Posted by kevin at 8:44pm EDT on Friday, July 18, 2008
Filed under: Drama, Thriller, Future releases, Cast updates, New trailers
The official website for Takahisa Zeze‘s Pandemic (Kansen Rettou) went live today and there have been all sorts of new developments since the movie was first announced at the beginning of the year. The release date has been officially set at January 17, 2009. Some new cast additions include Ryoko Kuninaka as a nurse named Takako, Yuji Tanaka as Takako’s husband, Chizuru Ikewaki as the wife of the first infected patient, Takanori Takeyama as a freelance virus researcher, Koichi Sato as an ER doctor, and Tatsuya Fuji as a university professor and expert on the influenza virus.
Posted by kevin at 3:09pm EDT on Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Filed under: Action, Thriller, Future releases, New trailers
When I wrote up this wiki article on Takanori Tsujimoto’s Hard Revenge, Milly last month it seemed odd that it had a run-time of only 44 minutes. Well, it all makes sense now, because it’s actually being packaged with Isao Kaneko’s The Masked Girl as part of the Neo Action double bill premiering at Q-AX on Saturday August 9, 2008. It’s pretty good timing, considering The Machine Girl will be going public in Japan on the previous Saturday and they might be able to piggyback on whatever new found interest in senseless violence that generates.
Posted by kevin at 10:43pm EDT on Monday, June 16, 2008
Filed under: Crime, Thriller, Movie people
Amongst fans of Japanese direct-to-video releases it’s pretty much set in stone that the first two actors of the “V-cinema big four” are Riki Takeuchi and Show Aikawa. There’s some room for argument beyond that, but it would be hard to dispute actor/director Hitoshi Ozawa being a solid #3. You’ve probably seen him before—he’s usually the hardboiled cop or vengeance-fueled Yakuza with a combed back mullet that isn’t Riki Takeuchi. Now 25 years into his career he’s had roles in over 200 movies, but most of those movies have never even been mentioned in the English-speaking world, let alone watched. Well no more, I say. It’s time for the well-coiffed sultan of shooting stuff to take his rightful place in the pantheon of V-cinema greats. As the first order of business on that front, we bring you two of his latest releases: the 2-part cliché-ridden gangster flick Taiyo ga Hajikeru hi followed by the slightly higher profile crime thriller Immoral: Kogoeru Shitai (frozen corpse) which he also directed.
Posted by kevin at 10:00am EDT on Friday, February 29, 2008
Filed under: Thriller, Future releases
The site for Chameleon: Long Goodbye, which we first wrote about here, just rolled out a new flash layout and added a new trailer. There are no new movie clips in the second trailer but there is some production footage, a short clip of Tatsuya Fujiwara talking about the project, and at the very end we get to see him doing a pretty cool stunt sliding down a metal staircase on his butt. I, for one, am officially sold. The menu is in English so check out the official website and click on “Trailer” for the video.
Posted by kevin at 6:46pm EDT on Saturday, February 9, 2008
Filed under: Horror, Thriller, Future releases
Shozin Fukui, whose directorial style is often compared to that of Shinya Tsukamoto, put out two extremely strange DV-shot cyberpunk horror films in the 90s, 964 Pinocchio in 1991 and Rubber’s Lover in 1996. Both of these were picked up by Unearthed Films and got released on R1 DVD in 2004 packaged with his previous shorts. After that he sort of dropped off the radar until 2006 when he put out two DVD releases, Onne and Den-Sen (Infection) - both of which went largely unnoticed. His latest offering, The Hiding (Senpuku) will be part of Cinema Artone Shimokitazawa’s late show rotation from May 10th - June 6th 2008. 964 Pinocchio, Rubber’s lover, and a completely re-edited version of Onne will also get separate screenings during the event.
