This episode has everything awesome. Yoko embarrasses Ryo, everyone goads Yoko into embarrassing himself then makes fun of him for it, Subaru's a perv, KinKi Kids tease the crap out of their kouhai, Hina can't find his own elbow without Subaru's help, Yasu's a delinquent, Tacchon's not too careful with his belongings, Maru likes girls who don't like him, and Kouichi is afraid of looking like a dork at Starbucks. Everything covered now?
Arashi's Kazunari Ninomiya, Kou Shibasaki Star in Ōoku Film
Arashi J-pop group member Kazunari Ninomiya and singer/actress Kou Shibasaki will star in the live-action film adaptation of Fumi Yoshinaga's award-nominated Ōoku: The Inner Chamber manga. ASMIK Ace will release the film in Japan on October 1, 2010.
The historical science fiction story takes place in an alternate history version of medieval Japan, in which a bizarre disease has dwindled the male population. This has led to a matriarchal society where women outnumber men by 4 to 1. The shogun and de facto ruler of Japan keeps her own harem of men, or Ōoku. The film will adapt the story in the first volume of the manga.
Ninomiya (Tekkonkinkreet, Letters from Iwo Jima) will play Hiroyuki Mizuno, the young man rising through the ranks of the Shogunate, while Shibasaki (Battle Royale, Dororo, Sekai no Chūshin de, Ai wo Sakebu) will play Shogun Yoshimune herself. Fuminori Kaneko, a director best known for the live-action Kisarazu Cat's Eye and Ikebukuro West Gate Park television series, is overseeing the Ōoku film project. Natsuko Takahashi scripted the animated television version of another Yoshinaga work, Antique Bakery, before tackling this project.
The manga has been running in Hakusensha's Melody magazine since 2005, and Viz Media began releasing the manga in North America in August. Ōoku was nominated for Japan's prestigious Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for the third year in a row this year, and it finally won the Grand Prize in April. The manga was also nominated for the first Manga Taisho Awards last year.
Shibasaki, Ninomiya to co-star in "Ooku" adaptation
Kou Shibasaki (28) and Arashi member Kazunari Ninomiya (26) have been chosen to star in Fuminori Kaneko's "Ooku," a live-action film adaptation of the manga by Fumi Yoshinaga. This will be the first jidaigeki film that either has starred in.
Yoshinaga's "Ooku" is a historical fiction set during the Edo period. A mysterious disease strikes Japan's male population, reducing their numbers to a fraction of the female population. As a result, the traditional gender roles are overturned, with women becoming the dominant members of society and men becoming valued for their ability to produce offspring.
In the story, the shoguns of the time are actually women, and the "ooku" (the "inner chambers" of the shogun's castle) consists of thousands of men rather than women. Shibasaki plays the role of the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune, while Ninomiya plays a young man named Mizuno who enters the ooku.
The movie, said to have a budget of 1 billion yen, covers only the first of the 5 manga volumes released so far. However, producers are considering turning "Ooku" into a series of films.
Post time 24-12-2009 07:40 AM
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