cell phone into a temporary “time slip” caused by an earthquake. When she attempts to call the number she hears a male voice she doesn’t recognize. It’s a boy named Tokijiro (Kazuma Sano) living in the Meiji era. The two continue talking and a romance begins to bloom even though they’re separated by a century, but their relationship hits a snag when faced with the inevitable mortality of a lithium battery.

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Shinji Imaoka’s Tasogare (Twilight) will premiere on February 16th. The story involves a 65-year-old plaster worker named Funakichi (Masaru Taga) who exchanges cell phone numbers with an old flame named Kazuko (Yasuko Namikibashi) at a class reunion while his wife is on her death bed. He continues clinging to his youth by doing things like going out to strip clubs with his buddies, getting drunk, and being busted for peeping. After his wife dies following one final moment of intimacy Funakichi and the recently-widowed Kazuko talk on the phone and the two newly-single seniors begin spending more time together.

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This has been assumed for a while now but it’s finally official. Ryotaro Muramatsu’s Hey Japanese! Do You Believe Peace, Love and Understanding? 2008, nicknamed “Heyjapa!” will be released on March 1st. From what I can gather it’s a black comedy interweaving 6 concurrent stories occuring in a suburban area on the outskirts of Tokyo. The group of combustible personalities includes a rock musician on his way to Tokyo (played by cross-dressing television personality Yakkun Sakuraduka), a group of goofy businessmen, some teenage shoplifters, and a couple of guys broadcasting a web show among many, many others (58 to be exact). Apparently the film is a comment on the Internet generation, and the way the stories intertwine is supposed to mimic the way the web works. But whatever, it looks funny.

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