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.

Executive Koala narrates the story of a koala bear who happens to be an executive in a pickle company. While trying to finalize a deal with a korean kimuchi company, Koala finds his girlfriend murdered.
He becomes the primary suspect and has to prove his innocence.
Executive Koala has been released on the 14th of January in Tokyo. It has been premiered at the hawai film festival where this lucky guy saw it.
It’s directed by Minoru Kawasaki whose previous efforts include Ika ressu (The Calamari Wresler) approprietly subtitled “Seafood Battle Royal”.
The official website is in Flash so no direct link to the trailer, you can find it by clicking on the frog guy on the far right of the navigation menu.
Thanks to twitch there’s also the Ika Ressu trailer here(wmv).

Happy new year all !
And since it’s new year, time to check what the best movies of 2005 were. Since i didn’t seen that much japanese movie last year i won’t do a top 10 myself.
Midnight eye annual poll hasn’t been released yet so we’ll have to content ourlves with the Eiga Geijutsu one.
Eiga Geijutsu is a japanese magazine, each year they ask critics and filmmakers to pick their favourite japanese movie of the past year. It’s a point based system, the movies with the less points end up in the worst movie of the year category.
Without further ado :

Best
1-Linda Linda Linda
2-Patchigi
3-Dokushosuru hi
4-Kanariya
5-Kuchu teien
6-Lakeside Murder Case
7-Unmei ja nai hito
8-Hibi
9-Sekai no owari
10-17-sai no fukei: shonen wa nani o mita no ka

Worst
1 Always: Sanchome no yuhi
2- Operetta tanuki goten
2-Takeshis’
2-Lorelai
5-Mata no hi no chika
6-Kita no reinen
6-Yogisha Muroi Shinji
8-Nana
9-Tetsujin 28-go
10- Ashurajo no hitomi

Pia is another magazine. Their poll is supposed to reflect the opinion of the “man of the street”. They ask the audience as they exit movie theatre what they think about the movie they just saw. Probably doesn’t mean much but still they come up with two rankings. One is based on small movie theatre in tokyo the other is nation wide. It also concerns all movie that have been released in Japan, not only the japanese one.

Tokyo small theatre ranking :

1-Summer Time machine Blues
2-Maison de Himiko
3-Chorus
4-Beyond the Sea
5-Hanging Garden (Kuchu Teien)
6-Linda, Linda, Linda
8-Scrap Heaven
9-Bungee Jumping of Their Own
10-A Song of Joy

Nation wide :

1-Star Wars Episode III
2-Always — Sunset on Third Street (Always — Sanchome no Yuhi)
3-A Moment to Remember
4-Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
5-Yamato: The Last Battle (Otokotachi no Yamato)
6-Cinderella Man
7-Shall We Dance?
8-Fly, Daddy, Fly
9-Aegis (Bokoku no Aegis)
10-A Stormy Night (Arashi no Yoru ni)

Tadaaa !

via stauffen
Urahara diva Shunji Iwai has written a script to be directed, surpisingly enough, by Ryuhei Kitamura (Godzilla Final Wars, Versus).
The movie, Bandage, is about the indie rock scene in Japan during the 90’s.
I always found weird that someone like Iwai never got his due when the asian movie craze went mainstream in the mid 90’s. I’m not 100% positive about this but i don’t think any Iwai’s flick has been released in europe in the 90’s.
This is something that has plagued most “middleground” directors of asia. Only the true genre or the true author flicks from asia are getting in the mainstream media.
The fact is Iwai’s movies are not sophisticated enough for the art crowd and not entertaining enough for the movie geeks looking for thrills.
There’s also an economic factor, Iwai’s movie were very popular in Japan at the time. The foreign distribution rights must have been more expensive than the one for Kitano’s.
Kitano’s movies were totally ignored in Japan until he got international praise at Venice with Hana-bi.
Still, i’ve always enjoyed Iwai’s sophisticated teenage dramas and he was the one to discover Tadanobu Asano.
Anyway, Kitamura is japan’s Michael Bay on crunk juice so it might be interesting to see what he can do with an Iwai’s script probably dealing with the trials, tribulations and the resulting angst of an indie rock band.
Iden, Tity & Godzilla : Final war. Can’t wait to watch that.
Here’s Shunji Iwai’s official website and Bandage official press release in japanese.

By the way, here’s the list of the awards given and the recently ended Tokyo Film Festival :

Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix
WHAT THE SNOW BRINGS

Special Jury Prize
Conversations with Other Women, dir. Hans Canosa

Award for Best Director
Kichitaro Negishi [ WHAT THE SNOW BRINGS ]

Award for Best Performance by the Actress in Leading Role
Helena Bonham Carter [ Conversations with Other Women ]
Jin Ya-gin [ You and Me ] dir. Ma Liwen

Award for Best Performance by the Actor in Leading Role
Koichi Sato [ WHAT THE SNOW BRINGS ]

The Audience Award
WHAT THE SNOW BRINGS

Award for Best Artistic Contribution
Loach is Fish Too, dir. Yang Ya-zhou

Best Asian Film Award
Sepet (Slit Eyes) dir. Yasmin Ahmad
Special Mention
Be with Me, dir. Eric Khoo

Best Picture Award
Who’s Camus Anyway? dir. Mitsuo Yanagimachi

Special Award
Ski Jumping Pairs -Road to Torino 2006- dir. Masaki Kobayashi

There are news and there are news.
So i’ve been to the Tokyo film festival on the last day, thanks to Smith Frenzy, a 3yen benefactor. I had the chance to watch a super sentai double program featuring a early episode of Kamen rider and one of the less well known Miraa Maaan(aka Mirror Man).
This was in fact organised to promote the coming release of a new Mirror Man flick called Mirror Man Reflex that’s supposed to come out in early 2006.
The actor of the new Mirror Man film was present. The highlight of the night was, when asked to pose as Mirror Man for photographs, the actor replied “no man, that’s embarassing”.
A dvd box set of Mirror Man is also going to be released on the 23rd of November.
So now, i could just give you the link to the official site for Mirraaa Maaan Reflex (the trailer is in there, flash embeded).
But since it’s 3yen, and you know we go out of our way to provide the best in plexupublishing (ask Yves), here’s the vintage Mirror Man song, used to make fun of japanese economist Uekusa Kazuhide.(via wikipedia).
I’m glad because i think 3yen is the first english site to report the coming release of Mirraa maan Reflex in .
It’s small victories that makes us who we are. Succesful actors of the complex and unforgiven world of plexuspublishing.

The 19th Tokyo International Film festival (better known as TIFF) will be held in roppongi Virgin theater from the 22nd to the 30th of October.
On the international side of it, the program is nice: The Brother Grimm, Sympathy for lady Vengeance, Wallace & Grommit: curse of the were rabbit. Walk the line (the Johnny Cash biopic) and Oliver Twist.
The jury will be presided by Zhang Yimou which last movie Riding alone for thousand miles will open the event.
There’s a huge selection of movies from all over asia, of course if you don’t read perfect japanese it might be hard to keep up with the subtitles. But if you speak chinese, thai, tagalog, korean and vietnamese it should be no problem. Unless a cambodian movie shows up then you’re screwed.
Any way other notable movies are : Trio, a 1997 comedy by Chan Wook Park, Rikidozan a biopic of the korean wrestler, Under the same moon, the new Kenta Fukasaku movie starring Kubozuka, and The Whispering of the Gods one of the best japanese film of 2005 according to Donald Richie.
The official website is in japanese and english. The english version is not finished though and the translation feel automated.