Yasutomo Chikuma’s Now, I…

Leave it up to Jason Gray to discover gems of Japanese cinema. After alerting the English-speaking world about the superb This World of Ours, Jason has yet another winner on his hands — Yasutomo Chikuma (竹馬靖具監督)’s Now I (Ima, Boku wa / 今、僕は), screened in the Nippon Digital section of this year’s Nippon Connection.

Satoru is a so-called NEET (“not engaged in employment, education or training”), living the life of a recluse in his mother’s apartment. One day Tôsawa appears and attempts to draw him out of his inner prison. Soon the situation escalates…

Nippon Connection

The subject matter alone is enough to pique my interest, but with the added praise for the camerawork and especially acting, this looks like my kind of film. I’ve always been attracted to films about aimless and despairing youths — All About Lily Chou-Chou, Harmful Insect — maybe because I see fragments of myself projected onto the screen. Whatever the reason, and whatever the incentive for the rise of new filmmakers tackling contemporary issues, I welcome it. Hopefully this one will find its way through the festival circuit to VIFF.

Digital Omnibus R246 Story

Tadanobu Asano? Yes. Shinji Aoyama? Yes. Verbal? Okay, I’m listening…

Tadanobu Asano, one of my favourite actors hands down, and Shinji Aoyama, director of Eureka, one of my favourite films hands down, are once again collaborating for “224466″, a sci-fi short for the digital omnibus R246 Story. The anthology connects comedy, drama, and documentary through the motif of Route 246, the national highway stretching from Tokyo to Shizuoka.

Asano’s contribution as director, with Aoyama as screenwriter, will see him in the role of an alien searching for his lost drum kit. As an extraterrestrial from a rock ‘n roll planet, the set is crucial to his existence.

An old man named Torakichi (Ryo Kase) and a wee girl called Shidomi (Ayane Omori) come to his aid and try to track down the one person who knows where the drum kit is: Osho (Masatoshi Nagase). To get the info out of him, Shidomi has to engage in a guitar battle with a boy axe wizard…

Ryuganji 

And as if the story wasn’t crazy enough and the cast wasn’t already stacked, Hirofumi Arai and Kosuke Toyohara are also set to star. Talk about an orgy of goodness.

Now for those who are scratching their heads, wondering how they got here by searching “m-flo“, let me answer your question. What does this have to do with Verbal? Well, the same thing it has to do with Shido Nakamura, Yusuke Santamaria, Genki Sudo, and Illmari (from Rip Slyme) — all are set to direct a piece. That’s right. m-flo frontman Verbal (aka Mr. V, Johnny Astro) is signed on to direct “Dead Noise”, a “documentary on the future of Japanese hip-hop exploring ideas of Japanese culture and identity through a series of interviews with major figures in the game (Ryuganji)”.

Well, I’ve already linked it twice today, but if you want to find out more about the project and/or J-cinema in general, head on over to Ryuganji.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance Remake

Somehow I knew it was bound to happen — after all, it happened with Oldboy (although that remake’s currently stalled) — but it nonetheless came as a huge blow to me when I read that Charlize Theron is planning to produce and star in a remake of Park Chan-Wook’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, the finale to his vengeance trilogy.

Now, my particular frustration with this news is perhaps the culmination of previously pent up anger towards Hollywood’s Asian remakes. As a fan who takes their Asian cinema seriously, it pisses me off to no end to see perfectly fine — no, just perfect — films being (poorly) remade just so that an audience who’s too lazy to read subtitles can idle away their time for 2 hours. You can argue that remakes attract attention to the original, but honestly, who, having seen The Lake House or Shall We Dance or some other crappy remake which I’m too pissed off at the moment to remember, actually bothered to check up on the original? In fact, if anyone reading this did, leave me a comment and I’ll give you an e-cookie!

The fact is, the film will likely be marketed as a brutal revenge blockbuster ladened with sadistic violence, completely ignoring Park’s core argument that ultimately, vengeance achieves nothing. No, the whole point of the remake will likely be, “vengeance achieves everything.” So the next time you take the fall for someone else’s murder, you know what you gotta do: bust a cap in his ass.

Twitch Film, JoBlo

SLAM Website & Trailers

I have to admit, I gagged a little when I first saw this — but only because I thought it was in some way related to Jay Chou’s Slam Dunk. I have to say, the guy’s a musical genius (although his latest works have been proving me wrong…), but he should stay the hell away from movies and focus on music instead. Anyway, it turns out that SLAM is the latest from director Jonathan Lim, and is a story of adolescence, rivalry, basketball.

On the last day of school, Mouth, a 16 year-old teenager with a love for the game of basketball, and his best friends, Monkey and Jason, run into Li Wei, the captain of the high school basketball team, and his entourage. Li Wei continuously makes their lives a living hell, and the result of the building conflict ends up taking all parties to the finals of an Adidas 3-on-3 basketball tournament where all differences will be settled.

Now, there’s an even more detailed synopsis written by Jonathan Lim himself, but it’s a bit spoiler-esque so I’ll leave it for after the break. Read on if you want to find out or jump to the official website for trailers, pictures, and other goodies.

Twitch Film

Nightmare Detective 2 Synopsis

I wasn’t a big fan of the first Nightmare Detective — in fact, I felt it was the weakest of the Shinya Tsukamoto films I’d seen so far (A Snake of June, Vital) — but a synopsis for the sequel has been unearthed and I’ve got to admit, it does sound enticing. Read on for all the details! (And yes, that is a picture from the first film. The producers have been really hush-hush on the project, with no images or trailers available yet.)

Zhang Ziyi, Hugh Grant in Rom-Com

Whenever I look at Zhang Ziyi, I always think of a rebellious sword-wielding, self-sacrificing vixen, a la her roles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. But all that may change with her latest film. Apparently, she’s begun shooting a romantic comedy with Hugh Grant in London. Her character? A Chinese movie star. Hmm…I smell another Notting Hill…yellow fever style.

KFC Cinema

Coin Locker Babies Reborn

Co-penned by Sean (son of John) Lennon, starring Tadanobu Asano (Sad Vacation), and based on Ryu Murakami’s best-selling novel by the same name, Coin Locker Babies is finally moving ahead. At least that’s what I think is happening.

Since news of the film first appeared in 2000, it’s undergone casting changes and director swaps, disappeared and reappeared. But now it’s making some noise again, especially since some test footage of the film has appeared in a music video for Sean Lennon’s “Headlights”. Check out the video after the synopsis and jump.

[The film] tells the tale of two unwanted infants abandoned in adjacent train station lockers at birth.

Following a stint in an orphanage and some serious hypnotherapy, the pair are then raised as brothers before moving to Toxitown, a polluted city full of freaks and hustlers.

Once there, one of the brothers becomes a transvestite rocker looking for fame and love, the other a pole vaulter whose girlfriend encourages him to destroy Tokyo.

Time Out London

Kaiju Shakedown, Maboroshii Productions