A(nother) 21st century take on an anime fave from the past, former model Eriko Sato gets a flimsy excuse to run around in her underwear and skintight cat suit… (more…)
Osamu Tezuka’s (Astro Boy) Dororo gets the live-action makeover, from director Akihiko Shiota, starring Memories Of Matsuko’s Kou Shibasaki, but spoiled a little by wishy-washy CGI and under-par action from legendary Ching Siu-Tung… (more…)
Japanese director Tetsuya Nakashima (Memories Of Matsuko) has rapidly earned himself a reputation as a hugely talented and idiosyncratic auteur whose genre-busting films have been favourably compared to the work of directors such as Tim Burton (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory; Big Fish), Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge; Romeo And Juliet) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (A Very Long Engagement; Amelie). Now, the pop culture phenomenon that has taken Japan by storm, Nakashima’s KAMIKAZE GIRLS, comes to DVD and Blu-ray as a Special Edition release courtesy of Third Window Films.
Based on the bestselling novel-turned-manga by cult author Novala Takemoto, KAMIKAZE GIRLS concerns 17-year-old Momoko (Kyoko Fukada), a self-absorbed dreamer and ‘Lolita’ fashion obsessive whose love of all things Rococo sees her fantasizing about fleeing her backcountry home and living life in 18th Century Versailles.
While selling off her father’s supplies of bootleg designer fashion goods in order to fund her expensive obsession, Momoko unexpectedly meets the rebellious Ichigo (Anna Tsuchiya), a rough-and-tumble ‘Yanki’ biker chick. The girls begin a tentative and unlikely relationship that soon sees the two seemingly incompatible misfits forming a unique friendship. Together, they embark on a vividly coloured, sugar sweet, hyper-stylized odyssey of female bonding all set to a pounding J-Pop beat.
Described as ‘a wild, surreal speed-freak’s walk on the kitsch side of pop culture obsessions’ by The Sunday Times and by Metro as ‘everything you’d want in a slice of Japanese pop culture and more,’ Nakashima’s adaptation of Takemoto’s novel is a full-on bubblegum-laced extravaganza – the cinematic equivalent of a sweet-toothed teenager being given the keys to the candy store.
Starring J-Pop idol Kyoko Fukada (The Ring 2; Dolls) and pop star turned actress Anna Tsuchiya (Dororo; Sakuran), KAMIKAZE GIRLS is delightfully exuberant trip through teenage alienation terrain in the company of two of the most fun and endearing girls ever to grace the screen.
Cinematic guilty pleasures of the bubblegum-flavoured variety don’t come any more fun or satisfying than the superhero fantasy flick, CUTIE HONEY, in which the irresistible heroine of the popular Japanese manga and anime series is brought to vivid life in an effervescent eruption of exquisite eye candy.
Directed with enthusiastic verve by legendary anime director Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and starring model-turned-actress Eriko Sato (Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers!) and Mikako Ichikawa (Memories Of Matsuko), CUTIE HONEY is a shamelessly entertaining antidote to the recent spate of depressingly serious superhero flicks that have been gracing out screens lately (we’re looking at you, Dark Knight and Watchmen!).
Described as a “high energy Japanese adventure comedy” by the New York Times and as “damn good fun” by Asian Cinema Drifter, CUTIE HONEY’s cheeky combination of “Charlie’s Angels” attitude, “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” fantasy and “Austin Powers”-style comedy adds up to a fun and wacked out spectacle that is impossible to resist.
CUTIE HONEY (cert. tbc) will be released on DVD (£15.99) by MVM on 11th May 2009. Special Features include: Making of Cutie Honey; stills gallery; original trailers.
The debut feature from writer-director Yosuke Fujita, Fine, Totally Fine is an amiable romantic comedy that focuses on an unlikely love triangle involving three hugely likeable misfits expertly played by Yosiyosi Arakawa (Tokyo; Memories Of Matsuko; Survive Style 5), Yoshino Kimura (Blindness; Sukiyaki Western Django) and Yoshinori Okada (Dark Tales Of Japan; Kamikaze Girls).
Rapidly approaching his 30th birthday, Teruo (Arakawa), the eldest son of a second-hand bookstore owner, has a dream to build the world’s scariest haunted house and spends his leisure time playing frightening practical jokes on anybody unfortunate enough to be in his immediate vicinity.
