"Wonder if he'll ever know / he's in the best-selling show."

Various movies I have an interest in:

"Paradise Kiss" is a manga about a high-school girl who is abducted into the world of fashion when a group of student designers decide she'd be their perfect model. Naturally she ends up falling in love with one, becoming friends with the rest, and overall loving the career - but other than those implausibles, it's a bitter-sweetly realistic story of unfulfilled dreams and difficult relationships. I would never have believed I would enjoy a comic about clothes before, but I loved this one. As of May, Fox International was in talks to produce it, but apparently they're going to make it in Japanese so here's hoping they don't mess up too much.

 

"Ningen Shikkaku," called "No Longer Human" in English, called author Dazai Osamu's masterpiece, called my favorite Japanese book when I am inevitably asked. "That's... rather dark," they say, but at least they look at me with more respect than if I named some children's comic. The movie, coming out next spring, stars Ikuta Toma, a bright young actor that I've loved in everything so far but... he always plays such essentially positive, heroic characters that I'm curious to see him play the "human disqualified" as the title literally translates.

 

I was excited about "Norwegian Wood" until thirty seconds ago because I enjoyed the novel by Murakami Haruki. Then I looked it up and realized the movie would be directed by Tran Anh Hung who has done some pretty horrendous work in the past, and now I'm dreading it a little. It's a very subtle, laid-back novel - I've heard it called the Japanese Catcher in the Rye - and he's got all the subtlety of a ACME anvil. Well, perhaps if they don't let him write the script it won't be so bad. No word yet on who will star.

 

"My Darling is a Foreigner" has been making a buzz around the expatriate community. The manga by Oguri Saori was based on her real-life marriage with journalist Tony László. It will be interesting to see how a foreign man - which rarely fare well in Japanese entertainment - translates from a sympathetic source onto the big screen.

 

Today the third part in the "20th Century Boys" trilogy came out - I think I posted about going to see the previous two. I have such a Pavlovian reaction now that the second I hear the very distinctive theme music I look at the TV even though I've seen the preview dozens of times. Since I have to go into the city tomorrow to buy my application for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, I might go to the cinema while I'm there.