easternkicks.com » Japan

DVD/Blu-ray: Professor Layton and The Eternal Diva

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:32:27 +0000

“BREATHLESS ADVENTURE THAT PERFECTLY CAPTURES THE SKEWED CHARM OF THE GAMES.” (4 STARS) – IGN.COM

The star of the global phenomenon that has already become the biggest selling Nintendo DS brand in the UK, Professor Layton now faces his toughest puzzle yet in the brand new and exciting feature-length animated adventure for all the family, Professor Layton And The Eternal Diva, coming to DVD and Blu-ray on 18th October 2010, courtesy of Manga Entertainment.

Produced by Masakazu Kubo (producer of the Pokemon movies) and based on the Nintendo and Level 5 video game series that to date has sold 5.5 million copies worldwide and been played by an estimated 3 million British gamers. Both young and old have fallen in love with Professor Layton and the film brings the world’s greatest amateur super-sleuth to life like never before.

When Professor Layton receives a letter along with complimentary opera tickets from a former student-turned-opera singer, the contents of the note prove to be irresistibly intriguing. In it, she informs the Professor that a friend of hers who died one year ago has now reappeared as a seven-year-old girl who claims to be immortal.

Hoping to get to the bottom of this puzzling affair, the Professor, young Luke and Layton’s assistant Remi head off to the Crown Petone Theatre to attend a performance of a new opera composed by pianist Oslo Whistler and based upon research by Layton’s mentor, Dr. Schrader, into the legends surrounding the ancient Kingdom of Ambrosia, otherwise known as the land of eternal life. At the theatre, it soon becomes apparent that there is a common motive amongst many of the audience members when a mysterious figure appears on stage and announces the start of a brainteaser game. Incredibly, it is announced that the winner of the game will be rewarded with the gift of immortality. With Luke’s help, Professor Layton sets about solving the series of puzzles, unaware that mortal danger lurks at every turn.

Professor Layton And The Eternal Diva (cert. U) will be released on DVD (£15.99) and Blu-ray(£19.99) by Manga Entertainment on 18th October 2010.

The film will also be available as a three-disc DVD/Blu-ray Collector’s Edition Combi Pack(£24.99) that includes the feature presentation on DVD and Blu-ray, plus a bonus DVD featuring ‘Mystery Of The Last Song’, ‘Professor Layton And The Mystery Of The Production Company’, ‘Professor Layton And The Mystery Of The 3D CG’ and a promo video for the Professor Layton games.

Additionally, there will be a three-disc DVD/Blu-ray Deluxe Collector’s Edition Combi Pack(£49.99) featuring the same components as the standard Combi Pack plus a super-collectable 630-page Storyboard Book and rigid art box outer packaging.

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2010 Tokyo International Film Festival to commemorate Bruce Lee

Andrew Heskins — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:00:46 +0000

The 2010 Tokyo International Film Festival will commemorate the life and enduring influence of Bruce Lee with a special tribute at the festival’s Winds of Asia Middle-East section, entitled The 70th Anniversary: Bruce LEE to the Future.

Screenings will include the film that finally catapulted him into the mass populace, Enter The Dragon, sadly released just after his death, and a rare chance to see the Japanese version of Game Of Death, distributed in 1978. There will also be exciting new films that pay homage to Lee nearly 30 years after his death, including Derek Kwok and Clement Cheng’s Gallants and Luu Huynh Luu’s The Legend Is Alive.

The 23rd TIFF will be held from October 23-31, 2010 at Roppongi Hills and other venues in Tokyo.

Out today: Goemon and more

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:00:32 +0000

Yep, Kazuaki Kiriya’s (Casshern) latest and arguably far more enjoyable Goemon is released today, along with Tokyo Gore School and 14 Blades.

Something of a bumper day then!

Tokyo Gore School

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:00:48 +0000

Battle Royale meets social networking on the streets of Tokyo, from Yôhei Fukuda, the director of Chanbara Beauty…

Fujiwara is an intelligent, good looking young high school student with a bright future who happens to hang out with bullies in order to not end up being a loser. He soon finds the (occasionally literal) boot is on the other foot when he becomes dragged into an online game involving school students where they must defeat each other to gain points, and prevent their darkest secrets from being revealed.

