9/1/2005

I was talking a while back about a can coffee serie of ads featuring Asano Tadanobu and Susumu Terajima. Looks like the ads were so popular that they’re putting the main characters in a feature length movie.
So Tadanobu and Terajima will reprise their roles as the Okanemochi Brothers (rich brothers) except that they’ve been renamed the Guitar Brothers. There’ll be a third brother too, a fat gaijin kid named Masao (what ?). Oh the absurdity and nonsense humor we can expect from that one make my toes cringe with anticipation.
Here’s what Katsuhito Ishii (one of the directors) said about it in a midnight eye interview :
“..it’s a movie of one hundred gags. In between the three main segments we put commercials, which are also gags. But the whole thing combines into a single story.”

Here’s the trailer (giant anuses included) in high resolution (don’t say i didn’t warned you), thanks to twitch.
It’s directed by Hajime Ishimine, Shin’ichirô Miki, and as prevously mentionned Katsuhito Ishii.
Now the first two both have Nice no Mori listed as their only movie, i’m guessing they’re coming from the music video and advertisement industry. Katsuhito Ishii on the other hand should be a familiar name for japanese film buff.
Ishii is fairly known in the west for having directed the anime segment in Kill Bill Vol 1.
He’s also the director of three movies, that have received mainly good press in cult movies amateur circles. The last one The Taste of Tea is considered to be one of the best japanese movie of 2004 by practically everyone.
I don’t know about the Taste of tea but his first two flicks namely Shark skin man and Peach Hip girl and Party 7 were not that great imho.
I guess there’s something about wacky japanese movies being overrated in the west. Most of the times it’s because it’s wacky and exotic. Yes, it has the merit of being original but on the other hand you can see the same kind of originality in commercials and music videos everyday.
It’s something that striked me particularly on Survive Style 5+, released last year and also a cult moviegoers favorite.
In that movie one of the character is an advertising creative that makes wacky commercials. The movie clearly makes fun of the character whose ideas are not at all related to the product they’re supposed to sell.
But you could say the same thing about Survive Style 5+. It’s wacky for the hell of it. Yes it’s original and sometimes visually “cool” and you’ll eventually find a message about love triumphs all and so on and so forth, but it’s still pretty hollow.
Survive Style 5+ making fun of meaningless commercials is actually like spider babies making fun of their mother after having eating her.
I can understand people being amazed by the creative liberties japanese directors are given even in the field of genre movies. I can also understand the exotic value, but if you look past this you’ll find that, although fun, those movies are pretty limited. As in Dude, Where’s My Car limited (ok, that one was trolling).
That doesn’t mean of course that i won’t go and see Nice no Mori.