Hoga News

Box office battle of "Memories"

According to Mr. Texas, the box office ranking trick appears again last weekend.  Kogyo Tsushin's number of admissions ranking shows that "Memories of Tomorrow", starring Ken Watanabe, is #3 and ahead of "Memories of Matsuko".  However, in terms of box office gross, the order gets reversed.

This trick usually happens between a children's movie and and a regular movie, but this time, "Tomorrow" is not a children's movie - it means that "Tomorrow" is heavily supported by over-50, who take advantage of senior discounts and "couple 50 discount" (half price if one or both of the couple is/are over 50).

Source:  Movie Consultant Blog

"Matsuko" starts at 4th, "Brothers Mamiya" coming to 10th

Tetsuya Nakashima's "Memories of Matsuko", opened with much buzz last Saturday, finishes the weekend with 161.4 mil. yen box office and 113,500 admissions, at the 4th rank in the weekend box office.  The result is 205% of Nakashima's previous "Kamikaze Girls" opening weekend, and the Toho Studio is epecting more than 1 billion in total for sure.  So Toho's winning streak continues.

Another hoga that appeared newly on the top 10 list is "Brothers Mamiya," Yoshimitsu Morita's comedy about life and love of two happily-unmarried brothers.  The leading actors are Kuranosuke Sasaki ("Train Man") and Muga Tukaji from a comedy duo Drunk Dragon, and the film also features well-known cast members such as Takako Tokiwa ("Red Moon") and Erika Sawajiri ("Pacchigi!") as their dream women, as well as a legendary singer Miyuki Nakajima as the brothers' mother.  The film opened on May 13 in limited number of theaters, and is going wider this past weekend due to its good starting result of 16 mil. yen.

Please see Ryuganji blog for the weekend box office results.

Source:  Eiga.com, Movie Consultant Blog

Huge Japan Premiere of "Sinking of Japan"

The premiere showing of "Sinking of Japan" is held in Tokyo, as well as showings in 4 other locations throughout Japan, inviting 15,000 guests in total, on May 29.  Jason Gray has put up the detailed report about the premiere.

"Sinking of Japan" is scheduled to open on July 15.

Source:  SANSPO, jasongray

Director Shohei Imamura dies

See Ryuganji's report tand Kaiju Shakedown today.

"Babel" wins the director's prize

Alejandro González Iñárritu collects a director's prize at Cannes Film Festival for "Babel", starring Brad Pitt, as well as Koji Yakusho and Rinko Kikuchi in the Japan part.

Yakusho says, "I sent the message to the director at once, 'next is Palm D'or.'  It is an extraordinary film, and I feel very proud to be in this movie."

Ken Loach's "The Wind That Shakes the Barley'' wins the Palm D'or this year.

"Babel" is scheduled to open in the US on October 6, 2006.

Source:  Zakzak, Mercury News, MovieWeb

"Matsuko" good start, Nakashima and Nakaya make up

Tetsuya Nakashima 's "Memories of Matsuko" opened on Saturday, and its opening day gross is more than twice of that of his previous film "Kamikaze Girls".

See this post for details of "Matsuko".

The battle between Nakashima and the leading actress Miki Nakatani was much publicized through Nakatani's comments in press conferences, that the director often yelled at her "bad actress" or "I will kill you."  On the opening day appearance stage, though, Nakatani bows to the director and says "thank you very much", and Nakashima answers, "I am sorry that I said lots of impolite things to you."  The theater-full of audience give warm ovations to them.

Source:  SANSPO

"Sakuran" and Mika Ninagawa's colorful world

Nihon Keizai Shinbun puts up a special report about Mika Ninagawa's first film "Sakuran", a manga-based pop story of Edo Period oiran, starring Anna Tsuchiya　("Kamikaze Girls").  Mika Ninagawa is a daughter of the famous stage play director Yukio Ninagawa, and has been working as a photographer.

Ninagawa selected gold fish as the motif of Yoshiwara, an official red-light district in Edo.  The oirans are the high class prostitutes, and they are often compared to gold fish, who are in gorgeous costumes but are confined in a small world with no way out.  Ninagawa once took photos of gold fish for her photo book and did a lot of research about them, and started to think, "it may be human's complacency to think that gold fish are poor creatures.  They have no predator and get to eat everyday - they may be happy there."

