Takashi Miike's summer 2008 release, GOD'S PUZZLE (or PUZZLE OF GOD), has released its pressbook and below you can find scans that show just enough to make it look somewhat interesting. The movie, set for a June 7 release, features Hayato Ichihara (NEGATIVE HAPPY CHAINSAW EDGE, ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU) playing twins who hook up with Mitsuki Tanimura (THE CHASING WORLD, CANARY) to unlock the secrets of the universe and to build their own universe. Who hasn't done the same thing one rainy, boring afternoon?

The movie is a medium-budgeted sci-fi, romantic comedy based on a novel of the same name, and it's being produced by the colorful Haruki Kadokawa who is a blessing to journalists everywhere because of things like this (from Variety):

"Speaking to reporters at Nikkatsu on Friday, Kadokawa said he first read the 2002 novel while in prison on drug charges and that, though the theme seemed heavy, he saw 'a strong comic element in the material' that he plans to underline with 'a large helping of CG effects'."

Could Kadokawa be the last great showman left? I mean, who else says they optioned a novel because it was good prison reading?

(Thanks to logboy for sending in these scans.)

(Variety has more of the story) 

Kihachiro Kawamoto is right up there with the Quay Brothers as one of the world's great stop motion animators. I've seen a few of his projects and while they don't get my blood pumping they're undeniably beautiful and technically exquisite. Jasper Sharp over at Midnight Eye has organized a massive, touring retrospective of his work that will crawl all over the United Kingdom from March 15 - May 15 of this year, starting off at the Watershed Media Center in Bristol. If you're American, you have to wait until April when Kino is releasing a collection of his shorts (recommended) and his feature BOOK OF THE DEAD (which isn't my thing, really. A bit too stately.)

If you've never seen anything by Kawamoto give him a try. There's a massive, English-language interview up with him on Midnight Eye, and there's his very own Japanese language website if you're interested.

(Complete info on the touring retrospective) 

(Thanks to logboy for sending this in) 

Linn Haynes died a few days ago in a car accident. He was 32 years old. Linn was passionate about martial arts films and a constant presence in online fan communities where he brought a wealth of knowledge to the table and was generally a calm and sane voice of reason in the boiling scrum of shouting and flame wars that message boards can all-too-often become.

Linn was working with Media Blasters on its upcoming Shaw Brothers releases, doing audio commentaries and producing extra feature material. I'll try to find out the status of the discs, but in the meantime at the bottom of this page there's links to an interview with him about these releases, and an interview with him about Chinese nationalism in martial arts films which, while not authoritative (and Linn would never claim that it was) makes for some fun reading.

And, in case you're curious, here are the titles Media Blasters have picked up from Shaw:

Five Elements Ninjas AKA Super Ninjas
Heroes Two
The Master
Challenge of the Masters
Martial Club
The Deadly Duo
The Brave Archer
The Ten Tigers of Kwangtung
Black Magic 2
Flag of Iron

(Interview with Linn about the special features on the Shaw Brothers discs)

(An essay by Linn on which DVDs you should own and why.) 

One of the greatest untapped resources on the planet are the Hong Kong International Film Festival catalogues. Spanning the entire modern history of Hong Kong films they feature interviews with filmmakers, director's statements and assessments of the state of Hong Kong cinema by critics on the ground writing as it happened. Pick up a catalogue from the early 90's and you get to see Wong Kar-wai before he put on the sunglasses, when he was just a nerdy young man trying to find commercial success in the marketplace.

His director's statement for AS TEARS GO BY is forgotten next to his headshot where he looks like a newly-hatched chicken, all gangly neck and over-sized head, putting on a serious face that's not quite working. A few years later he's trying on his sunglasses for DAYS OF BEING WILD making this statement in the write-up:

"I loved the cinema as a child. The attraction was that I could always lose myself in that re-created world: to cry, to laugh, to get angry, to feel deprived...and I enjoyed these films tremendously. I really do not think it matters if my films are critically well received or not. What is essential is that I want my audience to leave the cinema having enjoyed the film, and that means the whole world to me." 

"I really do not think it matters if my films are critically well received or not..." that's sort of the opposite of today's Wong Kar-wai. I wonder what happened. 

Four years later he's back with ASHES OF TIME and CHUNGKING EXPRESS and he's ditched the sunglasses and is wearing a great big smile in his photos. Of CHUNGKING EXPRESS he says that the original title was CHUNGKING JUNGLE but it's the write-up for ASHES OF TIME where you get a sense of a totally different director than the cool, in control, icon who can put the Cannes Film Festival on pause at will.

"Initially I wanted to get in touch with Louis Cha. He got to have some ideas regarding the history of these characters that he didn't put into the novel. But unfortunately I couldn't find him...I had wanted the film to be some kind of a journey. I wanted it to begin in Qinghai, the mouth of the Yellow River, and go all the way to Hukou. But that's too difficult. We couldn't afford that. Besides, you don't ask actors like Leslie Cheung and Lin Chin Hsia to make a road movie. So I had to stay put in one place." 

There's more but you get the idea: every motion picture super-stud started out as an insecure little guy, including Wong Kar-wai.  

There are two kinds of trailers for horror movies. There's the kind for Kelvin Tong's RULE #1 which stars Shawn Yue who seems to be in the Early Daniel Wu phase of his career (ie, appearing in every other movie coming out of Hong Kong). This is the kind of horror movie trailer that features some neat-o imagery, a lot of atmosphere and sets up some kind of mystery that you just know will have a twist ending where everything we think we know turns out to be wrong. Meh.

Or you could make a trailer like the one for ART OF THE DEVIL 3 (now with English subtitles). This is the kind of trailer that makes you freak out and sends you crawling under your desk trying to scrub what you've just seen out of your eyes. You've been warned. It's heinous.

Speaking of scrubbing things out of your eyes, Patrick Macias uses YouTube to teach us about Japan's number one yakuza actor, Riki Takeuchi's new career: singer. It hurts! It hurts! (Read more here)

Jason Gray reveals that Takeshi Kitano is already in production on his new movie about a painter who can't sell his work.

Korea's THE CHASER has become the break-out hit of the year in Korea thus far, and it's all set to either get much bigger or fade away this week as it expands. Mark Russell has a review and here's the trailer.

Wisekwai has written a positive-with-reservations review of the indie Thai horror movie THE 8TH DAY which has a trailer up online.

And check it out: Bai Ling isn't getting charged with anything following her recent shoplifting arrest. The prosecutor has declined to file charges according to her very own blog.