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The first teaser for the new Jeeja Yanin movie, Raging Phoenix!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





FUCKING YES!

Thanks to WiseKwai for the heads up!

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Mission Statement
These mixes are collections of tracks that come up on random in my iTunes that I like and want to share. There is no theme or reason behind any particular track list, excepting that I try to avoid tracks by well known artists. The idea here is to expose people to new music that they might not otherwise hear. I doubt anyone is going to like all of them, but I'm hoping you find something you like by a band that you're not familiar with. The tracks vary in genre and style on purpose.

Ok?

Alright. Click on the link below to be directed to Mediafire, where you can download a zip file of the mp3s.

ADGY MIX #30


Tracklisting (in no particular order):
Raz Mesinai - "Ghosts Of The Gulag IV", from the album Cyborg Acoustics
Skullflower - "Woodland Death March", from the album Form Destroyer
Ait! - "Why", from the album Ait!
David Darling - "In Motion", from the album Dark Wood
Zu - "Axion", from the album Carboniferous
Murcof - "Cosmos II", from the album Cosmos
Rapoon - "Set Me Free", from the album The Library Of The Dead
Aids Wolf - "Cities Of Glass", from the album Cities Of Glass
The Angelic Process - "Worried Man", from the album ...And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey
Project Dark - "White Leather Jacket", from the album Excited By Gramophones Vol. 4
Six Organs Of Admittance - "Attar", from the album The Sun Awakens
Eyvind Kang - "Sweetness Of Candy", from the album The Story Of Iceland

That's it for this one. All together, the playlist is an hour long, so it'll fit on a CD-R if that's the route you choose. I try to keep all of them short enough to fit onto a CD-R and small enough size-wise to fit in a single zip file on mediafire.

Once again, I hope that those of you that download this find something new to listen to. If you like, many of the previous mixes are still available to download. You can view all the entries tagged as mixes and download them.

Enjoy.

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You may want to hold off.

On July 21st, the Watchmen Director's Cut DVD comes out.



Undoubtedly, fan boys and girls all over the continent have already placed money off to the side so that they can acquire it. The Director's Cut of the film is over 3 hours long (as opposed to the 2 1/2 hours of the theatrical cut) and it's got all kinds of neat extras. Or so I hear. One of those extras is actually not a DVD special feature, but is instead a coupon for $10 off on the Watchmen Ultimate Edition 5 disc DVD that's due out in December.



I don't know was being nice or stupid with this, but either way... if you were planning to buy it, you might want to wait a few more months.

Speaking for myself, I'm hoping to maybe catch one of the limited theatrical screenings of the Director's Cut, but doubt I'll be buying the DVDs either way.

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On the off-chance that any Radiohead fans don't already have this, Amazon's MP3 Store is selling Radiohead's fantastic "Amnesiac" album for only $1.99.



If you're not yet too familiar with Radiohead and are looking for a place to start, this is a pretty good one.

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Recently came across a couple of mentions of this artist on some blogs I read and I've had Pink Tentacle's entry on him as an open tab for over a week now. Otomo is a ballpoint pen illustrator and I really like a lot of his stuff.



Check out his Official Website for more like that. Some of the images are NSFW. Most of the images are totally badass.

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Relatively warm on the heels of Miramax's recent announcement that they'll be releasing a Blu-Ray box set of martial arts films in September comes word that Sony Pictures has plans to do the same, only a hell of a lot sooner.

Next week, on July 14th this bad boy comes out:



Yup, that's exactly what it looks like. The reviews on Amazon are mostly filled with people complaining about that the titles are not being made available individually (except House Of Flying Daggers, which is already available). A lot of people didn't particularly care for Curse Of The Golden Flower (though I liked it) and just want Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A fair complaint. I'd probably be joining them if I'd already purchased House Of Flying Daggers.

I haven't yet, though, so I want this. Pre-order from Amazon is $52.99, which isn't much of a price difference from the Miramax box set (which has 4 movies instead of 3). I don't expect that any of the three films in the Sony box will have any extra features or be anything more than the films repackaged as they were for Blu-Ray. The box art indicates a certain amount of laziness that just screams "put it out and make a quick buck!!!!!!!!". Regardless, that shit is on my want list.

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Kodansha International recently released what I think may be the first ever english translated work of Japanese writer Shuhei Fujisawa in February of this year under the title of The Bamboo Sword: And Other Samurai Tales.



Fujisawa is the man who wrote the original stories adapted into film by Yoji Yamada for his samurai trilogy consisting of The Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade and Love & Honor. Not the action packed samurai films or stories that some might expect, Yamada's films (as well as the original stories, I assume) are less about the action and more about the people involved. There is a major difference of tone in these stories and I imagine that they're infinitely more realistic than most of the genre counterparts.

You can get The Bamboo Sword: And Other Samurai Tales on Amazon for a pretty good price. There are 8 short stories in the collection and if the reviews on Amazon are anything to go by, it's well worth the $16.50.

I'd also highly recommend checking out any of Yoji Yamada's films, as well.

Thanks to J-Film Pow Wow for the heads up.

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BloodyDisgusting got the goods. Chanwook Park's Thirst will begin it's US theatrical run on July 31st in three theaters before expanding to more places. Those three theaters are:

New York
Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema (143 East Houston Street, near 2nd Avenue)

Los Angeles
Laemmle’s Sunset 5 (8000 Sunset Boulevard, at Crescent Heights)

San Francisco
Landmark’s Bridge Theatre (3010 Geary Boulevard, near Blake Street)


Guess where The Lady and I are going to be on Friday, July 31st? Too fucking right.



I don't know when and where it'll expand to. I do know that the Laemmle theater in Pasadena, CA is getting it on August 14th. The Official Website isn't much help. If it screens at the Laemmle in Claremont, I predict that I will end up seeing this movie at least 4 times. Assuming I'm still employed by the time it happens (which is not a given).

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Salon.com' Andrew O'Hehir's Beyond The Multiplex column.

Good readin'.

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Let me tell you about DVDs.

On July 28th, Hitoshi Matsumoto's batshit crazy Big Man Japan comes out.


BIG MAN JAPAN is an outrageous portrayal of an original superhero. As Big Man Japan, Daisato inherited the role of defending Japan against a host of bizarre monsters. He receives high-voltage electroshocks which transform him into a stocky, stick-wielding giant several stories high.
However, where his predecessors were revered as national heroes, he is an outcast among the citizens he protects.


I have not seen this movie. It screened for a week at the Nuart Theater in LA, but I am too old and/or lazy to drive out there after work, drive the 50+ miles home afterwards (around midnight) and then get up for work the next morning. This is a problem I currently have with my life. Anyway, pretty much everything I've heard and read about this movie has been positive and I think Magnet Releasing deserves some points for giving it theatrical distribution and then a timely DVD release. I'm not sure when I'll get around to seeing it myself, but hopefully it won't take me too long.

Amazon - Netflix - Blockbuster

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AnimEigo has announced that they'll be releasing a boxset of the first four Tora-san films by Yoji Yamada in November!



Tora-san is a 48 film series about a "kind-hearted vagabond who is always unlucky in love". Yes, I said forty-eight film series. I believe all but two of them were directed by Yoji Yamada, and that Yamada wrote all of them. The series ran from 1969 to 1995. Feel free to read more about the series on Wikipedia.

I have never seen any of these, either. In fact, if not for Yoji Yamada's name being on them, I don't know how much interest I'd even have. Given the incredible quality of Yamada's work that I have seen, though, (The Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade) I fully expect these are very enjoyable. It'll be interesting to see how much this first boxset goes for, as you can currently get the first 32 installments in Region 3 boxsets (8 in each box) with english subs for about $60 each at HKFlix.

------------------------

Also from AnimEigo, coming in September is a boxset containing the first four Shinobi No Mono movies.



Shinobi No Mono was a series of, I think, 8 films made in Japan during the 60's about a ninja "and his struggle to survive during Japan's warring states period." It stars Raizo Ichikawa (from The Sleepy Eyes Of Death which is also being released in a box by AnimEigo) and Tomisaburo Wakayama (also star of the Lone Wolf & Cub movies). Is there really anything else that needs to be said? The four movies in this boxset have already been released individually by AnimEigo. I have a copy of the second one that was given to me, but I wanted to watch the first one before I watched it.

Amazon

----------------------

That's all I have time for at the moment.

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Tomorrow sees the US DVD release of Hideo Nakata's recent ghost story film Kaidan by Lions Gate.



I saw this movie at last year's Japanese Film Festival in Los Angeles and briefly wrote about it for PiQ (the short-lived magazine that was actually paying me to write), but never got around to writing a full review.

Plot synopsis from the press release: "The unwitting victim of a terrible curse, a young man accidentally injures his wife, a jealous teacher who soon dies from her wound. Running away with one of her students, he fails to heed the dead woman's warning that if he remarries, she'll haunt him to the grave."

I like Hideo Nakata a lot. I really do. I know his style doesn't suit everyone. A lot of people watch the original Ring or Dark Water and consider them boring, but I tend to really enjoy his style and pacing, even if it is a bit slow. The phrase you hear used the most in (positive) reviews of his films is "slow burn" and with good reason. His horror films tend to be sparse on the scares for the vast majority of their running time, with Nakata usually opting to have little bits of them here and there before a pay off at the end. His films are not necessarily scary. A better word for them might be haunting. Or creepy.

Kaidan is pretty much the same. It's clearly a tribute to the older Japanese horror films like Kobayashi's Kwaidan, Shinoda's Onibaba, Mizoguchi's Ugetsu or even parts of Oshima's Empire Of Passion. Hell, just about any pre-90's Japanese movie with scary parts. There's no loud blast of music accompanying the scare. It stays quiet and lets the events onscreen do the work. Atmosphere. That's the word I want. There aren't many people who do this sort of thing better than Nakata does, in my opinion. Even in his lesser movies, he does a very good job with the atmosphere. The sense of building tension is very clear and very much a part of the story.

This sense of atmosphere and creepiness is helped along masterfully by Kenji Kawai's music. I really wish Kawai was better known in the west because trying to actually acquire his stuff out here can be hellish. He does a lot of anime music, which I've not heard a lot of, but his "scary" music is so fucking good that I would be willing to pay the price to import it (usually) if only I could find it!

Anyway. Kaidan is far from a perfect movie. There are bits that seem just a little too coincidental and the film also suffers at times from poor CGI/effects that make parts seem cheesy and funny when they're clearly meant to be something else. However, if you've enjoyed Nakata's past horror films, then this one is definitely worth renting, but probably not much more than that.


Amazon - HK Flix - Netflix - Blockbuster


I also want to mention, for The Lady's benefit, that Samurai Champloo: The Complete Collection comes out tomorrow, as well.

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I would also totally play Melt-Banana for the kid when mommy's not around.

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Nick Cave has a new novel coming out on September 1st called The Death of Bunny Munro



What the hell?!?! The name sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I'm in shock that I wasn't any more aware of this than that. The little blurb on Amazon is basically just a review quote from Irvine Welsh (who is awesome):

'Put Cormac McCarthy, Franz Kafka and Benny Hill together in a Brighton seaside guesthouse and they might just come up with The Death of Bunny Munro. As it stands though, this novel emerges emphatically as the work of one of the great cross-genre storytellers of our age; a compulsive read possessing all Nick Cave's trademark horror and humanity, often thinly disguised in a galloping, playful romp.'

This is awesome news! I loved the shit out of Nick's previous novel, And the Ass Saw The Angel when I read it back around 2001 or something. Looks like there will also be an Audiobook and maybe another Audiobook with a soundtrack by Nick and Warren Ellis. Or maybe that's two different listings for the same product?

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Damn, there's even a website for it. You can listen to the first chapter under the Audiobook tab. Oh, goddamn, there's even going to be a "signed, numbered and slipcased" edition available exclusively through the website, too.

WHY AM I ONLY JUST NOW FINDING OUT ABOUT THIS?!!!?

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Read some sad news yesterday that Japanese director Yasuharu Hasebe passed away at the age of 77 from pneumonia. Rater than take the time to actually try and add some original content to this blog for a change, I'm going to refer you elsewhere to read about the man.



Cinebeats has a fantastic obituary up that would shame anything I might care to write, anyway.

There isn't a whole hell of a lot of Hasebe's work available in the US, but my favorite film of his, Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter, is. Stars Meiko Kaji (of course) as the leader of a girl gang that gets in fights, listens to music and gets in fights.



Amazon - HK Flix - Netflix - Blockbuster

I think I've only seen about four of the man's movies, but I enjoyed all of them to some degree and I really wish someone would bring Black Tight Killers back into print so I could buy it.



You can also check out his Wikipedia page for more information.

Obligatory pictures of Meiko Kaji in Stray Cat Rock )

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The people at Deknang.com have helped make the world a better place by finding and posting some behind the scenes images from the upcoming Raging Phoenix, starring Jija Yanin.



I assume you all know that Jeeja (also spelled Jija sometimes) is the badass actress from the Thai martial arts flick Chocolate (reviewed here). There are a bunch of photos, but no action shots as yet. As far as I know, there hasn't been much said about the plot of this new film, either.

But I'll let you know everything after I know everything.


Thanks to Twitch for finding the link.

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Saw this just now on Affenheim Theater.

On September 15th, Miramax is going to be releasing this:



All four films will be released separately, as well as in the box. The HD Room is reporting that Iron Monkey, Legend Of The Drunken Master and Zatoichi are going to have an individual SRP of $39.99 and that Hero will be $44.99 because it includes "one new bonus feature, Close-up of a Fight Scene, a new transfer, a slip-case and a digital copy." They also say the whole boxset will have an SRP of $109.99.

Now.

Aside from the high price, I worry about this. The regular DVD releases for 3 of these 4 movies left a LOT to be desire. A LOT. The Zatoichi release wasn't that bad. The rest were. All of them except Zatoichi were released with the actual film edited. Scenes cut out. For Zatoichi, the film was intact but some of the interviews in the special features were edited. Jackie Chan's Legend Of The Drunken Master was released dubbed, with no options for the original audio track and subtitles. And you KNOW how much I love that. In addition, the release of Hero, a movie whose main draw is it's visuals, left a lot to be desired visually.

So.

Are these going to be any different? HD Room says Hero is getting a new transfer. That's encouraging. It'll probably still be edited. In fact, I'll be amazed if any of the films other than Zatoichi are uncut. But if the picture quality is as good as it should be and the discs make dubbing OPTIONAL, then this could be cool, although very expensive. I'm sure Amazon'll have them quite a bit cheaper...

Either way, though, it'd probably be a good idea to wait until reviews of the discs come out before wetting our pants. In my opinion, these are all fantastic movies that would be well worth owning on Blu-Ray. Hero especially.

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The post seems to be gone, but the LJ RSS feed entry isn't. The damage is done.



It says October 23rd.

According to the message boards on Blu-Ray.com, the box includes Seven Samurai, Kagemusha, Sanshiro Sugata I & II, Sanjuro, Men Who Tread On The Tiger's Tail and The Bad Sleep Well. They'll be released individually as well as in the box.

No english subtitles.



This I find out just after Affenheim Theater and Wildgrounds both recently wondered aloud about Japanese films being released on Blu-Ray without english subs.

It's a sad state of affairs.

No doubt, Criterion will eventually get around to releasing most/all of these on Blu-Ray themselves, but who knows when that'll happen?

Another missed opportunity.

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It's the best one yet!



Can you believe we're less than two months away from this?

EXCITED. YES.

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The bestest post rock band in the universe is touring North America again!



Fall North American Tour

Sep 22 Houston,TX @ Walters on Washington
Sep 23 Baton Rouge, LA @ Spanish Moon
Sep 24 Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade (Hell Stage) w/ Maserati
Sep 25 Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506 w/ Maserati
Sep 26 Washington, DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel w/ Maserati
Sep 27 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church w/ Maserati
Sep 28 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom w/ Maserati
Sep 29 Brooklyn, NY @ The Bell House w/ Maserati
Sep 30 Cambridge, MA @ Middle East Downstairs w/ Maserati
Oct 01 Montreal, QC @ La TuLipe w/ Maserati
Oct 02 Toronto, ON @ Lees Palace w/ Maserati
Oct 03 Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick w/ Maserati
Oct 04 Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge w/ Maserati, Helen Money
Oct 05 Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club w/ Maserati
Oct 08 Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret w/ Maserati
Oct 09 Seattle, WA @ Neumos w/ Maserati
Oct 10 Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge w/ Maserati
Oct 12 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall w/ Maserati
Oct 13 Los Angeles , CA @ El Rey Theatre w/ Maserati
Oct 14 Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress w/ Maserati
Oct 16 Denton, TX @ HaileyÕs w/ Maserati
Oct 17 Austin, TX @ The Mohawk w/ Maserati

If you live in or around any of these cities, you should feel obligated to attend. The Lady and I already have our tickets to see them in LA. You can find tickets and other things at their website.