Yoshiwara and its oirans are often pictured in tragedy contexts in films and literatures, but for this one, the heroin Kiyoha is not a pitiful woman at all - she is the top star, but strong-willed and loves to fight.  She often tries to escape from Yoshiwara, but gets caught and comes back with an attitude.  Ninagawa thinks, "not all the oirans were pitiful people.  Women are often much stronger and audacious.  So I decided to make it the story of a super-cool woman.  And that is the significance that I, as a woman, direct this film."

Ninagawa's photographic works are known for the vivid psychedelic colors, and she takes this sense of color to her first film.  Oirans' super-colorful kimonos are designed with modern color combinations, while using classical patterns such as birds and flowers.  Kiyoha's costume in an oiran parade scene comsists with a red kimono with black dragon embroiderｙ, a black coat with bright pink bamboo design, and animal-print obi (belt) in front.  To understand the visuals of Yoshiwara, Ninagawa went through a huge volume of Ukiyoes (wooden block prints in Edo period), and reconstructed her own colorful world utilizing the spirit of the classic art.

Her father, Yukio, is an expert of blending the classic's spirit with his own edgy sense of beauty, such as his interpretation of Shakespeare in Kabuki.  Mika says "I have seen his works since I was very young, so I may have learned something without noticing."

"Sakuran" is scheduled to be released in the spring of 2007.  See this and this past entries for more about "Sakuran".

Source:  Nihon Keizai Shinbun

Minoru Kawasaki's illogical animal movie opening this weekend

I mean, it probably is totally irrelevant to most readers, but I couldn't help posting this.

"Kani Goalkeeper" (literal translation "crab goalkeeper") by Director Minoru Kawasaki is opening this weekend, and I laughed my brain off watching this trailer. 

A human-size crab is hired by a soccer team as a goalkeeper, and grows up to be a hero with various love and encounters with people.  The film features some familiar actors such as Hiroshi Fujioka (the original "Masked Rider") and Naoto Takenaka ("Shall We Dance?").  The film release coincides with upcoming World Cup Soccer.

Minoru Kawasaki is known for "Caramari Wrestler", and along with "Koala Manager" and this one, the series is dubbed "illogical animal movie".  Kawasaki also is directing the pardy version of "Sinking of Japan (Tidal Wave)".

Source:  Movie Walker

Jo Odagiri's hair-do of the day

Miwa Nishikawa's "Yureru (Sway)" is screened in Fortnight Program in Cannes on 26th.  The 900-seat theater is standing-room-only, and after the movie, the film gets a warm standing ovation.  Director Nishikawa and the star Jo Odagiri (in his hair-do of the day) stand up and answer the greetings from the audience.

Source:  Cinema Topic Online

Kurosawa family's management problem?

The failure of Kurosawa Academy, as was reported earlier, turns out not to be the only problem that may embarrase Akira Kurosawa 's name, cherished treasure not only for his own surviving family but also for all the Japanese people.

See this article for an earlier report about Kurosawa Academy.

The Academy was spearheaded by Hisao Kurosawa (on the right in this photo), Akira's oldest son and President of Kurosawa Production.  With the infamous incident with the Academy, another failure report was surfaced on entertainment tabloid media lately.  The project was about so-called "Kurosawa Cinema Village", supposedly a huge theme facility with Kurosawa Memorial Museum, exhibits of some of Kurosawa's open sets, organic farms and hot spring spa (huh?).  The facility was planned in Akita city, a northern middle-size city, but a city official now says that they have not heard anything from Kurosawa since their initial talk 2 years ago.

It also was reported last year that Kurosawa production sold the remake rights of Kurosawa's popular "Yojinbo" and "Sanjuro" to Kadokawa Films for 300 million yen.  While there is no follow-up news on the production of these films, some people worry that Hisao is selling them off cheap and slowly eating up his father's precious legacy.

A movie critic Koichi Nojima states, "now Akira Kurosawa is not as well known among young generations anymore, so it is doubtful that he can bank on Kurosawa's name much longer.  Rather than betting on risky commercial ventures, I believe he should spend more energy to promote the films' value itself, for example by making Kurosawa movies more available overseas."

Source:  Zakzak