As pockets of allies start to turn up, from the nerds and wimps who stand no chance alone, to Fujiwara’s ex-friends who don’t even choose to play by the given rules, the game quickly turns from minor scuffles to deadly serious conclusions. But as Fujiwara’s secret is the darkest of them all, will do anything to protect it?

Despite the involvement of Yôhei Fukuda, director of Chanbara Beauty and cinematographer for the controversial Grotesque (which remains banned in the UK) and it’s rather misplaced English title, Tokyo Gore School is not, in any way, related to the recent spate of Japanese splatter punk movies led by Tokyo Gore Police and The Machine Girl. (Though things do turn rather messy by the end…)

Indeed I feared the worst from the film the second I saw the production company credit, JollyRoger, whose last film Geisha Assassin was utterly dire, but have to admit to being pleasantly surprised. Again this film is shot on DV, but instead of looking cheap (note to JollyRoger: DV, like Video, and historical drama don’t really mix) it adds a real energy to the piece. The editing is tight and keeps momentum through out.

Sure, Tokyo Gore School owes a great debt to Battle Royale – there’s even a hint that the ministry of education are behind the website and game (though god knows what that means of the general opinion of education in Japan?) – and in turn Lord Of The Files, of course. But there’s no doubt about the extra mileage Fukuda and co-writer Kiyoshi Yamamoto gain from the central concept, adding the social networking side and taking ‘cyber bullying’ to its next logical step on the streets of Tokyo. Such concepts may have been hinted at before, for instance in Kenta Fukasaku’s Yo-Yo Girl Cop, but never taken to this extent.

Fukuda lets the characters play out pretty well: the crushes, the angst, the rivalries, the fears – it’s all there. My only major sticking point is this: I don’t know what the hell is on the curriculum in Japanese high schools, but free running and martial arts seem to be top of the list!?

This ‘over basting’ of students abilities may make for a more exciting film – the chases really are quite exhilarating – but you half feel it really doesn’t need it. A more realistically grounded film would have had more overall and lasting impact. It’s not like everyone in Battle Royale immediately knew how to fire a gun; in fact very few of them did – so why do we need such an invention here?

That said, the cast do a pretty good job of making this believable. Really quite enjoyable – just see Battle Royale first, if you haven’t already!

Tokyo Gore School is released by Manga Entertainment on Monday 16th August.

Kamui: The Lone Ninja

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:00:31 +0000

A very enjoyable manga adaption from director Yoichi Sai (Blood And Bones) and starring Ken’ichi Matsuyama (L Change The WorLd, Bare Essence Of Life), but ‘probably the best ninja movie ever’… what, really?

Based on the legenadry series created by Japanese artist Sanpei Shirato in 1964, Kamui: The Lone Ninja tells of it’s eponymous hero, played by Ken’ichi Matsuyama (Death Note, Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler), a young man who has spent all of his life as one type of outcast or another. Attempting to find true freedom away from inherited cast and clan he turns his back on life as a ninja, making him a target for the ninja hunters led by his one time master Dumok (Ekin Cheung, Storm Warriors, Tokyo Raiders).

Kamui finds fleeting solace with spirited fisherman Hanbei (Kaoru Kobayashi, Princess Mononoke, Tales from Earthsea) who invites him to stay with his family. Yet even here Kamui discovers himself face-to-face with a long-forgotten nemesis, another renegade ninja with a deadly score to settle. And all the while the ninja hunters are setting a trap from which there can be no escape…

Director Yoichi Sai (Doing Time, All Under The Moon), together with co-scripter Kankuro Kudo (Ping Pong, Zebraman, Go), keeps the film close to its source, becoming as much about the social commentary that ran through Sanpei’s work as it does of great battles. (And presumably it’s where the storyline gets some of its ‘weirdness’.) The opening titles, perhaps cutest thing in the whole movie, actually use frames from the original manga to set the scene.

Here he greatly benefits from solid performances from a great cast that also includes Suzuka Ohgo (Memoirs Of A Geisha), Koichi Sato (Sukiyaki Western Django, Starfish Hotel), Koyuki (Blood: The Last Vampire, Kitaro) and Yuta Kanai (L Change The WorLd). Ken’ichi proves again just how compelling and increasingly versatile he can be, making sympathetic but believable lead.

