Posted by kevin at 7:48am EDT on Saturday, July 19, 2008
Filed under: Comedy, Future releases, Cast updates, New trailers
Forget everything I’ve written about this year; all I really care about is Shinobu Yaguchi‘s Happy Flight. Okay, maybe that’s an overstatement—but it is the movie I’m most excited about in 2008, hands down. Most people know of Yaguchi for his two teen idol zeroes to heroes blockbusters, Waterboys and Swing Girls, but before that he had quite a run on tough luck comedies. Throughout the 90s he released movies like Down the Drain, My Secret Cache, and Adrenaline Drive in which people would get caught up in the worst possible situations that just snowballed from there as if they were on a mission to prove out Murphy’s law. Sure he clings to formulas for dear life, but it doesn’t really matter because his scripts are always funny and his actors always seem to hit the right comedic marks.
Posted by kevin at 8:44pm EDT on Friday, July 18, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Thriller, Future releases, Cast updates, New trailers
The official website for Takahisa Zeze‘s Pandemic (Kansen Rettou) went live today and there have been all sorts of new developments since the movie was first announced at the beginning of the year. The release date has been officially set at January 17, 2009. Some new cast additions include Ryoko Kuninaka as a nurse named Takako, Yuji Tanaka as Takako’s husband, Chizuru Ikewaki as the wife of the first infected patient, Takanori Takeyama as a freelance virus researcher, Koichi Sato as an ER doctor, and Tatsuya Fuji as a university professor and expert on the influenza virus.
Posted by kevin at 3:51pm EDT on Friday, July 18, 2008
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Future releases, New trailers
Comedian Hiroshi Tamura’s autobiographical novel, Homeless Chugakusei, has sold over 2 million copies in Japan since it was released last year. As Tokyograph reported back in December, there was a bidding war for the film rights, with Toho winning out in the end. In recent months that popularity has also yielded a manga adaptation and a Fuji TV drama. Gee guys, overexpose much?
The movie stars WaT’s Teppei Koike as a 14-year-old who finds himself homeless for a summer when his family falls apart. He ends up living in a nearby park where he only has rain water to bathe and gets so hungry he tries to eat grass and cardboard. Akihiro Nishino and Chizuru Ikewaki also star. Check out the brand new full trailer below.
Posted by kevin at 10:51am EDT on Friday, July 18, 2008
Filed under: Documentary, Future releases, New trailers
Coming to Tokyo’s Theater Pole-Pole on July 26th is Yoko Tashiro’s new documentary, Kuusou no Mori about two families of vegetable farmers living together in Shintoku-cho, Hokkaido. Tashiro kept tabs on the Yamada and Miyashita families over a 7-year period as they raised their kids without much money and farmed vegetables without the benefit of machinery, but still managed to lead happy lives. The trailer, which you can find below, has only been viewed 300 times since it was posted a month and a half ago so this one probably isn’t primed to take the world by storm—but hey, if it’s worth 7 years to film it’s certainly worth 5 minutes to post something about.
Posted by kevin at 11:43am EDT on Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Jidaigeki, Future releases, New trailers
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.
