This week we had news for Sion (Love Exposure) Sono’s adaptation of the manga Himizu.
The man just doesn’t stop working and Himizu wrapped up filming last month and will be released early in 2012. It was only announced in April but Sion Sono’s nothing if not prolific (a point I keep making). Anyway, news emerged on eiga.com (movie) about the cast. The lead will be played by Shota Sometani and the heroine will be played by Fumi Nikaido.
The trailers collected this week are for a mixed bag of films due to be released in the UK over the next few weeks and are the interesting titles that I can see.
Potiche
UK release – 17th June –
Running Time – 96 mins –
A belated release for Francois (Water Drops on Burning Rocks, 8 Women) Ozon’s last film which was released in France in 2010. It is a comedy that stars Catherine Deneuve in a ghastly track-suit, Gerard Depardieu.
1977 France, Suzanne Pujol (Catherine Deneuve) is the trophy wife (potiche) of Robert (Fabrice Luchini) who runs an umbrella factory. She leads a life of under-appreciation as her husband cheats on her with his secretary and their children regard her as a joke. That is until Robert is kidnapped and then hospitalised by the workers in the factors during an industrial dispute. After this series of events, Suzanne takes control of the factory and finds she is rather good at running it. However she runs into a familiar face from the past, an old flame named Maurice Babin (Gerard Depardieu), who just happens to be a Communist union activist and Robert’s sworn enemy.
Viva Riva
UK release – 24th June –
Running Time – 96 mins –
In the same week that Transformers is released in the UK an African action movie will also premiere. This film has been earning a lot of good reviews on the internet and the trailer looks like a lot of fun.
Written and directed by Djo Munga, the story takes place in Kinshasha in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it centres on a young guy in Angola named Riva (Patsha Bay) who works for a gang as a petrol smuggler. He decides to steal petrol from his own boss and sell it in petrol-starved Kinshasha, which is enough to earn his boss’s ire. After celebrating his quick profit making scheme with wild parties he falls for the local mob boss’s girl, Nora (Manie Malone). With two gangsters on his case, Riva goes on the run.
Hobo with a Shotgun
Release Date – 15th July
Running Time – 86 mins
This sounded like an elaborate joke but whenever I checked in with websites like… news just kept coming and then announcements that it was screening in festivals like SXSW and gaining great reviews. I never thought this would get a UK exhibition. This has passed by serious film magazines without mention and the fact that it’s based on a spoof trailer in Tarantino and Rodriuez’s Grindhouse didn’t fill me with hope but cinema needs more Rutger Hauer, right? Then I watched the trailer and was convinced – this could be the most fun in the cinema this year.
A hobo (Rutger Hauer)hops off the train at Hope Town, a violent urban war-zone full of gangsters, paedophiles and other scum-bags who think nothing of terrorising the innocent and making hobos fight each other for videos. The hobo just wants to start a new life but the gangsters won’t leave him alone.
Genkinahito 