Easily one of the better manga adaptions of late, it’s easy to forget beyond the seeming overwhelming trend that there’s something of a long history to live-action adaptations from manga, and from its predecessor martial art novels. A note that brings to mind two of the more successful efforts from the same period as the original Kamui manga, Zatoichi and Lone Wolf And Cub. The former expanded from a minor character in a novel, the later itself very close to the original material.

Arguably Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s work picked up where Sanpei left off, itself a well research commentary on social status both then and now. Of course, the film adaptions of Lone Wolf and Cub fell foul of the early 80s video nasties label. Though violent, the films embodied the original manga values and visual composition, making them both poignant and surprisingly beautiful.

With Kamui, Yoichi has created something rather similar, having some for the almost deliberate over-the-top approach of samurai and martial art movies from the late 70s and early 80s, like Lone Wolf, many Shaw Brothers films, and even Ching Siu-tung’s delightful Duel to the Death.

But ‘Probably the best ninja movie ever made’ as critic Tony Ryans said?. That quote may have been somewhat overused (largely by myself) but I admit it gave me high expectations for Kamui which were not quite fulfilled. The overuse of CGI is frankly distracting, as though animating humans may not quite look as bad as it used to, it’s still a bit weird. I’d rather see more clever use of wire work and editing. The recent Goemon did a better job (though admittedly you might expect that from green screen king Kazuaki Kiriya). Then there’s just odd uses of it in other places, like the awkward superimposing of water when the characters are on a calm sea, and so on – it just seems a bit cheap and needless.

Visually the film fails to really find a character for itself. It’s well shot but in quite a mainstream Western action movie bland sort of a way. The aforementioned comparison with those old Lone Wolf movies is not favourable.

So ‘best movie’? Perhaps if your reference point is Ninja Assassin or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but no, I wouldn’t go that far. But enjoyable, and with a deliberately open ended conclusion, I wouldn’t mind betting there’ll be more on the way soon…

Kamui: The Lone Ninja is released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Manga Entertainment on 9 August.

DVD: Goemon

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:48:01 +0000

FROM THE PRODUCERS OF ‘THE GRUDGE’ AND THE DIRECTOR OF ‘CASSHERN’

Five years ago, acclaimed Japanese fashion photographer and music video director Kazuaki Kiriya made an explosive and groundbreaking assault on the movie world with his directorial debut feature, the visually stunning and hugely ambitious sci-fi epic, ‘Casshern’. Now, Kiriya returns in his own inimitable style with the equally spectacular period, fantasy action-adventure, Goemon.

Produced by Kiriya and legendary producer Takashige Ichise (The Ring; Dark Water; The Grudge; Shutter) and boasting a star-studded cast that includes Yosuke Eguchi (Shaolin Girl), Takao Osawa (Ichi; Sky High), Jun Kaname (Blood; K-20; Casshern), Tetsuji Tamayama (Norwegian Wood; Casshern) and Susumu Terajima (Casshern; Ichi The Killer), Goemon is based on the exploits of the film’s eponymous, ninja bandit hero – the Japanese folklore equivalent of Robin Hood.

The year is 1582 and the ruler of Japan, Oda Nobunaga, has been brutally murdered leaving the country in a state of political chaos. Meanwhile, a chivalrous thief known as Goemon, whose loyalties lay with Nobunaga, has risen as a hero figure amongst the populace thanks to his propensity for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Goemon’s latest haul, stolen from one of his arch-enemies, includes a small wooden box of Western origin which he believes to be worthless and accidentally bestows upon a young street urchin. In truth, the box is a priceless artifact – a true Pandora’s box that holds a deep secret coveted and sought by Japan’s most powerful and deadly warlords.

Realising his error, Goemon seeks to regain possession of the box before it falls into the wrong hands. But its existence has also attracted the interests of a legendary swordsman, Matahachi, the legendary ninja Hattori Hanzo, and Goemon’s fearsome former friend and current rival, Saizo. With such a prize at stake, the stage is set for a series of bloody frays between Japan’s most skilled and deadly ninjas and swordsmen in a conflict that will have a profound effect on the country’s future.

A mind-blowing, eye-popping action epic that easily matches the visionary ambitions of Kiriya’s debut movie, Goemon is a fast-paced historical adventure packed with the same kind of dazzling costumes, set designs, inspired visuals and awesome special effects that made ‘Casshern’ such an original and singularly spectacular cinematic experience.

Goemon (cert. 15) is released on DVD by Momentum Pictures on 16 August.

Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler

Andrew Heskins — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:00:32 +0000

The cast of Death Note reunite for another live-action version of a manga and anime, this time with a gruellingly perilous walk across a girder between two skyscrapers (not for vertigo suffers!)…

Kaiji (Tatsuya Fujiwara, Death Note, Battle Royale) is one hell of a loser. A part time convenience store clerk, he dreams of making the big time of a scratchcard, frustrated by the unfiar hand fate has dealt him. That all changes when loan shark Rinko Endo (Yûki Amami, Ponyo) arrives to collect a debt he seemingly signed as guarantor on. She gives him a choice, pay it off for the next 10 years, on spend a night on a gambling boat and no only pay it off but have a chance of making a whole lot more.

On the boat he finds himself surrounded by similarly asset-challenged, no hope (read loser) men, and a lot more a stake than his debt – his very life…!

Based on Nobuyuki Fukumoto’s manga Tokaku Mokshiroku Kaiji, aka Kaiji – Ultimate Survivor, and a 26-part anime series, like Death Note, the film suffers from trying to condense the events of the long-running manga and anime into a relatively short running time, jettisoning much of the stories more complex aspects to concentrate (and dwell far too long on) on what the filmmakers consider to be the more dramatic elements.

In the case of Kaiji that means losing much of the original stories power, the repetitiveness of having Kaiji himself bet all in the hope of escaping his imprisonment, facing one tortuous challenge after another, only to have that hope dashed time and time again. By reducing that to a couple of events, that residual building of hope over a substantial amount of time, and of Kaiji’s character, is lost.

Tatsuya Fujiwara as an entirely unsympathetic character as he was in Death Note, if for different reasons. That is, of course, part of the satire of Nobuyuki Fukumoto’s original manga, a comment on well-educated young men who consider they ‘deserve’ a fair break, without ever working towards it. (The irony being that much of the manga’s core audience would be men just like this?) The trouble is Kaiji doesn’t really seem to grow as a person, to stop breaking into tears at each trial that comes along.

The same isn’t true of co-star Ken’ichi Matsuyama (Death Note, L: Change the World, Bare Essence Of Life, Kamui: The Lone Ninja). Appearing in little more than an extended cameo Kenichi acts Tatsuya (and everyone else) off the screen, giving a depth to his underdeveloped role only he could. The cast also incudes Teruyuki Kagawa (20th Century Boys, Tokyo Sonata) and Taro Yamamoto (Princess Racoon, Battle Royale), but it’s Yûki Amami, best know for TV work such Wasted Land and Boss, who shines as the debt collector boss who may, or may not, have a heart.

Of all the scenes, it’s the gruelling walk across the girders between the two skyscrapers that catches your attention. Excruciatingly stretched out over 20 minutes, it comes closest to capturing the unpleasant torture of the original manga. It’s pretty effectively played – almost unbearably for us vertigo suffers – but as with much of the film it’s just a little too long.

Again, the script by Mika Omori (Detroit Metal City) has many of the same flaws as Death Note, the main one being that the denouncements are nowhere near as clever as they’d like us to believe – and definitely not worth waiting for.

All that said, this is still more enjoyable the Death Note: The Last Name…

Win Kamui: The Lone Ninja on DVD

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:15:21 +0000

We have three copies of Kamui – “probably the best ninja movie ever made” – on DVD up for grabs in our easy-to-enter giveaway!

Described by critic Tony Ryans as ‘Probably the best ninja movie ever made’, Kamui: The Lone Ninja comes to DVD and Blu-ray on 9 August courtesy of Manga Entertainment. Starring Ken’ichi Matsuyama (Bare Essence Of Life, Death Note, L – Change the WorLd, Kaiji: The Ulitmate Gambler) and directed by Yoichi Sai (Blood And Bones, Doing Time, All Under The Moon), the film is adapted from the legendary multi-volume manga series created by Japanese artist and essayist Sanpei Shirato in 1964.

Please note, only entries from the UK will be accepted for this competition. The competition closes midnight 15 August, no entries after that time will be accepted. Prize winners will then be randomly picked and prizes only sent out after that date.

Good luck!

Goemon

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:00:04 +0000

Director Kazuaki Kiriya’s follow-up to Casshern is as visually dazzling as its predecessor – thank god it’s a bit easier to understand, too…!

