battlefield baseball 地獄甲子園 [movie]

yeah its not funky forest but its still pretty weird. 

ok, this movie... what can i say. 

im putting in some quotes here and there just to try and give you a sense of how random this movie is.

i just dont think i can do it justice.

also, i think a *spoiler alert* is needed. but this movie makes less sense the more you know so it wont ruin anything. 

dear god, aside from this guy's face, where to start...

Jube is a highschool delinquent, he moves to a school who's team is about to play an insanely violent team who usually leave all the opposing players in a bloody dismembered mess on the pitch and sail through their victories straight to the cup. 

Jube is suffering at the memory of killing his father with a baseball pitch on the beach one day - which we are loving told through the medium of song ballad and purple camera filter. reminded me of the stock videos that accompany japanese karaoke songs.

*#father died, the pitch was too fast...
and thats the story of a boy and baseball#




eventually after some fights, persuasion, and a round of applause from the suddenly appearing entire school, Jube joins the team in the hopes to defeat the violent Gedo zombie-inmate-psychopath-mutant-whateverthefucktheyare baseball team in the coming match.

there is a guy that is played by 3 different actors because he dies so many times - actually pretty much all of the characters die at one or more times throughout and come back again in various states of alive-ness. 





this particular pitch that everything is riding on doesnt actually ever really rear its head in the match! 
they just beat the crap out of each other for a while, shaolin soccer style, and with a team of re-encarnated robotised half assed cobbled togther left overs of teachers, students, and Jube's mum, we get the final showdown with the big chinned blue skinned cowboy coach of the Gedo team, and i have no idea what the sh*t is going on.

*but Jube-kun, can we win?
*yes! with the deadly bullet pitch we can definitely win! the ball... the deadly bullet that killed my dad...
*you were hiding a pitch like that?
*no i dont actually remember how to do it, but when i was dead ten minutes ago my dead father told me to throw it.



i was surprised how funny this movie was. its weird enough to be totally crackers, but its not so stupid that it just leaves you thinking you just wasted 2 hours. and it is 2 long hours of nonsense. 


All, we come to find, is really something to do with that old drunk guy in his long johns with his dog watching on the side lines. 

and there's always an old drunk guy in his long johns with his dog watching on the side lines isnt there?

*who are you? who stopped my super tornado?

i watched this thinking "man this movie feels familiar" then found out it was a Kitamura Ryuhei film. 

I watched the whole thing thinking "Jube looks really familiar too" then i realised it was Sakaguchi Taku from alive and versus etc. 

man, he was super pretty in this.

*indeed, i died, but ive been reborn, of course, my face changed too.
*youve been reborn?
*i heard everything while i was dead, its time to get even with Gedo!
*ok, weve both died once, lets do it!

and if you think these quotes might make more sense when you watch the movie, youre wrong. they wont. im more confused now than before i saw it. i read a review before watching, it looked interesting and suitably stupid enough for my want at the time, but it was funnier than i expected it to be. those stupid but subtle nods of earnest agreement, the furrows of worry, Tak had me in fits. and yes, even though it was bonkers, i think the humour in it was more subtle than the outset would have you think.

*thanks to advanced technology, im mega gorilla!

maybe not.

i cant be arsed to do a cast list, look it up. by the way the title means Koshien Hell, not battlefield baseball, in case you get stuck. looking through the screen shots it actually looks pretty tame, i mean, its no funky forest but its still up there in the top leagues of weird ass japanese movies. its one for a group of people to enjoy. wish i had found this while i was still living back at the flat and the gang could have come over to watch this. damn funny.

Tokyo Dogs 東京DOGS [series]

after watching arakawa... this was weird

i say after arakawa - which is truly very strange, but i dont mean that this show was weird exactly. it is just that Oguri Shun plays such a normal character here that it is quite a leap from Soncho.

im currently watching rich man poor woman so i thought it might be a good time to review tokyo dogs. 

Oguri Shun has recently got married and is still getting great roles, i always enjoy watching him, ever since Binbo Danshi. (when he met his wife, squeeeee!)

now, im going to get confused as to which series im reviewing here. im not doing arakawa, im going to wait until after the movie (yatta!) and im not doing rich man poor woman, just yet.time to focus on tokyo dogs. if i can remember anything about it. 

ah yes, Mizushima Hiro and Yoshitaka Yuriko feature along side Oguri Shun in this drama. Mizushima and Oguri are unlikely partners in the police force (paired together despite their complete dislike for each other) and Yoshitaka plays yuki, who is not only the love interest but the most important piece of their puzzling police case.

Marou (Mizushima) is a bit bizarre. he was kind of a yankii in his younger days and now he is a detective who doesnt really know how to do much but fight and shout a bit too much, he is obsessed with pretty girls (until he meets yuki) and offers the majority of the comedy to the show, the character allows Mizushima to let out his quirky weird tendencies at every given moment.

Takakura (Oguri) saw his dad get shot when he was just a little kid, he trained in the US and became an elite New York City cop determined to catch his father's killer. He is stern and hard, with only that purpose in mind. 

