Two weeks ago the official website for Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata added a trailer to the upper left corner of the front page. Earlier today Fortissimo Films uploaded the same trailer in much higher resolution along with a teaser. To find them go here and click the button highlighted in the image below. Once you get to the player the buttons on the side of the TV switch between teaser and trailer.

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With 8 months to promote Takashi Miike‘s live-action adaptation of the popular 1970s cartoon Yatterman it makes sense that the film’s PR team is keeping things close to the vest so far. But earlier this morning NTV viewers got a *very* brief sneak peek at a scene from the film. It’s tough to make anything out in the scene shown but given what we know about the cast so far it’s safe to assume that’s Arashi‘s Sho Sakurai as Yatter-Bark’s builder Gan-chan looking up at his creation with teen idol Saki Fukuda in the background in her role as Gan’s partner Ai-chan and a CGI-created Omotchama buzzing around the laboratory. Live-action shooting wrapped last month and everything seems to be on schedule for a March 2009 release. Clip after the break.

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Shonen Merikensack distributor Toei has come up with a bizarre-yet-innovative way to promote their upcoming punk rock comedy while generating good will by saving Japanese motorists gas money. Gas prices have reached 180 yen per liter recently; the highest price in history. Toei is offering a special sticker people can put on their cars so that when they fill up at “Usami” gas stations they can get a discount of 5 yen per liter. There will be 900 stickers total distributed evenly to 9 stores nationwide. If my math is right that amounts to about 18 cents per gallon. Not too shabby. Check out this image for a cutesy illustrated representation of the process.

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It’s a well-known fact that Sabu’s first film, Dangan Runner was the inspiration for Tom Tykwer’s 1998 German hit, “Run, Lola, Run”. The tremendous international success of that film eventually got programmers for Loews Theaters’ indie distribution arm, “The Shooting Gallery” to briefly re-name Dangan Runner “Non-Stop” and screen it in New York in the fall of 2000. Nothing really ever came from that, however; I don’t think distribution went far beyond those screenings and a short-lived stint on VHS (good luck finding a non-bootleg copy now—TSG doesn’t exist anymore). Unfortunately this moderate, short-lived hype may have been a bit misdirected because Sabu’s debut, like most filmmakers’ debuts, is probably his most disjointed offering to date. He’s since gone on to make a number of far-superior films, none of which have so much as sniffed a proper US release.

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To any analytical thinker with even a cursory understanding of evolution it stands to reason that we as humans are just a small step above animals, driven by instinct and the will to survive. So it begs the question: are ideals like civility, respect, honor, and even love—often collectively referred to as our “humanity”—directly proportionate to how cushy our lives are? In other words, are we only capable of luxuries like love and caring when we’ve grown accustomed to being safe and well-fed or are they intrinsic human values we can suppress when need be? For the first 90 minutes of The Ballad of Narayama, director Shohei Imamura would seem to be trying to prove the former with various scenes of comical-yet-disturbing emotionless sex, greed, and even murder edited together not-so-subtly with scenes of animals procreating, eating each other, and killing. But toward the end of the film the tone shifts and a seemingly heartless death ritual becomes the ultimate example of love and sacrifice.

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