In 2004 fashion photographer and music video director Kazuaki Kiriya burst onto the filmmaking scene with his mind-blowing adaption of an early 70s manga and anime series, Casshern. One of the first movies to be shot almost entirely on a studio back lot with it’s actors against a greenscreen, it was a dazzling, imaginative vision of a future world, the nearest to a proper live-action version of an anime we will probably ever see.

Unfortunately it was so much of a visual overload that it made what narrative there was all but incomprehensible!

Five years on Kazuaki is back with a similarly breathtaking period tale of action and adventure, Goemon.

It’s 1582 and the ruler of Japan Oda Nobunaga has been brutally murdered leaving the country in a state of political chaos. Master thief Ishikawa Goemon (Yosuke Eguchi, Shaolin Girl) has risen as a hero of the people due to his inclination to take from the rich and give to the poor. His latest haul could get him in trouble, as it includes small box that holds a secret that could rock the kingdom to its roots.

Unfortunately for Goemon, he’s discarded it into the crowds, caught by a street urchin. On discovering it’s value he quickly tries to reclaim it, only to find it’s also come to the attention of legendary swordsman Matahachi (Tetsuji Tamayama, Norwegian Wood, Casshern) and legendary ninja Hattori Hanzo (Susumu Terajima, Hana yori mo naho, Casshern, Ichi The Killer, Hana-Bi).

Soon there’s far more at stake than untold riches, as it transpires there’s far more to Goemon than meets the eye. But can he save the nation from destruction – does he even care anymore?

Produced by Takashige Ichise, best known for launching so-called J Horror with films like Ringu, Dark Water, Ju-On: The Grudge, and Shutter, director Kazuaki Kiriya’s latest film is as sumptuous a creation as Casshern. As with his earlier film, Kiriya’s obsession with classical art creates a beautiful sets and costumes as Renaissance art mixes with a baroque vision of Feudal period Japanese design.

There’s definitely a particular style at work, and Goemon’s tendency to wear masks that cover the lower half of his face is just one of many similarities with the films predecessor. The pacing and basic plot structure is almost an exact duplicate, as are many of the filming techniques used and black and white for flashback, etc – but here at least Kiriya lets the characters breathe a little more. And if the conclusion is, once again, that war is terrible and countless innocents are lost just so warring commanders can make their plays for power (yada yada), then at least this time Kiriya doesn’t take himself quite as seriously. It’s easily a lot more fun than Casshern, and this time there’s much more focus on shooting the action, and more combat between humans rather than CGI’d robots and endless jetting around.

Sure, there is a mass of CGI, and with the period setting this makes the film seem a little less original than Casshern. Computer generated fireflies, for instance, seem to have been used countless times now, including way back in The Storm Riders. The film itself is rather like an extreme version of Chen Kaige’s The Promise, but, again, perhaps a bit more enjoyable.

The character of Ishikawa Goemon is indeed a real folk hero, Japan’s equivalent of Robin Hood, who has been referenced in films and media many times before, including as a regular character in the animated series Lupin The Third (Lupin III), occasionally directed by a pre-Studio Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki. Like our very own (though rather older) Robin Hood folk tale, very little is known in truth about this figure. Even then (surprise surprise!) it’s hard to find much correlation between any of the known legends and Kiriya’s take on them, let alone the actual documented historical events. (Though many of the characters are named after real Feudal figures of the time, such as Mitsunari Ishida, played by Jun Kaname, Blood, K-20: Legend of the Mask, Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers, and Hideyoshi Toyotomi, played by Eiji Okuda, The Sea Is Watching, Black Kiss.)

See it as a Casshern 2.0 and you won’t be far off. It might not be quite it’s visual equal, but it’s a far better story – and that’s got to be a good thing!

Goemon (cert. 15) is released by Momentum Pictures and will open at selected UK cinemas this Friday, 23rd July 2010.

Casshern

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:00:46 +0000

Visually one of the most inventive films of the last decade, but ex-promo director and fashion photographer Kazuaki Kiriya’s movie debut is rather like watching a two and a half hour long music video – unintelligible and actually a bit dull…

In a near-future a fifty-year war between the Eastern Federation and Europa has finally come to an end, with the federation taking control of the Eurasian continent. And yet the war goes on, with a new rebellion breaking out in one former Eurasian zone.

