Posted by kevin at 12:16am EDT on Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Future releases, New trailers
The official website for Masahiko Nagasawa‘s Tengoku wa Mada Tooku (roughly “Heaven is still far away") is now live and features a full-length trailer. In the film, which is based on a best-selling Maiko Seo novel, Zexy CM girl Rosa Kato plays Chizuru, an office lady who’s literally given up on life. Unlucky in work and in love, Chizuru makes the decision that she’s going to end it all in a place she doesn’t know. She takes a taxi to a remote area and checks into a small bed and breakfast situated in the heart of a mountain. The proprietor of the bed and breakfast, a self-sufficient, upbeat man named Tamura (Yoshimi Tokui) greets her when she arrives. Over the course of her stay time seems to stand still as Tamura and other local villagers gradually restore Chizuru’s will to live.
Posted by kevin at 3:22pm EDT on Saturday, August 16, 2008
Filed under: Chambara, Action, Future releases, New trailers
Geisha vs Ninjas is the upcoming directorial debut of Go Ohara and, as its title explains pretty thoroughly, involves a geisha named Kotono (Minami Tsukui) who sets out to avenge her father’s murder at the hands of a band of ninja assassins. Personally I’m relieved to see she actually does modify her style a bit before she goes back for the second round of whoop-ass, but either way it seems to be an overtly silly Japanese action flick that isn’t exactly hiding its intentions. A press conference for the film’s completion was held back in July and it’s slated for release in Japan on September 27, 2008. Trailers below.
Posted by kevin at 7:35pm EDT on Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Filed under: Crime, Future releases, New trailers
Here’s the new trailer for Hiroshi Nishitani’s Yougisha X no Kenshin. I posted the first teaser here last month but the new trailer seems to do a better job of conveying the tone of the film and the comedic rapport between Kou Shibasaki and Masaharu Fukuyama. Based on a Fuji TV drama that featured the same two actors, the film centers around a mysterious murder in which the victim’s hand is severely burned but the cause of death is actually strangulation. Detective Kaoru Utsumi (Shibasaki) attempts to corroborate the alibi of the victim’s ex-wife and discovers the woman’s neighbor, a genius high school math teacher named Tetsuya Ishigami (Shinichi Tsutsumi), went to Teito University—the same school as genius physicist Manabu Yukawa, aka “Galileo” (Fukuyama). Knowing it will take a genius to catch a genius she enlists the help of Yukawa to figure out Ishigami’s role in all of it.
Posted by kevin at 5:31am EDT on Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Filed under: Horror, Future releases, New trailers
To be honest I’m a bit wary of even mentioning Toshikazu Nagae’s latest attempt at horror, Hoso Kinshi Gekijo Ban because the first attempt: “Ghost System” was one of my least favorite movies of all time. And yet, girls in blank masks are kind of creepy, so here goes. In 2003 Fuji TV started airing a series of documentaries called “Hoso Kinshi” (banned from broadcast) late at night about creepy events as told to the interviewer by the people who were supposedly involved. They were staged to seem as real as possible so it caused a lot of confusion that got people talking and all that buzz just ended up making it more popular.
Posted by kevin at 2:03am EDT on Saturday, August 2, 2008
Filed under: Horror, Future releases, New trailers
The first teaser for Orochi was so incredibly lame and pointless that it makes the new full trailer that came out yesterday (see below) all the more noteworthy, simply for having actual footage. Based on a 1969 Kazuo Umezu manga, “Orochi” tells the story of two sisters, Kazusa (Yoshino Kimura) and her younger sister Lisa (Noriko Nakagoshi). Lisa can never seem to do anything as well as Kazusa—a fact that her cruel parents will never stop reminding her of. In fact, the only person in her family that’s nice to her at all is the sister she’s slowly growing to despise. A third girl named Orochi (Mitsuki Tanimura) observes the situation and acts as a narrator for the story. Orochi is an ageless being who must sleep every 100 years. However, when she saves Lisa from an accident her sleep is trigger prematurely. When she awakens decades later she discovers Kazusa is now ill and being taken care of by Lisa, but things don’t seem quite right between them.
