rinko kikuchi Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If there's an adaptation that should make for an enticing and lyrically beautiful film, it's Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. The novel is named after a great Beatles song, follows a post-suicide star-crossed attraction, is set on the landscape of 1960s Japan, and is rife with melancholia and detachment. Nevertheless, things like this always rely on those who make it come to life, and after this latest bit of news, there shouldn't be any cause for worry. Sweet relief!

Variety reports that Tran Ang Hung's project will star Kenichi Matsuyama as Toru, Rinko Kikuchi as Naoko, and model Kiko Mizuhara as Midori. The New York Times review is the best way to get an idea about the plot, but briefly: A man named Toru hears "Norwegian Wood," which sends him back to memories of his life in the '60s. As a teen, he was best friends with a couple, Naoko and Kizuki. Kizuki killed himself, leaving the remaining pair damaged and struggling. They fall in love, but Naoko still struggles and goes to a sanitarium to try and work through her pain. Meanwhile, Toru meets another, Midori, who is the light to Naoko's darkness, and feels torn between them.

It's about time Kikuchi got a more prominent role. Her work in Babel and The Brothers Bloom was excellent but painfully brief, and it'll be nice to see her take a central role that can let her talents run wild.

Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until at least the Fall of 2010 to see for ourselves.

The Brothers Bloom is one of the best movies I've seen in quite a while. I actually dreamed that at one of the press days, instead of DVDs with assets they were giving out copies of the movie, and I was really disappointed when I woke up. Seriously.

It's being marketed as a globe-trotting con man movie, which is true, but it's also got some romantic comedy action going on, and it's very funny. Rachel Weisz's character Penelope is one of the coolest and most three-dimensional "quirky female" characters I've seen in so long. Rinko Kikuchi steals every scene she's in as Bang Bang, their explosions expert. It's why The Brothers Bloom ranked with Happy-Go-Lucky as one of my faves of last year. The costumes are stylish and cool, the locations are glamorous and romantic, and the script is smart and well written -- just what you'd expect from Rian Johnson, who wrote Brick. (Fortunately, I didn't need subtitles to get all the nuances of Johnson's script, as I did with Brick -- which is, by the way, totally worth it.)

Okay, so now that I've slobbered all over The Brothers Bloom, go watch the first seven minutes on Hulu, introduced by Rian Johnson. Voila! The rest of the film hits theaters on May 15.

When we here at Cinematical harp on about a particular movie, it's usually because it deserves the attention, whether or not it's a genuinely Great Movie. Every so often, several of us on the staff will share the same wavelength for a film and insists on flogging it through its release, and we do so because we care so, so very much. Now, I personally won't go on about The Brothers Bloom at as great a length as we have with, say, The Promotion or Dear Zachary...; earlier today, when a colleague asked me (in wording that doesn't quite merit repeating here) if I had an overwhelming affection for the film, I couldn't say it was any stronger than I felt for either of those films.

I should know why I'm supporting any film, though, and I do know that I would like to see Bloom fare well in the marketplace whenever it does open -- which is why I hope that Summit changes its release date just one last time.

This had been hush-hush for a mild while now, but it looks like Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom has been bumped back yet again to next May. Back in September, I had mentioned that the crime caper had moved from October to a NY/LA qualifying run next week and a wide release in January. The difference between that post and this one is that I was fortunate to see the film at Fantastic Fest a couple of months back, and it was good enough to make me equally anxious to just see the film again.

Writer-director Johnson confirmed the rumor on his message board, then joking that his own December birthday had been pushed back by Summit to May, when there are less of them to contend with. All kidding aside, Bloom is now scheduled to bow in limited release on May 15th -- opposite DaVinci Code sequel Angels & Demons and Borat follow-up Bruno -- and then wide on May 29th, up against Sam Raimi's return to horror Drag Me To Hell and Pixar's anticipated-by-default Up.

It's tough competition, to be sure, but believe me (and Eugene, and James) when we say that The Brothers Bloom will be well worth the wait.

I'm constantly grumbling about Americans remaking Asian films -- the idea of Steven Spielberg trying to redo Park Chan-wook's Oldboy with Will Smith is potentially the most cringe-worthy of them all -- so, to be fair, I suppose I should be complaining that a Japanese remake of Alexander Payne's Sideways recently started filming in Napa Valley, California, according to Variety. But an unrelated comic book may hold the key to the remake's appeal.

Payne's superb tale of romantic yearning and mid-life anxiety famously centers on wine snob Paul Giamatti (he praised pinot noir and derided merlot) and his much coarser buddy Thomas Haden Church as they wine, dine, and romance Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh. The movie's success caused a strong surge in sales of pinor noir in the US.

Japan doesn't seem to have an equivalent wine culture; owing to weather, soil, and scarcity of land, the country is not well-suited to viticulture, and, historically, wine consumpton has been low. Recently, though, California wine imports have signficantly increased. And the comic Kami no Shizuku (translated as The Drops of God; pictured) has become a phenomenon over the last couple of years, read by 500,00 Japanese weekly, according to Telegraph (UK), and sending wine sales skyrocketing across Asia. The series details a young man's quest to identify the 12 wines described in his father's will.

