Audition SE announced!

It's gratifying to finally see the official announcement for the "prominent Japanese genre classic from a major director re-release" I've been hinting about since mid-April, and several times since then. It's Takashi Miike's AUDITION, of course, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year and is being re-released by a company called Shout! Factory, previously known primarily for music and documentary titles, but which should be putting out some really interesting genre stuff this year and next, since ex-BCI acquisitions guy Cliff MacMillan moved over there a few months ago. At least one other prominent Japanese title is in the works that we know of.

AUDITION comes to DVD and BluRay this October, and will feature the following supplements, all produced by yours truly, and all brand-new for this release.

• 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

We're actually still working on the interview edits, but they should be pretty good. Shiina's and Renji's in particular are really great, with a ton of stories from the making of not only AUDITION, but lots of other films and from the genesis of the whole project.

Preorders should be available on Amazon soon!

Japanese cinema blogathon begins!

This week sees not only the start of the NY Asian Film Festival - this Friday! - but also a weeklong blogathon dedicated to Japanese cinema. For full details, see this post at Wildgrounds.

I hope to be back a couple of times this week with some posts devoted to unseen Japanese cinema and possible American DVD releases.

Until then, in honor of the NYAFF's NY premiere of Nobuhiko Obayashi's astonishing film HOUSE, here are some of his most famous commercials (made before his feature film debut), for men's fragrance "Mandom" and starring everybody's favorite vigilante, Charles Bronson.

Obayashi was one of the first Japanese commercial directors to work frequently with foreign stars as pitchmen, something that's now very commonplace in the industry. These commercials really show his wild style of shooting and editing, too. He made something like 3000 of them over the course of his career!

New York Asian Film Festival 2009!

The festival starts in 2 1/2 weeks - been very busy getting it all ready for the past, oh, six months.

Check out this year's festival trailer, which went online today.



Lots of great films and terrific guests in this year's lineup; hopefuly we'll also have an audience, which will make it all worthwhile.

Two more Outcast jobs hit the street

Streeting tomorrow are two new DVDs from Synapse Films, the first Toei productions starring Meiko Kaji, Wandering Ginza Butterfly and its sequel, Wandering Ginza Butterfly 2: She-Cat Gambler. (We did a bit of creative editing on the title to the latter (no #2 in the original Japanese), but that's mainly to make it easier to handle the discs at U.S. retailers.)

Though my relationship with parent company Synapse has unfortunately soured (due to some unwarranted penny-strangling on the part of their financial chieftain), I'm proud of these discs and hope that classic Japanese cinema fans give them a try. The film transfers are top-notch, and entirely due to the efforts of Synapse tech and creative guy Don May, Jr. Neither film has seen a release in Japan except on VHS, so these represent the best versions available worldwide at the moment. I'm willing to bet I see a ton of these on sale at Shinjuku Disc Union in Tokyo the next time I'm there.

The extras are also pretty good, if I say so myself. We interviewed Pinky Violence expert J-Taro Sugisaku way back in November 2007, and a short piece with him appears on the second of the Ginza discs, where he talks about the appeal of star Meiko Kaji.

Appearing on both discs is a lengthy interview with series director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, one of the shining B-stars of the Toei universe, responsible for all the films in the Delinquent Girl Boss and Sister Street Fighter series, not to mention Sonny Chiba's Karate for Life movies, and various other genre classics. Yamaguchi talked at length about working with Chiba, Kaji, Etsuko Shiomi, American porn star Sharon Kelly, Reiko Oshida, and others, and the interview is a treasure trove of stories for fans of classic Japanese exploitation. Want to know about the genesis of the Female Convict Scorpion series? You can learn about it here.

Both discs also feature the usual trailers, poster galleries, biographies, and other goodies, plus the first disc features an informative audio commentary by Japanese film expert Chris D., where he talks about Kaji's career, Toei's reputation in the early 1970s, director Yamaguchi, and all the minor character actors appearing throughout both films. Hours of entertainment await - what are you still sitting in front of your computer for? Get out there and buy them!

At long last...

The Criterion / Eclipse Nikkatsu Action box set has been announced!



This release has been in the works, in one way or another, for over a year and a half and it's a relief to finally see it written up online. The long road to holding it in my hands will finally end in late August.

For many Japanese films fans - basically anybody who was unable to attend any of the Nikkatsu Action screening series' dates last year - this will be their first opportunity to see every one of these five films, each of which is fantastic. I can't wait to read about peoples' reactions to A Colt is My Passport and, especially, Cruel Gun Story, a fantastic Japanese riff on Stanley Kubrick's The Killing which probably less than ten people outside of Japan have seen at this moment in time. Soon, that will all change.

A big hint

This one should do it.

More details to come, once they're confirmed to be ok to announce.

Next interview

Here's another hint. Then again, he was in at least as many Miike films as Ren Osugi was!

Truly talented and prolific actor - since the mid-1950s! - Renji Ishibashi. We chatted about the Miike film in question, plus his other works including films for Kinji Fukasaku, Tatsumi Kumashiro, Noboru Tanaka and others.

More updates to come.