Yasuharu Hasebe‘s spinoff to the hugely successful “Aibo” detective drama and 2008 feature film. The new film revolves around forensics expert Mamoru Yonezawa (Seiji Rokkaku) as he uses his skill set to solve a terrorist bombing case along with his detective partner played by Masato Hagiwara. Slated for release in 2009.

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Still waiting on a legit trailer for Tak Sakaguchi’s Samurai Zombie, but for now we can watch 55 seconds of footage at the tail end of a recent press event for the film. You can find the clip embedded after the break. Thanks to 24fps (via Quiet Earth) for the heads up.

Plot: A family find themselves confronted by relentless, worm-infested zombies in samurai armor after an encounter with a strange couple with guns on a remote mountain trail.

This is the second film directed by Sakaguchi, the first being Be a Man! Samurai School which came out in the beginning of this year. Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus, Alive) wrote the screenplay and picked the cast headlined by cross-dressing comedian and TV personality Yakkun Sakuraduka.

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Ryutaro Kajino‘s first feature-length film, Pyocotan Profile, will be playing at Theater Tsutaya starting next Saturday (11/29). I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the plot for a while now. It’s not as much a language barrier as it’s a “wtf?” barrier. But here goes:

A group of teenage girls plan a trip for graduation and find a flyer advertising Gomuniku (rubber meat) Island. The flyer also says they can win prize money if they manage to capture a strange biological anomaly called a “Pyocotan”. Sayori is suspicious of the whole thing and decides not to go, but her two friends go anyway and are promptly abducted. Also, a secret about the Pyocotan is revealed that could doom the entire planet. To find her friends and save the planet Sayori sails to Gomuniku alone. Can the mysterious Pyocotan be captured?

Trailer after the break.

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Yasutomo Nakai‘s adaptation of an award-winning Maha Harada novel. General store manager Akio (Tetsuji Tamayama) lives a carefree live in Okinawa with his dog, Kafu. One day he receives a strange letter from a woman named Sachi, but that’s not any person he’s familiar with. It turns out that the letter was a response to a joke wish he hung up at a Shinto shrine months earlier. Then one day, Sachi (Maiko) shows up and the two begin a relationship. Slated for release on February 28, 2009 in Japan.

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Scheduled for release on January 17, 2009, Pandemic involves large-scale virus that infects 25 million people. Satoshi Tsumabuki plays a doctor working to save lives at a field hospital and Rei Dan plays a medical officer from the World Health Organization. For the first trailer, see this link.

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