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.

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Here’s another one for the ever-growing “nobody cares but me” file. One of my favorite young actresses, Shihori Kanjiya (Survive Style 5+, Swing Girls), was recently a guest on the uber consumer-centric Japanese talk show “Meringue no Kimochi”. Among other things she talked about her love of manga and anime, especially Sailor Moon. So as a gift they got Kotono Mitsuishi, the seiyu who plays Usagi Tsukino as well as about a billion other things in the world of anime to record a special message for her on an alarm clock. Later she gets to try out a freaky tentacle-looking ergonomic pillow for no particular reason. Finally, co-host Masami Hisamoto tries out a creepy boyfriend pillow for the sake of a cheap laugh. Clip below:

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Not exactly timely since The Blue Light came out in 2003, but I really like the film and I really like Aya Matsuura so what the hell. During a recent interview with Hot Express, Matsuura talked about everything from her evolution as a pop idol to the legitimacy of her smiles. The conversation briefly touched on her first movie role alongside Arashi’s Kazunari Ninomiya and her interaction (or lack thereof) with veteran director Yukio Ninagawa. I find this bit particularly interesting because I thought she was pretty awful in the movie and almost managed to single-handedly drag down an amazing performance by her co-star. Relevant excerpt below:

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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.

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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.

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