First look (and listen) at Shunji Iwai and Takeshi Kobayashi's "Bandage"

by Chris MaGee

Now that Shinya Tsukamoto's "Tetsuo The Bulletman" seems to be disappointing audiences at the Venice Film Festival (what a shame!) Japanese film fans have to look forward to yet another near highly anticipated film project to sate their movie dreams, that film project being the Shunji Iwai scripted, Takeshi Kobayashi directed music drama "Bandage". Rumours about this film had been floating around online for at least a couple of years with speculation that none other than Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus, Azumi) was going to be helming Iwai's screenplay about the struggles of a Japanese indie rock band during the 1990's, but in October of last year rumours became fact when it was reported that "Bandage" was moving forward without Kitamura in the director's chair. Instead it was revealed that longtime Iwai collaborator and the man who helped compose and compile the music for "All About Lily Chou-Chou", Takeshi Kobayashi would be holding the reins of the film. (Read our full "Bandage" coverage here. It'd been a while since anything had been heard from the "bandage" camp though, and that had me and a lot of other people wondering if the film had gone back into production limbo. Thankfully it hasn't. According to http://www.tokyograph.com/news/id-5236 the lead actor from "bandage" will be releasing music from teh film in advance of its January 16th, 2010 Japanese theatrical release.

Jin Akanishi, lead singer of Japanese band KAN-TUN will be starring in "Bandage" as the lead singer of a fictional Japanese band called LANDS (what's with all the upper case?) and he will be releasing a solo album under the name LANDS before the end of 2009. The first single from the album, titled "Bandage" of course, is already gearing up to hit Japanese airwaves and in the YouTube clip taken from Japanese TV (below) not only can you get a sample of the song, but some snippets of footage from the film itself. The song isn't much to write home about, so lets hope "Bandage" the film is a lot better.

Thanks to Baidu.com for the above image.

"Bandage" moves on without Ryuhei Kitamura

by Chris MaGee

With Guns 'n' Roses "Chinese Democracy" album finally looking like it will actually be released next month I'll have to revert to picking on the one other hotly anticipated release that will probably never see the light of day: "Bandage", the film project announced way back in 2005 that was to be produced by Shunji Iwai and directed by Ryuhei Kitamura. Strange pairing, I know. "Bandage" is/ was supposed to chronicle the music business in Japan during the 1990's, territory that Iwai knows well as he got his start directing music videos during that era. There's been continued buzz online about the production since '05, but mostly from film bloggers wondering about the how, who and most importantly when of "Bandage" especially after Kitamura went off to Hollywood to helm the disaster that was "Midnight Meat Train".

But wait... Can this be true? According to a report posted today at Tokyograph production on "Bandage" is apparently moving ahead, and without Ryuhei Kitamura. Apparently he's out of the picture entirely (I guess off to direct that U.S. remake of "Versus") and longtime Shunji Iwai collaborator Takeshi Kobayashi has been chosen to direct. And there's more! Jin Akanishi (above) of Japanese pop outfit KAT-TUN will be starring in the film as Natsu, the frontman of a fictional band called LAND whose rise to fame will be the subject of the film.

This makes a lot more sense. Even though Kobayashi has never helmed a feature film he has worked with Iwai as the musical director/ composer on "Swallowtail Butterfly" and "All about Lily-Chou-Chou", and according to the Tokyograph report will be writing four original songs for LAND to perform. Kitamura's name made for great "what if?" headlines, but unless they were planning to include a 6 person sword fight somewhere in "Bandage" his involvement never quite added up for me.

Now before you start getting all wound up for the imminent release of this film wait for the other shoe to drop: production is set to begin on November 3rd, but "Bandage" isn't set for theatrical release until 2010(?!?!) What? Is there going to be a whole bunch of post-production CGI work done? If this were a Hollywood film this wouldn't be a surprise, but Japanese films move a hell of a lot quicker than their American counterparts. My advice... Don't hold your collective breath just yet on this one. At least we're getting "Chinese Democracy".

Finally! The full trailer for Takeshi Kobayashi and Shunji Iwai's "Bandage"

by Chris MaGee

It's been a long, long, looong road for the musical drama "Bandage" (read our full coverage here). Originally conceived of as a project written by Shunji Iwai and directed by Ryuhei Kitamura the film about the rise of an indie Japanese rock band languished in development hell for a number of years, that is until last year when Kitamura left the project to be replaced by longtime Iwai collaborator and songwriter Takeshi Kobayashi. Once that happened production on the film started to roll along at a steady pace with Jin Akanishi, lead singer of Japanese band KAN-TUN, cast as the lead singer of the fictional group LANDS. Fans of Iwai have waited and waited for the trailer for this film and finally it's arrived.

it vary much from the standard rags to riches rock star drama? It doesn't seem to. Does it look like it's been worth several years of waiting? Maybe, but it's hard to tell. Is the music created by Akanishi and Kobayashi for the film as memorable as, say, the music Kobayashi put together for Iwai's "All About Lily Chou-Chou"? I don't think so, but that film set the bar very, very high. Am I asking all of these questions rhetorically? No. These are the questions on a lot of people's minds, questions that can only be answered by checking out the full trailer over at Nippon Cinema". What are you waiting for? Go!