Amid this ongoing chaos, Dr Azuma (Akira Terao, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, Ran) proposes a solution to depleting armed forces, the invention of a neo cell that can regenerate any human tissue. Kaoru Naito (Mitsuhiro Oikawa), a representative of Nikko Hairal Inc., soon helps him get the cells into production, yet his experiments seem fruitless until a mysterious lightning bolt stimulates the cells, and regenerates the cells into new mutants, who call themselves ‘neo sapiens’.

That same night Azuma’s son, Tetsuya (Yusuke Iseya, After Life, Memories of Matsuko) body is returned home, a casualty of war. Azuma tries the neo cells on his body and brings him back to life, though it takes the father of his fiancé Luna (Kumiko Aso, Bare Essence of Life, Kaidan), Dr Kozuki (Fumiyo Kohinata), to build him an ectoskeleton to allow his body to survive it’s new abilities.

With the leader of the neo sapiens, Burai (Toshiaki Karasawa, 20th Century Boys) and his surviving associates including Barashin (Jun Kaname, Blood, Goemon) having reanimated a dormant army of robots, now only Tetsuya, having adopted the name of legendary Eurasian saviour Casshern, stands between them and their goal of annihilating mankind…

Casshern was one of the first films to be shot almost entirely against a green screen, with all but the actors and costumes themselves actually composites of 2D and 3D computer generated graphics, alongside contempory films like Sin City, Able Edwards and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Visually easily the most ambitious of the films, it’s a fascinating vision of a futuristic world, if not as successful as Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s ‘comic book-ification’ of Miller’s Sin City.

Indeed director Kiriya takes many of his visual cues from the original series, including those cheap ‘anime’ style battles where the animators would show a still of the participants against a moving background. It’s the closest I’ve seen to a proper live-action version of an anime, and yet it doesn’t help the narrative, with Kiriya more interested in plaintive conversations between combatants than the fights themselves.

It’s Kiriya’s convoluted take on the original story – which from all accounts appears to have simply been Casshern versus the robots – that is the real problem here. Too interested with how the film looks, he introduces to many elements into the narrative without really wanting to take them to their conclusion. Kiriya may have publicly counted Shakespeare’s Hamlet amongst his influences for the film (and there sure is plenty of family tragedy), but this is far harder to follow.

Accidently or not, themes of endless wars begun for nefarious reasons, with hints of a larger corporate companies behind them, is reminiscent of Japanese author Hiroshi Mori’s work, recently adapted by anime supremo Mamoru Oshii as The Sky Crawlers. Interestingly the look of the military uniforms, so obviously Nazi-based, is all too reminiscent of those in Oshii’s Jigoku no banken trilogy, culminating in Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Kiriya’s futuristic vision is also evocative of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (much more than Blade Runner), of which a 40s adaptation by Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka had only recently remade when the film was originally released.

Those who’ve seen Kiriya’s latest film Goemon will recognise the director’s declamation of the needless perpetuity of war. Fair enough, but he does seem to go on about it. And the film is way too long, though the US cut removing 20 minutes definitely doesn’t help.

Casshern is a beautiful movie that proves the strength of using green screen if you have a powerful imagination behind it. In this case that mind may be a little too distracted to follow an narrative, but it’s still impressive. In spite of the film weaknesses, if not because of them, Casshern will take repeated viewings well, as there really is so much going on.

Just don’t expect to enjoy it too much.

easternkicks.com » Japan

DVD/Blu-ray: Professor Layton and The Eternal Diva

Professor Layton And The Eternal Diva (cert. U) will be released on DVD (£15.99) and Blu-ray(£19.99) by Manga Entertainment on 18th October 2010.

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2010 Tokyo International Film Festival to commemorate Bruce Lee

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Out today: Goemon and more

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Tokyo Gore School

Tokyo Gore School is released by Manga Entertainment on Monday 16th August.

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Kamui: The Lone Ninja

Kamui: The Lone Ninja is released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Manga Entertainment on 9 August.

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DVD: Goemon

Goemon (cert. 15) is released on DVD by Momentum Pictures on 16 August.

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Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler

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Win Kamui: The Lone Ninja on DVD

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Goemon

Goemon (cert. 15) is released by Momentum Pictures and will open at selected UK cinemas this Friday, 23rd July 2010.

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Casshern

Goemon (cert. 15) is released by Momentum Pictures and will open at selected UK cinemas this Friday, 23rd July 2010.

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