The two policemen get paired up to finally try and bring this killer to justice and in comes Yuki, all memory-buggered and watery eyed, not knowing what the hell is going on or how she is involved, but tangled in it all the same.

They all look f*cking fabulous in this drama, as you can tell from the screen shots. gorgeous, the lot of them. all the characters are good, their banter is hilario, that was meant to be hilarious but spell checker suggested hilario so im keeping it as that. :) 

i thought it would be a bit boring, like a grown up version of shibatora without the premonitions, but it turned out to be really really good. i raced through the whole series in two days and totally enjoyed it - i think even without any sort of premise i could just watch those two idiots bickering with each other for hours.

there is a long question of who did what and bla bla bla - as you get in this sort of story, youre not sure whose side some people are on, there is danger and death on every corner, and lots of Takakura being a total dick to Yuki and making her cry - which is great because Yoshitaka is beautiful when she has tears in her eyes. and she basically looks that way the entire show.

I love how Oguri Shun can be so funny when he is playing such a straight character. it was an inspired choice to cast these two together. It was a bit like hana yori dango pairing him and trout mouth Jun together - but with a better story to show chemistry between good actors. 

It is worth mentioning some other side characters, or rather, their actors; Katsuji Ryou from shouni kyumei, atsu-hime, sore wa totsuzen arashi no you ni, etc etc. i like him a lot, i think his role was adequately stupid and odd. this drama also had wonky jaw woman Tomosaka Rie from samurai pastry chef movie chonmage purin. Mikami Kensei from deka wanko, beck, hanawake, bloody monday, and yamapi is an undertaker - i mean - saikou no jinsei no owarikata. and playing detective Majima, the wonderful Otsuka Nene from tumbling, saigo no yakusoku, iryu, tokyo tower, kurosagi, hero, and a million other things. Majima was a great character with a nice little story arc of her own. 

Yeah this wasnt really the most interesting review ive ever done but blogspot keeps deleting big chunks of stuff i write for no reason so im simplifying my life by cracking this out in a few minutes. 

the series is better than i make it sound. i fail at my job. but im too busy enjoying Oguri Shun's new drama to give a sh*t. 

~

Bloody Monday ブラッディ・マンデイ [series]

doll faced terrorists and computer hackers, guns, back stabbing, an awesome sound track, AND a mother f*cking second series. 

most of my screen shots are from the second season because SILVER HAIR and thats all you need to know.

Narimiya Hiroki, Miura Haruma, Kawashima Umika, Sato Takeru, Fujii Mina, Takashima Masahiro... you know what? i cant even be bothered, there are so many characters and amazing actors in this - i just cant even - with this - here is the link to the drama wiki, look them up if you want to know who else is in it. absolutely f*ck doing a cast listing. 

this chick is so hot. my god. seriously.

first off, this will be a utterly pants review. im telling you now. i watched it a long time ago, so i dont have any details fresh to mind to spoil for you - so thats good, but also i cant remember sh*t about it so it might not make much sense. 

also, i just so love this show. that sometimes doesnt help my reviews be particularly coherent. but nevermind! shoganai ne.

It is cheesy. yeah, i cant deny that one. but of course it is a bit over the top. proper tense computer hacker stuff always is - you know the plot - young kid hacker genius called in by police to help against terrorist, gets caught up in a load of stuff he shouldnt have to deal with, but does it brilliantly because he is Miura Haruma and awesome. 

fantastic cast - you just couldnt ask for much better than these two, then along come the rest and it just spirals off into a whirlwind of - oh god its everyone i love from everything ive ever seen all at once in the same drama.

Sato Takeru plays his friend, Narimiya Hiroki plays a mastermind terrorist, the wonderful Kichise Michiko from liar game, hanawake, boss, pandora, nodame, bla bla bla... uh how did i start this sentence? well, her anyway, she plays a - uh - sort of -    ...  i dont really know. she's just badass.

Mitsushima Hikari comes into the second season *swoon* oh god i love that girl. christ i just want her a Narimiya to make a swarm of the most charismatic babies that ever lived. 




aside from all the fan girl fodder, it has a really solid story and is shot really well. yeah its cheesy but you know that sort of panic stricken story line kind of has to be. 

its always a race against time to stop the world from blowing up in an insane fight with code name: puff the magic dragon on crack, while the whole of the world watch, and only one small boy and his dog - i mean - laptop can save humanity... 

there are lots of camera shots close up of staring eyes and weird angles, dramatic music to accompany the countdown to explosions and death and such...

and of course the obligatory changing of sides from baddie to goodie and goodie to badass mother trucker that you never expected or you kind of did but then thought it was someone else but then the music made you think it might be them again and then - bam! yep, they screwed everyone over and no-one ever saw it coming. 

the second series is awesome. i watched it in about 4 days. it is too good to just say, oh i'll watch it later, seriously guys, if you havent watched it already make this your next one. if only for the silver hair. oh god. the silver hair. i died over and over again. 

~