Even though Paco and the Magical Picture Book seems like it’s pretty squarely geared toward little kids, it’s been getting a lot of attention in the west both for its director: Tetsuya Nakashima (Memories of Matsuko, Kamikaze Girls), and its star-studded cast: Koji Yakusho, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Anna Tsuchiya, Sadao Abe, Ryo Kase, and Eiko Koike to name a few. The story involves a little girl named Paco, played by newcomer Ayaka Wilson, who is staying in a hospital following a car accident that killed both her parents and left her with a brain injury that limits her memory to a single day. One day she tries to read her picture book on a bench next to grumpy old man named Onuki (Yakusho), but he bumps her off and laughs. However, as he discovers more about her he begins to change as a person and decides to do something special for her involving her picture book.

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We’ve had death by videotape, death by dial-up Internet connection, death by cell phone, and death by pretty much every modern technological convenience you could possibly think of. That is, until now—because in one of the more unlikely product tie-ins in recent memory the upcoming teen horror flick Twilight Syndrome: Dead Cruise will feature death by Nintendo DS Lite. When I first wrote about this movie back in May I knew the story involved a vindictive bullying victim named Eri (Saki Terashima) who traps her classmates in a deadly virtual reality game while on a class trip, but I had no idea she’d actually be walking around controlling it through her DS touchscreen. Check out the trailer below to witness the unabashed commercialism for yourself.

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Cinema fans and my F5 key should thank Jason Gray for pointing out that the trailer for Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s Tokyo Sonata has finally been added to its official website. The film took home the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes back in May. Its story revolves around a salaryman whose family slowly falls apart after he loses the job that defined him. I’m sure that’s a drastic over-simplification given Kurosawa’s past work, so check out Midnight Eye for an early review with lots of words. I notice the trailer’s theme music is Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”. Hopefully this film can live up to the last critically-acclaimed masterpiece to make use of that, School Day of the Dead.

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Talk about coming out of nowhere. Today we present you with Gachi-ban, a movie that seems to have appeared out of thin air and yet already has a trailer and is primed for a limited 1-week showing starting July 19 at Cinemart Roppongi. Does this lack of prior PR mean it sucks? Quite possibly, but judging from the trailer it will at least give the kids some over-the-top delinquent schoolboy ass-kicking to tide them over until Crows Zero 2 comes out next year.

Created by long-time pinku director Hideo Jojo and co-written by Masao Iketani (Yakuza’s Kindergarten), the film is pretty much a direct spoof that makes no effort to hide that fact that it’s trying to capitalize on the success of Takashi Miike‘s Crows Zero with a quickly-produced “high-tension yankee movie”. The difference, however, is that they’re replacing Miike with Jyoujyou and Shun Oguri with Shunsuke Kubozuka (Saikano, Yo-Yo Girl Cop). Something tells me they won’t be hitting the 2.4 billion yen mark that “Crows” reached.

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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).

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