Japanese Cinema

A 30-second trailer for Nigerian-born tarento Bobby Ologun’s Moon Dream has been uploaded to the Movie Collection channel on YouTube. In addition to directing and starring in the film, Ologun also wrote the screenplay, which is based on his own experiences as a young foreigner coming to Japan for the first time. When he arrives, he meets other foreigners struggling to make it in Tokyo as well as various Japanese people, leading to relationships that transcend racial and cultural differences....

Modestep is a four-piece bass orientated band from London who are quickly rising to the top of every music lovers’ playlist. Armed with over a half a million fans total on social media, and selling out concerts worldwide, we are very honored to have one of the members of this iconic band. Enter Nick Tsang, since turning professional in 2004, Nick has already toured extensively throughout the UK and internationally, plus amassing a wealth of session, touring, recording, and songwriting credits. We sit down and talk about his overwhelming success, playing at Coachella, Asian films, and more! Read below for the full Q&A… Would it be accurate to say there aren’t too many Asian musicians in the dubstep scene? How did you find yourself in the place you’re in now? Did you have aspirations growing up as a child? Nick: I can’t speak world wide because I am sure there are Dubstep musicians in the far east, but I have to say I haven’t met many Asian Musicians in the Dubstep scene in UK and US. The only guys I know of are xKore and one of the members of the band Subsource. My last band was the Ting Tings, and when that finished a friend called me and asked if I was interested to meet a band that he was working with called Modestep. I went to meet the guys and we clicked from the start. The day after we met they asked me to join the band and three days later I was was performing my first show with them at Download festival. To be honest I never knew what I wanted to be growing up, but I knew I loved music. I was a bit of a failure academically so I thought I might as well pursue my passion. So here I am still with my six strings. Bit of a joke really! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bparw9Jo3dk What have you learned so far during your North American tour. Did you guys have any expectations from performing in the U.S. for the first time? Nick: I’ve learnt that there is a huge difference in the Dub step scene in UK and the States. In UK, the people who come to dubstep shows generally are ghetto boys with new era caps and their hoods up. Its a very grimey and dark scene. In US its a rave thing. Everyone turns up in UV glow paint, glow sticks, juggling toys and bright pick tutus. Because of the big delay with the release of our album, I thought that the US would have forgotten about us. So it was pretty crazy to have sell out shows on our first ever US tour. You most recently hit Coachella. What was that experience like? Nick: Coachella was mind-blowing. We have been on the road for about two and a half months performing nearly everyday. Because of the routine of it, we felt like we had conquered the stage nerves. Coachella knocked the nerves right back into us! As soon as we saw the crowd that we were about to step in front of, we all shat our pants! The whole energy of the crowd, and the stage production got us all amped up more than any other of the US shows we had done. Hopefully our nervous energy translated into a good performance on stage. There are lots of styles and sounds in your music like dubstep, rock, and other various musical elements. Since joining the band what unique attributes have you contributed to the sound of Modestep? Nick: I guess I introduced guitars and help bring the rock element to the Modestep sound. oh and the asian factor obviously. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qpUChC6iU4 And how did that carry over into your new album ‘Evolution Theory’? What was the creative process like on that LP? Nick: In the songs written before I joined such as Up, Bite the hand and Feel Good, there were little or no guitars on the recordings. Within the two day I met the boys, I was straight into laying guitars for ‘To the Stars’ and since then, we have recorded guitars for every track. The most guitar dominated track is ‘Freedom’, where you can probably hear my Rage Against the Machine influence creeping in. For the creative process of the LP, all the band m

