Posted by kevin at 4:39am EDT on Saturday, June 28, 2008
Filed under: Sci-Fi, Future releases, New trailers
The official website for Yukihiko Tsutsumi‘s 20th Century Boys (20-seiki Shonen) was updated today and features the newest trailer minus the annoying TV baubles and fonting from the one everyone was watching on YouTube last month. News of the film has been slowly trickling out for the better part of a year now, but if you don’t have the patience for blurb-tracking here’s the lowdown:
Back in February Tokyograph reported that the popular Naoki Urasawa manga “20th Century Boys” would be adapted to not just one, but a trilogy of live-action films with a combined budget of about 6 billion yen (almost 60 million USD). It was later announced that the cast would include over 300 people, with 200 of those appearing in the first installment of the trilogy. Some notables include Toshiaki Karasawa as Kenji, Etsushi Toyokawa as Otcho, Takako Tokiwa as Yukiji, Teruyuki Kagawa as Yoshitsune, and Kuranosuke Sasaki as Fukubei (among many, many others).
Posted by kevin at 7:47pm EDT on Friday, June 27, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Future releases, New trailers, DVD releases
The full trailer for Tomoyuki Takimoto’s Ikigami is out, and you can check it out below the break. I wrote about it a little more in-depth when i posted the teaser here back in May, but basically the story involves a government-implemented system in which people under the age of 24 are eligible to be picked at random for death. Having reached the age of 24, Kengo Fujimoto (Shota Matsuda—Soujiroh Nishikado from the Hana Yori Dango series) is appointed as one of the people responsible for handing out these ikigami informing people that they have 24 hours to live. This is just a courtesy, however—the method of death is actually a lethal nanocapsule injected in children at an early age which lays dormant in their pulmonary artery until it’s activated by the government. Fujimoto vehemently opposes the law but isn’t in a position to speak out against it. Instead he continues doing his job as expected while having to deal with the various emotional responses of his victims. Also judging from the trailer I take it there’s a sappy song that brings everyone together. Aww…
Posted by kevin at 2:49pm EDT on Friday, June 27, 2008
Filed under: Fantasy, Future releases, New trailers
A massive redesign of the Paco and the Magical Picture Book official website went live today, and aside from the news box showing up mojibake on my PC it looks pretty good. They also uploaded a 2nd teaser, which you can get to by going to the site and clicking the button above the “9.13”. I’ve highlighted it in the screencap below:
I’ll probably post something more substantial on this one closer to its September 13 release date, but there’s already a ton of info over at pymmik’s site.
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 9:43pm EDT on Monday, June 23, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Future releases, New trailers
If you read my article on Shiori to Shimiko no Kaiki Jikenbo, then you know I really think highly of actress Nao Minamisawa and I’m totally convinced she’s going to be a big deal. So needless to say I was excited when the news broke earlier today that she’s been cast in the lead role of Akai Ito, an upcoming movie based on a popular mobile phone novel. As Tokyograph reported back in April, the story will be split between a Fuji TV television drama and a Shochiku-produced movie with both being directed by Fuji TV’s Shosuke Murakami and featuring the same cast.
Minamisawa will play the lead role of Mei. She says she’s nervous about the prospect of starring in a movie, but really excited at the same time and she’ll give it her all with reckless abandon. Mei’s love interest Atsushi will be played by Junpei Mizobata (Dive!!). Also added to the cast were relative newcomers Ryo Kimura, Rei Okamoto, Tomo Yanagishita, Anna Oshibashi, and Nanami Sakuraba. The film’s theme song will be handled by the band HY, who take their name from the initials of their hometown Higashi Yakena.
Coinciding with cast announcements, the official website for the film posted some behind-the-scenes footage of Minamisawa which you can check out here. I posted the teaser below the break, but since it was made before they announced the cast publicly you can imagine how generic it is.