One day, through his childhood friend, Hisanobu (Okada), Teruo is introduced to a pretty young woman named Akari (Kimura), an extremely accident-prone artist who takes a job as an assistant at his father’s shop. Cute and attractive, Akari soon becomes the object of desire for both Teruo and Hisanobu resulting in a situation that threatens the pair’s longstanding friendship. As the trio’s relationships with each other begin to develop, the small bookstore becomes a refuge and meeting place for variety of individuals and outcasts whose life paths have taken a different direction to the rest of the mainstream society.
A charming, character-driven comedy revolving around humorously absurd situations and personal relationships, Fine, Totally Fine is a sweet and heart-warming study of people trying to get by in an emotionally confusing world.
Fine, Totally Fine (cert. 15) will be released on DVD (£14.99) by Third Window Films on 11th May 2009.
Japanese director Tetsuya Nakashima (Memories Of Matsuko) has rapidly earned himself a reputation as a hugely talented and idiosyncratic auteur whose genre-busting films have been favourably compared to the work of directors such as Tim Burton (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory; Big Fish), Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge; Romeo And Juliet) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (A Very Long Engagement; Amelie). Now, the pop culture phenomenon that has taken Japan by storm, Nakashima’s KAMIKAZE GIRLS, comes to DVD courtesy of Third Window Films.
KAMIKAZE GIRLS (cert. 12) will be released on DVD (£14.99) by Third Window Films on 12th January 2009. Special Features include: interviews with Kyoko Fukada and Anna Tsuchiya; theatrical trailer; Third Window trailers.
Written by Tetsuya Nakashima, the award-winning writer-director of ‘Kamikaze Girls’ and ‘Memories Of Matsuko’, and starring Yuri Nakamura (The Grudge: Girl In Black; Sakuran), Hiroki Narimiya (Sakuran) and Mari Hamada (Memories Of Matsuko), LALA PIPO, the directorial debut of Masayuki Miyano, takes a quirky and comedic trawl through the gutters of the Japanese porn industry in the company of six disparate characters whose tales overlap in unexpected ways.
Nakashima’s script is based on a collection of short stories by celebrated author Okuda Hideo, the title originating from one character’s mispronunciation of an American tourist’s observation that Tokyo sure has ‘a lot of people’.
Among those people is Hiroshi, a slovenly loner, desperate for a girlfriend and who has conversations with his penis (hilariously played by a furry green Muppet). Tomoko is a young and pretty shop assistant who inadvertently finds her way into the sex business by way of hooking before trying her hand (so to speak) as being a porn star thanks to the intervention of ‘talent scout’ Kenji. Then there’s Yoshie, a mature wife and mother with a secret that will soon be revealed, Koichi, whose fantasy alter-ego is a porno Power Ranger called Captain Bonita, and Sayuri, an overweight young woman whose ambition is to be an anime voiceover artist but who has already carved herself a unique career in the adult entertainment world.
As these characters’ fates are interwoven, each finds their own vision of hope and humanity in the darkest, unlikeliest – and stickiest – of places.
Shot in the same vibrant, candy-coloured, hyper-surreal style that will be familiar to fans of Tetsuya Nakashima’s directorial works, Masayuki Miyano’s debut feature is a fun, off-beat and totally unpredictable romp through Tokyo’s very own planet porno.
Hailed as a “bizarre, baroque, hilarious epic” (Total Film) and a “crazy, perversely monumental teen comedy romance” (Metro) on its UK theatrical release in October, director Sion Sono’s LOVE EXPOSURE comes to DVD in January 2010 as a two-disc release courtesy of Third Window Films.
Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize and the Caligari Film Award at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival, the latest film from acclaimed Japanese writer-director Sion Sono (Exte: Hair Extensions), LOVE EXPOSURE is a monumental work of cinema that manages to combine comedy, action, romance and drama into its compelling, satirical and frequently violent commentary on religion, morality, sexual perversion and, of course, love, both requited and unrequited.
Following the untimely death of his mother during his early childhood, Tokyo teenager Yu (Takahiro Nishijima) is raised by his father, Tetsu (Atsuro Watabe), who has dealt with his grief by becoming a Catholic priest. Despite his new calling, Tetsu is seduced into a love affair with an emotionally unstable parishioner, an act that causes him to transfer his guilt onto Yu, whom he forces to attend confession as often as possible. Eager to satisfy his father’s demands, but quickly running out of false transgressions to own up to, Yu begins to find new and genuine sins to confess, the most effective of which proves to be taking covert up-skirt panty photographs of young women on the city’s streets.