Godzilla 2000 is a 1999 Japanese kaiju film directed by Takao Okawara and written by Hiroshi Kashiwabara. It was the twenty-third film released in the Godzilla series and only one to feature Orga a kind of weird thing I don’t know how to describe. I don’t really like this one, it doesn’t do anything other movies haven’t done better and it doesn’t add anything new to the series. Remember the neatness of the 80’s series how they all flowed into one story? Well this film is the first official movie in the millennium series whose continuity is all over the place. The millennium series unlike the Hesei series ignores continuity established by any previous Godzilla films except for the first one. But a few of them share continuity with a few other Toho features. It’s a mess. Godzilla 2000 is the last in the Godzilla series to make a North American theatrical run until the upcoming one in 2014. Godzilla is a force of destruction to Japan (what else is new right?). The Godzilla Prediction Network studies the mutant dinosaur and predicts his landfalls. Meanwhile, the scientists of Crisis Control Intelligence find a sixty million year old UFO deep in the Japan Trench. As CCI attempts to raise the UFO to study it, it takes off into the sky on its own. Godzilla arrives and battles the Japan Self Defense Forces in just about the only worthwhile scene, but the UFO appears, searching for genetic information that only Godzilla possesses. It fights Godzilla to a standstill, driving the monster underwater, and then lands to replenish its solar power. Yawn. The founder of the GPN discovers the secret to Godzilla’s regenerative properties but so has the UFO. Which has begun to drain all the files about Godzilla from Tokyo’s master computers. The rest of the film is an incredibly drawn out scene where Orga appears monsters lamely fight and the two scientists groups argue. The story is extraordinarily boring. I am not sure how the 1998 film gets so much hate but this one is relatively unknown. It’s slowly paced, drawn out, confusing, and all around not fun to watch. This was the first Toho flick to use an abundance of CGI and it looks so out of place. There is a scene where Godzilla swims underwater and it looks like it was thrown together in 5 minutes with Photoshop. Orga’s space ship looks like a giant brown nut and when it flies its very laughable. Orga himself looks ok as does Godzilla when they are both not CGI of course. But none of the sets feel real there is never any sense of dread except for a scene near the beginning that has the GPN being chased through a tunnel. None of the characters are memorable, I don’t even know if they gave many of them names. There are a lot of random slap stick scenes that pad the run time with nonsense. Did I mention there is nothing interesting happening in this movie? So on top of not being invested the audience is just left bored. I remember seeing this movie in theaters and being left really confused because I genuinely thought I was walking into a sequel to the movie I had enjoyed a few years earlier although to be fair the first time I saw it was the last day of my summer vacation at the time so it has always left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t think this one is worth your investment despite it having one of the last original monsters.

Cover art for Pokémon Adventures: Black & White and Pokémon Adventures: Diamond and Pearl/Platinum. Images courtesy of VIZ Media. © 2013 Pokémon. © 2011 Pokémon. © 1995-2011 Nintendo/Creatures Inc./GAME FREAK inc. POCKET MONSTER SPECIAL © 1997 Hidenori KUSAKA, Satoshi YAMAMOTO/SHOGAKUKAN VIZ Kids Launches Popular Series in the Important British and Irish Markets Source: VIZ Media, MediaLab press releases Official Site: VIZ.com/Pokemon Special Thanks to Jane Lui and Erik Jansen VIZ Media, LLC brings the fun and adventure of the popular Pokémon manga franchise to the United Kingdom and Ireland for the first time. Simon & Schuster U.K. is the official distributor of VIZ Media titles in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Several Pokémon manga series are scheduled for release under the company’s VIZ Kids imprint and kicks off with the U.K. debut of Pokémon Adventures: Black & White, now available. The series is rated ‘A’ for All Ages and will carry an RRP of £3.99. VIZ Media plans to follow this title with the debut of Pokémon Adventures: Diamond and Pearl/Platinum on June 6th and will launch the Pokémon Adventures: Heartgold and Soulsilver series later this Autumn. Continued...

Today it was revealed that the second film of the trilogy based on the late Osamu Tezuka's award-winning 8-volume Buddha manga will be released in February 2014. In addition, an official website has been launched which features a 9-minute English-subtitled promotional video produced for the Cannes Film Market. The first installment, Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha, was released in 2010 and covered the early part of Siddhartha's life as a young prince as he questioned the very class discrimination that...

Welcome back Gentle-Minions!!! This week we bring you more Kickstarter goodness with selections from Brian (BTSJunki) Kelley with The corruption of Chris Miller (1973) directed by Juan Antonio Bardem and a selection from Tom Chance with Ghosts...of the Civil Dead (1988) directed by John Hillcoat!!! Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com Voicemails to 206-666-5207 Adios!!!

On Monday it was announced that Shusuke Kaneko’s upcoming teen survival thriller Ikenie no Dilemma will actually be a trilogy, following the format of Shinjiro Dobashi’s original novel series. The first film, which was announced last month, will get a limited release at United Cinemas Toyosu on July 13, 2013. Then on August 2, the first film will be released on DVD along with two DVD-exclusive sequels. Like the original book trilogy, the three movies will be referenced by their sub-titles:...

