Director Fumihiko Sori joined Ichi stars Haruka Ayase and Takao Osawa yesterday for a preview screening of the film and greetings from the stage. As is typical for these press events nothing particularly informative came out of it, but a lot of praise was poured on Ayase for being able to handle all her own fight scenes without the benefit of a stand-in and a relatively short amount of time to train. Sori was particularly impressed by her natural reflexes and fighting spirit.

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Two weeks ago the official website for Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata added a trailer to the upper left corner of the front page. Earlier today Fortissimo Films uploaded the same trailer in much higher resolution along with a teaser. To find them go here and click the button highlighted in the image below. Once you get to the player the buttons on the side of the TV switch between teaser and trailer.

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With 8 months to promote Takashi Miike‘s live-action adaptation of the popular 1970s cartoon Yatterman it makes sense that the film’s PR team is keeping things close to the vest so far. But earlier this morning NTV viewers got a *very* brief sneak peek at a scene from the film. It’s tough to make anything out in the scene shown but given what we know about the cast so far it’s safe to assume that’s Arashi‘s Sho Sakurai as Yatter-Bark’s builder Gan-chan looking up at his creation with teen idol Saki Fukuda in the background in her role as Gan’s partner Ai-chan and a CGI-created Omotchama buzzing around the laboratory. Live-action shooting wrapped last month and everything seems to be on schedule for a March 2009 release. Clip after the break.

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Shonen Merikensack distributor Toei has come up with a bizarre-yet-innovative way to promote their upcoming punk rock comedy while generating good will by saving Japanese motorists gas money. Gas prices have reached 180 yen per liter recently; the highest price in history. Toei is offering a special sticker people can put on their cars so that when they fill up at “Usami” gas stations they can get a discount of 5 yen per liter. There will be 900 stickers total distributed evenly to 9 stores nationwide. If my math is right that amounts to about 18 cents per gallon. Not too shabby. Check out this image for a cutesy illustrated representation of the process.

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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…

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