Rock ‘n’ Roll bar owner Gun-san (Daisuke Shima) used to be in a band in his youth but recently he’s let himself go. When his family starts getting ashamed of him he defends himself by claiming his weight is just proof of his happiness. However, when a young female guitarist named Nana (Nao Nagasawa) drunkenly berates him for losing his rock ‘n’ roll spirit, he decides it’s time to go on a diet in preparation for getting back on stage.

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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.

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An office lady named Chizuru (Rosa Kato) decides to travel to a remote village to commit suicide, but the villagers’ kindness causes a changes her perspective on life. Based on a novel by Maiko Seo.

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For the past few years and without really giving it too much thought I’ve been under the impression that “Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers” had some sort of inherent flaw that led to the general lack of media buzz and web coverage that would (or should) normally come from a movie with names like Satoshi Miki, Juri Ueno, and Yu Aoi attached. Fortunately I was dead wrong about that. This is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time and offers a unique, childlike approach to cinematic absurdity you just can’t get from anyone else but Miki.

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It’s not all that often that a simple magazine cover catches my attention (okay, so there was this time, this time, this time, and this time), but this is certainly also one of those times. Anna Tsuchiya is on the front of the 8/6 issue of “an・an” magazine—the “Sex” special edition—in all of her topless-but-obscured glory. The issue also features photography by Lily Franky and apparently includes a CD insert with Etsushi Toyokawa reading from the erotic novel “Italy no Shitsurai”.

You can order the issue at Amazon.co.jp which has optional English-language navigation and forms, but obviously international shipping is killer.

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