The line-up of japanese movie at this year’s Venice film festival is pretty impressive. Mamoru Oshii, Satoshi Kon, Shinji Aoyama, Kyoshi Kurosawa and Katsuhiro Otomo are sending their last effort there. Only two films are actually in competition and surprisingly enough those are anime.
On top of that studio Ghibli’s last effort Gedo Senki will also be shown. It’s the first full length directed by Hayao Myazaki’s son, Goro Miyazaki.
I was kind of surprised to hear about a new Otomo movie. Apparently Mushi shi, is a film adaptation of the anime tv show of the same name. Here’s the official website for the tv show in japanese of course.
It’s also interesting to note that the two movie in the official competion are from Otomo and Kon. Kon started his career at Otomo’s studio, he notably directed one of the sketches of Memories.
So we have a Master/student battle here, nice.
I have no idea what Kon’s movie, Paprika, is about, but the few images on the official site are just gorgeous. You can watch the trailer here, but it’s really a small. Up until now Kon has slowly imposed himself as an important animation filmmaker. His last effort the anime serie Paranoia Agent is probably one of the best thing coming out of japanese tv since Serial Experiment Lain.

Here’s the listing of all the japanese films for the Venice Biennale :

Competition

Paprika, Kon SatoshiMushi-shi, Ôtomo Katsuhiro

Out of Competition

Gedo senki (Tales from Earthsea), Miyazaki Goro

Out of Competition (Midnight)

Sakebi, Kurosawa Kiyoshi

Horizons

Kôrogi, Aoyama Shinji

Horizons (Documentary)

Tachiguishi retsuden, Oshii Mamoru

Via

One of the most celebrated japanese director in recent years, Imamura Shohei has died on May 30th. He ’s mostly known for two movies in the west, The Ballad of Narayama and The Eel (Unagi), both having won him the Palme d’Or at the Cannes festival in 83 & 97. Imamura was one of the most prominent member of what was called the japanese new wave along with Nagisa Oshima and Masahiro Shinoda.
My personal favourite of his was Doctor Akagi (Kanzo Sensei).
There’s an obituary on the New-York Times, it barely made the news in Japan.

Hiroyuki Nakano who is best known for having directed the post-modern ninja parody Red Shadow and the post-modern samurai music video Samurai Fiction has won a prize for his short movie Iron.
“This short film deals with the troubled mind of an eccentric guy with peculiar ironing obsession.”
The movie won the OFAJ (Very) Young Critic Award. Each year the Cannes film festival organizes a critic’s contest with the highschools of France and Germany participating. The authors of the best ones are invited to a special jury within the Semaine de la Critique competition. This is the prize Nakano won.
Not much but at least he won a prize at Cannes. What did you win you slob ?

This is no joke, Gamera is indeed back and his return was witnessed by the most dedicated of the 3yen contributors.
All praise the kaiju gods. Gamera is back in a new movie that’ll take a closer look at his wild youth. Yes, the new Gamera is a prequel and it will unveiled the mystery behind my favourite atomic turtle origins. I can’t wait. I like to think that this modest blog inspired japanese producers to revive Gamera, since Gamera was the subject of the first post of the site, proving the renewing interest in that magnificent beast.
Shrine of Gamera has quite a documented report on the movie with shots taken from the set.
The trailer has already been uploaded on youtube with a lenghty description of the movie.
There’s also the official website full of information in Japanese and where you can listen to the theme song from Mink.
Gamera : Little Braves (Gamera: Chiisaki yusha-tachi) is going to be released on the 29th of April. Yes, it’s not been released yet and i’m talking about it which pretty rare, i’m so proud of myself. It actually still qualifies as “news”.
I’m going to eat a suppon to celebrate then, i’ll start lobbying for a Gamera vs Negadon movie.

Brooklyn rail has recently featured a guide to japanese 70’s sexloitation movies on dvd. I have no other choice but to link it.
It’s good and full of female convicts, snow blood, and stray cats. What’s not to like ?

Initially a cheap raunchy flick, The Glamorous Life of Shachiko Hanai is gathering good press from around the network of japanese film buffs.
I remember seeing a mention of the movie in midnight eye and unsurprisingly it made the best of the year list of Eye writer Jasper Sharp.
It’s has been recently showed at the raindance festival where a guy from twitch saw it and is providing a review.
The Glamourous Life of Sachiko Hanai is actually a director’s cut of a movie named “Horny Home Tutor: Teacher’s Love Juice”.
After being shot in the head, a call-girl realise that she has become a kind of genius capable of absorbing any piece of knowledge that comes across. At the same time she mysteriously end up in possession of a replica of George W. Bush finger giving her the potential power of launching a nuclear attack.
Yep, yet again another super wacky japanese flick is gaining hype in various festival. What sets The Glamorous Life…” a part is its clear pinku eiga origins.
That reminds me of director Tastsumi Kumashiro that was rediscovered at the end of the 90’s. Kumashiro was from the generation of the japanese new wave and most of his movies were set in the Roman Porno genre of the 70’s. While clearly fullfiling his duty to the codes of the genre, he also was tremendously modern for the time, creating post-modern softcore flicks that are to be seen to be believed.
He basically went under the radar of most critics at the time because of the poor reputation of the Roman Porno flicks. Much like Seijun Suzuki he ended up being rediscovered later when he was given a retrospective that toured around the globe at the end of the 90’s.
Kumashiro is not the first example either. In the 60’s Bergman ’s Monika was showned only in small adult film theatre in Paris where the guys that would form the french new wave discovered the movie and held it as a masterpiece of modern filmaking.
Is Mitsuru Meike (The Life’s director) destined to a similar fate is a guess i won’t take.
Heres the trailer(.asx), and here’s the one page official website.

