When the older brother of Saori (Mirai Shida) is arrested for murder, police protect her family by changing their name and take them out of contact with the rest of society for a while. Saori is then sent to live with Detective Katsuura (Koichi Sato) for futher protection from the media onslaught. Katsuura is in a tricky situation trying to deal with Saori’s fragile mental state while carefully trying to get her testimony about what happened. Meanwhile, his own family is coming apart at the seams. Slated for release in Japan on January 24, 2009. For the second teaser, see this link. For the full trailer, see this link.

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Set in a 3-year “Group Sounds” boom starting in 1968 and inspired by the Britpop explosion, Kuriyama stars as an organ-player named Miku who’s forced to cross-dress as a man to be part of fictitious Group Sounds band, “The Tightsmen”. Slated for release on November 15, 2008. For the first teaser, see this link.

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Here’s the current schedule of Japanese films screening at the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) this October. Each is linked to their respective screening info pages. You can find the full schedule here.

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The Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) will be screening two Katsuhito Ishii movies this year, Darling of the Mountains (Yama no Anata) and the recently-wrapped Sorasoi. Ishii is a regular at the festival and in Hawaii in general, having filmed both “Sorasoi” and his U-BEE scenery DVDs there recently.

Darling of the Mountains screening info
Sorasoi screening info

Incidentally, Geneon will be releasing “Darling of the Mountains” on Japanese R2 DVD with English subtitles on December 10th. Both a bare-bones Standard Edition and 3-disc Premium Edition are available for pre-order now.

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Six years into her career, AV idol Sola Aoi continues to stray further and further from the hardcore porn that made her an international star. She’s been in plenty of non-porny V-cinema movies in the past few years, but she took an extra step for her latest project, Aozora (Blue Sky), and actually penned the screenplay herself.

The story revolves around a pachinko parlor worker named Shiori (Aoi) and her aspiring musician boyfriend, Tetsu. The two of them travel from Kyushu to Tokyo together and struggle to stay afloat while Tetsu chases his dream. Tetsu’s younger brother eventually shows up and the two brothers form a duo and start to play some shows together. Later, Shiori gets recruited as a gravure idol while Tetsu gets involved with a local yakuza and cheats on Shiori with another woman. Tetsu continues loving Shiori, but big city life gradually tears them apart.

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