Bullets 'n' Babes

I'm a little late with this, but:

Cannes: Toei Pitches Shunji Iwai Return to Live Action Film
- http://variety.com/2015/film/asia/shunj ... 201498906/

"...Iwai set out a multi-seasonal shooting schedule to fulfill an ambition to shoot a film that captures the beauty of Japan’s four seasons. Lensing will wrap in August, with theatrical distribution in Japan set between February and April next year.

The story involves a couple, their online personas, jealousy, divorce and cynical manipulations...."

Very much looking forward to this. Swallowtail Butterfly and All About Lily Chou Chou are both among the 10 best movies ever made for me, and April Story is right behind them. Iwai's latest live action, Vampire, was very uneven but still fascinating. Interesting to see how the new film will turn out.

The title is The Bride of Rip Van Winkle. Opens 2016/03/26 in Japan.

The website is also active, with a teaser that shows nothing.
- http://rvw-bride.com/movie.html

The poster is a thing of beauty

Full trailer, which still shows nothing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhF5bqHTkA4

Proper trailer:
http://asianwiki.com/The_Bride_of_Rip_Van_Winkle

This is bloody 3 hours long! Except in Hong Kong, where two versions have been released simultaneously: 179 min and 119 min.
- http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/film-tv/a ... -fine-form

I'll see if I can find time to see it this week.

Well, this was frustrating. Iwai, the director of such incredibly good films as Swallowtail Butterfly and All About Lily Chou Chou, has gone all Japanese and delivered a melodramatic tear fest. Without going into spoilers, it has us follow a naive girl putting her trust in the wrong people. All for the sake of tears, and then some more tears. The film also deals with family rental, something Sion Sono did much better in Noriko's Dinner Table a decade ago, and cyberspace, something Iwai did much better more than a decade ago in All About Lily Chou Chou. It's all the more disappointing because it's not a bad film. It looks and feels Iwai; not Iwai at his best but Iwai nonetheless, and it's very, very well acted by lead star Haru Kuroki. The three hour running time isn't a problem at all either. The shorter 2 hour cut would probably be best avoided as I can only imagine it emphasizing the weaknesses and cutting out much what is good about the film. As a director Iwai still seems worthwhile, but as a writer, what happened?

HK DVD is out (as of yesterday) from Panorama Distributions with English subtitles. It's the 180 minute director's cut too.