News

While “Ultraman” is primarily known as a prominent figure in television, films like Kazuya Konaka's “Ultraman: The Next” and Shinji Higuchi's “Shin Ultraman” have shown that the beloved superhero can work well within a movie format. The fictional icon's latest cinematic outing, the Japanese-American animated co-production “Ultraman: Rising,” brings together quite a team. Netflix Animation and Tsuburaya Productions collaborate with animation by Industrial Light & Magic (Ilm), originally founded by filmmaker George Lucas. Making his directorial debut is Shannon Tindle, a prominent animation designer whose work includes on shows like “Samurai Jack” and movies such as “Kubo and the Two Strings.” He also writes the screenplay alongside Marc Haimes. John Aoshima is co-directing with Tindle, who similarly has an experienced animation resume, including on the hit comedy series “Futurama.” These creative minds come together and deliver a visually astonishing, if rather formulaic, family feature.

Click the image below to...

Kazuya Konaka directs from a script by Hirotoshi Kobayashi.

Paris-based sales outfit Charades has acquired international rights excluding Asia and Latin America to Anime title Sylvanian Families The Movie: A Gift From Freya.

It is the first feature film about Japanese animal IP Sylvanian Families and is kicking off sales at the AFM. Charades is using the title Calico Critters when talking to North American buyers.

Kazuya Konaka directs from a script by Hirotoshi Kobayashi.

The children’s toys were launched in Japan in 1985 by Epoch and the franchise has since been adapted to several animated series and video games.

With a focus on diversity, “Nippon Connection” once more cements its position as the biggest Japanese cinema festival in Europe. The selection is as interesting as always, although the current state of Japanese cinema and the fact that Cannes take place pretty close to the festival, did not allow to include some of the biggest latest titles, such as the ones from Takeshi Kitano and Hirokazu Koreeda. Nevertheless, a number of gems are here once more, the articles of which are included in the list below.

Click on the titles for the full articles.

1. Single8 (2023) by Kazuya Konaka

A coming-of-age story veiled as a love-letter to movie-making, ‘Single8′ wears it passions on its sleeve, following its cast as they mature from avid enthusiasts to storytellers in their own right. Director Kazuya Konaka, of whose teenage years the film is based on, captures their passions and determination with an inquisitive zeal,...

Strip away the politics and the grander discourses resonating from their collective cerebral cortex, movies engross and enchant; molding and inspiring younger impressionable minds, the cinematic audiovisual experience is an exhilarating tour-de-force of mind-bending effects and inimitable panache. Sat in a movie theatre with eyes glued to the screen awash in pure wonderment is the future, a myriad of potential creatives who will never forget their first time of becoming speechless at the big screen. It is a fertile time when untamed and unfiltered bewilderment possesses those hearts and minds in lieu of the irrational realities that will one day take its place for so many. For Kazuya Konaka, nothing would ever be the same again once he would emerge from a movie theater in 1978 after witnessing a groundbreaking achievement in the arts, filled with hopes of one day fulfilling his own; with ‘Single8' Konaka relives a time of...

The longest running genre fest in the US, the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival (Boston SciFi for short) returned for its 48th annual event in Somerville, Ma last week.

I was only able to attend one of the five days, but I managed to squeeze in four features plus two panels. Here’s what I saw at this year’s Boston Science Fiction Film Festival.

The Warm Season

Boston SciFi hosted the world premiere of The Warm Season, a character-driven sci-fi drama with shades of Starman. As a young girl, Clive (Carie Kawa) encountered Mann (Michael Esparza), an alien in human disguise, who gave her a glowing rock before being captured by government agents. 25 years later in 1992, an escaped Mann returns to Clive’s failing motel to retrieve the “fail-safe” in order to return to his planet. Between the weather patterns and the government closing in, they only have three days to get him home.

Ashina Sei, an established actor in high demand for TV dramas and films, was discovered dead in her Tokyo apartment Monday. Both Tokyo police and her agency have confirmed that she died of suicide, age 36.

Born in 1983 in Fukushima Prefecture as Igarashi Aya, she came to Tokyo while still a teenager and soon found work as a fashion model. She made her acting debut in 2002 in the TBS network drama “The Tail of Happiness” (“Shiawase no Shippo”). Beating nearly 800 other hopefuls, Ashina was cast as the Japanese lead in the 2007 François Girard historical drama “Silk,” a Japanese, Canadian and Italian co-production.

She accumulated numerous TV and film credits in the past decade, including a lead role in the 2010 Kazuya Konaka drama “Nanase: The Psychic Wanderers” and a continuing role from 2017 to this year in the popular TV Asahi series “Aibo: Tokyo Detective Duo,” whose 19th season will air from October.