Highly recommended.

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I made mention the other day that, at the age of 62 and after a long hiatus, Meiko Kaji had some new music coming out. She now has an official website and blog to help promote it!



The posts are all in Japanese, of course, so I can't really read them (YET!), but there are links and images and she recently posted a video, as well. I've added an LJ feed for her blog at [info]meikokajiblog so those of us interested can follow it there.

Just FYI.

While I'm here, though... might as well post some pictures! )

More later.

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The 10th Anniversary of release of Audition. Holy crap, I feel old.



This will be the third time I've bought this film, though it'll be on Blu-Ray this time.

According to Outcast Cinema, the new special features are as follows:

• Feature-length audio commentary with Miike and screenwriter Daisuke Tengan, who is also scripting Miike's upcoming remake of the chanbara classic 13 ASSASSINS. Film writer and Eiga Hi-Ho contributor Masato Kobayashi moderates the Japanese-language (and English-subtitled) commentary track.
• Video introduction by Miike
• New video interview featurettes with the film's main cast
From Audition to Vampire Girl: Eihi Shiina
Tokyo—Hollywood: Ryo Ishibashi
Miike's Toy: Renji Ishibashi
The Man in the Bag Speaks: Ren Osugi
• Film trailer, plus liner notes by Agitator author and Midnight Eye founder Tom Mes

Due out in October. Fangoria says that the 2 disc DVD and Blu-Ray will both be priced at $24.98 and that they'll have "a new high-definition transfer from the internegative (with a fresh digital stereo soundtrack)".

Audition is my favorite Takashi Miike movie.

In an effort to show my appreciation for the chance to have this film on Blu-Ray, as well as to make this a somewhat more meaningful entry for the Blogathon, I'm going to share some high resolution pictures from Audition that make excellent desktop backgrounds. I recommend that you all join the Cool Kids Club and make one of these your desktop picture. I hear that chicks dig it and who doesn't want chicks to like them?

Words create lies. Pain can be trusted. )

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This is the week of the Japanese Cinema Blogathon, an idea started up by Wildgrounds, in which bloggers from all over the world will post about Japanese cinema in an effort to promote Japanese cinema.

A running tab of all of the blogathon posts is being kept here and I highly recommend visiting it, checking out some new blogs and learning some new things.

After spending some time trying to decide how best to contribute with my own blog, I decided that I wanted to do something other than just write reviews of movies. If the idea is to get new people interested in Japanese cinema, then I feel there needs to be more done than just writing a lengthy review of a movie or an essay on why I love Japanese cinema (although I hope to do some of that, too). I think some people tend to zone out during large paragraphs of text.

So.

Today I'm going to use words and pictures. But mostly pictures.

And I can't think of a better place to start than with my favorite Japanese person in the universe: Meiko Kaji.



The first Meiko Kaji movie I ever saw was Lady Snowblood, back in 2004. I wrote about discovering it on the shelf at the local DVD rental store. Re-reading that entry is slightly embarrassing now. Since that day I've been semi-obsessed with Meiko Kaji and no matter how often I rave about her here, it never seems like it's enough. So... ok, I'm going to try and use pictures to do it now.

These images are mostly grabbed from various places on the internet. A few are screencaps of my own doing, but mostly I'm taking them from someone else. I would certainly have preferred to have done all of my own screencaps, but I haven't had the time. I may do some this week.

Enough talking. Let's look at pictures. Feel free to take your time and enjoy how fucking awesome they are and she is. Meiko Kaji = Fierce )

That's only a few. I could go on. I may do so later.

If this entry has at all piqued your interest, I think a great starting point would be to add Lady Snowblood to your Netflix or Blockbuster account or purchase it directly from Amazon or Netflix or wherever.

It's where I started.

Also, if you're a LiveJournal member, consider joining LJ's Meiko Kaji community (which I moderate) at [info]meikokaji. All kinds of cool shit shows up there.

Or if you just want to know more about her, you can check out her Wikipedia entry or read portions of an interview she did with Chris D. for his excellent book, Outlaw Masters Of Japanese Film.

