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.

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.

Negadon is a CGI short film that pays hommage to the old kaiju movies that we all love. They even put a scratches and dust filter on the picture to have that authentic 60’s feel.
The two trailers are pretty cool, the official site is in japanese. I don’t know what else to say, i’m too moved by this.
Trailer 1
Trailer 2
via stauffen

via imdb :

” … the Japan Tobacco company is offering free tickets to a screening of Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, on one condition — that everyone smoke… Company spokesman Tsuyoshi Miyashita told the newspaper, “The event is to provide a rare opportunity for smokers to light up freely while watching the movie, so they can enjoy the film without suppressing their urge to smoke. … I remember seeing filmgoers smoke in theaters, though it’s impossible today.”

JT is also doing a campaign to make people stop smoking on the street while walking. Where does those guys stand is behind me.
I guess they have attain that famous level of wealth, when you start eating your own poopoo.

Kei Fujiwara made a little name for herself by writing, producing, editing, and designing the horror flick Organ, back in 1996.
Fujiwara has been an underground activist for some times, she notably worked with Tsukamoto and his theater troupe Kaiju theater back in the 80’s. She also played a part in Tetsuo the Iron man.
She is now almost ready to release her next picture, Id, which she started shooting back in 1999. Yes, life is hard for independant filmmaker in Japan.
Anyway, Organwas a pretty fucked up movie and did make some noise in various international film festival and amongst extreme cinema fans circles.
Id sounds equally psychotic so i guess she can hope to continue the buzz and hopeflly make
her next movie faster.
Here’s Id’s official website, in english (Fujiwara got most of her praise from outside japan so it makes sense). No trailer yet.
via twitch