"Kisarazu Cat's Eye" beats "Flags of Our Fathers"

I missed this one!  I have not reported about "Kisarazu Cat's Eye World Series" in the past, but noticed yesterday that early user reviews were VERY strong (92.86 points out of 100) on "Eiga Seikatsu" site, so I was just going to write about it... Really.

Now on the weekend box office ranking, this Fuminori Kaneko's youth comedy sequel debuted at No. 1, topping Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers", also opened last weekend.  Mr. Texas reports that "Flags" made 190 million yen (slightly better than "Million Dollar Baby"), so it means "Kisarazu" made more than that.

"Kisarazu" depicts the life, love and tears of a group of ordinary young people who gather to form a local baseball team.

OK... who are involved in this movie?  Screenwriter is Kantaro Kudo ("Yaji and Kita - Midnight Pilgrim") - OK, that is strong.  It is backed up by TBS, and the director Kaneko is the popular TV drama director at TBS - aaahh, so it is another TBS media machine thing.  Leading actors/actresses include Junichi Okada ("Hana"), Sho Sakurai, Wakana Sakai, Yoshinori Okada, Ryuta Sato ("Umizaru 2") and many others, lots of familiar names, but none has a BIG superstar status on screen.  Started off as a TV drama in 2002, then feature-length version "Kisarazu Cat's Eye Japan Series" was made in 2003, and this "World Series" is supposed to be the last one.  Here and here are some still photos from the film.

TBS is REALLY on winning streak right now, after "Sinking of Japan" and "Nada So-so" this year.

Source:  Eiga Seikatsu, Cinema Topic Online, Kogyo Tsushin

<Addition 10/31>

According to Eiga.com, "Kisarazu World Series"'s opening weekend gross was 323.3 million yen with 219,000 admissions, and its final is estimated as between 2 to 3 billion yen, double of the prequal and a great hit for this scale of movie.