ryuganji: film news from japan

Now for some news that I really don’t care about: there will be a “Bayside Shakedown 3″. As the first sequel was the highest grossing live-action film in Japanese box office history (raking in over 17 billion yen), this hardly comes as a surprise.

The director-screenwriter combo of Motohiro Katsuyuki and Kimizuka Ryoichi return, as do core cast members Oda Yuji, Yanagiba Toshiro, Fukatsu Eri, Yusuke Santamaria and Mizuno Miki. Ikariya Chosuke has since passed away, but producer Kameyama Chihiro has hinted that he might yet make an appearance in some form. Oda’s schedule is packed this year, so shooting will begin in 2009 with a release date yet to be decided. Although a script hasn’t been written yet, Kameyama says the story will pick up after the actual five year break since the last movie, with some characters including Oda’s Detective Aoshima having since been promoted.

I know a lot of people enjoyed these films and I can concede that they work as undemanding light entertainment, but my problem is less with the inadequacies of the films themselves than the era they’ve brought about. The huge success of Fuji TV’s franchise ushered in the current spate of lackluster movies based on television series, and although it could be said they gave the film industry a much-needed boost by getting small screen audiences into the habit of going to see locally-made films in cinemas again, that brought along with it a dependence on television-grade acting, direction and aesthetics that’s become sadly prevalent in Japanese feature films today. （source: Sanspo)