Ryuta Sato
Ryuta Sato, who played Kowato-sensei in the drama and movie versions of Rookies, will star in a new film called Manzai Gang.
Based on a novel by Hiroshi Shinigawa, Sato plays Kurosawa, one half of a comedy duo whose partner has quite and who has drowned his sorrows in sake. After being locked up he meets another prisoner, a natural straightman, and the two take their act to the streets.
Filming is expected to wrap up in June, with an undetermined 2011 release date.
From the drama version of Saru Lock.
Saru Lock: The Movie, based on a manga series of the same name, has released a trailer and can be found by clicking here: (Saru Lock Trailer)
Japanese funny man Hayato Ichihara stars as Sarumaru, who works for his father’s locksmithing business and uses his skills to get himself in humorous adventures.
Saru Lock: The Movie is set to debut Feb. 27, 2010.
As was largely predicted, the film version of Rookies, based on a TBS drama, destroyed box office numbers, taking in 1.2 billion yen during its opening weekend.
Some 980,000 people saw the film that continued Rookies’ storyline about a high school teacher’s attempts to revive the school’s baseball club and help them realize their dream of going to the national tournament. The film had the biggest opening weekend this year and beat last year’s top box office earner’s weekends. Rookies is expected to out-earn both in its theatrical run.
If the film surpasses the 10 billion yen ceiling, it would be only the fourth live action movie to have done so in Japanese history.
A trailer for the new Gokusen movie has been posted, including some casting surprises along with it.
It appears that actors from the first two seasons of the popular series will be joining Yankumi in her continuing plight to protect her students. Shun Oguri, Yuma Ishigaki and Hiroki Marimiya from the first season and Mocomichi Hayami, Teppei Koike and Keisuke Koide from the second will join the third season’s cast of misfit students.
This weekend will see the release of the new Rookies movie, continuing the saga of the TBS drama; and if the buzz surrounding the movie is any indication, it may set box office records.
The film has already sold 240,000 advance tickets, more than last year’s box office success Hana Yori Dango (Boys Before Flowers), and a stadium event held for the movie, the largest event for a film in Japanese history, sold out of its 12,000 tickets in two minutes.
Recently J Geeks brought you a review of the Gokusen TV series, itself adapted from a manga and anime. Now the next version is here: Gokusen the movie. The film will bring back season 3′s cast, and you can find the first teaser here!
Courtesy of Nippon Cinema
All That Drama, Part I
For the next few installments of Tatami Critic, we’re going to take a break from the movies and talk a bit about another enjoyable Japanese genre: The Drama.
Most dramas in Japan seem to be following a trend similar in the U.S.: one-hour episodes (less accounting for commercials) arranged in smaller runs of somewhere around 10-12 episodes (the brilliantly made Kisarazu Cat’s Eye, on queue for review in a later installment, intuitively had a nine-episode run, corresponding to the number of innings in a baseball game).
What fellow J Geeks are saying