Eventually, Yu’s misdemeanours attract the attention of teenage girl Aya Koike (Sakura Ando) – a con artist, coke dealer, the regional leader of a bizarre religious cult and a victim of paternal abuse – who decides she can use the wayward “king of perverts” for her own means. Shortly after their auspicious meeting, a cross-dressing incident resulting from a lost bet also brings Yu into contact with Kurt Cobain-loving, but otherwise totally man-hating, schoolgirl Yoko (Hikari Mitsushima), with whom he falls instantly in love. The fates of this trio become hopelessly connected and sealed when Yu’s father decides to give up the cloth to marry his lover and Yu discovers that Yoko is about to become his stepsister!
Running at just under four hours (although moving at such a brisk pace it’s barely noticeable) and already being hailed as Sion Sono’s career masterpiece in many quarters, LOVE EXPOSURE stars Hikari Mitsushima (Shaolin Girl; Death Note: The Last Name; Death Note), Takahiro Nishijima (star of Japanese TV’s Ghost Friends), Sakura Ando (Crime Or Punishment) and Astsuro Watabe (Echo Of Silence) and was the recipient of the 2009 awards for the Best Asian Film, the Jury Prize for Best Female Performance (Hikari Mitsushima), the Jury Special Prize for Feature Film and the Most Innovative Film at Montreal’s Fant-Asia Film Festival.
Japanese director Tetsuya Nakashima (Memories Of Matsuko) has rapidly earned himself a reputation as a hugely talented and idiosyncratic auteur whose genre-busting films have been favourably compared to the work of directors such as Tim Burton (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory; Big Fish), Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge; Romeo And Juliet) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (A Very Long Engagement; Amelie). Now, the pop culture phenomenon that has taken Japan by storm, Nakashima’s KAMIKAZE GIRLS, comes to DVD courtesy of Third Window Films.
MEMORIES OF MATSUKO (cert. 15 will be released on DVD (£14.99) by Third Window Films on 12th January 2009. Special Features include: Making of featurette; film to storyboard comparisons; Third Window trailers.
GARY OLDMAN STARS IN THE ACTION-PACKED CRIME-THRILLER BASED ON THE BESTSELLING NOVEL BY BARRY EISLER.
Based on the first book in the series of bestselling ‘John Rain’ novels by acclaimed author and former CIA operative Barry Eisler, the action-packed crime-thriller, Rain Fall, brings Eisler’s half-Japanese, half-American anti-hero to the screen for the first time in the form of award winning Japanese star, Keppei Shiina (The Last Princess; Sakuran).
Adapted for the screen and directed by Max Mannix (Dance Of The Dragon), this slickly mounted, tense thriller co-stars Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight; Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix), veteran Japanese actor Akira Emoto (Ichi; Memories Of Matsuko; Sinking Of Japan), Kyoko Hasegawa (Nanayo), Misa Shimizu (The Unbroken; The Harimaya Bridge) and Dirk Hunter (Undead).
Former US Special Force soldier turned contract killer John Rain is an assassin who specializes in making his ‘hits’ look like deaths from natural causes. Following his own, strict, self-imposed code of conduct, Rain only targets key figures and never accepts a job if it involves killing a woman or a child. But complications arise during Rain’s latest assignment when he becomes attracted to a young woman named Midori, the beautiful daughter of his most recent victim.
It soon becomes apparent that the killing of Midori’s father and its repercussions are just one small part of a much wider conspiracy involving both the CIA and Tokyo’s gangland crimelords. Now, both Rain and Midori have become targets themselves and Rain is forced to compromise his beliefs and to risk everything to protect the girl he loves before she is eliminated as collateral damage for being an innocent witness to a vast CIA cover up operation.
A hard boiled action thriller that will appeal to fans of the ‘Bourne’ movies, Rain Fall marks star Keppei Shiina as an action star in the making and features and typically powerful performance from Gary Oldman as Rain’s nemesis, the Chief Officer of the CIA’s Tokyo Bureau.
‘2012’ meets ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ in Sinking Of Japan, an edge-of-your-seat, blockbuster of a thrill-ride laden with breathtaking specials effects and jaw-dropping scenes of destruction as the Land of the Rising Sun faces the ultimate catastrophe!
When an underwater earthquake strikes deep beneath Suruga Bay it proves to be just the first in a series of devastating natural disasters to hit Japan in quick succession. Soon the entire nation and its people are under assault from further earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions caused by massive tectonic shifting in the area.
