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“Ushikubi Village” will be the third movie in the “Horror Village” series by Takashi Shimizu, following “Howling Village and “Suicide Forest Village”.

Takuya Kimura’s daughter, Mitsuki Kimura will play the female lead role alongside Masahiro Inoue who plays the male lead.

Filming location will start in the northwest base of Mt. Fuji, a famous area for having a lot of paranormal activity.

Music will be composed by Alan Tyler and Takashi Ohmama.

Takashi Shimizu will direct, and the screenwriters are Hosaka Daisuke and Takashi Shimizu...

The collage of different ideas that is usually the trademark of Miike’s cinema finds one of its apogees in “Zebraman 2”, a film that manages to portray a pointy sociopolitical satire about 2010 Tokyo and Japan in general, while incorporating a number of absurd ideas and a more than delirious narrative.

The story takes place in 2025, when Tokyo has been taken over by an eccentric Mayor named Kozo Aihara, who looks like he jumped straight from “A Clockwork Orange”, has changed the name of the city to Zebra City, and fully capitalizing on Zebraman’s heroics 15 years ago, has introduced Zebra time. This last concept is probably the most significant change, since, every day from 5:00 Am and for five minutes, all crime is legal. Among bosses raping their secretaries and a number of other crimes, the Zebra Police (who look like the members of a boy band...

The Japanese pop culture blog Gigazine has posted individual trailers for the trilogy of "Real Onigokko" movies being released in Japan this May.

All three movies are directed by Mari Asato (Ju-on: Black Ghost, Keitai Kanojo) and their events take place at the same time in different locations.

The Real Onigokko franchise is based on a novel by Yusuke Yamada about a parallel world where everyone with the last name "Sato" is hunted by masked men for some mysterious reason. "Onigokko" is the Japanese equivalent of the children's game "tag". The person designated "oni" (demon) tries to catch any of the other players. Appropriately, these movies generally stick to the basic theme of people being chased. Fighting back is rarely an option due to the single-minded determination of the "oni", so survivors end up running for their lives in a series of nonstop action scenes. In a similar vein to Battle Royale,...

A new trilogy of Real Onigokko movies is set for release in Japan this May. A combined trailer for all three movies was released earlier today.

In 2008, Yusuke Yamada’s popular Real Onigokko novel was adapted as a relatively low budget movie starring Takuya Ishida, Shunsuke Daito, and Mitsuki Tanimura (international English title: The Chasing World). In the story, a teenager named Tsubasa Sato is pulled into a parallel world where anyone with the surname Sato is hunted relentlessly by creepy masked men under orders from a mysterious king. Anyone who dies in the parallel world also dies in Tsubasa’s original world, so he spends the majority of the story protecting the alternate version of his sister.

The movie did surprisingly well with teens and tweens due to repeat after-school viewings, and a sequel followed in 2010.

In the new movies, people with type B blood are victims of the game.

Along with the list of films playing in-competition, the Venice Film Festival has announced which films are playing out-of-competition this year. The movies include Ben Affleck’s The Town, Casey Affleck’s Joaquin Phoenix documentary I’m Still Here, Martin Scorsese’s Elia Kazan documentary A Letter to Elia, John Turturro’s Passione, Julie Taymor’s The Tempest as the closing night film, and Robert Rodriguez’ Machete as the opening night film. It’s an eclectic bunch of flicks and they’re just a small sampling of the movies playing out-of-competition. Hit the jump to check out the full list.

The 67th Venice Film Festival will run from September 1 – 11th.

Ben Affleck – The Town

USA, 120′

Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively

Casey Affleck – I’M Still Here

USA, 108′ (documentary)

Joaquin Phoenix

Marco Bellocchio – Sorelle Mai

Italy, 110′

Alba Rohrwacher, Donatella Finocchiaro, Elena Bellocchio, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio

Piergiorgio Gay...