I’m a bit late that’s true. The fact is there’s plenty of info already available on Takeshis. Everyone was disapointed by it, even Kitano.
I haven’t seen it so i can’t really pronounce myself can i. Still i’m rejoicing of seeing Kitano trying lots of different stuff lately rather than sticking to the melancolic yakuza flicks that made him a japanese movie diva.
That’s a japanese thing, most succesful filmakers have huge filmos here compared to western directors. I mean you know that Miike is not trying to make a masterpiece with every movie he directs. But the fact that he does about 2, 3 movies a year allows him to experiment on different genre and format.
Kitano has been doing the same on a smaller scale lately, from ambitious drama (Dolls) to pure genre remaking (Zatoichi). Takeshis seems a part of that.
So Takeshis is the story of a very popular actor(Kitano) that wonders what his life would be if he was a different person.
It looks kind of crazy and schizophrenic like Kitano’s own career.
The official site is here and the trailer is embeded in flash so you’ll have to find it by yourself.

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.

Everybody love time travel stories. What about summer time travel stories ?
Summer Time Machine Blues is a teen-movie where a group of geeks from the science fiction club find a working time machine. Funny situations ensues
Seems to me that there’s a wave of time travel movies coming our way. after Sengoku 1549 and Einstein Girl, this is the third time travel movie this year.
I won’t complain, i mean everybody likes time travel movies. I mean you liked Groundhog Dayand Back to the Future didn’t you ? Summer Time Machine Blues is the same lighthearted comedy full of goofiness bathed in a general summer spirit that people likes.
Now, to illustrate that, i decided to put a pictures from the blog you can find on the official site. Those young people eating hamburgers are just plain likeable don’t you think ?
Now the official site is hilarious and the trailer (.asx) has a cute interface, you’ll like them both as if they were your children.
Children are our future by the way… except when the get their hands on a time machine hahahahamlkjshgpvqddgf

Yet one another whacky japanese flick. I know you love it as much as i do. Ok, maybe not but still.
Kamikaze Girl ( Shimotsuma Monogatari) is about the friendship of two very different girls and their adventures in the slums of Ibaraki prefecture. Momoko is a french-maid looking lolita longing for the refinements of the lost french aristocracy while Ichiko is a hard-boiled biker gang leader.
They somehow end up friends and do crasy things for an hour and a half then it’s over. You also have an anime part to keep you entertain.
Why wouldn’t you want to watch this movie ? Come on, watch it ! Please.
For once the official site can be found in english here along with the trailer (more like a music video actually).
The two girls are Kyoko Fukada and Anna Tsuchiya, two fairly well-known pop stars in Japan. Rock n’roll.

Even if i’m almost always disapointed, i cannot resist the urge to watch stupid whacky japanese flicks. Sakigake !! Kuromati Koukou (Sakigake!! Cromartie High School) is one of those. It’s going to be terribly bad but i still want to go watch it.
I guess it’s like hollywood blockbusters, you know it’s gonna suck but you can resist the urge to go, if only for the eye-candy. I guess we have all inside of us the desire to see things exploding and giant monsters.
Now i guess you wanna know what Sakigake!! Kuromati Koukou is about. Well it’s about a crazy high school and that’s all you need to know. I mean it’s not like the story is going to be relevant to anything anyway.
So here’s my summary of the movie : Pencil-eating bad guy, two men, dressed as bunny rabbit talking, can-shapped robot, alien invasion.
This should give you an idea about what’s the movie is all about. A part from that, it’s an adaptation of a succesful whacky manga. Oh, as a side note, the name of the high school is actually the name of a guy who used to play base ball in Japan, Warren Cromartie. The guy is suing the producers of the movie because he feels the movie makes him look like an ass.
In the meantime here’s the official site and trailer.

Densha Otoko is becoming a strange phenomenon here. It began on an internet message board as one geek told his story of meeting a cute girl on a train and dating her while slowly abandonning his geeky habits.
The message board became a book which became a manga and now it’s a movie. Yes, finally, geek has become the new cool. I can finally go outside in my godzilla costume and not only feel good about myself, but also get chicks. This must be another sign of the end of days so let’s enjoy it while it last.
Now, another important side of this story is that, supposedly, the book was edited out of the most saucy bits that were originaly on the message board. One can only wonder if any bed scenes are going to be in the movie. Insert dirty joke with some kind of train metaphor here.
Probably not, this is just some romantic comedy. Go see it with you’re girlfriend and maybe she’ll understand your passion with Gundam figurines.
I don’t know leave me alone or give me some Miike’s violent porno goodness instead.
The official website is here, the trailer is here, go and do your magic.

Minoru Torihada is a right-wing stand up comedian or left-wing comedian passing for a right-wing guy. His act usually mimicks old World War II type propaganda. To be honest with you i have no idea of what the guy is talking about in his shows but it gives the creeps.
Anyway, he happens to be also popular enough to finally get his own movie : All About Tanaka Hiroshi (Tanaka Hiroshi no subete). A comedy about a strange 32 year old guy still single, who likes playing theremin or who is just part of an association of theremin players.
I don’t know, this is too japanese, even for me. See for yourself here (.asx).

School girls are finally falling from the sky thanks to Koibone. So it looks like a horror movie but with some chunks of comedy in it. Well maybe it’s not supposed to be funny but i lauged a little while watching the trailer. That trailer also ran on those big screens in shibuya so i guess it’s not as cheap as it looks like, but boy does it look cheap.