Clint Eastwood is going to direct not one, but two movies about the infamous Iwo Jima battle that took place between american and japanese forces during World War II.
The first one will focus on the american side of things, the second one on the Japanese point of view.
The cast has just been confirmed for the japanese one, it will include Ken Watanabe (Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha), Shido Nakamura and Ryo Kase amongst others.
The japanese film is titled Red Sun, Black Sand, the american one Flags of our fathers.
Flags of our fathers shooting has already been completed and the film is due to be released in August. Ryan Phillipe, Adam Beach and Barry Pepper forms the main cast. Red Sun, Black Sand will be released in December of this year if everything go as planned.
Here’s Flags of our fathers official website(no trailer yet) and here’s the short page for Red Sun, Black Sand on imdb.

You lucky pups !
An american company has bought the right to Negadon, the wonderful cg flick about giant monsters.
Central Park Media is not sweeping it under the rug either, they have some big promo operations on the way and we just receive an email from them detailing what is to come.
I don’t make an habit of shamelessly promoting stuff but the news of the coming release of Negadon fills me with joy. So i have to express myself by talking about CPM’s promo operations. Unfortunately they’re not paying us, not yet.
Come on, use our cheap cpm CPM !
Anyway, they just launched an all english website featuring a teaser trailer. They have a kaiju-design contest where the best submited creations will be on the dvd and they plan on showing the movie at an anime fest in Syracuse on march 25th.
The dvd itself will be released this coming summer.
Support the cg kaiju goodness !
The internet will love you for it.

Eating on the street without paying -
the artistry of the tachigui people.
So much is in the dark and left unsaid.

Following 2004’s Innocence, Tachiguishi Retsuden,Mamoru Oshii’s next film might let a couple of us puzzled.
Oshii is famous for being able to cram his metaphysical reflexions in all his movies, whatever the original setting might be.
Howewer in his next one it’s going to be tough.
Judge for yoursleves, here’s Tachiguishi Retsuden’s synopsis :

Immediately following the end of the World War II in 1945, or the 20th year of the Showa era, Tokyo was trying to emerge from the rubble. In a black market in one corner of Tokyo stood a flimsy tachigui soba (buckwheat noodle) place.

Fast Food Grifters are the phantoms that rise and fall with the shifting diet-styles. They are the dissenting heroes that left their names on the dark side of dietary culture with their glare. Now their legend revives, strong as ever…

There a couple of exemples of director losing it but, most of the time it’s just a single movie before they get their shit together. We can really treasure those fucked-up flicks as a bowl of fresh air in sometimes predictable filmos. Soderberg’s Schizopolis is a prominent exemple of that. Remember, right after this self-starring psychotic dv movie he went on and made Out of Sight, probably his most “hollywood” effort to date.
In the case of Tachiguishi Retsuden though Oshii’s comments are kind of scary. Acoording to the press release of Production I.G “Director Mamoru Oshii does not hesitate to declare that portraying the world of tachigui is his lifework.”
Well, there clearly is no bad subject when you tell a story. The most trivial context can be set for very ambitious reflexions on our societies.
Oshii, as previously stated, is used to that kind of acrobatics. Most of his characters would not be out of place in a brainless b-movie. Still, they are tangled in a metaphysical web and questions themselves about Nietzsche’s utter interogations while offing armies of deadly naked female androids.
Now, can we expect the “food grifters” of Tachiguishi Retsuden questioning their place in the universe, and quoting Wittgenstein while eating a good old beef bowl at yoshinoya ?
Well, that’s the thing, with Oshii you never know, and it might be ten times more mind blowing than the end of 2001: a space odyssey.
Yes, i’m a fan.
Anyway here’s production I.G press release for the movie(in english please), the official site, and the trailer embeded in fresh flash mud.

Via kinejapan
Takashi Miike was recently hired by the american Showtime cable channel to participate in a serie called Masters Of Horror. The serie include famous horror movie directors such as John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, Dario Argento and Tobe Hooper.
Looks like Miike’s episode won’t get air time due to its extreme content.
Some folk at the tvbarn2 mailing list reported on a q&a with Showtime’s Robert Greenblat about the whole thing :

QUESTION: In front. I wonder if you could talk about the episode of
“Masters of Horror” directed by Takashi Miike that you guys have apparently
withdrawn as unsuitable for even premium cable viewers.

ROBERT GREENBLATT: Sure. Yeah. I don’t know if people know him as a
filmmaker, but he tends to make films that are really extreme in terms of
their visual depiction of torture and violence. And the episode came out
just really, really strong. And rather than try to figure out how to cut it
and make it work for us, we decided it’s probably better not to butcher
Takashi’s vision and, instead, not air it, and they’ll put it out on DVD.

QUESTION: Was this not foreseeable?

ROBERT GREENBLATT: You know, we sort of said, “Let’s see. Let’s see how
edgy it gets and how extreme he wants to go.” And we kind of gave him the
freedom to film it, and then we decided to take a look at it and evaluate
it after the fact.