A year and a half after winning the Grand prix at Cannes with what can only be described as a filmgasm for critics, “The Mourning Forest”, Naomi Kawase will attempt to follow up that massive success with Seven Nights (Nana yo Machi); a relatively simple story about a woman who gets lost in Thailand and ends up “finding herself” through the art of traditional Thai massage.

The trailer is pretty self-explanatory but the basic premise is that the woman named Ayako (… or Saiko?), played by Kyoko Hasegawa (Love Never to End, The Sword of Alexander), has a some sort of miscommunication with her taxi driver while in Thailand and ends up getting dropped off with a Thai woman and a French tourist (Grégoire Colin). Over the course of her 7 nights stuck there she gradually makes the transition from a stressed-out ball of rage to completely mellow and friendly, largely due to the therapeutic effect of Thai massage, but also because of her relationship with Colin’s character.

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Coinciding the recently-concluded Beijing Olympics, the 150-year anniversary of the opening of the port of Yokohama coming up in 2009, and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, China and Yokohama have their own significant milestone. 100 years ago the first elementary school for the children of Chinese immigrants was established in Japan. Currently there are 5 of these Chinese schools throughout all of Japan, and two of them are located in Yokohama. Working with a grant from the Fund For the Promotion of Art and Culture, Nozomi Kataka filmed students at a Yamate Chinese School in Yokohama for 3 years, starting with their first day in elementary school. The end result is the documentary, Chukogakko no Kodomotachi (The Kids of Chinese School).

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Apple recently uploaded a new HD quicktime trailer for the limited US release of Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django by First Look Studios. It’s very stylized but the video quality is about 10x better than the interlaced piece of crap Apple uploaded to their Japanese site last year. Check out ryuganji for info and an interview with Miike. Incidentally, First Look’s Blu-ray and DVD releases of “Django” are slated for November 11th in the US.

Apple trailer page
Official website for the US release

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The official website for Shinobu Yaguchi‘s Happy Flight was recently updated with a fancy new layout; and with that update comes a brand new 32-second teaser taking the place of the old one. For those of you that want to check out the old one, see this post from July 19th with the video clip and full cast information.

As most of you probably know, Yaguchi is the man who brought us comedies like Waterboys, Swing Girls, and My Secret Cache. He tends to be a perfectionist while writing scripts, and in preparation for making an airline comedy he spent years learning the ins and outs of that industry. So while it’s kind of agonizing to wait years between projects, it’s always worth it. Tease ahoy!

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Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s Maboroshi no Yamataikoku is shaping up to be one of the most uniquely Japanese movies to come out in a long time. The plot centers around a blind former railroad worker named Yohei (Naoto Takenaka) who becomes obsessed with finding the ancient country of Yamataikoku, home to the legendary shaman queen Himiko. His passion for finding it was first ignited when he uncovered ancient earthenware while making rail repairs after a flood. Now blind, he completely depends on his wife Kazuko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) to make sense of his maps and lead him through the Kyushu region where he believes Yamataikoku to be.

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