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The official website for the upcoming live-action film adaptation of Yuto Yotsuba (story) and Ryo Ogawa's (art) comedy manga Ya Boy Kongming! (known as Paripi Koumei in Japan) announced that voice actor Mamoru Miyano will appear in the film. Miyano will play Mc Mamo, a host of the music festival “Music Battle Awards 2025,” the main setting of the film's story. In the festival, Takanori Iwata (Exile / Sandaime J Soul Brothers from Exile Tribe), enka singer Kaori Mizumori and hip-hop unit Komorebi appear as themselves. Additionally, dance group Avantgardey teams up with Ryo (played by Win Morisaki in the film) and perform under the unit name “Avantgardey feat. Ryo from Jet Jacket.” Three-member dance unit Power Puff Boys , who have worked on choreography for artists such as West. and Sekai No Owari, also joins the festival to perform. The site is now streaming a special performance clip narrated by Miyano,...

The film stars Tatsuya Fujiwara and is the third in the series.

Japan’s Nippon Television (Ntv) is launching sales at Asian Film Market on the third installment in its series based on the popular Kaiji manga, Kaiji: Final Game, again starring Tatsuya Fujiwara.

Created by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, the Kaiji manga about a consummate gambler and his misadventures has previously spawned an anime TV series and two live-action films: Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler (2009) and Kaiji 2: Jinsei Dakkai Game (2011). The manga also inspired a Chinese live-action film, Animal World, released in June 2018.

Kaiji: Final Game, again directed by Toya Sato,...

Say what you will about rarefied Japanese enviro-auteur Naomi Kawase, but there are relatively few filmmakers whose work can be identified from its image system alone, and she is firmly in that club. It takes mere seconds for “Vision” to announce itself as a Kawase enterprise, as its opening shots dwell woozily on translucent clouds masking the sun, an emerald shag-pile carpet of forest treetops viewed from above, and a sudden shaft of sunlight hitting a single taupe tree trunk like a flaming arrow. The quasi-mystical marvels of nature in repose are Kawase’s earnest stock-in-trade, and they’ve rarely been quite so gorgeously gazed upon as they are in “Vision”: When Juliette Binoche’s heartsick travel writer Jeanne wanders into these woods, her eyes and ours are very much aligned in beauty-drunk wonder.

The spell is likely to wear off a little sooner for the audience than it does for Jeanne,...

The awards were first presented in 1976, from the sports newspaper Hochi Shinbun, currently named Sports Hochi. The voters include readers of the newspaper and a committee of Japanese film critics.

This year’s ceremony was held on December 20th, at Prince Park Hotel, in Tokyo, and the winners were:

Best Picture: Her Love Boils Bathwater (Ryota Nakano)

Best International Picture: Creed (Ryan Coogler)

Best Actor: Tomokazu Miura (Katsuragi Case)

Best Actress: Rie Miyazawa (Her Love Boils Bathwater)

Best Supporting Actor: Go Ayano (Rage)

Best Supporting Actress: Hana Sugisaki (Her Love Boils Bathwater)

Best New Artist: Takanori Iwata (Evergreen Love) Ryota Nakano (Her Love Boils Bathwater)

Special Award: Your Name

Best Director: Lee Sang-il (Rage)...