Geological research into the events reveals the government’s worst fears – Japan has less than a year before Mount Fuji itself erupts and the entire country sinks into the sea disappearing from the face of the earth forever! As cities are reduced to rubble by quakes and tidal waves, the government begins immediate evacuation plans, but it quickly becomes obvious that only a fraction of the population is likely to survive. With nothing left to lose, devise a desperate plan to avert the final disaster by planting and detonating huge explosives deep in the earth’s crust.
Caught up in the ongoing chaos are three individuals united by their calamitous circumstances: research submarine pilot, Toshio Onoder; rescue worker, Reiko Abe; and a young orphan girl, Misaki Kuraki. Together, they struggle to survive as the fate of the nation hangs precariously in the balance. But what they are yet to learn is that one of them will be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice in an act of bravery that could save people and the country they love.
Starring Kou Shibasaki (Dororo; Memories Of Matsuko; One Missed Call; Battle Royale), Mayuko Fukudo (Death Note: L Change The World; Kamikaze Girls) and Tsuyoshi Kusanagi (Monkey Magic), Sinking Of Japan is a thrilling disaster movie on a par with the best of Hollywood’s recent crop of ‘end of the world’ scenario blockbusters.
Sinking Of Japan (cert. 12) will be released on DVD (£15.99) by MVM on 8th March 2010.
This month Third Window continue to release Asian films that might otherwise get missed with two ‘offbeat’ Japanese comedies… (more…)
Director Sion Sono follows up Exte: Hair Extensions with an equally unpredictable (nearly) four-hour epic love story… of sorts… (more…)
An astounding visual mash-up of pop cultural references, welcome to the work of director Tetsuya Nakashima… (more…)
It’s a good day for fans of Tetsuya Nakashima, as today sees the release of both his scripted comedy Lala Pipo, directed by Masayuki Miyano, and his own highly enjoyable feature Kamikaze Girls, released in a new special edition 2-disc DVD and single disc Blu-ray boasting plenty of new features including the short film ‘Birth Of Unicorn Ryuji’, a making of featurette, interviews with cast and crew, and a music video with star Anna Tsuchiya.
Surely, no need to highlight that Park Chan-wook critically acclaimed Thirst gets released by Palisades Tartan on Blu-ray and DVD? Highly enjoyable, funny and intelligent, it’s everything you’d want from a post-modern vampire film but were too afraid you’d end up with Twilight, instead.
Also out today – and sharing a common theme in Catholism – is the four-hour epic Love Exposure, from writer-director Sion Sono (Exte: Hair Extensions). Highly inventive and less of an endurance test than you might expect at that length, to my mind the end result is flawed – not helped by the lack of chemistry between leads Takahiro Nishijima and the delightful Hikari Mitsushima.
Just a quick round-up of some future releases to look forward to:
Of course, the chief one will be Park Chan-wook’s Thirst, coming to DVD and Blu-ray on 25 January 2010, an undoubtedly one of the biggest releases for the newly reborn Palisades Tartan label.
January also sees the release of The Twins Effect and Sniper director Dante Lam’s The Beast Stalker as a two-disc collectors edition. Starring Nicholas Tse (Dragon Tiger Gate; New Police Story; The Medallion) and Jingchu Zhang (Rush Hour 3; Seven Swords), this kinetic crime-thriller gets released on 4 January 2010 by Cine Asia.
There’s also the Ong-Bak styled Thai martial arts film, Fireball, from producer Adirek Watleela (Bang Rajan, Bangkok Dangerous) and director Thanakorn Pongsuwan (Opapatika, The Story Of X-Circle). Fireball is released on DVD and Blu-ray by E1 Entertainment.
Just to remind you that the Tetsuya Nakashima scripted sex comedy Lalo Pipo is on limited release around the UK. Those based in the UK and fully digital (shouldn’t we all be) may be interested to know that Film4 is showing Nakashima’s epic Memories Of Matsuko and (the arguably more impressive) Kamikaze Girls, as well as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, so set your PVRs.
Out today, Akihiko Shiota’s entertaining live-action update of the Dororo manga, by Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka – and there’s still a chance to win a copy on DVD…! (more…)
Could this be the final sunset for the Rising Sun? It’s bye bye Japan in this big budget disaster movie… (more…)
We have three copies of the live-action version of Osamu Tezuka’s (Astro Boy) Dororo to give away on DVD… (more…)
