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Recent Tatsuya Fujiwara starring action picture Chameleon seems to be one of those that splits audiences pretty evenly - I’m very much on the positive side, myself - but those outside of Japan haven’t had a whole lot of opportunities to judge the film for themselves until now. The young star of the Death Note films stars as a petty grifter caught up in a much larger political corruption and assassination plot when he sees something he shouldn’t have and all bets are off as he sets off on a mission of bloody revenge when the corrupt politicos strike him a little too close to home. The trailers may have oversold the action quotient on this one a bit as it is very drama focused in the first half and really only features two significant action sequences but those sequences are truly epic in the 70’s styled...

Swapping games of death for Gunplay “Death Note”, “Battle Royale” star Fujiwara Tatsuya’s new hardboiled action thriller Chameleon has just arrived fresh off the production line, on Hong Kong English subbed DVD. Tatsuya plays the leader of a group of con men - inadvertently caught up in a crime gang’s plot of kidnap and murder - who soon find they are way out of their league. Several trailers, full of gunplay laden goodness, can be found on the flicks official site. The plot: The leader of a group of con artists, Goro (Tatsuya) and his gang witness a kidnapping, after a successful scam. Goro records the incident on his mobile phone, but soon learns that the kidnapped man is a key witness in a high-profile political corruption case. The perpetrators, however, are also aware Goro and his friends have incriminating evidence on hand.

While it has been known for some time that Shingo Katori from the Japanese Pop-group Smap (jup, the one from the Ninja Scroll live-action adaptation) will continue the work of Shintaro Katsu and Takeshi Kitano and will play the role of Ichi, the full cast has just been announced. Tokyograph mentions Takashi Sorimachi (Fulltime Killer, Yamato) and Satomi Ishihara (The Climber’s High) in supporting roles and Chieko Baisho, Youki Kudoh, Koichi Iwaki, Yoshio Harada, Kanzaburo Nakamura and Seishiro Kato in smaller roles.

But I think more interesting than all these names is the fact that Sorimachi will play a close friend of Ichi while cute Ishihara will be his wife!

Looks like director Junji Sakamoto (Children of the Dark, Chameleon) wants to show another side of the lone wolf Ichi, who already went through a sex change in 2008 when Haruka Ayase played his/her part in Ichi.

The shooting began in early March,...

It’s the end of an era, folks. Toho Studios have announced the launch of production of Zatoichi The Last and word is that the title is an appropriate one: Toho are saying that this will be the final entry in the long running Zatoichi canon. The story of the blind master swordsman has been a huge favorite for decades now so it comes as something of a surprise that Toho are pulling the plug on the title. Junji Sakamoto takes the helm of this one fresh on the heels of Chameleon - I seem to have been one of the only people who really liked that one - with Smap’s Shingo Katori taking on the role, which means we’re getting a much younger Zatoichi than we’re used to.

For fans of the long running film and tv series Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, it looks like Zatoichi The Last will be the final film according to Toho. Starring will be Shingo Katori, none of whose films I've seen like The Adventures of Super Monkey. Junji Sakamoto (Chameleon) is already directing as production started in Yamagata this past Sunday. As usual, the French have put some money on this project as they do with many other Nippon films, and the plan is to release the film next year and screen it at Cannes.

Hopefully more to come soon. via Tokyograph...