by Chris MaGeeWho says that Kankuro Kudo can have all the fun making a film about a rock band with his upcoming comedy "Shonen Merikensack"? Here's another film with about a band that I saw some teaser trailers and stills for this upcoming film before our two week break, but I hadn't seen a lot of English language coverage of it then or since, so I thought I'd give what looks to be a really fun and interesting film a bit of online love.
"Aozora Punch" is the debut feature of director Tsuyoshi Shibata and tells the story of a rock band that starts up in rural Japan. I had my good friend and Japanese film industry veteran, Robyn Dranfield, help out with some translation of the film's synopsis from the official site:
"Katsuo (21), a musician trying to make it in Tokyo suddenly comes back home. Masuo (21), Kazuo’s former bandmate has taken over his family’s business. Tamae (14), lives in the countryside with her grandfather because of some trouble in Osaka. Funaki (27) a former elite businessman who failed to fulfill his dreams of success. A strange event brings the four of them together to form a band. They aim to play a gig at the town’s fireworks event. But, at a crucial moment the band breaks up because of Katsuo’s nonsense behaviour… In the beautiful background of the Kagawa sea, a once in a lifetime story of youth plays out!"
The onscreen band is played by Masato Ishida, Yoshiyuki Itakura, Rina Koike and Takeshi Yamamoto (looking more than a little worse for wear in the above pic), while the music for the film is being provided by Japanese pop-rock-jazz outfit Arakajime. In the video below Shiyouzi Ikenaga from the band delivers a solo interpretation of the film's theme on his melodica followed by one of the teasers for the film.
The "Aozora Punch" website has just been updated and now has a full fledged trailer posted which you can check by clicking here. "Aozora Punch" is set for release in Japanese theatres on September 13th.
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3 comments:
Factual error here. It's not the debut film of someone named Tsuyoshi Shibata, it's the director of OSOI HITO, Shibata Go's, new film.
It's a for hire production that had it's rough cut debut at this year's Yubari Fantastic Film Fest. This release is a substantial re-cut from what I understand.
I wrote about it previously on my blog here: http://mab-pro.blogspot.com/search?q=shibata+go.
Ouch! Thanks for the clarification, Nicholas. I'll definitely check out your post.
P.S.: Big fan of your blog and your liner notes for "Karaoke Terror".
No problem.
And thanks for the kudos! :-) The old blog-o has been quiet lately because of work and family responsibilities. (Something had to give, quite frankly, and unfortunately the blog lost out.) I hope to get back to more regular posting come the fall!
I enjoy the Pow-wow blog too!
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