Since the 1500′s, man has been searching for the answer to eternal youth and beauty. People have resorted to witches or voodoo queens and dermatologists have come out with skin serums but nothing seems to satisfy the public. Writer, Lillian Lee brought us the short story Dumplings, putting a modern twist on the demand for eternal youth for the film Three Extremes. Fruit Chan directed both the short film and the full length feature and both are fantastic. Showing us brilliant writing, acting and cinematography, Dumplings deservedly won awards for all of the above. Ms. Li is a middle-aged, former tv star and your regular woman with normal problems. Her successful husband is beginning to look at younger women but she blames herself. She doesn’t feel like her old self and doesn’t look like her either. She had been hearing women all over Hong Kong speaking of a woman named Mei who makes special dumplings that, apparently, make you years younger inside and out. Li (Miriam Yeung Chin Wah) has more than enough money to spend and is desperate to get her tongue on those dumplings, so she finds out how to get in contact with her without hesitation. “Aunt Mei”, played by Bai Ling (The Crow) is immediately charming. She sits Li at a small table while she works her magic in the closed-off kitchen to eventually reveal the most amazing dumplings she had ever tasted. Within a day, she already begins to feel more youthful… but she wants more. The power she feels in the dumplings is intoxicating and she begins leading herself down an obsessive and destructive path. I will not give anything away specifically, but what is inside the dumplings is what brings up a most interesting discussion topic because it is not as foreign as you’d think it should be. The closest example would have to be the cultural taboo of Placentophagy, which is rising in popularity in means of natural rejuvenation, much like the dumplings in the film. There are controversial subjects all throughout the movie and while it may not be for the squeamish, there’s no doubt that the dialogue between Li and Mei will get your brain ticking. It’s a great story that builds and explodes with plenty of gore, sex and feminine power. What’s not to love? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ixdhYr3a6g There are not enough reasons to watch this amazing film, but half of those reasons could also be why you shouldn’t watch it. Many people were repelled by it’s overly graphic displays as well as with one of it’s main topics. If you are uncomfortable with subjects such as abortion than you should not watch this film. As for everyone else, I highly recommend Dumplings. It is an intelligent and twisted look at humanity that shouldn’t be missed.

Authors: Loren Portillo, Sean Kotz Photos courtesy of Loren Portillo Ray Harryhausen, doing what he did best. Ray Harryhausen, the pioneering filmmaker and special effects master of such classic films as THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, VALLEY OF GWANGI, and JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, passed away peacefully Tuesday May 7th in London England from an undisclosed illness. He was 92 years old. With Ray Harryhausen’s passing came an instantaneous ritual litany of recognizable names testifying to his influence -- Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, to name a few. But by the same token, there was practically no real discussion of why he had that impact. That’s predictable, really. For most people, this is just a news sidebar, including the legions of web-bound entertainment beat writers frantically culling fragmentary and unchecked sources to adopt a posture of authority for his impromptu obituary. Harryhausen is simply not familiar to most of the new breed of writers cluttering online news services and blogosphere. He outlived his career by 30 years, and for the bulk of the obit writers, his death detoured them from their real concerns, like whether Mylie Cyrus is hotter than Lindsey Lohan. But, the simple fact that Harryhausen’s death resides largely on entertainment pages betrays how poorly his contributions are understood. Continued...

The S.H.Figuarts Toei hero lineup for September/October 2013. Photos courtesy of Bluefin. © Ishimori Pro ? Toei/ © Toei Articulated Bandai Figures to be Sold in Japan and America Source: Bluefin Corp. S.H.Figuarts Official Site: tamashii.jp/shfiguarts (Japan) Special Thanks to Xavier Lim Distributor Bluefin Corp. has provided product specs and high-res photos for three S.H.Figuarts releases coming from Bandai's Tamashii Nations in September and October 2013. Fans of Toei's Kamen Rider franchise will soon be able to purchase Masked Rider Blade and Masked Rider No. 1's Cyclone motorcycle, while Super Sentai fans can look forward to an exclusive Mighty Morphin White Ranger figure. All three items will be released both in Japan and North America. Fans and collectors can purchase S.H.Figuarts figures from authorized Bluefin dealers, including SciFi Japan's sponsors Anime Jungle and Toy Freakz. Continued...