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I read somewhere that Terminator: Salvation did really well at the box office overseas. I remember reading that and, at the time, wondering if they just hadn't read any of the reviews people had written after advanced screenings and it's opening out here.

Then I saw this and I immediately understood why it made money in Japan, at least.



Picture swiped from The Vault.

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We have the first trailer for Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island.

Watch it here.

It looks awesome.



The book is, in my opinion, Lehane's best and that is saying something. I really like everything of his that I've read. It's fantastic and I recommend it highly. I just started re-reading it yesterday in anticipation of the film.



Order it from Amazon

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I would absolutely love to give each of these their own post and maybe talk a little about each film at some length, but I don't have time. Luckily, the pages I will link you to include descriptions and details alongside the trailers. These all appeared while I was out on vacation.

Please assume that the mere fact that I am mentioning them here means that they are worthwhile and go watch them. You don't need to know any details. My recommendation should be enough, yeah?


Two new Ju-On movies. One trailer. Here.

Pen Ek Ratanaruang (Last Life In The Universe) has a new one called Nymph. Trailer is here.

Hard Revenge Milly: Bloody Battle, looks like FUN.

That new Zhang Ziyi film Sophie's Revenge has a new trailer. Here.

Kore-eda's Air Doll. Written about more than once here. Here is trailer.

A Finnish film called Mothgirl looks fucking awesome. Go watch the trailer.

Yoshihiro Nishimura's Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl is premiering at the New York Asian Film Festival and as a pre-taste, we've got the Wrist Cut Rally.



Enjoy.

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It looks like the live action adaptation of Blood: The Last Vampire is going to be hitting the US in limited release in July, according to it's distributor.


This is the UK poster, I believe.

According to Bloody Disgusting, the new Chanwook Park film Thirst will begin it's US theatrical run on July 31st with "the screenings starting in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York and gradually expanding to include other states for a wider release".



If you still haven't seen the trailer for that yet, it's at that Bloody Disgusting link. Go watch it.

This is all very good news, although I have my doubts about Blood.

The Lady and I went to a movie while we were in New York and I'll write about that later, but I think I'm going to be spending some money this week on some others. I still need to see:

Departures
Drag Me To Hell
The Brothers Bloom
The Hangover
Up
Rudo Y Cursi

I get the feeling I'm still forgetting something.

Anyway, I'm fuckin' PUMPED that we get to see Thirst so soon.

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One of the more exciting things that popped up while I was trying to catch up on what I missed while I was on vacation was [info]warden_goda posting this over in [info]meikokaji:



You can't really make out the picture all that well, so I will tell you that this is the cover for a brand new Meiko Kaji single. Yes, at the ripe age of 62 she is releasing new music. It's due out June 24th.

I already pre-ordered it from CD Japan in April, but it can also be pre-ordered from Amazon Japan if you wish to do so.

If you're on the fence, you can hear a couple sample clips from the single here. There are two windows media files (.wax) that you can download there.

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I promise to do a vacation post, but I just spent some time trying to sort of catch up on what I've missed while I was away and now I have 50 million tabs open in Firefox and I want to post some of the stuff while the desire is alive and strong. So excuse the number of posts from me here, unless you actually enjoy reading this stuff. If that's the case, well... you're welcome.

One thing that I did hear about while I was gone was the deaths of both David Carradine and Shih Kien.



I'm going to assume you all know who David Carradine is. Shih Kien is probably best known for being the bad guy, Han, in Bruce Lee's Enter The Dragon, but he made a whole ton of kung fu movies and a bunch of non-kung fu ones, too.

I'm not really familiar enough with either of these actors to be able to say anything other than I was sad to hear that they'd died.

Wanted to mention Shih Kien especially since I don't think his death was too terribly well publicized in the US. Kung Fu Cult Cinema posted some links to a bunch of pictures and a news coverage video on the passing of Kien if you're interested.

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Twitch interview with James Quandt, who curated the Nagisa Oshima retrospective currently making the rounds, just recently finishing in Toronto. You may recall my previous post about going to the first night of the retrospective in LA.

It's long and it's mostly about Oshima. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

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Swiped from [info]demonsthenes



If I can't convince The Lady to ever dress up in the leather apron like the actress in Audition, this may be a decent enough substitute...

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