For more details on the film (in Japanese) head to its official site here. "Bandage" is set to hit Japanese theatres on January 16th.

Takeshi Kobayashi and Shunji Iwai's "Bandage" sells 70,000 advance tickets

by Chris MaGee

Well, we knew that the online anticipation for the Shunji Iwai scripted and Takeshi Kobayashi directed film "Bandage" was pretty intense. You just need to read back over our own coverage of the project that stretches back over a year. Seeing that Iwai, who got his start directing music videos for some of Japan's biggest stars in the late 80's and early 90's, and Kobayashi, who wrote the music for Iwai's brilliant 2001 film "All About Lily Chou-Chou" were teaming up to tell the story of an indie rock band called LANDS we can easily see why there's a lot of excitement surrounding this film... but who would have thought there would have been this much excitement?

According to Tokyograph advance tickets went on sale for "Bandage" last Saturday in Japan and moviegoers were quick to scoop them up. 70,000 advance tickets were sold on that very first day, and that take has broken records in Japan for advance ticket sales.

To accompany this boom in advance interest in "Bandage" the lead single from the film's soundtrack, and from the film's fictitious band LANDS headed up by KAT-TUN lead singer Jin Akanishi was released and immediately went to number one on the Japanese pop charts. Give it a listen (and a look) below.

Takeshi Kobayashi gets his full cast for "Bandage"

by Chris MaGee

With the announcement at the end of October that Ryuhei Kitamura had relinquished the director's chair on the Shunji Iwai penned "Bandage" and that long time Iwai collaborator, music producer Takeshi Kobayashi (above), was going to step in it gave a lot of people hope that this story of the rise of a fictional rock band called Land was finally going to make it to the big screen.

Well, the momentum hasn't seemed to ebb on the project with the announcement yesterday of the full cast for Bandage. It's a mixed bag of actors (Kie Kitano, Kengo Kora, Yuki Shibamoto, Ayumi Ito, Hideyuki Kasahara) musicians (Nobuaki Kaneko of RIZE), and models (Anne), but here's hoping that the combination of Kobayashi and Iwai makes magic happen again. The two previously collaborated on Iwai's transcendent 2001 drama "All about Lily Chou-Chou".

No character details were announced, but the film is still quite a ways off with a theatrical release scheduled for 2010, but we'll keep on top of this as more details come out.

Thanks to Tokyograph for the story.

Iwai Shunji takes us to the world's smallest film festival with new website

by Chris MaGee

One of the biggest buzz names of the past 15 years in Japanese film-making is getting ready to make a major comeback in 2011. Starting with the phenomenal success of his 1995 supernatural romance "Love Letter" Shunji Iwai would become one of the most talked about of the young directors from Japan at the turn of the century. Iwai would bring his signature film-making style to films like "Swallowtail Butterfly", "Hana and Alice" and the film that we at the Pow-Wow think was his masterpiece "All About Lily Chou-Chou". In the past few years Iwai has been keeping a lower profile, but has still managed to maintain a work schedule that most film-makers would die to have. He contributed a segment to the 2008 omnibus film "New York, I Love You", he wrote the script for the Ryuhei Kitamura animated film "Baton", directed a music video for pop music sensations AKB48 and he also reunited with "Lily Chou-Chou" music director Takeshi Kobayashi for the indie band drama "Bandage".

Now Iwai, who is making a point of calling himself Iwai Shunji as opposed to Shunji Iwai, has launched a new website he's calling the Iwai Shunji Film Festival. "I'm not usually into film festivals," Iwai says on the site, "but I thought I would give it a try." Don't think of this as your standard film festival though. Iwai is using his site to post exclusive essays and content relating to such classic films as "All About Lily Chou-Chou" (the original "Lily Chou-Chou" e-novel is posted on the site), as well as details of his upcoming English-language gothic horror "Vampire" starring Kevin Zegers, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Amanda Plummer and Yu Aoi. All this content can be accessed by subscribing to the site. From this web-based festival that's dubbed the "World's Smallest Film Festival" Iwai will be going to one of the world's biggest film festivals, the Sundance Film Festival where "Vampire" will be making its world premiere later this month.

To get your subscription to all thing Iwai head over to the Iwai Shunji Film Festival by clicking here. Our thanks goes to CinemaCafe.net for the heads up on this.