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

Loft is the next Kyoshi Kurosawa’s picture. For those who don’t know him, no, he’s not realted at all with the other Kurosawa.
KK has been one of the most revered japanese directors in the west those last few years. Some would say he’s like a respectable Takeshi Miike. Like Miike he’s working a lot, directing between 1 and 2 movies a year, and like Miike his filmo spans over countless different genres from auteuresque drama to yakuza skin flick, to horror movies.
The big different between the two would be that Miike is well known for his genre movies while Kurosawa is mostly known for his auteur movies.
Loft is a horror movie about ghosts (yawn) and mummies. It’s Kurosawa so we can expect something interesting but the plot is very boring :
“A prize-winning writer, Leiko (NAKATANI Miki), moves to a quiet sub-urban house to finish up her new novel with a help from the editor. That night while sleeping, she sees a man in a storage room transporting an object wrapped in cloth. She soon finds out that he is a renowned archaeologist, Professor Yoshioka (TOYOKAWA Etsushi), researching ancient mummies, and that object was a recently discovered mummy. Working late on her book, Leiko witneses a ghost and finds out that her room once belonged to a woman who had been misssing for a while. This brings unexplainable fear to Leiko as she starts to uncover more stories from the past.”
Then again, Kourei was another Kurosawa’s horror film and was very boring.
If you’re interested in Kurosawa’s work my personal recomendations would be Cure and Barren Illusions. He has yet to top those two movies, imho.
Anyway, Loft official site (in english) and the trailer(.wmv).

It seems that there’s a wave of big budget war movies in Japan right now. After Lorelei, Sengoku 1549 and Aegis, here comes Otoko tachi no Yamato. Based on the non fiction books from Jun Henmi, Otoko tachi no Yamato relates the story of a japanese battleship during the second World War. According to twitch the budget for the movie is 14 millions $. Not bad at all. It’s directed by Junya Sato and planned for a december 2005 release.
And yes the promotional staff are already quite busy. They often show the teaser on one of the three big screens in Shibuya, they already have posters at movie theaters and a shitload of videos up on the official site.
A flop for this one would equal the wreckage of the title name battleship.
And yes, it’s the same Yamato as in Space Battleship Yamato, where the battleship in question was made from salvages from the real Yamato. Well according to wikipedia anyway.
You have making of videos here and lots of trailers here.

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

I was talking about Toyoda last week if you remember. I actually went to his”live cinema” performance last wednesday.
Anyway, Toyoda have been arrested for drug posession this morning. His next movie, Kuchu Teien, will have its october scheduled release postponed.
The original news article in japanese can be found here.
And heres’s translation of the same article by Jason Gray of the kine japan mailing list from which i got the news :

“Kyoko Koizumi Shocked! Director Toshiaki Toyoda Arrested
for Drugs – ‘Kuchu Teien’ Release Postponed”

Film director Toshiaki Toyoda (36) was arrested for
possession of a controlled substance on August 25th. Five
packets (approximately 3.9 grams) of a stimulant were
found at Toyoda’s home in Komae City, Tokyo. “It was for
personal use,” stated Toyoda. The young talent directed
the movie “Kuchu Teien”, slated to open in theaters this
October. The film’s cast and crew, including star Kyoko
Koizumi, who enjoyed a premiere of the film in April,
could not hide their shock at the news and the possibility
of the film’s release being delayed.

—–

Koizumi goes on to speak about her great surprise at the
news, as there was no indication during filming of a
change in Toyoda’s behaviour.

Looks like japan is going to join france and the US as animation pioneer countries. According to this article a recent found would date the first japanese animation picture in 1907.
Jasper Sharp of midnight eye fame is skeptical about it as stated in this post from the kinema club maling list :

“…J. Stuart Blackton’s incredibly
primitive looking Humorous Phases of a Funny Face, a series of chalk
drawings, was only made in 1906…”
“This seems to be akin to
saying that Japan invented animation. I, for one, am not convinced at all
by this discovery.”

Sharp has written a very good paper on japanese animation history for midnight eye. You can read it here.