DVD release - The Taste of Tea [Limited Edition] (Viz Pictures) available on July 3, 2007

US distributor Viz Pictures will be releasing Katsuhito Ishii's The Taste of Tea (Cha no Aji, 2004) on Limited Edition and Standard Edition DVD on July 3rd. The film is a quirky slice of life comedy about the every day activities of the Haruno family. Each family member has their own personal struggles to go through and goals to work toward which keep them generally detached from the others, but in the end it's the support of family that helps them muddle through it all and get by.

Plot: 8-year old Sachiko (Maya Banno) can't seem to shake the gigantic version of herself that follows her wherever she goes, and somehow she feels like all her problems will be solved if she could just do a full flip on a horizontal bar near her house. Meanwhile her older brother Hajime (Takahiro Sato) is working through a massive crush on a girl named Aoi (Anna Tsuchiya) in his after school “Go” board game club. The mother, Yoshiko (Satomi Tezuka) is gradually getting back into her work as an anime artist after years of being a housewife, and her husband Nobuo (Tomokazu Miura) is having a hard time dealing with the change. Their uncle Ayano (Tadanobu Asano) is a music producer, but he’s really not sure why—however he does know it’s not to produce the avant garde musical stylings of grandfather Akira (Tatsuya Gashuin).

Region 1, NTSC, anamorphic widescreen, 2 discs. Japanese audio with English subtitles. Features include:

• Cast/crew info
• Culture tips
• Trailers
• Featurette: "Super Big" (3 min.)
• Behind-the-scenes/making-of (91 min.)

Available at the following retailer(s) on July 3, 2007:

Trailer: