There were some cast announcements yesterday for this summer's highly anticipated movie sequel "Odoru Daisosasen 3" (Bayside Shakedown 3). Actress Uchida Yuki (34) will reprise the police officer role she last played in the original TV series in 1998 (photo). Uchida is recently enjoying a resurgence in her career, which was put on hold following her marriage to actor and "Kita no Kuni Kara" co-star Yoshioka Hidetaka in 2002. The couple split in 2005. She returned to the big screen in 2007, appearing in Kitano Takeshi's "Kantoku Banzai!" (Glory to the Filmmaker!).

Actor Ito Atsushi (26) will be introduced to the cast as the nephew of the late veteran detective Waku Heihachiro. Waku was played in the first two movies by comedian Ikariya Chosuke, who died in 2004. Main character Aoshima Shunsaku, played by Oda Yuji (42), has been promoted to section chief and will have three new subordinates: regular cast member Komoto Masahiro (44), newly transferred to the armed robbery section, and newcomers Kawano Naoki (27) and Takito Kenichi (33).

The latest in the most commercially successful movie series of all time, Odoru3 is scheduled for release on July 3.
http://www.japan-zone.com/news/2010/02/10/index.shtml

Awesome. I use Variety instead of BOM. So it was at $150m after 7 weeks, incredible.

So, after 7 weeks:

Spirited Away - $150.8m, $234m total
Howl's Moving Castle - $125.7m, $190m total
Harry Potter 1 - $120.5m, $152.9m total
Ponyo - $118.2m, $172.2m total
Bayside Shakedown 2 - $115.5m, $164.5m total
Harry Potter 2 - $114m, $142.8m total
Avatar - $108m,
Harry Potter 3 - $92.2m, $121m total

Now if only Princess Mononoke and Titanic's weekly breakdowns were available somewhere.

Titanic in Japan:

(Up to)

December 23, 1997 - $4.0m (Opening Weekend)
December 31, 1997 - $11.6m (Cume)

January 13, 1998 - $27.7m (Cume)
January 16, 1998 - $28.6m (Cume)

February 2, 1998 - $41.7m (Cume)
February 3, 1998 - $4.0m (6th weekend)
February 3, 1998 - $45.7m (Cume)
February 9, 1998 - $48.1m (Cume)
February 17, 1998 - $3.1m (8th weekend)
February 17, 1998 - $61.1m (Cume)

March 2, 1998 - $66.2m (Cume)
March 3, 1998 - $2.9m (10th weekend)
March 3, 1998 - $71.0m (Cume)
March 9, 1998 - $72.6m (Cume)
March 17, 1998 - $86.0m (Cume)
March 31, 1998 - $101.4m (Cume)

April 6, 1998 - $102.7m (Cume)
April 7, 1998 - $5.6m (15th weekend)
April 7, 1998 - $108.3m (Cume)
April 14, 1998 - $3.4m (16th weekend)
April 21, 1998 - $122.8m (Cume)
April 27, 1998 - $125.0m (Cume)

May 11, 1998 - $140m (Cume)
May 12, 1998 - $2.2m (20th weekend)
May 12, 1998 - $142.2m (Cume)
May 26, 1998 - $148.3m (Cume)
May 27, 1998 - $2.2m (22nd weekend)
May 27, 1998 - $151.4m (Cume)

June 2, 1998 - $2.1m (23rd weekend)
June 2, 1998 - $155.8m (Cume)
June 8, 1998 - $157.3m (Cume)
June 9, 1998 - $2.7m (24th weekend)
June 9, 1998 - $160m (Cume)

July 7, 1998 - $170m (Cume)
July 27, 1998 - $175.1m (Cume)

August 18, 1998 - $181.9m (Cume)

September 1, 1998 - $185.3m (Cume)
September 11, 1998 - $186.9m (Cume)

October 6, 1998 - $191m (Cume)


I hope this works. I don't have any numbers after October 6th.

Nice great update Corpse. I have a question though, how much do you think Avatar will hold up? I mean for how many weeks will it go and what could be the legs at current rate when all is said and done ?

The title character of Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro film makes a cameo in Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich and Pixar's film for which a third trailer was released on Thursday. Toy Story 3 will open in North America on June 18.

Miyazaki and Pixar founder John Lasseter have been personal friends for two decades; the two have visited each others' studios frequently over the years, and Lasseter helped oversee the English release of Miyazaki's Spirited Away and Ponyo. Along with previous efforts, Lasseter opened a 2008 charity auction at Pixar's own headquarters for the Totoro Forest Project, an effort to save one of the forests that inspired My Neighbor Totoro.
http://www.thehdroom.com/news/Toy_Story ... Cameo/6349

According to a press release from Kadokawa Group Publishing on the News2u.net website, viewers have spent 200 million yen (about US$2.2 million) to see The Vanishment of Haruhi Suzumiya film 140,000 times in its first week at the box office.

The Vanishment of Haruhi Suzumiya is the first ever film in the Haruhi Suzumiya anime franchise from the Kyoto Animation studio. For the story, chief director Tatsuya Ishihara and director Yasuhiro Takemoto adapted the fourth Haruhi Suzumiya light novel from Nagaru Tanigawa and Noizi Ito.

The film had already earned US$997,803 in its first weekend, despite having only 24 screens in Japan.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 ... n-1st-week

The Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood television anime series will premiere on Cartoon Network 's Adult Swim programming block at midnight EST/PST early Sunday morning in the United States. The weekly English-dubbed episodes will also be available, as a download-to-own option, on the PLAYSTATION Network and Zune Marketplace on Sundays. Each new dubbed episode will then stream from the Adult Swim website on Wednesdays.

Like the first Fullmetal Alchemist television series in 2003-2004, the ongoing Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood anime adapts Hiromu Arakawa's dark fantasy manga about two brothers who risked their bodies with human alchemy to unsuccessfully resurrect their mother. Now the two attempt to restore their bodies by seeking the illusive Philosopher's Stone, and they are not alone in their quest.

Unlike the earlier anime effort, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood follows the manga more closely; Arakawa has acknowledged that her manga is coming to an end soon. The new anime retains the same main cast from the earlier anime's English dub, except for two recasted characters and one all-new character. Maxey Whitehead replaces Aaron Dismuke as Alphonse Elric, and J. Michael Tatum already replaced Dameon Clarke as Scar in the Fullmetal Alchemist: Premium Collection video spinoff. Bryan Massey plays the new character Isaac McDougal.

Funimation began streaming the television anime series in Japanese with English subtitles in North America last April, and it will release Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Part One on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on May 25. Viz Media published the 22nd volume of the original manga last month.

The television premiere of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Ponyo scored a 29.8% rating when it ran on February 5 at 9:00 p.m. That makes it the fifth highest rated Friday movie airing since 1989. Three of the four higher rated Friday movie airings, including the highest rated one, were Miyazaki/Ghibli works: Spirited Away (January 24, 2003 at 46.9%), Princess Mononoke (January 22, 1999 at 35.1%), and Howl's Moving Castle (July 21, 2006 at 32.9%).

Ponyo - 29.8%
Sazae-san - 18.9%
Chibi Maruko-chan - 12.9%
Detective Conan - 10.8%
One Piece - 10.7%
Doraemon - 10.5%
Crayon Shin-chan - 9.6%
Dragon Ball Kai - 8.6%
Pokemon Diamond and Pearl - 6.9%
Kaidan Restaurant - 6.8%

The Japanese publisher Shueisha is producing 3 million copies of the 57th volume of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece pirate manga — the latest volume in the series to set a manga record for the most copies in its first printing. The volume will ship on March 4. The previous volume, volume 56, held the former record of 2.85 million copies and sold at least 2,016,841 copies as of January 17.

The North America publisher Viz Media is publishing volumes 24 to 53 of the manga between January and June. Funimation is releasing the television anime adaptation on DVD and via online streaming. The 10th theatrical anime film, One Piece Film Strong World, opened in Japan on December 12 and boosted sales not only of volume 56, but of all previous volumes into Japan's weekly top 200 manga chart.

The Nikkatsu studio is the Japanese film industry's oldest — it will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2012. In the 1950s and early 1960s it was also a box-office leader, turning out hit after hit with Japan's biggest postwar star, Yujiro Ishihara. By the 1970s, however, Nikkatsu and the rest of the industry were struggling, as audiences deserted theaters for television.




Ready for action: Tomomi Miyauchi plays a cab driver in "Ushiro kara Mae kara" and gives her customers more than just a ride home.

In 1971, the studio was staring bankruptcy in the face, but instead of calling its lawyers, it decided to switch the bulk of its production to softcore porn. Churned out by the hundreds by indie production companies, "eroductions" — the then-current Japanese-English term for adult films — were drawing fans by offering them something they couldn't get on the small screen.

Over the next 18 years, until 1988 when adult videos basically finished the genre off, the studio released 1,133 so-called Nikkatsu Roman Porno (a contraction of "romantic pornographique") films. These softcore features were made with bigger budgets and more studio resources than the adult industry norm. Also, directors were given wide latitude to tell stories and develop characters, as long as they fulfilled the minimum requirement of a bed scene every 10 minutes or so. In the 1970s Nikkatsu Roman Porno films were regularly ranked in critics' top-10 lists, while launching the careers of many young directors who went on to mainstream success, including Yojiro Takita, director of the Oscar-winning "Okuribito" ("Departures," 2008).

Now Nikkatsu is reviving Roman Porno in the form of two new films — "Danchizuma: Hirusagari no Joji" ("Love in the Afternoon") and "Ushiro kara Mae kara" ("From the Back or from the Front") — the former playing Feb. 13-26; the latter Feb. 27-Mar. 12 at Eurospace in the Shibuya district of Tokyo.

The films are reworkings (not remakes) of Roman Porno classics from the 1970s, with the target audience being, not horny guys logging onto Internet porn sites, but both men and women, whether dating couples or no.

The first, Shun Nakahara's "Love in the Afternoon," based on the first-ever Roman Porno film, certainly offers equal-opportunity eroticism. Sayaka (Sakiko Takao) is a bored young housewife in a big apartment complex. Her workaholic hubby is always away and her one "friend" is a middle-aged busybody. Then a handsome water-purifier salesman (Masaki Miura) comes calling.

The setup is a cliche, but Nakahara, who apprenticed in Roman Porno before embarking on a successful straight directing career with the high school drama "The Cherry Orchard" ("Sakura no Sono," 1990), tells his simple story with a winning combination of eroticism and realism. Sayaka and the salesman are both lonely souls who find in each other, not just sexual release but a warm kindred spirit in a cold world. At the same time, they know that prying eyes are about — that real life, with its insistent claims, is right outside the bedroom door.

Shoichiro Masumoto's "From the Back, From the Front" is a comedy of the lewd, decidedly non-PC sort. Momoko (Tomomi Miyauchi) is struggling to make her quota as a cabby until Ranko (Kotono), a cute, successful colleague, lets her in on a secret: Sex sells. Soon Momoko is giving "special services" to her male clients — and reaping the happy financial rewards.

Then the cops catch her in the act, give pursuit and she picks up her "last ride": a nice, if mysterious, guy (Yoshiki Kanahashi) on a private mission.

The story is little more than a series of porny incidents, played for laughs, while the two female leads are amiable sorts with minimal acting skills. Nonetheless, the film rattles along entertainingly enough, with moments of pathos here and wacky erotic invention there.

Both films are cast with talented male actors — such as Masaki Miura in "Love in the Afternoon" and Yoshiki Kanahashi in "From the Back or from the Front," with long lists of straight film and TV credits. It's hard to call their work in these revivals art, but they make the viewing experience a lot more pleasurable — especially while sitting through those 10-minute passages of nonerotic exposition.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ ... 214a1.html