Ooooh ... while procrastinating on putting my stolen DVD list together today I swung by Tadanobu Asano's official site and happened to notice that the filmography had been updated. Yep, they finally added Nice No Mori on there, but it was the pair of titles a little farther down that caught my eye ...
At the very bottom of the list was Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani, the next film from Shinji Aoyama. Aoyama would've been enough to grab my attention but the fact that he's making a film titled with the last words of Christ dying on the cross got my ol' religious studies student antennae twitching.
Just above that? Tokyo Zombie. The title alone had me sold and then I realized who the director actually was. Sakichi Sato. Name not ringing a bell? Think Gozu. Think Ichi the Killer. He wrote the scripts for both. Whoo!
I haven't been able to turn up anything other than titles for both of these, so anything anybody else can find would be much appreciated ...
*** UPDATE ***
Oooh .... just got a note from Aaron saying that not only is Asano in Tokyo Zombie but his co-star will be Sho Aikawa. A fantastic combination there. Apparently the info came from the official Japanese website which is floating out in the ether somewhere undiscovered by me ...a URL? Please?
Okay, it looks like "Tori" actually came out on DVD in Japan a year ago. Has anyone seen it?
Nothing to do with Tori, but I did find THIS while digging around ... trailer for Teruo Ishii's Screwed ... that's one weird looking flick ...
Very interesting finds. More Asano is always a good thing.
i have the "tori" dvd - it's 5 short films. asano's contribution is a silent panotomime samurai film...the best way to describe it.
Well, as far as I can tell, Tokyo Zombie is adapted from a manga by an artist named Yusaku Hanakuma
From a Spanish geocities site:
Tokyo Zombie counts the adventures of a pair of experts of jujitsu, Hage (the bald one) Mitsuo (Aikawa Show) and Afuro (the Afro) Fujio (Tadanobu Asano), who unite their forces to fight against an army of zombis. This combination of martial arts and zombis already had been used in the work of cult VERSUS (2001) of Ryuhei Kitamura. Nevertheless Tokyo Zombie aims to have a tone much more comedian.
from rejectedunkown.com:
Yusaku Hanakuma is a Tokyo based artist who has achieved a large amount of success for the manga comics that he writes and illustrates. His drawings are crude and quickly made and his stories are often sick and bizarre. Potty humor, bizarre sex and lighthearted violence reigns in his work. Hanakuma’s characters such as Afro and Hage (translates to Bald Head) have been reproduced on everything from clothing to notebooks and dishes. Hanakuma is also a fighter. He is a member of Ichibanbosi Grappling, a total fight martial arts team trained in submission wrestling and jiu jitsu. One of his recent manga books Tokyo Zombie is currently being made into a live action feature film by the same name.
I read a few places about a date - 2/23/05, but I have no idea what it could possibly pertain to....
well couldnt find an official site as such, but one for the writer of the comic book, a picture from the film, the title in japanese and a couple of news pieces in japanese elsewhere... so sent them to todd...
Yay! A new zombie flick from Japan!
found info on Asano movies on imdb & Belgian Fantastic Film Festival site(going on yearly in may? in Brussels)
I've seen Tori, but with no subtitles! :( It's a visually impressive movie about Asano's dreams, but if anybody has subs for it... please let me know.