Whatever the original impetus for the live-action remake, it could prove to be equally influential whenever it's released in Japan next fall. Rinko Kikuchi (Babel, The Brothers Bloom) plays the wildcat role originally played by Oh, while the other main parts are filled by Fumiyo Kohinata (wine snob), Katsuhisa Namase (his buddy), and Kyoka Suzuki (object of wine snob's romantic attentions).

Long awaited in the wake of his 2005 debut Brick, Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom is a magic trick of a film; the second it's over, you want to see it again so you can try to catch how you were tricked, but you also want to see it again so you can return to the joy and wonder of being wrapped up in the nimble, deck-shuffling hands of a born showman. Watching it at first, some of The Brothers Bloom's creative and thematic elements seem like they're on loan from Paul Thomas Anderson (opening narration by Ricky Jay, pop-whiz-bang camera work, the troubled-but-tender relationship between the two brothers) while others feel as if they've been cribbed from Wes Anderson (deadpan confessions, whimsical set design, a parallel-universe setting where people still travel to Europe by steamship). The truth is, as much as The Brothers Bloom may feel like it's cribbing from other films at first, this is Rian Johnson's movie, and even if my more dreary and discerning critical faculties told me the final act goes on, perhaps, a beat too long, my inner moviegoer was sitting bolt upright, smiling, bright-eyed and carried away.

Brothers Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrian Brody) have grown up on the make, in a world of, as Jay's stage-setting narration puts it, "... grifters, ropers, faro fixers, tales drawn long and tall. ..." Stephen builds cons; Bloom gets close to the marks. Stephen's work on their scams is a weird, lucrative form of self-expression; as Bloom puts it, "My brother writes cons the way Russians write novels. ..." Bloom's work on their schemes is a weird, lucrative form of self-loathing; Bloom learns early on that playing a part means never having to be yourself, that he, when " ... being as he wasn't, could be as he wished to be." Stephen wants more. Bloom wants out.

Cinematical is excited to bring you these brand new exclusive images from The Brothers Bloom (see gallery below), which will enjoy a premiere at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival this month. The film, which marks writer-director Rian Johnson's follow-up to the much-beloved Brick, stars Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as "the best con men in the world" who, for their one last job, decide to take a beautiful and eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz) on a trip around the world. The delightful Rinko Kikuchi (pictured in the gallery below) also stars. We here at Cinematical are big fans of Johnson's Brick (that kinda sounds weird, huh?), and have been looking forward to The Brothers Bloom for quite some time now. While those lucky ducks currently in Toronto will get to see the film early (we'll have our review soon), the rest of us will have to wait till it hits theaters on December 19.

If I know our Eugene Novikov at all, his face is like mine in that it registers somewhere between the two pictured at the right when it comes to the news that The Brothers Bloom, writer-director Rian Johnson's follow-up to his nifty noir Brick, has been bumped back from October 24th (an admittedly crowded weekend) to a limited bow on December 19th, followed by a wide release on January 16th of 2009.

When the fairly reliable Box Office Mojo first mentioned the change, I balked at the thought, but now Johnson has confirmed it on his own message board, saying "There were a few reasons for the move: October and November are crowded as hell, it's a tough tough market, especially for a smart unique film like ours, and we'd have a week or two at the most to sink or swim. Whereas concentrating on a couple markets for awards consideration in December, then pushing the wide in the more open January slot just seemed like a better use of resources."

Wait -- what's that? Eugene gets to see it in a week's time up at Toronto? Excuse me, but I'm suddenly feeling much more like Bang Bang...

From bits of Babel to new nightmares on Elm Street:

• While it might have seemed like Rinko Kikuchi dropped off the cinematic circuit after making waves with Babel, the young actress has kept busy and will soon be seen in the likes of The Brothers Bloom and Shanghai. But that's not all: The Hollywood Reporter posts that she's in talks for Isabel Coixet's next film, Map of the Sounds of Tokyo. A tale of dual identities, the film is said to focus on a fish-market worker who is also a contract killer. It's not clear whether she is that worker, or will have another part in the film. Whatever the case, it'll be nice to see Rinko in something new.
• In a completely different vein, there's a new rumor on Elm Street. Forget Smallville stars -- according to Ace Showbiz, the reigning nightmare king Robert Englund was on Loveline recently, and mentioned the new movie. He said he's heard talks about Billy Bob Thornton taking on the role. I must say -- that's completely out of left field, but I'm not hating the idea. How about you? Could Billy Bob be a good fit for the striped sweater?

Are you deliriously loopy? You may need to be -- or be tipsy on homemade adult beverages -- to fully appreciate the genius that is Funky Forest: First Contact, which finally got a Region 1 DVD release this past Tuesday.

By the time I watched a late night screening at Fantastic Fest in 2006, Funky Forest had already accumulated a cult following, while also alienating others whose heads split open at the silly weirdness of it all. (Several people walked out of the screening after the first scene, while others scurried away after an hour or so.) In my book, it's the best post-modern musical ever made. I was humming songs and fondly replaying entire sequences for weeks.